SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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THE BULL-FIGHTS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

The following particulars were communicated to the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ of this month by a witness to a recent bull-fight in the
city of Lisbon. Speaking without reference to its humane character or
moral tendency, the writer remarks that no spectacle in the world can be
compared, for interest and effect, to a Spanish bull-fight, every part
of which is distinguished for striking parade or alarming danger.

The grand sweep of the amphitheatre in Cadiz, Seville, or Madrid,
crowded with a gay and variegated mass of eager and shouting spectators,
and garnished at distances with boxes for the judges, the court, or the
music--the immense area in which the combats take place, occupied with
the _picadors_ in silk jackets, on horses richly caparisoned, and
with the light skipping and elastic _bandarilleros_, carrying their
gaudy silk flags to provoke the rage and to elude the attack of the
bull, form of themselves a fine sight before the combat begins. When the
door of the den which encloses the bull is opened, and the noble animal
bursts in wildly upon this, to him, novel scene--his eyes glaring with
fury--when he makes a trot or a gallop round the ring, receiving from
each horseman as he passes a prick from a lance, which enrages him still
more--when, meditating vengeance, he rushes on his adversaries, and
scatters both horsemen and bandarilleros, by his onset, ripping up and
casting the horses on the ground, and causing the bandarilleros to
leap over the railing among the spectators--or when, after a defeated