MANRESA, a town of Catalonia, Spain, 39 miles north-west of Barcelona, with a population of 15,264. It was formerly Bacasis, one of the cities of the Jaccetani, the most important of the small tribes at the foot of the Pyrenees. It lies on the left bank of the Cardonero, 2 miles above its junction with the Llobregat, in the midst of a fertile and well-irrigated district, and its chief manufactures are cloth, cotton, silk, gunpowder, and brandy. Building stone is quarried near the town. The Cardonero is crossed by two bridges,—one ancient, the other erected in 1804. The two principal sights of Manresa are the collegiate church, El Seo, commenced in 1328, and finished in the 15th century, and the Cueva de San Ygnacio. The late Mr G. E. Street has minutely described the church in his Gothic Architecture of Spain. Among its greatest treasures he specializes a magnificent altar frontal as “the most beautiful work of its age.” It is 10 feet long by 2 feet 10 inches in height, and is divided into nine compartments, at the bottom of which is the inscription in Lombardie characters :— geri: laγi: rechamatore : MEFECiτ: inflorentia. In the Cueva de San Ygnacio, Ignatius Loyola lived for a year, fasting and submitting himself to the severest penances, constantly gazing at the shrine of the Virgin of Montserrat, who, he asserted, encouraged him in his austerities. A great monastery surrounds the cave, which is visited by thousands of pilgrims, and from the esplanade there is a magnificent view of the “pinnacles, spires, turrets, sugar-loaves, and pyramids of faint grey rocks,” constituting the famous mountain of Montserrat. At Cardona, a little more than 20 miles to the north-west of Manresa, there is a remarkable hill of rock-salt 3 miles in circumference, and 350 ...