somely-painted roofs can not supply the want of warmth; the windows, the doors, and indeed every part, admit the wind, not in gentle streams, but in chilling blasts. In summer, when the excessive heat renders this coolness desirable, the houses are not unpleasant; but in winter, when the mornings and evenings are extremely cold, a little more attention to the fitting of joints would be desirable, particularly as they have no coal to create a sufficient artificial heat. The country-towns are worse, in this respect than the large cities, as, except in the houses of the wealthy, glass is not used. The windows are supplied with clumsy wooden shutters, with a smaller one in the centre, so that the light shall not be completely excluded when the window is closed. Charcoal and wood are the only fuel; the former is burned in a brass basin, inserted into a large wooden frame, and elevated about a foot from the floor, which is invariably of tiles. The inhabitants sit round these warming-pans, or brazieras, as they are called, with their feet on the wooden frame. The gas arising from the charcoal is extremely injurious, and causes violent pains in the head, and difficulty of respiration; so that, to enjoy this comfort without danger, the door, at least, must be opened. As we have before remarked of Portugal, the houses are built, for the most part, on the old Moorish plan, with flat roofs, or verandas, as they are called. The outsides are also finely ornamented with paintings in fresco, or figures executed in the plaster with which they are faced. The effect of this latter mode is pleasing in the extreme; the groundwork is wrought with rough-cast, and the figures laid on smoothly, being outlined with lines, and shaded in the same manner. The entrances to Barcelona are extremely fine; the roads are good, and shaded by fine trees, with fountains occurring occasionally. The fondness of the Spaniards for fountains is doubtless a relic of Moorish manners, and these erections are often dedicated to some saint, whose image is affixed in a niche, before which, near a town, a lamp is kept burning at night.

Besides the buildings we have mentioned, there are others worthy of note, one of which is the hospital, There are two hospitals for the sick in Barcelona; one is entirely devoted to military patients, the other to all persons born in the city. Foundlings, as at Belem in Portugal, are also received and educated; and the females, when of age, are paraded through the streets once a year, when any person taking a fancy to one of them, throws a handkerchief to her, which she preserves till the owner calls at the hospital. Here he has to produce certificates of his respectability, and ability to support a wife, when the bride is produced, the dowry paid, and the happy couple married on the spot. No disgrace whatever is attached to marriages of this kind; on the contrary, the nobles, proud as they are deemed, frequently condescend thus to select a partner for life. Besides the establishment for foundlings, the hospital contains every convenience for the sick, an asylum for lunatics, and a daily allowance of provisions for the poor. This immense establishment is entirely supported by voluntary donations.

CORUNNA is a seaport town of Spain, in the province of Gallicia. It is situated on a peninsula, at the entrance of the bay of Betanzos. The town is divided into the upper and lower town. The former, which lies on the declivity of a hill, is surrounded by a wall, and defended by a citadel. The harbor is large and secure : it is in the form of a crescent, and is provided with a handsome quay. The entrance is protected by the two castles of St. Martin and Santa Cruz, and also by two strong forts, one of which is placed on a rock which commands the port, and part of the

road.

On the 16th of January, 1809, the retreating British army, under Sir John Moore,. was attacked by the French under General Soult, near Corunna. The action was obstinate, but the British succeeded in driving back the enemy. We add a full account of this celebrated battle, as it formed an era of considerable importance in the Spanish war.

General Laborde's division being come up, the French force could not be less than 20,000 men; and the duke of Dalmatia, having made his arrangements, did not lose any time in idle evolutions, but, distributing his lighter guns along the front of his position, opened a heavy fire from the battery on his left, and instantly descended with three solid masses to the assault. A cloud of skirmishers led the way, and the British pickets being driven back in disorder, the village of Elvina was carried by the first column, which afterward dividing, one half pushed on against Baird's front,. the other turned his right by the valley. The second column made for the centre. The third engaged the left by the village of Palavia Abaxo. The weight of the

French guns overmatched the English six-pounders, and their shot swept the position to the centre.

Sir John Moore, observing that, according to his expectations, the enemy did not show any body of infantry beyond that which, moving up the valley, outflanked Baird's right, ordered General Paget to carry the reserve to where the detached regiment was posted, and, as he had before arranged with him, to turn the left of the French attack, and menace the great battery. Then directing Frazer's division to support Paget, he threw back the fourth regiment, which formed the right of Baird's division, opened a heavy fire upon the flank of the troops penetrating up the valley, and with the fiftieth and forty-second regiments met those breaking through Elvina. The ground about that village was intersected by stone walls and hollow roads; a severe, scrambling fight ensued, but in half an hour the French were borne back with great loss. The fiftieth regiment entered the village with them, and, after a second struggle, drove them for some distance beyond it. Meanwhile the general, bringing up a battalion of the brigade of guards to fill the space in the line left vacant by those two regiments, the forty-second mistook his intention, and retired, and at that moment the enemy, being reinforced, renewed the fight beyond the village, the officer commanding the fiftieth was wounded and taken prisoner, and Elvina became the scene of a second struggle; this being observed by the commander-inchief, who directed in person the operations of Baird's division, he addressed a few animating words to the forty-second, and caused it to return to the attack. General Paget, with the reserve, now descended into the valley, and the line of skirmishers

being thus supported, vigorously checked the advance of the enemy's troops in that quarter, while the fourth regiment galled their flank. At the same time the centre and left of the army also became engaged: Sir David Baird was severely wounded, and a furious action ensued along the line, in the valley, and on the hills. Sir John Moore, while earnestly watching the result of the fight about the village of Elvina, was mortally wounded on the left breast by a cannon shot, from the effects of which he expired before the battle was concluded.

During this time the army was rapidly gaining ground. The reserve, overthrowing everything in the valley, and obliging La Houssaye's dragoons (who had dismounted) to retire, turned the enemy's left, and even approached the eminence on which the great battery was posted. On the left, Colonel Nicholls, at the head of some companies of the fourteenth, carried Palavia Abaxo (which General Foy defended but feebly), and in the centre the obstinate dispute for Elvina terminated in favor of the British, so that when the night set in their line was considerable advanced beyond the original position of the morning, and the French were falling back in confusion. The disorder into which the French were thrown offered a very favorable opportunity for embarking, which was the original plan, and which was by Sir John Hope, on whom the command of the army had devolved, deemed prudent to effect without delay, the arrangements being so complete that neither confusion nor difficulty occurred. The English got on board the ships with little or no interruption, and thus ended the retreat to Corunna, but with the loss of their commanders.

"Sir John Moore," says Colonel Napier, in his history of the peninsular war, published by J. S. Redfield, New York, "while earnestly watching the result of the fight about the village of Elvina, was struck on the left breast by a cannon shot; the shock threw him from his horse with violence; he rose again in a sitting posture; his countenance unchanged, and his steadfast eye still fixed upon the regiments engaged in his front; no sigh betrayed a sensation of pain; but, in a few moments, when he was satisfied that the troops were gaining ground, his countenance brightened, and he suffered himself to be taken to the rear. Then was seen the dreadful nature of his hurt; the shoulder was shattered to pieces, the arm was hanging by a piece of skin, the ribs over the heart broken and bared of flesh, and the muscles of the breast torn into long strips, which were interlaced by their recoil from the dragging of the shot. As the soldiers placed him in a blanket his sword got entangled, and the hilt entered the wound. Captain Hardinge, a staff officer, who was near, attempted to take it off, but the dying man stopped him, saying, It is as well as it is. I had rather it should go out of the field with me.' And in that manner, so becoming a soldier, Moore was borne from the fight. *** The blood flowed fast, and the torture of his wound increased; but such was the unshaken firmness of his mind, that those about him, judging from the resolution of his countenance that his hurt was not mortal, expressed a hope of his recovery. Hearing this, he looked steadfastly at the injury for a moment, and then said, 'No; I feel that to be impossible.' Several times he caused his attendants to stop and turn him round, that he might behold the field of battle; and when the firing indicated the advance of the British, he discovered his satisfaction, and permitted the bearers to proceed. Being brought to his lodgings the surgeons examined his wound, but there was no hope; the pain increased, and he spoke with great difficulty. At intervals he asked if the French were beaten, and, addressing his old friend Colonel Anderson, he said, 'You know that I always wished to die this way.' Again he asked if the enemy were defeated, and being told they were, observed, 'It is a great satisfaction to me to know we have beaten the French.' His countenance continued firm, and his thoughts clear; once only when he spoke of his mother, he became agitated. He inquired after the safety of his friends and the officers of his staff; and he did not even in this moment forget to recommend those whose merit had given them claims to promotion. His strength was failing fast, and life was just extinct, when, with an unsubdued spirit, as if anticipating the baseness of his posthumous calumniators, he exclaimed, I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice.' The battle was scarcely ended when his corpse, wrapped in a military cloak, was interred by the officers of his staff in the citadel of Corunna. The guns of the enemy paid his funeral honors, and Soult, with a noble feeling of respect for his valor, raised a monument to his memory."

The death of Sir John Moore has furnished the subject of a poem of extraordinary

beauty, the author of which was long unknown. It is now ascertained to be the production of one whose compositions were few, and who died young-Wolfe :

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell-shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
"We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

"No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

"Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

"We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,

And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

"Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

"But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

"Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory!"

The village of VILLA VELLID, in Old Castile, represented in the engraving, is situ ated about half way between Medina de Rio Seco and the city of Toro. It may be taken as a fair specimen of the hundreds of similar little villages in this province, and in the southern parts of Leon, all of which bear the same characteristic features, being constructed of similar materials, and on the same plan. They contain usually from one hundred to three hundred, and even four hundred houses; which, according to the Spanish rate of calculation, will give about five times as many inhabitants.

There are no instances, in this part of Spain, of detached farmhouses in the country, as in the other provinces, and in this country; all are collected together in groups or villages, at distances of about two or three miles from each other, which gives the country, generally, a very monotonous appearance, being quite unbroken by any of those picturesque objects so common in most other countries, in the shape of trees, houses, and agricultural buildings of various descriptions. The prospect shown in the engraving embraces an extent of some forty or fifty miles, yet, on that immense plain, only seven or eight trees of any kind can be discovered, if we except a small tract of land covered by the short and shrub-like evergreen oak, or “Encina," which supplies the inhabitants with charcoal. This want of foliage, together with the unbroken nature of the ground, and the mean appearance of the villages, which seem (excepting their churches) mere collections of tiled mud-huts, render Castile the very reverse of picturesque, and (especially in winter and autumn, when the green corn-leaf is unseen) give it the appearance of a desert rather than of a cultivated province.

The houses are very small, and seldom higher than one story. The interior is usually whitewashed, the floor paved with bricks placed sidewise, and the walls ornamented with some gaudily-colored French engravings of saints and martyrs; with the addition, now and then, of an "indulgence," purchased from the nearest monastery, or an ornamented metal crucifix. The one solitary window is very small, and