DEBARY'S NOTES ON THE CANARY ISLANDS, SPAIN, AND ALGIERS. *

IN 1848, the Reverend Thomas Debary was recommended by his medical adviser to winter abroad ; and lie tried Madeira Not finding much benefit from that climate, he sailed for the Canary Islands, and, after spending some time in Teneriffe and Canary, making several excursions about the islands, including an ascent of the far-famed " Peak," he sailed for Cadiz. Ile passed the ensuing winter in Spain, residing chiefly at Seville ; and subsequently crossed the Mediterranean to Morocco and Algiers. With a diffidence more commendable than common, Mr. Debary hesitated about publishing the results of his experience, and was only at last induced to appear in print as thinking that his ob- servations on the state of religion in the countries he visited might be useful in the present state of the Church at home. The

gious feature is, no doubt, a remarkable point in the " Notes," but less for its bearing upon home affairs, except in an indirect way, than as furnishing a new and fresh subject. Spain and Portugal, including the Atlantic islands, contrive to unite, 'like Oxford. in Gibbon's University days, " the opposite extremes t f bigotry, and indifference." The Church has been despoiled, the cler yr degraded ; yet in the mass the gorgeous ceremonies are re- ed with a fond delight, and while the priests are secretly.dis- liked, they are willingly or unwillingly submitted to. Scepticism, supposed to be widely spread in Spain, has not produced liberality • Notes of a Residence in the Canary Islands, the South of Spain, and Algiers; illustrative of the State of Religion in those Countries, By the Reverend Thomas Debary, M.A. Published by Riviagtons.

or even toleration. In such eases, however, it seems rather na- tionality than religion that excites the prejudice. As " hostis" meant a stranger and an enemy in ancient Rome, so in Spain " heretic " means a foreigner; as in England "Jew," a sordid or slippery fellow, of bad manners, whom a gentleman or a free- born Briton cannot admit to equality. The only point that has a direct bearing on the English Church refers to celibacy; but Mr. Debary's opinion is not new, and it is presented as a conclusion of his own, not drawn from facts submitted to the reader.

Besides this kind of examination, religions or the churches form a subject of the book, through which the author's attention was directed to various matters that give freshness and reality to his pages. Such are the squabble at Madeira respecting Mr. Lowe and his alleged Tractarianism; the position of chaplains abroad, which is generally unpleasant unless they are Low Church, owing, our traveller thinks, to the predominance of Presbyterians settled beyond seas ; the processions, ceremonies, and services of the Bomish Church, and the behaviour of the congregations ; the feel- ings of the clergy as displayed in argument or discourse, and the opinions of some of the laity as exhibited in familiar conversation. The clerical character of Mr. Debary also gave him more facilities for at once reaching familiarity with strangers than common tra- vellers possess, especially with his own countrymen who had been knocking about the world, and wanted to pour their stories into the ears of somebody. Independently of the advantage derived from his primary pur- suit, Mr. Debary is fitted to travel with advantage : he has the sound knowledge and taste of a scholar in matters extending be- yond scholarship. He is familiar with society ; he has a taste for art, and a lively sense of the beauties of nature, but stopping short of cant, and not so zealous as to let his likings supersede criticism. He is moreover a companionable person, with considerable powers of exertion for an invalid ; and he has the power of clothing a clear perception of real and solid things in a. style of closeness and weight. The book is a varied and informing addition to our know- ledge of the places it treats of.

At Seville, Mr. Debary seems to have been recommended to board at a house of what in England would be considered a doubt- ful character; at least the landlady had some female friends, about whose character Mr. Debary seems to have had considerable mis- givings. However, he was kept in countenance by the arrival of a. priest and Jesuit; who soon installed himself as head of the house, notwithstanding the landlady's apparent dislike to him at first.

"I own to a sympathy with clergymen wherever I go. I know that we are all more or less embarked in the same cause, and that we, as it were, live within a charmed circle, or, as some people would like to call it, a nar- row-minded system ; and it was not altogether without satisfaction that I saw the arrival at the house where I was lodging of a priest, by no means of the jovial, easy kind, that I had before been introduced to. Padre Theofilo looked like one of those active spirits in the Church which move about the world to agitate extreme Church matters. His exterior was not very pre- possessing. He had the approved ghostly complexion, piercing eyes, and a long neck that was almost bare. He hardly looked at me, but sat down impatiently to supper; and was soon after visited by a young man, between a majo ' and a muleteer. Leaving them to their own company, I strolled out with the lady of the house and Don —. " Both began to abuse the new corner, in their own way : Don — called him a rude, coarse fellow; the senora, informing me be was a Jesuit, de- nounced the order. Carlos the Third never did a wiser thing than when he expelled them ; it was a complete coup d'etat, and almost accomplished in four-and-twenty hours. She said her father had quarrelled with her mother because the latter had allowed one of these gentlemen to get a footing in their house in such a way that he could not get rid of him. 'They com- pletely-overrule the houses,' said she ; 'they get into families, so that people not only cannot call their souls their own, but they cannot even call their houses or the food placed upon their tables their own. All she hoped was that Padre Theofilo was not going to stop long.' The reader may imagine my surprise, on entering the lady's work-room in the evening, to see the senora crying, with a letter in her hand, and the padre standing by, and she declaring that he was welcome to her house, not as a lodger, but as the particular friend of her dear cousin Don Alguen. "Theofilo was not slow in accepting the use of the senora's house that was thus placed at his disposal ; and I could not forbear smiling at the incon- sistency of the lady ; but I was not sorry of the opportunity thus afforded me of conversing with this disciple of Loyola. Upon my first inquiries about the 'Spanish Church, he pretended great ignorance ; telling me he had been ten years in Rome, and was only just returned from that city. His zeal for his Church and evident intelligence was much more pleasing in my eyes than the stolid ignorance or incommunicativeness of some of the clergy whom I had encountered. He seemed, moreover, better informed on the state of the Church of England than any I haebefore met. This could hardly excite surprise, when it is known, as he informed me, that, next to Belgium, perhaps more of their order are to be found in the great towns of England than anywhere else. He did not disguise his hope that England might be converted : bring that little island back again to the Pope, and we have conquered the world.' He lamented Gregory the Sixteenth, and said he was a much safer Pope than the present one. Pius the Ninth was a great deal too much of a Liberal for him; and as to Spain, it was in a deplorable state, as far as religion was concerned. The clergy were becoming more and more nationalists and less Catholic."

Mr. Debary and this priest had various religious talks or dis- cussions, and went to some services of the church ; at one of which the. Protestant traveller throws out an idea on the worship of the ' After the Archbishop had given the blessing, Theofilo took me to the celebrated image of the Virgin carved by Juan 'Martinez Montanes. The expression in Theofilo's face was not pleasing ; there was a look of admira- tion which recalled a story I had heard respecting. a veneration paid to the Virgin better adapted to the goddess of the Zidoinans. I throw it out as a speculation, whether the adoration of the Virgin could ever rise to any height amongst a very moral people. After having seen Christianity working.in many different countries, it is hard not to believe that indigenous prejudices are repres'ented in the particular customs of individual churches. By these alone any one might take a map of the world and trace upon it the ancient

empire of Rome ; and remembering the empire of Venus, it is only in this. way one can account for the blasphemous veneration paid to the Mother of our Lord.

" May I be pardoned if I wrong my Spanish friend ? but the expression of his countenance, as he extolled the very exquisite face of this figure, to say the least, had more of Platonic than Divine love about it."

The oddity and variety of American speculation is a well-known. subject. Mr. Debary fell in with it at Teneriffe in a new form.

" At any time it is painful to part with friends at a ship's side, morepar- ticularly when you are left without companions on a foreign shore. I re- turned to the fonda in somewhat depressed spirits, nor were my feelings improved by the state of things I found there ; for scarcely had my friends quitted their temporary lodgings when they were occupied by a very dif- ferent class of voyagers. There sat, in the window-scat of the sala ' or diningroom of the fonda, a very strange-looking person, apparently neither strictly speaking a sailor nor a landsman. I was told that he was the captain of an American bark, which had just entered the port, bringing a company of roving rather than strolling actors and actresses, and about twenty spotted circus horses, and a Portuguese clown, who was to echo the English jests of an American in bad Spanish. This certainly appeared one of the most ex- traordinary speculations that was ever heard of; nothing less than Mr. Ast- ley's embarking and following the track of Captain Cook. The landlord of the English hotel of course would not forego the profits of such a company, although he was asked to do so ; and accordingly, after a time, a troop of the performers made their appearance. Their countenances had very much of the savage look about them; their hair black and long, their cheek-bones high, and the general expression of their countenances very wild and law- less. I have mentioned them here, 'merely as illurstrating the extravagances into which American speculation will carry men.

" This circus drew people from all parts of the island, who cheerfully paid the enormous charge for admittance to witness the uncommon sight, to them, of men riding four or five horses at a time, marked in all manner of extra- ordinary ways, or rearing human pyramids; as these were matters that could afford little interest to one like myself, I embarked on board the Been Moro,' a trading fallucho that arrived from Cadiz, and crossed over to the island of Gran Canaria."

The author's residence in Spain is not told so continuously as the other parts of his travels; the chief incidents and subjects alone beingmentioned. His overland journey from Seville to Malaga, through a wild district of country, is a regular narrative, reminding one of travelling in the olden time. This is the town. of Antequera. " For two leagues we had the welcome sight of Antequera before us, perched upon a green hill itself, that seemed nestling amongst threatening mountains, behind which the sun had just dropped. As we rode through the olive groves up into the town, our long silence was pleasantly broken by the notes of four or five guitars ; and we stumbled against a troop of merry- making marriage people, who were issuing from the imposing-looking streets of Autcquera.

" The streets of Antequera are more stately than those of Seville, or in fact of any Spanish town with which I am acquainted. There are in it many palatial-looking buildings ; and it is said to be very bigoted and aris- tocratical. It is thoroughly national; and gave me the idea of a town that might have been built many centuries ago, stocked with inhabitants, and then cut off from the rest of the world, where family feuds, love, and the most extravagant superstition, were left to ferment. We rode up to an ad- mirable casa particular,' and were immediately received by the good se- nora. As Antequera is in the mountains, the houses, most of them, possess that which never fails to delight the eye of an Englishman—large and ample fireplaces. After the fatigues of the journey I felt great satisfaction at sit- ting in an arm-chair by a wood fire, such as one might meet with in one of our bettermost farm-houses, caressing two or three large dogs which were burning their noses in the ashes, and conversing with a goodnatured land- lord, with a pipe in his mouth, and a couple of fair daughters. These dam- sels had coal-black hair, clear, healthy, rich complexions, and teeth of ivory, and those pleasing manners which belong to nearly all the ladies of their country.

" Vi%en they found out that I was an Englishman, they began recounting their experience of English travellers : the last was a very great lord, who travelled with riding-horses and four or five calesas or cabs—most incon- ceivably awkward vehicles : he was not very young; but there had been a. very different Inglese," muy delicado,' very delicate, with light curly hair—' con una bout hermosa'—with a beautiful mouth. At last I con- fessed to being a cure,' and was not displeased to find that I was not the less thought of for this., I expressed my wonder at their calling their maid- servant Encarnacion' • one of them replied, Oh, it is a very common name for a maid in Ant'equera : our man-servant is named Trinidad' ; and tell us, seller, what your saint's name is ? '

" I replied, ' A very homely one—Tomas.'

" 'Don Tomasito,' cried one, you escaped a great danger today in coming from Osuna : the galera has been stopped and robbed three times lately.'

" For the evening I forgot all my fatigues in this pleasant party, but the following day I felt miserable : I walked about the town, and marvelled at the immense number of crosses stuck about the walls, particularly at the corners of streets, indicating where men had been murdered. The names of the victims were written underneath. It was really quite alarming, and led one to suppose that every man carried a stiletto under his caps.' "

The excursions to Morocco and Algiers contain the latest and best accounts of those places that we have fallen in with, includ- ing a view of the prospects of the Romanist missionaries at Tan- gier. These Mr. Debai7 describes as indifferent enough, and he appears inclined to ascribe the failure to the sloth of the priests : but what can he expect ? How long would a man's head be on his- shonlders who should apostatize from Mahometanism to Christi- anity ? and how long would the converting priests be allowed to remain in the town, if they could even manage to leave it alive?