redressing the wrongs of the poor and weak, seek to
promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become only terrible to
thyself!  And remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity
and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that
it may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have
strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous
sad.  Oh, do this, and fear not the result; for either shall thy end be a
majestic and an enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the
waters, thou Old Queen!

The above was part of a broken prayer for my native land, which, after my
usual thanksgiving, I breathed to the Almighty ere retiring to rest that
Sunday night at Gibraltar.




CHAPTER LII.


The Jolly Hosteler—Aspirants for Glory—A Portrait—Hamáles—Solomons—An
Expedition—The Yeoman Soldier—The Excavations—The Pull by the Skirt—Judah
and his Father—Judah’s Pilgrimage—The Bushy Beard—The False Moors—Judah
and the King’s Son—Premature Old Age.

Perhaps it would have been impossible to have chosen a situation more
adapted for studying at my ease Gibraltar and its inhabitants, than that
which I found myself occupying about ten o’clock on the following
morning.  Seated on a small bench just opposite the bar, close by the
door, in the passage of the hostelry at which I had taken up my temporary
abode, I enjoyed a view of the square of the exchange and all that was
going on there, and, by merely raising my eyes, could gaze at my leisure
on the stupendous hill which towers above the town to an altitude of some
thousand feet.  I could likewise observe every person who entered or left
the house, which is one of great resort, being situated in the most
frequented place of the principal thoroughfare of the town.  My eyes were
busy, and so were my ears.  Close beside me stood my excellent friend
Griffiths, the jolly hosteler, of whom I take the present opportunity of
saying a few words, though I dare say he has been f