第93章

MYSELF.- How many aspirants for the mission are you at present instructing?

RECTOR.- Not one, my son; not one.They are all fled.

The flock is scattered and the shepherd left alone.

MYSELF.- Your reverence has doubtless taken an active part in the mission abroad?

RECTOR.- I was forty years in the Philippines, my son, forty years amongst the Indians.Ah me! how I love those Indians of the Philippines.

MYSELF.- Can your reverence discourse in the language of the Indians?

RECTOR.- No, my son.We teach the Indians Castilian.

There is no better language, I believe.We teach them Castilian, and the adoration of the Virgin.What more need they know?

MYSELF.- And what did your reverence think of the Philippines as a country?

RECTOR.- I was forty years in the Philippines, but Iknow little of the country.I do not like the country.I love the Indians.The country is not very bad; it is, however, not worth Castile.

MYSELF.- Is your reverence a Castilian?

RECTOR.- I am an OLD Castilian, my son.

From the house of the Philippine Missions my friend conducted me to the English college; this establishment seemed in every respect to be on a more magnificent scale than its Scottish sister.In the latter there were few pupils, scarcely six or seven, I believe, whilst in the English seminary I was informed that between thirty and forty were receiving their education.It is a beautiful building, with a small but splendid church, and a handsome library.The situation is light and airy: it stands by itself in an unfrequented part of the city, and, with genuine English exclusiveness, is surrounded by a high wall, which encloses a delicious garden.

This is by far the most remarkable establishment of the kind in the Peninsula, and I believe the most prosperous.From the cursory view which I enjoyed of its interior, I of course cannot be expected to know much of its economy.I could not, however, fall to be struck with the order, neatness, and system which pervaded it.There was, however, an air of severe monastic discipline, though I am far from asserting that such actually existed.We were attended throughout by the sub-rector, the principal being absent.Of all the curiosities of this college, the most remarkable is the picture gallery, which contains neither more nor less than the portraits of a variety of scholars of this house who eventually suffered martyrdom in England, in the exercise of their vocation in the angry times of the Sixth Edward and fierce Elizabeth.Yes, in this very house were many of those pale smiling half-foreign priests educated, who, like stealthy grimalkins, traversed green England in all directions; crept into old halls beneath umbrageous rookeries, fanning the dying embers of Popery, with no other hope nor perhaps wish than to perish disembowelled by the bloody hands of the executioner, amongst the yells of a rabble as bigoted as themselves: priests like Bedingfield and Garnet, and many others who have left a name in English story.

Doubtless many a history, only the more wonderful for being true, could be wrought out of the archives of the English Popish seminary at Valladolid.