tissue, tunics of every variety of costly skirts and satins, magnificent suits of chain armour and mail inlaid with jewels, and jewel-studded swords and daggers, weapons of every description, and Solomon’s emerald table, wrought in burnished silver and gold. “This table,” says the Arabian chronicler, “was the most beautiful thing ever seen, with its golden vases and plates of a precious green stone, and three collars of rubies, emeralds, and pearls.” Other Arabian historians have claimed that it was composed of a solid emerald, and they are practically agreed that it was brought to Toledo after the sacking of Jerusalem, and that it was valued in Damascus at a hundred thousand dinars—about £50,000. Washington Irving, who invariably goes the whole hog when dealing with legendary history, says that this “inestimable table” was composed “of one single and entire emerald, and possessed talismanic powers; for tradition affirms that it was the work of genii, and had been wrought by them for King Solomon the Wise, the son of David. This marvellous relic was carefully preserved by Tarik, as the most precious of all his spoils, being intended by him as a present to the khalif; and, in commemoration of it, the city was called by the Arabs, Medina Almeyda; that is to say, ‘The City of the Table.’”

But the historian, Ibnu Hayyau, the greatly trusted authority of El-Makkari, gives, in the translation of Don Pascual de Gayangos, the following account of the origin of this article of virtue: “The celebrated table which Tarik found at Toledo, although attributed to Solomon, and named after him, never belonged to the poet-king. According to the barbarian authors, it was customary for the nobles and men in estimation of the Gothic Court, to bequeath a portion of their property to the Church. From the money so amassed the priests caused tables to be made of pure gold and silver, gorgeous thrones and stands on which to carry the gospels in public processions, or to ornament the altars on great festivals. The so-called Solomon’s table was originally wrought with money derived from this source, and was subsequently emulously increased and embellished by successive kings of Toledo, the latest always anxious to surpass his predecessors in magnificence, until it became the most splendid and costly gem ever made for such a purpose. The fabric was of pure gold, set with the most precious pearls, rubies, and emeralds. Its circumference was encrusted with three rows of these valuable stones, and the whole table displayed jewels so large and refulgent that never did human eye behold anything comparable with it.... When the Moslems entered Toledo it was found on the great altar of the Christian church, and the fact of such a treasure having been discovered soon became public and notorious.”

The history here assigned to the table is, it must be confessed, somewhat less improbable than the supposition of Gibbon, who is under the impression that if it ever existed it may have been carried away by Titus at the sacking of Jerusalem, and, later, to have fallen into the hands of the Goths at the taking of Rome by Alaric. Don Pascual, however, asks, very pertinently, whether it is likely that Bishop Sindered, and those who accompanied him in his flight, would have left behind them so valuable an object. And the conundrum still remains as to the present whereabouts of the table. It has been asserted that it forms part of the inestimable treasures of the Vatican, but as the devout Moslem would say, “Allah alone knoweth.”

Tarik, who perceived in Musa’s haste to join him in Toledo and take possession of the spoils, an indication of the governor’s envy, decided to conceal one of the feet of

the table against future emergencies. Musa, who met Tarik with savage upbraidings for exceeding his instructions—and some go so far as to say that he supplemented his speech with strokes of his whip—demanded the production of Solomon’s table, and questioned Tarik as to the absence of the missing fourth foot. The wily general declared that he had found it in that condition, and Musa had the missing emerald supplied by a foot of gold. Subsequently Musa had Tarik cast into prison, and, it is said, that he would have encompassed his death but for the prompt intervention of the khalif, who sent peremptory commands that the successful campaigner should be restored to his command of the Moorish army. Thereupon Musa professed to restore Tarik to his confidence and friendship; but he must have regretted that he had not executed his original purpose, when, on the occasion of his presenting the famous table as his own discovery to the khalif at Damascus, Tarik proclaimed himself to be the discoverer, and, as proof of his contention, produced the missing emerald foot.

The Moorish conquerors recognised the importance of Toledo as the capital of the Gothic empire, but these art-adoring, sun-worshipping warriors, who found their Eden in Andalusia, lavished their affection and culture on Cordova and Seville, and, for a time, Toledo became a secondary town. Musa’s son, Abdelasis, or Balacin, as Rasis el Moro calls him, married the widow of King Roderick, who has been variously styled Egilona, Exilona, and Blanche, and insisted upon every noble of the Moorish Court paying her extravagant homage; but the sultan held his Court at Cordova, and the Toledans never forgave this affront to their honour and dignity. They brooded in their stormy sullenness and independence. Their revolutionary instincts were never crushed; their discontent was never appeased through the three and a-half centuries of the Arab occupation of the city. Cassin, the Moorish ruler, became impregnated with the principles of independence, and threw off the yoke of Cordova, only to be betrayed in his turn by the Toledans, who, wearied of his tyranny, welcomed Abd-er-Rahman to the city, and submitted their allegiance to his throne. But throughout his reign the turbulent Toledans proved uncertain and prone to revolution, and his son, Hakam, who succeeded him, sought to conciliate them by appointing as governor a renegade Christian, one Amron, of Huesca. “By a condescension which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests,” the sultan wrote to his disaffected subjects, “instead of sending you one of our own subjects, we have chosen one of your compatriots.” Hakam’s error of judgment resulted in one of the most terrible deeds in the history of Toledo, perhaps the most disgraceful blot on the Moslem domination of Spain. Amron was entrusted with the mission of humbling his fellow countrymen to the rule of the sultan, and he achieved his object by the practice of a fiendish policy of perfidious cunning.

By affecting an aversion to the sultan, and preaching the gospel of the independence of Toledo, he won the confidence of the nobles, and concerted with them in plots to reconquer the city. In furtherance of their plans, the people consented to have soldiers quartered upon them; they welcomed the building of a fortress commanded by a strong guard at the extremity of the city; and it was at their own suggestion that a castle was erected in the middle of the town as a stronghold for the valiant governor. Then, having fortified himself with the trust of the people, and packed the city with troops, Amron secretly advised the sultan that the Toledans were ready for the lesson that was

to be read to them. Abd-er-Rahman, the son of Hakam, advanced towards the city at the head of a great army. The governor proposed that the nobles should go out to meet the young prince, and historians record that these implacable Gothic revolutionists were infatuated by the courtesy and cordiality with which they were received. The future sultan conquered their aversion by his grace and charm, and they loudly applauded Amron’s suggestion that he should be invited to accept the hospitality of the city. Abd-er-Rahman, instated in the castle of the governor, invited the nobles and representative men of Toledo to a great feast. They came in crowds, they were admitted to the castle singly, and not a single invited guest returned to his home. As each man crossed the courtyard of the castle he walked past an executioner, who stood in the shadow with uplifted blade awaiting his approach. No guest passed him. The nobles entered, the blade fell, and ready hands rolled the body into a ditch. In Spanish history that bloody day is known as the “Day of the Foss.”

“Only conceive,” writes Hannah Lynch, “the horrible picture in all its brutal nakedness! The gaily-apparelled guest, scented, jewelled, smiling, alights from his carriage, looking forward to pleasure in varied forms, brilliant lights, delicate viands, exquisite wines, lute, song, flowers, sparkling speech. Then the quick entrance into a dim courtyard, a step forward, perhaps in the act of unclasping a silken mantle, the soundless movement of a fatal arm in the shadowy silence, the invisible executioner’s form probably hidden by a profusion of tall plants or an Oriental bush, and body after body, head upon head, roll into the common grave till the ditch is filled with nigh upon five thousand corpses. Not even the famous St. Bartholomew can compete with this, in horror, in gruesomeness. Compared with it, that night of Paris was honourable and open warfare. It is the stillness of the hour, the quickness of doing, the unflinching and awful personality of the executioners, who so remarkably struck down life as ever it advanced with smiling lips and brightly-glancing eye, that lend this scene its matchless colours of cruelty and savagery. Beside it, few shocking hours in history will seem deprived of all sense of mitigation and humanity.”

Only a people rebellious by blood, by training, and by every tradition of their implacable race, could have thrown off the prostration that followed this terrible blow, and risen from their stupor with renewed determination to seize their independence. Yet Toledo survived this blow, and many others, which, if not so sudden and appalling, were sufficient to crush the spirit and deaden the aspiration of a more vincible nation. It is impossible to determine whether Abd-er-Rahman was an accessory to this deed of butchery, or to say if Amron planned the massacre in the belief that it was necessary to the maintenance of Moslem rule, to terrorise the Toledans into submission, or if the deed was inspired by the more subtle and diabolical intention of making the Moors more odious in the sight of the unmanageable citizens. When the people were sufficiently recovered from the horror of the atrocity to concoct a scheme of revenge, they acted with ferocious promptness. The cry for vengeance spread from the Zocodover into the surrounding country, and the people, hastily summoned into the city, surrounded the castle of Amron, and burnt the hateful fortress and its inmates to the ground. There, for the time, the insurrectionary movement stopped. An Arab governor was appointed, and the people, Christians and Jews as well as Moors, entered upon a new state of material prosperity. Under Aben Magot ben Ibraham the Moorish artistic influence

began to make itself felt. The architecture bore the imprint of the governing race, beautiful gardens were laid out along the Vega, Arabian palaces sprang into being, and on the ruins of Amron’s castle there was built a new alcazar.

But the respite from open tumult was only temporary. The Wali, finding the merchants increasing in riches, raised their tribute to the state, and smouldering discontent was immediately fanned into a flame. Led by a wealthy young Toledan, named Hacam, who subsequently earned the affix of “El Durrete”—“The Striker of Blows”—the people murdered the Moorish officials and captured the alcazar. The Moslem troops retaliated by recapturing that stronghold and routing the revolutionists. Hacam went into retirement until the Moors, lulled into security, relaxed their vigilance in the guardianship of the city, and then, striking swiftly through the neglected gates, he recovered the city between sunset and morning. The greater part of the upper town was burnt, the troops sent by Abd-er-Rahman II. were repulsed; and, although the Toledans were incidentally routed by the renegade Spaniard, Maisara, Toledo was not then retaken. In 873 the city was besieged for a whole year, and only surrendered when famine had rendered the citizens too weak to further resist the assaults of the Moorish troops.

The next firebrand to project itself into the inflammatory fabric of Toledan discontent was the fanatical martyr, Eulogius. In Cordova this frenzied religionist had fired the Christians into reviling Mohammed, and thereby exasperating the Moslems into persecution. To the tolerant and broad-minded Moors, religious observances were prejudices to be respected. They permitted, to Christians and Jews, the fullest licence in the matter of worship; they only demanded that a similar respect should be observed towards their own faith. The Christians were not asked to reverence the Prophet of Islam, but the Moslems could not allow him to be openly blasphemed by the infidels. It was against the articles of their creed, and it was contrary to human nature. To-day the Christian who rebelled against such a reasonable restriction would be accounted a bigot, undeserving of sympathy; in the days of Eulogius, the revilers of Moorish religious prejudices were regarded as saints. Toledo jumped at their rulers’ resentment of the Christians’ wanton insult to their faith as an excuse for an outburst of religious indignation, and Sindola seized the city and declared war against the khalifate by way of protesting against the execution of Eulogius’s disciples. OrdoÑo, king of Leon, sent reinforcements to Sindola, and the allied armies were caught in an ambush by the Moors, who struck off 8,000 Christian heads for public exhibition in the various disaffected towns. This reverse had the desired effect, and the Toledans made no further move until the death of Wistremir afforded them an opportunity of exasperating the sultan Mohammed by electing Eulogius to the vacant archbishopric of Toledo. The sultan, who retaliated by investing the city, had the bridge undermined while it was in the occupation of his troops, and, by making a feigned retreat, enticed the impetuous Spaniards to give chase. The depleted structure collapsed beneath the sudden burden of the pursuing army, and hundreds of men met their death in the sullen depths of the Tagus.

But neither massacre nor misfortune could shake the dogged Toledans from their purpose. With the king of Leon at their back, they put forth new efforts, and in 873 they forced Mohammed to acknowledge their independence as a Republic in return for the payment of an annual tribute. The treaty made with Mohammed was ratified by his successors, Mundhir and Abdallah. Even the Great Khalif, Abd-er-Rahman, was at first content to send from Cordova a royal proclamation, commanding Toledo to surrender her independence to the khalifate, and acknowledge him as liege lord, and it was not until 930, or eighteen years after he had ascended the throne, that he went up with his army against the arrogant and rebellious city. The siege of Toledo by Abd-er-Rahman lasted for eight years. The Moorish king built the city, which he called “Victory,” on a mountain commanding Toledo, and here he quartered his troops until famine and privation should open the gates for him. The long years of waiting culminated in a swift assault, and, at the close of a day’s fighting, the emaciated heads of the insurgent chiefs were impaled on spears to keep their last sightless watch from the walls of the city they had defended with such heroic fortitude.

After the death of the Great Khalif, and, thenceforth until the Christian conquest, Toledo maintained a partial independence, tolerating the rule of Moslem princes, but paying no allegiance to Cordova. And in the end she was recovered to the Christians by a piece of picturesque treachery. Alfonso of Leon (Alfonso VI.) had fled from the monastery of Sagahun, and sought the protection of King Almamon of Toledo, from whom he received the most generous hospitality, including gifts of palaces, farms, and orchards, and the government of the Christian section of the inhabitants. The Moorish king demanded only the subscription of his guest’s allegiance, and, in return, he gave a sincere affection, and promises of faithful protection. Almamon, whose one vague but ever present concern was the possibility of Toledo ever falling again into the hands of the Christians, was discussing the subject one day with his courtiers in the garden of Alfonso’s palace, and engrossed in the consideration of the possible misfortune, he described minutely the only plan by which, in his opinion, the city might be taken. Alfonso, who was one of the company, affected to be asleep while this dissertation was in progress, and the courtiers, who were unable to restrain the eloquence of the king, endeavoured to obtain Almamon’s consent to the execution of his Christian guest. But the king refused to listen to this inhospitable proposition, and on the death of Sancho of Castile (who was murdered by Bellido, under the walls of Zamora), his brother, Alfonso of Leon, returned to his own kingdom, loaded with honours, and carrying with him the secret of Toledo’s vincibility. Before he departed the two kings swore eternal amity, and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against the enemies of either, and the enemies of Almamon’s son, Yahya. But after the death of Almamon, Alfonso, forgetting his oath to his friend, and remembering only the plan of siege he had overheard in the garden of Toledo, adopted the principles invented by the Moorish theorist, and, in 1085, entered the city as its conqueror.

What has Toledo to show to-day for the three and a-half centuries of the artistic influence of Morisco culture and influence? Surprisingly little! And yet it would be an even greater surprise if she had more to show. The village that climbs the bosom of a mountain does not alter the contour of its impassive resting-place; the etchings traced upon a Toledo blade does not affect the temper of the steel. The city is still “Moorish in appearance,” to employ the guide-book phrase, but it is gradually divesting itself of the marks which at one time, and then only in part, disguised its Gothic ancestry. Since Alfonso, the tyrant of the Galicians, seized the town of Toledo, “that pearl of the necklace, that highest tower of the empire in this Peninsula”

(to quote Abon I Hasan), the Moorish bridge, near Santa Leocadia, and the other, which crossed the old Roman waterway, have disappeared, and the legendary Palace of Galiana is let out in miserable tenements to the lowest class of peasants.

Moratin has immortalised Galiana de Toledo, “most beautiful and marvellous,” and Calderon has written of the palace built for her by her father, Galafre, who ruled over Toledo for Abd-er-Rahman I. Galafre took the old Visigoth shell, and transformed the edifice, by the witchery of Moorish windows and arches and staircases, into a palace of delight. He devoted his knowledge of hydraulics to the unkempt Toledan Vega, and made of it a paradise of leaf and bloom and rill. In the fairy garden, Charlemagne, according to tradition, found the “most beautiful and marvellous” Galiana, and carried her away from the unwelcome addresses of her Moorish admirer, Prince Bradamante, to reign over France as his queen. The arms of the Guzmans, into whose possession the palace passed under Castillian rule, may still be descried upon its dismantled front.

The wonderful clepsydras, or water clocks of Toledo, the invention of Abou-l’-Casem, Abdo-er-Rahman, or Az-Zarcal, as he is more usually styled, are quaintly and vaguely described in the following Moorish document: “One of the greatest towns of Spain is Toledo, and Toledo is a large and well-populated city. On all sides it is washed by a splendid river, called the Tagus.... Among the rare and notable things of Toledo is that wheat may be kept more than seventy years without rotting, which is a great advantage, as all the land abounds in grain and seed of all kinds. But what is still more marvellous and surprising in Toledo, and what we believe no other inhabited town of all the world has anything to equal, are some clepsydras, or water clocks. It is said that Az-Zarcal, hearing of a certain talisman, which is in the city of Arin, of Eastern India, and which, Masudi says, shows the hours by means of aspas, or hands, from the time the sun rises till it sets, determined to fabricate an artifice by means of which the people could know the hour of day or night, and calculate the day of the moon. He made two great ponds in a house on the bank of the Tagus, not far from the Gate of the Tanners, making them so that they should be filled with water or emptied according to the rise and fall of the moon.”

In Babylonia, India, and Egypt, the clepsydra was used from before the dawn of history, especially in astronomical observations, and Latin and Greek writers refer to a type which resembled the modern sand glass, and was used in the courts of law to limit the length of the pleadings. The general form of the clepsydra, which Pliny ascribed to Scipio Nasica, consisted essentially of a float, which slowly rose by the tricklings of water from above through a small hole in a plate of metal. As the float rose it pointed to a scale of hours at the side of the water vessel; or, in the more elaborate forms, moved a wheel by means of a ratchet, and thus turned a hand on a dial.

The Moorish recounter of the wonders of the water clocks of Toledo tells us that its movements were regulated by the moon. As soon as the moon became visible by means of invisible conducts, the water began to flow into the ponds, and, by day rise, the ponds were four-sevenths full. At night another seventh was added, so that by day or night the ponds continued to increase in water a seventh every twenty-four hours, and were quite full by the time the moon was full. On the 14th of the month, when the moon began to fall, the ponds also fell in like proportion. On the 21st of the month they were half empty, and on the 29th

completely so. The exact working of those clepsydras, however, is lost, as a bungling astronomer, who was deputed by Alfonso “the Learned” to examine them and discover the secret, broke the delicate machinery, and was forthwith dubbed a Jew by the indignant and exasperated Moors.

Beyond the walls of the city is a stretch of fertile land beside the Tagus, which is called the Garden of the King; and at the further end of it is the country palace of Galiana. This pleasure house is of a later date than the palace of the same name within the city; but, like that debased edifice, it is a ruin, its walls of extreme thickness, flanked with two massive towers, only remaining to represent what was once

In the War of Independence the French soldiers made a ruin of the one-time magnificent Casa de Vargas, which was built by Juan de Herrera, and has been described by Antonio Ponz as one of the architectural splendours of Toledo. Ponz tells us that “the faÇade is perfect Doric, of exquisite marble, with fluted columns on either side, and the pedestals have military emblems in bas-relief. The frieze consists of helmets, heads of bulls, and goblets. The coat of arms above the cornice is most beautiful, and the women’s forms, seated on each side, are life-size. Nothing could be finer than the details, as well as the whole of this faÇade, and for sure it is the most serious, the most lovely, and most finished of all I have seen in Toledo. You enter a spacious courtyard with lofty galleries running round it above and below the lower gallery, sustained by Doric pillars and by the upper Ionic columns. The staircase is truly regal, and likewise the various inner chambers. They contain different chimney pieces, ornamented with graceful fancies executed in bas-relief; and thus, in the lower quarters, as in the principal, are other galleries with columns like those of the courtyard, with delicious views of the meadows and the Tagus.”

In the most miserable quarter of the town, far up above the river, the visitor may see some huge blocks of stone, and a few broken arches—all that remains of the once magnificent Moorish palace of Henry of Aragon, lord of Villena. Henry of Aragon was an enlightened prince and erudite scholar, and the possessor of a superb collection of books, which were publicly burnt on the plea that their owner had intercourse with the devil. Don Enrique is said to have used the subterranean chambers and passages of the palace as a meeting-place for witches, and here he is supposed to have entertained his Satanic majesty. Samuel Levi, Pedro the Cruel’s treasurer, turned the palace vault into a strong-room, but the prince, in a needy moment, proved stronger; and the Toledans, following the example of their king, completed the sacking of the mansion. The Duke of Escalona, in the reign of Charles Quint, burnt the palace to the ground, and fled the city with his family, rather than give house-room to the treacherous Bourbon, the Constable of France, at the bidding of his royal master.

There is in the little plaza of Santa Isabel, a half-obliterated Arabian inscription, wishing “Lasting prosperity and perpetual glory to the master of this edifice.” This inscription identifies the ruin as the palace of King Pedro. The beautiful Casa de Mesa bears scarcely a trace of the exquisite Moorish workmanship which characterised the palace of the Dukes of Alva; it is impossible to determine from the dilapidated Casa de las Tormerias whether it was originally built for a Moorish palace or a mezquita; while

some few scraps of Moorish inscription in the wood-work of a ruined wall still testify to the origin of the Casa de Munarriz. The alcazar, which was twice destroyed by fire, is represented by the faÇades, the three towers, the patio, and the enormous staircase—perhaps the only parts of the building that were not rebuilt by Charles Quint. The edifice commenced by that monarch, and completed by Philip II., was for long the most splendid and colossal palace in Spain. Staremberg’s troops destroyed the building by fire in 1710; and, a century later, the French troops fired the structure which Carlos III. had recomposed out of the ashes of Charles V.’s alcazar. The Casa de Mesa, the palace of Estevan de Illan, is reduced to a single chamber of exquisite Moorish workmanship; the remaining Moorish part of the Taller del Moro is used as a common workshop; the regal staircase of the alcazar, so wide that a whole army might march up its noble steps, ends in space.

As with the palaces of Toledo, so it is with its temples—the traces of Moorish art are nearly all defaced or obliterated. The mosque, which was replaced by the church of San Roman, possesses the purest mudejar steeple of Toledo, erected by Esteban de Illan, and another, if smaller, Moorish steeple, adorns the Santa Magdalena. A monument, which ranks among the most interesting in Spain, is the Cristo de la Luz, located between the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta Bisagra—a little gem of Moorish-Byzantine architecture, which is regarded as the oldest and most perfect specimen of its kind in the Peninsula. On the walls of this church, which remains to this day a perfect mosque, the conquering Alfonso VI. hung up his shield in 1035 to commemorate the first mass that was celebrated in Toledo after the defeat of the Moors. Until Tarik came to Toledo the mosque had been a Gothic temple, before which hung a cross, bearing an effigy of the crucified Christ. Legend declares that two impious Jews pricked the greatly-venerated body with a dagger, and that from the wound blood instantly gushed forth. The Jews, who attempted to evade the penalty of their folly by hiding the crucifix, were traced by the stains of blood to their house, and torn to pieces by the infuriated Christians. Tradition further asserts that the Jews planned a revenge by poisoning the feet of the restored statue, but that when a woman knelt before it the figure withdrew its foot from her kiss. Many other legends attach to the sacred relic, which was removed from before the church when the city was captured by the Moors, and secreted in a cavity in the wall, with a burning lamp placed before it. When the Moorish dominion came to an end, 370 years later, and the cavity was revealed, the unreplenished lamp was found to be still alight before the crucifix in the wall of the Moorish mosque. From this legend the church takes its name of the Christ of the Light.

This wonderful little monument, which is only twenty-two feet by twenty-five feet, possesses six short naves, which cross each other under nine vaults, and in the centre are four short, stout columns, surmounted by sculptured capitals, from which spring sixteen heavy horseshoe arches. This forest of naves and arches comprises a miniature reproduction of the mosque of Cordova. Arcades, cusped in Moorish fashion, and supported on shafts, pierce the walls; the inevitable “half orange” ceiling domes the centre, and above the principal arch is the shield of Alfonso VI., embellished with a white cross on a crimson ground, which the victorious king handed to Archbishop Bernardo to supply the place of a cross above the dismantled altar. This gem of Moorish-Byzantine architecture, so small yet so perfect,

so simple yet so fantastic, conveys an impression of amazing strength, and presents an admirable example of early Arabian work.

The nunnery of Santa Fe, which was originally a regal Moorish palace, has been shorn of nearly all its ancient beauty, which is now only traceable in the arcaded brickwork of the wall, almost obliterated by exuberant foliage. There are still the remnants of Moorish ornamentation in the convent halls and corridors of San Juan de la Penitencia, and the influence of Moorish art is also seen in some good azulejo and the artesonade ceiling of Santa Isabel.

The Alcantara bridge, which was originally a Roman structure, was repaired by the Goths in 687, and rebuilt by the Moors of 866. It was of this Moorish bridge that Rasis el Moro wrote: “It was such a rich and marvellous work, and so subtly wrought, that never man with truth could believe there was any other such fine work in Spain.” Since then it has been repaired and restored wholly, or in part, no fewer than eight times; and while these alterations have changed its style and appearance, it still remains one of the finest and most picturesque monuments of Toledo. The bridge of San Martin, which compares with it in interest and beauty, was built in 1203, and is guarded at either end with a tower and gateway adorned with Moorish arches and battlements. The bridge of San Martin gives entrance to the city through the gate of the Cambron. It is no longer Moorish, as it was in the time of Alfonso VI.; but on its half-renaissance, half-classical architecture, one may still read the remains of some of those grandiloquent utterances of the Moorish spirit which prompted Ponz to style Toledo the city of magnificent inscriptions. It was a devout, if somewhat credulous, spirit which inspired the transcription of the following article of faith: “There is but one God on earth, and Mohammed is His messenger. All the faithful who believe in our prophet Mohammed, and continue to kiss the hands and feet of Murabite Muley Abda Alcadar every day, will be without sin, will not be blind, nor deaf, nor lame, nor wounded; and receiving his benediction, when the time of his death comes, will only be three days ill and dying, will go with open eyes to Paradise forgiven of all sins.” Another inscription bore the following exhortation and compensatory promise: “Prayer and peace over our lord and prophet Mohammed. All the faithful, when they went to lie down in their beds, mentioning the Alfagiu Murabito Abdala, and recommending themselves to him, will enter no battle out of which they will not come victorious; and in whatever battle against Christians they may stain their lances with Christian blood, dying that same day, will go alive and whole with eyes open to Paradise, and his descendants will remain till the fourth generation forgiven.”

The present Visagra Gate, rebuilt under Charles V., dates back to the Moors. It is entirely Moorish in character, with the heavy simple features, the triple horseshoe arches and upper crenellated apertures which we associate with the first period of Morisco architecture. Through this gate, which is now blocked up, Alfonso VI. entered Toledo. The two graceful square towers, roofed with green and white tiles, which compose the edifice, are joined by the high turreted walls of a square courtyard, and the decorations include the Senate’s dedication of the gate to Charles Quint, the sculptured arms of the emperor, a statue of St. Eugenie, two others of Gothic kings, and a life-sized angel holding an unsheathed sword. This cold, bare inventory of the ornaments of the gate convey no idea of the splendid impressiveness of the structure, the splendour and charm of

which sink into comparative insignificance beside its glorious neighbour, the Gate of the Sun.

This magnificent gate of rough stone, with its towers of brown granite, has been rightly described as one of the world’s masterpieces. Yet here again the pen is powerless to do justice to its beauty; and to describe its proportions and decoration is to complicate, rather than explain, the impression that is conveyed by the camera. The square towers, with their semi-circular fronts, and the great central arch resting on two Moorish columns, and the zones of ornamental arches above the horse-shaped openings, comprise a Moorish gem against a Spanish sky, a miracle of loveliness upon a rough and naked rampart. But how, cries Hannah Lynch, to write of this Puerta del Sol, that “thing of beauty even among crowded enchantments! It is to pick one’s way through superlatives and points of exclamation and call in vain on the goddess of sobriety to subdue our tendency to excess and incoherence. Put this matchless gate in the middle of the desert of Sahara; it would then be worth while making the frightful journey alone to look at it. However far you may have journeyed, you would still be for ever thankful to have seen such a masterpiece—incontestably a work of supreme art, perhaps the rarest thing of the world.” Whether the writer intends her high eulogy to be applied generally to any “work of supreme art,” or to the Puerta del Sol in particular, most people who have come under the witching influence of the art of the Moors, will not deny that it is well deserved.