The National Register. — 1821-11-18 (London, England)

TILE LISBON INQUISITIO.V.  LISBON, OCT. 24.—0 n the Bth of October the Palace of the Holy-office iv.:s opened to the people. —The number which crowded to see it during the four first days rendered it extremely difficult and even dangerous to attempt an entrance. The edifice is extensive, and has the form of an oblong square, with a garden in the middle. It is three stories high, and has several vaulted galleries, along which are situated a number of dungeons, of six, seven, eight, and nine feet square. Those on the ground fluor and in the first story, having no windows, are deprived of both air and light when the door is shut. —The dungeons of the next story have a kind of breathing hole in the form of a chimney, through which the sky may be seen. These apartments were allotted to prisoners who, it was supposed, might be set at liberty. In the vaulted wall of each dungeon there is a hole of about an inch in diameter, which communicates with a secret corridor running along by each tier of dungeons. By this means the agents of the Inquisition could at any moment observe the conduct of the prisoners without being seen by them; and when two persons were confined in the same dungeon could hear their conversation.— In these corridors were seats so placed, that a spy could observe what was passing in two dungeons, by merely turning his eves from right to left in order to look into either of the holes between which he might be stationed. The spies wore list shoes that they might make no noise in walking over the vaults of the dungeons. A familiar of the Inquisition was often shut up in the same dungeon with a prisoner from whom it was wished to draw confessions to be used afterwards against him. Human skulls and other hones have been found in several of the dungeons. On the walls of these frightful holes are carved the names of some of the unfortunate victims buried in them, accompanied with lines or notches, indicating the number of days of their captivity. One name has beside it the date 1809, and 500 lines, which marks a confinement of more then' twelve months, terminated probably by the execution of the prisoner. The doors of certain dungeons which had not been used for some years still remained shut, but the people soon forced them open. In nearly all of them human bones were found, and among these melancholy remains were, in one dungeon, fragments of the garments of a monk and his girdle. In some of these dungeons the chimney-shaped air-hole was walled up, which is a certain sign of the murder of the prisoner.—ln such cases the unfortunate victim was compelled to go into the air-hole, the lower extremity of which was immediately closed by masonry. Quick lime was afterwards thrown down on him, which extinguished life ant destroyed the body. In several of these dens of misery mattresses were found, some old, others almost new,--a circumstance which proves, whatever may be said to the contrary, that the Inquisition in these latter times was something more than a scarecrow. The ground on which this palace of tae Inquisition stands was covered with private houses before 1755, whence it is plain that the victims who have suffered here must all have been slerificed within less than sixty years. Besides the dungeons which the people have already visited, there are subterraneous vaults which have not yet been opened.  .~