FOUR-FOOTED PRIZE-FIGHTERS. 24! 



Four successive popes tried in vain to stop the game. 

 Some of them threatened excommunication ; but they 

 found that their bulls did not scare the toreros, and 

 Gregory XIII. had actually to revoke his own edict : 

 nay, the clamors of the Spanish clergy obliged Clement 

 VII. to pass a special ordinance legalizing bull-fights on 

 church festivals ! (Lecky's " History of Rationalism, * 

 vol. i. p. 308.) In the cities the matanzas went on as 

 merrily as ever : Seville had a special school for toreros, 

 and Philip the Second kept a torero guard and a chief 

 court matador. Three hundred years of monk-rule and 

 misfortune have not tamed this passion. Cadiz, Cordova, 

 Toledo, Medellin, Cartagena, and Alicante mere beggar- 

 towns, compared with their former splendor still man- 

 age to get up a weekly matanza. No saint can hope to 

 rival the popularity of a successful matador : the French 

 publisher Hallerman made a fortune by chromotyping 

 the portrait of the torero Perez. Jose Maria Perez 

 began his career as a Cartagena canallon, or circus- 

 sweeper, and, in spite of his dissolute habits, died the 

 richest man of his native town. His arrival in a bull- 

 ring city produced a regular furore : merchants closed 

 their offices and teachers their schools,* disguised monks 



* Natura si furca expellas, etc. Last August [1881] a Georgia moon- 

 shiner captured a wild-cat and brought it to Birmingham, Alabama. The 

 dignitaries of that city assembled at the court-house and resolved by ac- 

 clamation, 1st, to pit the cat against a certain town-dog; 2d, to celebrate 

 the event by a general holiday. On the following morning all work was 



