BEFORE quitting England for a first visit to Spain in the Autumn of 1869, I made up my mind both to see and draw as much of the Architectural remains of that country as the time and means at my disposal would permit; and further determined so to draw as to admit of the publication of my sketches and portions of my notes on the objects represented, in the precise form in which they might be made. I was influenced in that determination by the consciousness that almost from day to day the glorious past was being trampled out in Spain; and that whatever issue, prosperous or otherwise, the fortunes of that much distracted country might take in the future, the minor monuments of Art at least which adorned its soil, would rapidly disappear. Their disappearance would result naturally from what is called "progress" if Spain should revive; while their perishing through neglect and wilful damage, or peculation, would inevitably follow, if the ever smouldering embers of domestic revolution should burst afresh into flame. Such has been the invariable action of those fires which in all history have melted away the most refined evidences of man's intelligence, leaving behind only scanty, and often all but shapeless, relics of the richest and ripest genius.

It is difficult to realise the rapidity with which, almost under one's eyes, the Spain of history and romance "is casting its skin." Travelling even with so recent and so excellent a handbook as O'Shea's of 1869, I noted the following wanton acts of Vandalism and destruction, committed upon monuments of the greatest archÆological and artistic interest since he wrote. At Seville, the Church of San Miguel, one of the oldest and finest in the city, was senselessly demolished by the populace as a sort of auto-da-fÉ, and by way of commemoration of the revolution of September, 1867. In exactly the same way the fine Byzantine churches of San Juan at Lerida, and of San Miguel at Barcelona, have been "improved off the face of the earth." Church plate, Custodias and Virils of the D'ArfÉs, Becerrias, and other Art workmen, have vanished from the treasuries of all the great ecclesiastical structures; whether sold, melted down, or only hidden, "quien sabe?" The beautiful Moorish decorations of the Alcazar at Segovia had been all but entirely destroyed by fire, attributed to the careless cigar-lighting of the Cadets to whom the structure had been abandoned. The finest old mansion in Barcelona, the Casa de Gralla, probably the masterpiece of Damian Forment, and dating from the commencement of the fourteenth century, has been pulled down by the Duke of Medina Celi to form a new street. The beautiful wooden ceiling of the Casa del Infantado at Guadalaxara, the finest of its kind in Spain, in the absence of its owner, who I was told lives in Russia, is coming down in large pieces, and once fallen, I scarcely think it will be in the power of living workmen to make it good again. The exquisite Moorish Palace of the Generalife at Granada, second only to the Alhambra and the Alcazar at Seville, is never visited by its proprietor, and is now one mass of white-wash, a victim of the zeal for cleanliness of a Sanitary "Administrador." In short to visit a Spanish city now, by the light shed upon its ancient glories by the industrious Ponz, is simply to have forced upon one's attention the most striking evidence of the "vanity of human things," and man's inherent tendency to destroy.

BURGOS.

THE ARCO DE SANTA MARIA.

IT is sad to notice how few traces beyond its magnificent Cathedral are left in this, the capital of old Castile, of those "Castellanos rancios y viejos," who once so splendidly represented the pride and power of Spanish chivalry. Of the sixteen golden castles the city bears upon its stately arms how insignificant are the relics? The remains of its walls and bastions attest the many centuries during which it held its own against all comers, Christian or Infidel. Of these walls, our sketch represents a portion in which there is little doubt the Renaissance frontispiece and archway replaced an older and sterner portal, better suited probably for defence than decoration. The legend runs that this faÇade was executed by the citizens, who had been exhibiting proclivities of far too Communistic a character to be agreeable to so high-handed a sovereign as Charles V., in order to propitiate that potentate, and to commemorate a visit, on his part at least, of a conciliatory character. It would seem, however, that in spite of the loyalty which induced the Burgalese to assign the post of honour (always under the invocation of the "Virgen sin pecado concebida)" to the statue of the King, they took good care to give him for companions NuÑo Rasura, and Lain Calvo, whom they had themselves elected in the tenth century to rule over them, and protect their Communal rights. The maintenance of these had been somewhat interfered with by the King of Leon, Fruela II., who had invited the chief citizens to a banquet, and then quietly removed them out of his royal way by summarily putting them all to death. Amongst other statues which adorn this gateway are to be found those of Don Diego Parcelos, the founder of the city in 884, of the Cid—the pride of Spain and especially of Burgos, in which city he was born, and where his bones still rest—and of Fernan Gonzalez who redeemed the district from the yoke of the Kings of Leon, to whom it had been tributary, and who constituted himself and his family its protectors, under the style and title of Condes de Castilla.

The architecture of this frontispiece which gains great importance and much picturesque effect from its association with the bartizans and turrets of the mediÆval gateway, has been attributed to Felipe de BorgoÑa, not apparently on any other grounds than the facts that he was an inhabitant of the city in whom his fellow-citizens felt great pride, and that he was employed upon the "Crucero" of the cathedral at about the period when this grand portal was probably erected.

VALLADOLID.

DETAIL FROM THE "PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO."

THE portion of the great Dominican Convent of Valladolid which formed the subject of the last sketch, is supposed to have been the commencement of a second Patio, or courtyard, around which were to have been arranged apartments, mainly intended for the reception of guests or visitors, lay as well as ecclesiastic. The arcading, of which Plate IV is a sketch, surrounds the great Patio of the monastic establishment of which the "Colegio" proper is the Church. Around this noble courtyard were grouped the apartments in which resided the powerful Black Friars—so called from their dress—worthy adherents to the traditions of the founder of the Order, himself an old Castilian, whose activity as Preachers, and still more as Inquisitors, made them, perhaps, even more powerful in controlling the destinies of the Peninsula than the political heads of the State. The first stone of this great establishment, dedicated to St. Gregory, and founded by Alonso of Burgos, Bishop of Palencia, was laid in the year 1488. Some idea of the rapid growth and elevation of the Dominicans about this period may be derived from an observation of the fact that this splendid Church and Monastery was the second great establishment of the Order in Valladolid completed within the space of about ten years. Cean Bermudez tells us that the Cardinal Don Juan Torquemada caused the Church of the Convent of St. Paul to be erected, which, with its faÇade of excellent architecture, was finished in the year 1463.

The work at Saint Gregory lasted about eight years, a very short time, considering not only the quantity and extent of labour involved in the mere construction, but the amount of intricate and elaborate sculpture which decorates the faÇade of the Church. Its architect, Macias Carpintero, of Medino del Campo, is placed by Llaguno y Amirola upon a footing, as to merit, with the celebrated architects Siloe and Cruz of Cologne, who introduced extraordinary elaboration into the ornamental carving of Spain. The fate of Macias was a sad one, since on the last Saturday in July, in the year 1490, while working himself, and directing this great architectural work, he committed suicide, infinitely to the surprise and regret of the monks and their fellow-citizens.

Some idea of the scale upon which the Patio of San Gregorio is worked out, may be derived from a knowledge of the facts, that the lower arcade is about twenty feet high, and the upper fifteen feet. The open space enclosed by the arcading is very large, and the distance from centre to centre of each of the pillars about nine feet.

VALLADOLID.

SMALL PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO.

IN that material—stucco—which we of the nineteenth century affect to despise, and in the use of which both the Romans and the Great Masters of the Renaissance, under Raffaelle's guidance, excelled, the Moors delighted. By its use they were able, with speed and accuracy, to supply the redundancy of conventional ornament essential to contrast with the rigid geometrical setting out of lines and compartments which formed a fundamental law of their beautiful style of design. Their aptitude in the manipulation of this material did not desert them when their talents were called into operation by their Christian Masters. Of this the pretty window which forms the chief feature of the sketch under consideration, offers an agreeable proof. At the first glance, one might have fancied that this window was of earlier date than the gothic stone arch beneath, and indeed a relic of the Moorish occupation of Valladolid before the Christians reconquered the district, so different in style are its details from those of the arch. To have encountered the difficulties of constructing such an arch beneath, without destroying such a window, is, however, so contrary to all ancient precedents in similar cases, that any such theory must be dismissed on reflexion, and an explanation sought in some other direction. It is to be found in the fact, that about the middle of the fifteenth century, shortly after which date, both arch and window were probably constructed, the Christians had plenty of skilful artificers in stone, who possessed no aptitude for working in stucco, whilst the Moors executed but little ornament in stone, but much in brick and plaster. Hence the marked difference in style which is apparent between the window sketched, and the architectural detail of the rest of this pretty little court, which is shown on this sketch, and the one which follows it.

The rooms surrounding the Arcade of this Patio, and the Arcade itself, are now used as a "Corps de Garde" in connection with the Government offices of the great Patio of this "Colegio." They naturally, therefore, rejoice in the rapidly accumulating whitewash, which serves very generally in Spain, at once as a panacea against cholera and fever, and the obliterator of all useless excrescences in the nature of Architectural Ornament.

VALLADOLID.

SMALL PATIO, COLEGIO DE SAN GREGORIO.

THE stucco upper-storey from which the last sketch (Plate V) was taken, rests upon a lower open storey, forming the usual recessed Arcade or Colonade of even very humble Patios. In this case, the columns, on two sides, (the upper parts of one of which are shown) including the coat-of-arms, are in stone; while the brackets easing the compression of the fibres, and shortening the bearing of the beams, the beams themselves, and the row of brackets above, being really only the moulded ends of the joists of the upper floor, are all in wood. They thus illustrate the combination of materials in construction so much affected by the Moors. At the same time the architectural details shown both in this sketch, and in the one which precedes it, exhibit certain ornamental features derived from Arabian models. That there should be no question in this structure, however, as to the ascendency of the Christian over the Moor, the proud founder has affixed his arms, in which the Church's sacred emblems of the fleur-de-lys and cross forcibly express the favourite tenets of the Spaniard.

VALLADOLID.

LA CASA DEL INFANTADO.

AS in Italy, so in Spain, the architecture of the revival may be divided into at least two great schools, viz., the early, in which sculpture, and particularly sculptured arabesque, play a prominent part; and the late, in which regularity in the use of the orders and a system of rigidly proportioned plain architectural members form the main constituents of the most highly commended structures. Both merged into the extravagance which follows when architects learn to draw with facility rather than to think with steadfastness and propriety. As Italy had its Borromini, so had Spain its Churriguera.

The building from which my sketch has been taken, belongs to the second of these divisions of the architecture of the revival, as may be seen by the grave simplicity of the Ionic columns which support the massive but plain arches of both stories of a large and pretentious Patio. In this sketch I have chosen the point of view from the entrance loggia of the house, because looking from it I could well see, and therefore illustrate, the way in which a grand staircase, covered at the top, but open to the air upon one side, usually connects, in large houses, the upper and lower arcades of the Patios, and consequently the upper and lower floors of the mansion which open on to the two main arcades. The staircase is very rarely closed by iron-work or otherwise; consequently the visitor once obtaining access to the Patio was and is at liberty to ramble nearly all over the house unchecked. As front doors usually stand open from morning till night, access to Patios may generally be freely obtained; but where the house is inhabited by one family only, or by more than one family desiring privacy, iron or wooden doors usually close openings to the Patio such as are shown in the sketch. It is only when in answer to a bell, or knocker, attached to this or to an external doorway, a servant has appeared and ascertained that the visitor is an "amigo," that the door itself is opened, and access to the interior afforded.

It is a popular prejudice that gravity in Spanish architecture only came in with Herrera, after the middle of the fifteenth century in Spain, but in reality there were several other men who before him asserted their dissent from the plateresque redundancy of ornament, and designed works upon a careful study of Italian models of architectural proportion. Among such may be reckoned Pedro Machuca who in 1526 designed the palace of Charles V. at Granada, Alonzo Covarrubias who was architect for the noble staircase and cortile of the Alcazar at Toledo, and Diego Siloe who a few years later created the fine Cathedral of Granada.

LEON.

CHURCH OF SAN ISIDRO.

THE antiquity of the city of Leon and its importance as a Roman station are well shown by its picturesque and strong walls, which in many places yet exhibit clearly Roman masonry in the substructure and general form. On other places, subsequent generations of artificers have left unmistakeable autographs inscribed in most legible and durable forms, attesting dates of construction, dilapidation, restoration, and then again dilapidation, through centuries of tempestuous existence. One of the most picturesque bastions of these old walls is the one shown in my sketch which groups exceedingly well with the fine Romanesque steeple of San Isidro, which stands on the west of the Church but altogether detached from it. Both Church and steeple date from about the middle of the twelfth century, and possess great historical and architectural interest. Their historical interest is due to their association with the fervidly pious Queen Sancha; and to the fact that in the Pantheon, or chapel dedicated to Santa Catilina at the north-west end of the Church, probably grouped around the body of the Saint, repose Kings and Queens of Spain from Fernando I. and DoÑa Sancha the founders of the Church, through eight generations. Their architectural interest is derivable from the constructional and ornamental details dwelt upon by Mr. Street, to whose excellent account of the building the reader may be referred.

LEON.

CONVENT OF SAN MARCOS.

LEON.

CLOISTER OF THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCOS.

IT used to be a proud old boast of the brothers of the Military Order of Sant' Iago that their Palace, or Convent, call it which you will, at Leon, was quite as fine and spacious as the palace occupied by the Kings of Spain at Madrid. Knowing this, I visited it with a certain amount of apprehension as to my reception by such successors to the magnates of old, as might still occupy the building. My fears were groundless, for I found after much knocking and ringing, that a solitary policeman was the only occasional tenant of its vast halls, and almost numberless rooms. It was indeed melancholy to see such a structure so evidently and entirely "out of joint with fortune" and "the times," as to be apparently inapplicable and inconvertible to any useful purpose.

LEON.

EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES.

IN an ancient house which stood upon the site on which now stands the Palace which forms the subject of our sketch, there was born, in the year 1266, a "Cavalier," who, when arrived at manhood, followed the fortunes of Sancho the Brave. After many struggles, the King having taken Tarifa in Andalucia from the Moors in 1292, looked round amongst his followers for one willing to hold what he had won. All refused, owing to the danger of the position, until Alonso Perez de Guzman, the Cavalier in question, offered to keep possession of the town for a year. The story is thus condensed by Ford, from the "Romancero." The Moors beleaguered it, aided by the Infante Juan, a traitor brother of Sancho's to whom Alonso's eldest son, aged nine, had been entrusted previously as a page. "Juan now brought the boy under the walls, and threatened to kill him if his father would not surrender the place. Alonso drew his dagger and threw it down exclaiming, 'I prefer honour without a son, to a son with dishonour.' He retired, and the Prince caused the child to be put to death. A cry of horror ran through the Spanish battlements. Alonso rushed forth, beheld his son's body, and returning to his childless mother, calmly observed, 'I feared that the infidel had gained the city.' Sancho, the King, likened him to Abraham, from this parental sacrifice and honoured him with the 'canting' name 'El Bueno.' The good (Guzman, Gutman, Goodman.) He became the founder of the princely Dukes of Medina Sidonia, now merged by marriage in the Villafrancas." From this great head descended ultimately Her Majesty the Empress EugÉnie of France. Gaining strength, riches and power, the original residence of El Bueno became too small for his aspiring family, and in 1560, Don Juan QuiÑones y Guzman, Bishop of Calahorra, determined upon the erection, on the same site, of the present fine structure. The name of the architect does not seem to be known, but it is obviously the work of one who, rejecting the elaboration of the Plateresque style, followed the simpler and more chastened proportions recommended by the early Italian writers on architecture, such as Alberti and Serlio, and by the first Spanish student of Vitruvius, Diego Sagredo in his "Medidas del Romano," (Toledo, 1526.)

LEON.

PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES.

PALACES, such as supply our twelfth illustration, are now rarely occupied in Spain by one family only. Instead of serving as the place of general rendezvous for the dependants and intimate friends only of the aristocratic proprietor, the Patios are now usually peopled with men, women and children belonging to the numerous families, between whom the occupation of the Palace, sadly fallen from its high estate, is divided. Instead of the mansions being guarded by a grand inquisitor in the shape of a porter, with armed servants within hail, with almost more than Oriental jealousy, as in the old days, he who will, may usually find entrance or exit unheeded, passing but as one more or one less of the hundreds who go to and fro in the course of the day to the various apartments which are frequently let and sublet, at ridiculously low rents, to poor occupants who can afford to pay no other. Poverty, in fact, revels in halls where magnificence once reigned supreme.

It is no easy task for the imagination to repeople such grand old residences with the stately Hidalgoes and SeÑoras, who once occupied and maintained them with scrupulous care and princely dignity. Happily, the Countess d'Aulnois comes to our aid with her lively account of the dwelling at Madrid of the Duchess of Terra Nueva, appointed Camerera-Mayor to the young Queen, in 1679; and her picturesque sketch may be freely accepted as expressing the general style in which families of dignity, such as the Guzmanes, magnates of Leon, lived during the plenitude of Spanish wealth and power.

LEON.

DETAIL FROM A HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE LA TESORIERA.

THIS pretty little keystone, with its acanthus leaf well drawn and freely cut in good cinque-cento style occurs over the Portal of an old house in one of the secondary streets of Leon. The pot of lilies which surmounts it is a pretty little "impresa," quaintly signifying the devotion of the owner of the house to the especial object of every good Spaniard's worship, the most holy Virgin "sin pecado concebida." The S shaped irons, which appear on the right and left of the pot of lilies, serve to help to support the light balcony, which generally occurs over entrance doors of minor importance in Spain, and which often serves as a small open air addition to the common sitting room, in which the women of the house do much of the usual needle work, spinning, &c.

SALAMANCA.

EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THIS is, upon the whole, the most complete house I met with of its period, answering in Art, and nearly in point of time, to the florid Burgundian style of the Low Countries, with which there was much intercourse at the probable date of its construction—the close of the fifteenth century. It stands almost opposite the great Church of the Gesuitas, some of the columns of an unfinished porch or portico of which may be seen upon the left hand side of the sketch. No doubt this fine mansion does not possess its original roofing, as testified by the comparatively modern windows of a portion of the top storey, but with that exception it is fairly complete, both externally and internally.

The little projections on the masonry looking like nail heads are, really, as will be seen by the details given in Plates XVII. and XIX., representations of shells, the heraldic badge of the owner of the house, from which, rather than from his name, the cognomen by which the house is known, has been derived. It is difficult now to divine in what way the top storey was originally constructed, but judging by analogy with what was usual in such houses elsewhere in Spain at the time, it appears probable that it may have consisted of a light open arcading, serving as a "look out"—"mirador"—and place for exercising for the ladies of the household, at times when the streets may have been neither safe nor agreeable.

SALAMANCA.

PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THE Patio of this house is yet more perfect than its faÇade, and, a rare circumstance in Spain, I found it both clean and well kept. It is not upon a large scale, and did not, perhaps, look the less elegant on that account. The upper arcade produces a far better effect than the lower, since in the latter the principle of the arch seems fantastically and heedlessly lost sight of. With the exception in the upper arcade of the way in which the wreaths and escutcheons are placed, as though to conceal a confusion in the lines of the archivolt, which the architect (or mason) did not seem quite to know how to bring together comfortably over the capitals, the whole effect is quiet and pretty. The open work parapet at the top is the only motif in the design which appears to be borrowed from the architecture of the Moors.

SALAMANCA.

STAIRCASE OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

ON the side of the Patio, opposite to the entrance, occurs the archway through the wall which forms the back of the arcade on that side of the Court, and beyond which is seen the staircase which connects the upper and lower arcades. From its masonry bonded in with the enclosing walls, it assumes even, while simple in design, a thoroughly architectural character, while the depth of shade, which almost invariably covers the back wall and parts of the side wall, serve to throw the lower part of the staircase into brilliant relief. The graceful and gay figures which, in the characteristic costume of Salamanca, from time to time, went up or down the staircase, or linger upon it in groups chatting or smoking, or flirting, make up occasional pictures not rapidly to be effaced from the author's memory.

SALAMANCA.

WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

ONE of the most agreeable features in the design of the Casa de las Conchas, is the variety of detail of the different windows throughout the house. On the sketch under consideration, and in the two which follow it, evidence is afforded of the burning of the "lamp of life," as Mr. Ruskin would call it. They are all of them conceived in a transitional and composite but very picturesque style, and however different or possibly antagonistic the details of each window may appear amongst themselves, as a whole they agree and look exceedingly well.

This window occurs on the first floor of the faÇade, and possesses an additional interest from showing us pretty clearly what kind of windows may have been superseded in a similar situation by the Italian windows so much to be regretted in the fine Palace of the Duques del Infantado at Guadalajara. See Plate LXXVIII.

SALAMANCA.

WINDOW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THIS window with its heavy ironwork, gives light through the back wall of the arcading of the Patio to a passage running behind a room, which derives its light from the external wall of the house. Such passages occur not unfrequently in Spanish houses, and are convenient, as they serve to bring three rooms into a suite without the necessity of having to pass through any one room to get to another. Of course of the three rooms two may be of the full width, extending from the external wall of the house to the back wall of the arcading of the Patio, and one of that width less the width of the passage, into which the three doors open, and which is lighted by a window from the Patio (such as that sketched), and frequently approached also from the arcading by a doorway adjoining the window. As the Patio is a comparatively public part of the house, such windows require, and usually have, the strong close iron work, which gives security and a certain amount of privacy to the external windows of the ground-floor of the house.

SALAMANCA.

EXTERNAL WINDOW OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THE windows of the first-floors of Spanish houses are always the largest, airiest, and openest, of the whole of the windows of the house, excepting in the rare cases where there is a top story consisting of a large gallery, as frequently at Genoa, serving for promenade and look out—in fact a species of Belvedere. The importance of the rooms lighted is generally indicated by the relative richness of the window dressings. The profusion with which heraldic insignia are used in the window sketched, suffices, therefore, to show that with others of the same kind it lighted the principal saloons of the house. Another point of construction illustrated by the sketch, is the fact that the "conchas" or carved stone shells have been applied after the general building of the wall. This is proved by the regularity with which they are placed, irrespective of the heights of the various courses of masonry, and of the levels at which the joints occur.

SALAMANCA.

EXTERIOR OF THE CASA MONTEREY.

OF the very picturesque specimen of domestic architecture illustrated in Plate XX., and bearing the local name of the Casa de Monterey, but little seems to be known. Escosura confesses himself reduced to conjecture, and thus theorises on the subject. As to the exact epoch at which the Casa de Monterey was built, the following circumstances should be borne in mind. "The title of Conde de Monterey was created in favour of Don Baltasar de ZuÑiga, who was Viceroy of Naples in the year 1626. This nobleman caused the Church of the Convent of Nuns which bore his name, and which stands opposite his palace, to be erected at his expense from the designs of the fashionable Italian architect, Fontana. May it be unreasonable to suppose that the Palace was designed at the same time by the same architect?"

To this question, the proper answer given by some better judge of architectural style would, probably, be "very," since it is difficult to perceive any similarity between the modes of design, upon which the two buildings are based. The architecture of the Church of the Convent, one angle of which appears on the left hand of the sketch, is in the large florid manner of the post-Palladian Italians, while that of the Palace is small in its ornamental parts, and instead of exhibiting Italian features, seems throughout to show the peculiar reading of Italian style adopted by the late Plateresque Spanish architects of the second half of the sixteenth century. This is particularly noticeable in the absence of a crowning balustrade, and in the substitution for it of the elaborate pierced cresting which apparently the Spanish architects adopted from Moorish rather than from any antique models.

The interior of this grand looking palace is said to have been all but destroyed by the French.

SALAMANCA.

RENAISSANCE HOUSE OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.

IN every ancient city the largest and most costly building ever erected in it is usually the most enduring. The causes of this are various—for instance—the construction in itself may have been the most solid, the citizens may have taken such pride in it as to bestow unusual pains upon its conservation, they may have retained it for uses for which it may have become more or less unfit (as is the case with the majority of ancient Ecclesiastical buildings in Protestant countries), rather than face the expense of re-erecting appropriate buildings, or it may still be well suited for present purposes. Hence cathedrals, churches, palaces, (rarely castles, owing to the combative propensities of their owners), hospitals, great residences of ancient families, and in Catholic countries, convents and monasteries, of almost all periods, may remain to attest the changes of architectural style, &c.; but the ordinary residences of the middle classes, and of the numerous secondary nobility, get swept away by the tides of history, or are so altered by them as to leave scarcely any satisfactory land-marks to indicate what once gave its predominant character to the streets of many an ancient city. Such changes are effected almost equally by progress and by decay. By the former, all minor monuments become obliterated or transformed,—they represent in fact old age, pushed aside to make way for youth—while by the latter they descend in the social scale until beggars break up what nobles once built up. How constantly the traveller meets with some splendid old cathedral still "hale and hearty," with the weight of half-a-dozen or more centuries upon its head, around which he knows were once grouped teeming populations full of strength, life, and wealth, of which not a habitation may be left extending backwards for more than a hundred years from the present date? Any exceptions to such illustrations of the way in which fortune turns her wheel become the especially cherished haunts of the antiquary, who knows that from day to day they become rarer, and consequently more precious. Hence the enthusiasm with which the neglected quarters of every old town are visited in the hope of meeting with some relics of what may therein at least appear, "remains of an extinct civilization." Some such reward I met with in encountering, amidst much dirt and apparent poverty in the quarter of San Benito, in Salamanca, the pretty faÇades of old Renaissance houses which form the subjects of this sketch and of the one which succeeds it.

THE Renaissance house now presented to the reader, although richer in its ornaments, is not as complete as the one given in the preceding sketch, having apparently lost its original roof. Instead of the overhanging eaves casting a constantly cool shade over the open balustrading, through which light and air still pass to "a chamber that's next to the sky;" in this case nothing is probably left over the principal apartment, the window of which richly decorated with heraldry and arabesque is shown over the strong doorway with its deep flat arch, excepting a dark and scarcely habitable attic. I think it very likely that the wreath, coat of arms, and boys, which still occupy their original position over the principal window, once supported the sill of a superior window, and that the house which now appears to have two stories only, had once at least as many as three.

AVILA.

ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

THE Portal which forms the subject of my twenty-third sketch serves as the entrance to the dilapidated old mansion of the Condes de Polentinos at Avila, a view of the remains of the Patio of which will be found on turning over this page. The architectural characteristics of this striking gateway are certainly very singular. On catching a glimpse of it from a distance, and seizing the aspect only of its ponderous masonry and deep machicolations, I fully believed I was coming upon an old bit of castellated construction of the fourteenth or fifteenth century at latest. On nearer inspection, however, I found out my mistake, and arrived at the conclusion that the SeÑor Conde, late in the sixteenth century, who had caused the whole structure to be built, had probably charged his architect, either to preserve the general form of some much earlier portal of the old house, which he may have caused to be pulled down, or to imitate the general aspect of some other aristocratic portal of early date, which the Count may have admired elsewhere. Different as the corbelling, &c., looks to the gateway, and the window over it, I found that ornamental detail of a similar nature to, but somewhat coarser style than that of the door and window dressings was worked over most of the corbelling, and part of the upper gallery carried by the corbels, but apparently by a provincial hand. The stone work of the door and window had probably been left in the rough for awhile, possibly for some fifty years, and then its carving entrusted to some superior artist, working according to the latest lights of the fashion of the close of the sixteenth century. Although the style of all this carving is plateresque, there are many indications about it of an inclination to Greco-Roman work. For instance, the griffins, the lions' heads of antique type, and the arms and armour arranged as trophies, all indicate acquaintance with the prevalent materials of Italian arabesque design of late cinque-cento style. Indeed, the very form and fluting of the corselets, brasses, vambrasses, and cuisses, would indicate that armour of a date posterior to the middle of the sixteenth century had been adopted as types for the making up of the trophies.

AVILA.

THE PATIO OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

AVILA.

IRON PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL.

MR. STREET'S illustrations and description of all that is left of the old glories of Avila, previous to the epoch of the Renaissance, are so complete, that I can feel no compunction in having gleaned only from this delightful old city two specimens of the ability of the Spanish smiths of the period he repudiates, and two others showing remains of the domestic architecture of the same style.

Let it not be supposed, however, that it was only the school of the Renaissance which produced masterly iron-work, and even masterly iron pulpits, in Spain. Mr. Street has himself given us a beautiful woodcut of the pulpit in the church of St. Gil, at Burgos. This exhibits no other than Gothic details, while in the pulpit which forms the subject of my twenty-fifth sketch, as will no doubt be observed, Renaissance details are freely intermixed with Gothic ones. The whole, however different in style in different parts, appeared to me to be contemporaneous; and I, therefore, regard this pulpit as an interesting example of a transitional style, later of course, than that followed in the pulpit of Saint Gil, which Mr. Street describes as the earliest he saw. In both, the primitive mode of working through thin plates superposed to form tracery has been adhered to, and the whole of the ironwork has been applied to a wooden framework. I regard the pulpit at Burgos as likely to have been executed early in the fifteenth century, and the one now under consideration as of the close of the same century; and both may, I think, have been produced under the influence of the masters from Cologne, who did such wonders, and set so many fashions, in Burgos and its vicinity, especially at Miraflores.

AVILA.

IRON PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL.

IN method of manufacture no less than in style of design this pulpit, which forms a pendant to the one last given just outside the choir of Avila Cathedral, offers a contrast to its predecessor. We no longer meet with a superposition of perforated plates, but the operations of beating and chasing, and, indeed, cutting the metal with chisels, files and hammers; working in fact as the Italians term it "a massiccio." The basis of the design is no longer Gothic, but strictly of the regular Spanish Plateresque Renaissance with balustrade columns, figures in niches, and Arabesques imitated from the Italians. From all these details, we may fairly be justified in ascribing this work to about the middle of the sixteenth century.

ESCORIAL.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE ESCORIAL.

IN all Spain I saw nothing which so ill-agreed with my preconceptions as the Escorial. As for beauty, I could find none whatever in it. The building appeared to me thoroughly unsatisfactory alike as church, palace, or monastery. Still, to omit it altogether from any series of Spanish sketches with pen or pencil, would be to leave out the Monument which reflects, probably, more perfectly than any other in the Peninsula, the mixture of arrogant extravagance, and arid ascetism, which characterized its most potent rulers in the plenitude of their historical importance. In it, in my opinion, Herrera proved himself an architect thoroughly worthy of the masters who employed him, formal, pedantic, cold, extravagant to a degree, and yet mean. That the building contains many most interesting works of art, is as true, as that a visit to it should on no account be omitted by any one who would at all attempt to realize what the Spanish Court may have been in the days of Philip II.; but, after all, I am bound to confess that what most pleased me in the vast edifice, with the exception of some few pictures and illuminated books, was the work of Italians and not of Spaniards, viz., the marble crucifix of Benvenuto Cellini, the magnificent gilt bronze statues of the Kings and Queens of Spain in the Church, by Pompeio Leoni, and the decorations of the Library, principally by Pelegrino Tibaldi. To such a judgment may be objected that the structure now is not what it was, let us see what an acute observer says of it, writing late in the seventeenth century:—

"A while after we went to the Escurial, which to give it no less than its due, may in Spain pass for an admirable structure, but where building is understood, would not be looked on as very extraordinary. In a general consideration, it seems a mass of stone of great perfection; but going to particulars, scarce any of them but falls very short of the magnificence imagined, and that so much, that if Philip the Second, who built it, and was called the Solomon of his age, did no more resemble that wise king then this edifice does his Temple, to which it is often compared, the copy comes very short of the original; in the meantime to stretch the comparison they please themselves in saying, that Charles the Fifth, like another David, only designed his holy work, which (being a man of war and blood) God reserved for his son. Ignorant strangers are entertained with this tale, but such as are versed in history tell us, that after the battle of St. Quentin, Philip the Second made two vows, one never to go in person to the wars, the other to build this cloyster for the Order of St. Jerome instead of that which had been burnt, it cost him near six millions of gold, though out of consideration of parsimony and convenience of bringing stone, he made choice of the worst situation in nature, for it is at the foot of a barren mountain, and hard by a wretched village called Escurial, that can hardly lodge a man of any fashion; this may seem very strange to those that know the Court is there twice in a year: the place it stands on is, by transcendence, called the Seat, because it was levelled in order to build on.

"The fabrick is very fair, with four towers at the four corners, but coming to it, one knows not which way to enter, for as soon as out of the great walk, in a kind of Piazza, you see only little doors, which, when you are over it, lead into two pavilions, that contain offices and lodgings for some of the Court; when you have well viewed this side of the square, you come to that which is towards the mountain, where there is a very large magnificent portal, on each side beautify'd with pillars; by this stately gate you enter a quadrangle, where right over against it stands the Church, ascended to it by a stair of five or six steps, as long as the Court is large, extending from one side of it to the other, very fair columnes support the porch, and on the top of the wall stand six statues, the middlemost of which are David and Solomon, by whom they would represent Charles the Fifth, and Philip the Second. About the church are many pavillions, all comprehended in the exact square which environs that building. Report mentions many Bascourts, but we could not reckon above seven or eight. That this is a very fair cloyster for Friers cannot be denied, neither can it be allowed to be a pallace magnificent enough for such a monarch as Philip the Second, who having built it in one-and-twenty years, and enjoyed it twelve or thirteen, boasted, that from the foot of a mountain and his closet, with two inches of paper, he made himself obeyed in the Old and New World.

"The King and Queen's apartments have nothing in them that appears roial, they are altogether unfurnished, and they say, when the King goes to any of his houses of pleasure, they remove all to the very bedsteads; the rooms are little and low; the roofs not beautiful enough to invite the eyes to look up to them; its many pictures of excellent masters, and especially of Titian, that wrought a great while there, are very much vaunted, yet there are not so many as report gives out. The Spaniards have so little understanding of pictures, they are alike taken with all, and the Marquis Serragenovese, that accompanied us, sufficiently laughed at the foolishness of a Castillian, who, willing to have us admire the slightest and wretchedest landskipes of a gallery where we were, told us nothing could equalize them, because in a place where their King sometimes walked. There are yet in the vestry some good pieces, especially a Christ, and Mary Magdalen; and in the Church others very estimable. For paintings in fresco, the quire, done by Titian, is doubtlessly an excellent work, and so is the library, I think by the same hand, where amongst the rest is represented the ancient Roman manner of defending criminals, who stand by bound hand and foot; Cicero is also there pleading for Milo, or some other, I not being sufficiently acquainted with his meen, to be positive, and without apprehension of mistaking; this library is truly very considerable, as well for its length, breadth, height, and light; the pictures and marble tables that stand in the midst of it, as for its quantity of choice and rare books, if we may believe the monks; they are certainly very well bound and guilded, and if I mistake not, but seldom read. In the vestry, they show priests' copes, where embroidery and pearl with emulation contend whether art or matter renders them more rich and sumptuous; they showed us a cross of very fair pearl, diamonds, and emeralds; it is a very pretty knack, and would not become less such if it changed countreys, I would willingly have undertaken for it if they would have suffered it to pass the Pyreneans, had it been only to show my friends a hundred thousand crowns in a nut-shell. The library I have spoken of, the high altar and monument of their kings, which they call Pantheon (though I know not why, unless because a single round arch like the Pantheon at Rome), are certainly the best pieces of this magnificent fabrick. The high altar is approached by steps of red marble, and invironed by sixteen pillars of jasper, which reach the top of the quire, and cost only a matter of fifty or sixty thousand crowns cutting, between these are niches with statues of guilded brass, and so there are on the side of the tables and praying places. The Pantheon is under the altar, and descended by stairs, though narrow, very light; at the entrance of this rich chappel, a marble shines, whose lustre is heightened by reflexion of the gold, with which all the iron-work and part of that fair stone are overlaid. In the middle of it, and right against the altar, is a fair candlestick of brass, gilded, and in six several niches, twenty-four sepulchres of black marble to receive as many bodies; above the gate are two more. This stately monument is small, but sumptuous, it was finished by the present King, who, about six months since placed there the bodies of Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second, and Philip the Third. The first was most intire; in the niches, on the left, lie the Queens, and the last of them Queen Elizabeth of Burbon. He that preached the day that these seven tombs or sepulchres had bodies laid in them, began by his apprehension to speak in presence of so many kings who had conquered the world, and expressed himself so well, and so highly pleased the King that he got a yearly pension of a thousand crowns. Nothing attaining such perfection as to secure it from the teeth of criticks, the three pieces I have now mentioned, have been attacqued by them. It is objected against the Library, that its entrance suits not with its magnificence and grandeur, and that it stands as if stoln in, and not of the same piece with the rest.

"Over against the great altar, where all is so well proportioned, they wish away a silver lamp, whose size corresponds not with that of the place it burns in, which is vast and large. In the Pantheon they find great fault, that all the steps by which it is descended are not marble, and that the sides of the walls are not incrusted with it, the chappel being all so, and a like magnificence requisite everywhere. In the brazen candlestick, the inner part which is not guilded is discerned amongst the black and foul branches that extend from it. It cost ten thousand crowns, which is ten times more than it is worth; but it is common in this country to boast things of excessive price, which they would have admired on that account, as if because they are foolish merchants, the ware they buy too dear, were therefore the more valuable. These are my observations of the so famous Escurial, adorned only by some small parterras and fountains; one side of it affords a handsome prospect, but the ground near it is the greatest part rock or heath, some walks and groves are planted about it, but being cold and windy, trees thrive not. There are some deer in a kind of park, ill-designed, and with very low walls, the way to it is nothing pleasant, and the King who goes thither thrice every year, one of which times is in the winter, cannot certainly find any great diversion in those journeys, for during three months all is covered with snow."

Nothing need be added, I think, to so graphic a "boutade" as this, which, though somewhat satirical, would not appear to have been much too highly coloured for the occasion.

SEGOVIA.

GATEWAY IN THE CITY WALLS.

THERE is probably no city in all Spain, and few perhaps in any part of the world, in which within a similar compass, so many good, although fragmentary, materials could be found for illustrating styles and inflections of style in building, from the days of the Romans through those of the Moors and Christians, up to the period of the Renaissance, than Segovia. Of this last named period, two of the greatest masters, Gil de OntaÑon and his son Rodrigo, have nobly left their mark in the splendid Cathedral, a worthy rival to that of Salamanca, also executed from the designs, and under the personal superintendence of the elder of the two OntaÑones. The city, probably, owes these varied monuments to its merits, as a strong, as well as a beautiful position. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that its old walls should offer many features of interest as well as picturesqueness. In fact, to the educated eye, the former is almost a necessary ingredient to making up the latter. As I wended my way upwards, therefore, from the railway station to the town, through this gateway, about which I caught indications here of one style, and there of another, Roman, Moor, and Christian doing here a jot and there a little, that I should linger on my way for awhile; partly, perhaps, to cool myself, and partly to make the little sketch I present herewith to my readers.

I need, perhaps, only add that the rough but effective cornice of the gateway is made up from its top to its bottom by different combinations of common tiles, and that its little enriched frieze is a specimen of the clever stucco-work, probably executed by workmen of Moorish descent in Renaissance times. The whole, even to the painting of the Virgin, is roughly executed, but is not the less graceful, perhaps, from the apparent absence of all effort. An aspect of spontaneity in works of art has its own particular charm, as has the semblance of the most careful solicitude under appropriate circumstances. The true artist, heedful of his "when" and "how," is master of both moods.

SEGOVIA.

ARCHWAY IN THE HALL OF THE KINGS.

SEGOVIA.

DETAIL FROM THE ALCAZAR.

IN describing the last sketch (No. 29), some particulars were given of the building from which both that and this (No. 30) were taken. It may be well to note now the peculiar style of design illustrated by both. This style is what is technically known in Spain as "Mudejar," i.e., neither Gothic nor Moorish strictly, but a compound of both. The date of these particular specimens happens to be well fixed by the inscriptions to which allusion has been recently made, and of one of which a portion is shown in the sketch (No. 30), as running horizontally between two string courses on each side of the small quasi-rose windows. This "Mudejar" work was certainly executed between the years 1452 and 1458, in the reign of Enrique IV., King of Castille. It was the wise policy of the most sagacious of the Spanish monarchs in their contests with the Moors, to half-shut their eyes to what they could not eradicate, viz., the secret Islamism of the race. They long continued this laudable inclination to tolerate and use the skilful Arabian artificers, under Christian guidance and superintendence, in the various localities in which they successively planted the Standard of the Cross, tearing down that of the Crescent. At last the inflation which followed their ultimate conquests under Ferdinand and Isabella, led to the establishment of the pernicious Inquisition, the "teterrima causa" of infinite misery, and the subverter of tolerance and progress throughout the country. From that period gradually disappeared—lingering, as we shall have occasion to observe, much longer in the South than in the North—the skilled artificer, learned in all the technicalities, and the elaborate geometrical principles of the combination of ornamental form, which Arabian genius had engrafted upon the traditions of Ancient Rome, handed down to them through the medium of Byzantium. The very antagonism of creed induced the Moor to avoid polluting his art with types of form or processes borrowed from the Christian, as he would have avoided polluting his faith with Catholic legend or tenets. Hence when he and his became the spoil of the Christian, which, to a great extent, they did, the Christian necessarily inherited no unimportant addition to his repertory of beautiful, fresh, and valuable arts and industries. This precious inheritance was not altogether appreciated by the Spaniards, as it might have been by a people of greater producing energies; but in spite of their comparative ineptitude, they gained greatly by the leaven of Moorish skill and talent; and as one of the first and best fruits of the gradual conquest and absorption of the race, we may certainly reckon the leading features of the "Mudejar" style.

SEGOVIA.

EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE MONASTERY OF EL PARRAL.

IN Mr. Street's work on "Gothic Architecture on Spain," so justly praised by all who know anything of ancient Spanish Art will be found on Plate VIII a sketch plan, and on pages 185 and 186 a full description of this extensive old Convent, and especially of the Church of the Vera Cruz to which it is attached. I felt, therefore, that my duty to the student would be best fulfilled by simply laying before him a sketch of the exterior to supplement Mr. Street's ground plan, referring the student for all further information to his work. It would have been easy to extract from Cean Bermudez the same historical details; but it could only have resulted in a thrice-told tale. It may suffice to note that the entrance to the Convent may be sought (with much but rarely effectual knocking and ringing) through the curious old porch represented in my sketch on the right hand of the Church, which should be visited in the morning, on account of its beautiful arrangement of lighting, mainly from the East.

ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES.

EXTERIOR OF THE COLEGIO DE SAN ILDEFONSO.

ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES.

WINDOW OF THE ARZOBISPADO.

THE Archi-episcopal Palace of Alcala de HeÑares is a building of many periods and many styles. Founded upon the Old Alcazar, of which vestiges remain, it contains several pretty mediÆval windows, one of which Mr. Street thought not unworthy of his pencil. The late Plateresque details of its double Patios arrested my attention, and I was pleased to observe in them a more than usual elegance of moulding, and originality, with propriety of style. On account of their possession of these qualities, their invention and the execution of the medallion-heads and ornaments have been ascribed to Alonzo Berruguete, whose studies in Florence have been looked upon as the main agents in purifying the then prevalent tendency to exuberance in Plateresque design to which he might have surrendered himself, but for his opportunities of becoming acquainted with the works of Michael Angelo and other great contemporary masters of Italian Art. If Berruguete had no hand in this work, (and I have been able to find no proof whatever that he had), it lends greater probability to the theory I have ventured to broach in the description of the next sketch, which is taken from another but contemporary part of the same building.

Another attribution of the design of these details has been to Alonso de Covarrubias, but I can find no other authority for it than the fact that Ponz considered them to resemble certain windows of the Alcazar at Toledo which were known to have been designed by that master.

ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES.

DETAIL FROM THE ARZOBISPADO.

ALTHOUGH commonly described as Plateresque, the architecture of the Patio of the Archbishop's Palace at Alcala de HeÑares, of which my sketch represents the detail of the upper story, excites a far more forcible reminiscence of good cinque-cento work. It seems to have been executed principally by Spaniards of the sixteenth century, but still to have been founded on pure Italian models. This is particularly shown, as it appeared to me, in the regular form of the bell and volutes of the capitals of the columns with the well drawn and cut acanthus leaves, and the regular eggs and tongues of the cornice. Recognising this, and noticing the correspondence in style between the execution of this work, and that of the architectural parts of the monument to Cardinal Cisneros alluded to in the description of the last sketch but one, I could not but fancy it possible that the same artist, Domenico of Florence, who is allowed to have produced that monument, may, after its completion, have been retained to work upon the Patios of the Archi-episcopal Palace; and possibly also upon some portions of the faÇade of the University which was not as we know set in hand until some time after the Cardinal's death.

TOLEDO.

VIEW OF THE REMAINS OF A MOORISH FORTRESS ON THE RIVER.

THE situation of Toledo is most romantic, and presents as many charms from its beauty to the architect, as the site for a commanding city, as no doubt it offered from, its great natural strength, to the "man of war" who must needs have regarded it as an almost heaven-born fortress. It owes much, both of its beauty and its strength, to the clear and abundant current of the Tagus, which more than half surrounds it. This river has, as we shall have occasion to observe, been nobly spanned by Roman, Moor, and Christian; and on its banks are yet traceable, in architectural fragments, the handiwork of each of those races.

Our sketch represents a passage of this river which has once been commanded by the Moorish fortress, above the "tapia" or concrete remains of which, some shade-loving Spaniard of to-day has planted his vines and gourds, and reared his modest, but neither unpicturesque nor altogether uncomfortable, tenement. A fortification of this kind was much affected by the Moors for salient points, on account of the command it gave them of the various directions from which attack might be apprehended, and was called by them "Almodovar."

TOLEDO.

BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA.

TOLEDO.

MOORISH GATEWAY BY THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA.

NEAR to the bridge of Alcantara (sketch No. 36) on the road leading up from it to the city, stands the celebrated Moorish gateway of the "Puerta del Sol." This strong, large, and well fortified approach to the city, I found to labour under two marked disadvantages for my sketch-book, viz., it had been too often illustrated, and its curious details had been so vigorously "restored" (when Spaniards do "restore" there is no mistake about it), as to have lost in a great degree its original and authentic characteristics. I looked about, therefore, in the immediate vicinity of the bridge, for other vestiges of the antiquity of the city. These I soon came upon in the old gateway of which I give a sketch, and to the construction of which, both Roman and Moor have contributed. As the poor heavily laden mules laboured up the dusty stony road, with the patience of, in Spain, a much-abused race, it was impossible not to speculate upon the generations upon generations which had followed in the same track up the same road, on the same duty, through every vicissitude of occupation of the Gateway, through which they swayed monotonously from side to side.

TOLEDO.

ENTRANCE ARCHWAY OF THE ZOCODOVER.

ALTHOUGH as appears from the steps shown in my sketch rising up through this archway, which is known as that of the Zocodover, or more properly Zocodober, which means in Arabic, according to Cean Bermudez, "a place upon a lower level," the archway is situated upon an ascent, it by no means follows that there may not be a higher plane to which it may still be a descent. Such is the case in the Zocodover of Toledo, which is really the "Place" of the city in the usual French, or the "Piazza" in the Italian, sense. It is reached from without the walls by the steps shown, and is yet literally the "lower Place" when compared with the platform of the Alcazar or "Royal Residence." Of great strength, it must in its time have been the scene of terrible struggles, and blood shedding, as it dates from the days when Moors ruled in the North of Spain, and had to be wrested from the descendants of its builders only by many a tussle between the upholders of the Crescent and the Cross. On the inside of the city to the market place it has been modified, and Italianised, but to the thousands who pass up it daily from the lower parts of the outskirts, it wears its original Oriental aspect.

Ford gives to the word "Zocodover" quite another meaning and derivation. He explains it as "the square market." Whether he or Bermudez may be right, I know not, but, certain it is that either meaning may be aptly fitted to describe the spot to which our gateway leads—a spot of no comfortable memories—since it still reeks with the cruelties of genuine Spanish diversions, "Autos da Fe," and "Fiestas de Toros."

TOLEDO.

INTERIOR OF THE "TALLER DEL MORO."

FROM the spring of the year 712, when Tarik, with his renegade Jews and Berbers, wrested the city from its Gothic rulers, to the spring of the year 1085, when Alfonso VI.—the Emperor as he styled himself after having won his laurels—reconquered the city for the Christians, Toledo remained altogether an Oriental city. As such, it was inhabited by Berbers, strict Mahommedans and Jews, the last named being occasionally tolerated and occasionally persecuted as they had been by the Goths, and subsequently were by the Castilian Christians. The duration of this tenure of power has to be borne in mind continually, in the endeavour to assign dates to the Moorish monuments of this city, of which there are a great number. It is of course true that long after the date of Alfonso's conquest the Moorish artificers worked for the Christians, but such was their constant condition of subjection that it is not to be credited that any one of them could have been allowed to live in the wealth and luxury, in which the inhabitants of such a Moorish house, as that known as the "Taller del Moro," a beautiful fragment of which forms the subject of the fortieth sketch, must have lived. I can, therefore, have no hesitation in repudiating for the date of its origin, as late a period as 1350, which has been assigned to it. On the other hand, I am no less confident that SeÑor Escosura, who has written of it as of "between the ninth and tenth centuries," is also in error. What I believe is, that this elegant set of chambers was really one of the latest works in the city immediately preceding its capture by Alfonso, in 1085. The style of its work is certainly later than any of that executed under the Khalifate of Corduba while in the hands of the UmmeyÀh family. It belongs, I believe, to the school of the Almohades, and reflects some of the novelties in complicated geometry introduced by the Arabs of Damascus, in advance of the UmmeyÀhs. They held to earlier types, as may be seen in all the works at Corduba, including even those ascribed to the author of the splendid Mih-rÁb or sanctuary, the Sultan Al-Hakem II., who completed the "cubba," or Cupola of the Mih-rÀb (the most complicated piece of design in all Cordova) in the year A.D., 965.

All that is left at present of this once sumptuous mansion consists of a central chamber, (fifty-four feet long by twenty-three feet wide), approached from a court-yard, the usual Moorish Alfagia, (no doubt, by the doorway shown on the right hand side of my sketch), and of two chambers, one at each end of the central one. Traces of colour and gilding have almost entirely disappeared, but the stucco ornamentation, where not wilfully or heedlessly destroyed, retains all its original sharpness and beauty. I found the "Taller del Moro" in full use, or rather abuse, as a carpenter's workshop.

TOLEDO.

TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF LA MAGDALENA.

TOLEDO is, or rather has been, a city of peculiar devotion. Its Christian mediÆval architecture Mr. Street has fully illustrated, but he has passed hurriedly over some of the remains of that peculiar mixed style in which Christians usually gave the order, and Moors did the work. I have, accordingly, sketched two Christiano-Moorish campaniles which he has not given, and one which he has, but from a different point of view.

The steeple of La Magdalena is, I fancy, of two periods, the construction from the ground to the base of the belfry being of one class, and the belfry itself of another. It has all the appearance of having been the old tower of a mosque previous to the conquest of Toledo by King Alfonso, and of having been subsequently taken down to a certain level, and the belfry chamber and bells added, on the christianising of the structure.

It is built almost entirely of brick, and although simple to the extent of rudeness, its mass yet groups well with the long roof lines of the convents by which it is as it were hemmed in.

TOLEDO.

MOORISH TOWER OF SAN PEDRO MARTIRE.

PLATE Forty-two presents us with another type of Christiano-Moorish Campanile from that given by the last sketch. In this case the usual fashion of the mediÆval church builders of dividing the total height of the tower into several compartments, pierced with largish openings on more than one floor, has been followed. The regular Arabian praying-tower is generally simply the inclosure of a staircase, with a gallery, or open chamber, only at the summit, from which "the faithful" are duly summoned by the Imaum to their devotions. The conversion of one or more stories into belfries, however, indicates (where the work is clearly that of a Mahommedan artificer), that he has been working only for the performance of the behests of a Christian, as in the case of the Tower of San Pedro Martire at Toledo. The Church itself exhibits only a clumsy and overgrown Palladian style of a thoroughly commonplace description, gloomy and uninteresting.

TOLEDO.

TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF SANT' IAGO DE LA VEGA.

THIS Church appeared to me to retain more of the primitive "Mezquita," or mosque, than any other in Toledo, excepting the celebrated "Christo de la Luz." Its aspect is most picturesque as one descends from the city towards the Vega, or once rich and lovely plain. I could not help recognizing in it how good an effect might be produced in our ordinary street architecture by the use of common brick, provided that the masses of the construction should be artistically disposed, and used without the appearance of pinching here and paring off there, which spoils many of our usually too ambitious efforts.

In all such work as this in Spain, one is reminded only of the "bottom of the purse" when the work remains unfinished. With us the aspect of the "fond-du-sac" begins generally with the beginning, with the first lines of the disposition of the plan, and ends only with the end of the whole. As far as appearances go in this structure, differences of style from those of the rest of the building shown in my sketch in the belfry, and in the apsidal end of the choir of the Church, and in one or two other parts, seemed to point to those features of the design as being of considerably later date than that of the rest of the building. If the primitive Moorish work may have been of the middle of the eleventh century, the Christiano-Moorish may have been of the end of the thirteenth.

TOLEDO.

EXTERNAL VIEW OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS.

DESCENDING from the main Piazza of the city, through the gateway shown by the thirty-ninth sketch, the great "Hospedal de la Santa Cruz" is speedily reached. This is generally considered the finest example of Plateresque (literally silversmith's) Architecture left in Spain. Its founder was the all powerful Cardinal D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, "Tertius Rex," of Castile, Consolidator of the Monarchy, and Father of the absolute supremacy of the Catholic Church in Spain. The style of this building, and the circumstances of the birth and training of its architect, raise the important question of the extent to which the Plateresque style in Spain may, or may not, have been of national origin? It appears that in 1459, a certain Anequin de Egas de Bruselas (or Brussels) of the Cathedral of Toledo, in his capacity of "Maestro Mayor," with his assistant Juan Fernandez de Liena, executed the faÇade of the main southern transept of that Cathedral, and the entrance familiarly known as "de los Leones." In this work, the architecture is of florid Burgundian-Gothic, with scarcely a trace of Renaissance about its original design. Anequin died in 1494, and his son Henrique was appointed, by the Chapter of Toledo, to succeed his father as "Maestro Mayor," the duties of which office he performed until his death in 1534. Henrique was the favourite architect of the King D. Fernando, and of his son, the Archbishop D. Alonso, who actually disputed, in 1505, as to which of them should for awhile avail themselves of his exclusive services. He was called in to every important consultation of architects of his time, and was evidently "au courant" of the great changes of style which had been developed in Italy, and which were in course of development in France, and in and about his father's native place. His influence as a naturalizer of the exotic details of which models were furnished to artists by the prints and portable works of the "petits maÎtres," is clearly manifested when we recognise the early dates at which his florid Renaissance buildings were executed. For instance, in those designed for Cardinal Mendoza, the dates of which are well known, we find Renaissance features well carried out with scarcely any admixture of Gothic. The earliest of these is the vast "Colegio Mayor" de Sta. Cruz at Valladolid, which Henrique began in 1480 and completed in 1492, and the second the splendid Hospital for Foundlings at Toledo (1504 to 1514) from which the sketch, now under consideration, and the two which follow it have been taken. In describing the second of these sketches, we shall resume our consideration of the Plateresque style generally from the point at which it is now left. It may be well, however, with relation to this sketch, to state that it shows the principal portal or great entrance to the Hospital, and that the top story appears to be of later date and coarser execution than the portal and the two elegant windows of the first floor. The carving in the lunette of the doorway represents, in very good style, the "invention of the Cross" with Sta. Helena and the Founder. The colour of the stone, and the quality of the workmanship leave nothing to be desired.

TOLEDO.

CORTILE OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS.

IT is in the interior rather than on the exterior of the Toledo Foundling Hospital, that Henrique de Egas has best shown his command over the Plateresque style. It was no longer in designing the former a question of adding on ornament in fanciful door and window dressings, as it was in the latter, but a necessity to adapt from existing models, or originate essential parts of the structure, executing important functions of use and stability. The columns, arches, and interspacing of the arcading of the Patios evidence by their proportions, quite as much as by their details, that Henrique's and his employer's backs had been turned upon Gothic, and that a new style had been inaugurated for Spanish architecture, as the successes of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the discovery of America, had laid the foundations of an entirely new era for Spain.

The construction of the building under notice was begun by Cardinal Mendoza, under Henrique, in 1504; the year in which those Sovereigns ascended the throne, and completed in the year 1514. Simultaneously with the commencement of the great Hospital for the "Tertius Rex," Henrique designed a still more extensive and magnificent Hospital which the "Reyes Catolicos" proposed to construct at Santiago, and entered upon many other great architectural works in other parts of Spain. Ford, who was no mean judge, says of the Hospedal de la Santa Cruz, that its "position overlooking the Tagus is glorious, and the building is one of the gems of the world; nor can any chasing of Cellini surpass the elegant Portal."

There is little doubt that Egas was stimulated to great exertion by the rivalry of many competitors, few of whom, however, designed in exactly his style. The work which most resembles his, I believe, will be found in the detail of the wonderful Plateresque Town Hall at Seville, and that of the Cathedral at Plasencia.

That so magnificent a Palace (for such it is) should have been thought necessary, or at any rate should have been indulged in, for the reception of foundlings, is to be partially accounted for by an old assertion I have met with, that the Spaniards, not knowing the parentage of the "niÑos perdidos," gave them "the benefit of the doubt," and considered them all as children of Hidalgos, a questionable compliment to the boasted morality, or at any rate austerity, of the upper classes.

TOLEDO.

DOORWAY FROM THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS.

THE facts that Moorish workmen should have been found in Toledo, Segovia, and elsewhere in Spain, to modify their national style, in their Mudejar work, and to incorporate freely in it many features of late mediÆval work; while they scarcely ever lent themselves to any expression of Renaissance form, although they occasionally laboured in buildings of that style, have been supposed to imply a greater affinity between Arabian and Gothic modes of design, than between the Arabian style and Plateresque. This may, to some extent, account for the presence of this Mudejar work, assimilating in no way with the last-mentioned style, in a building of so distinctly a Renaissance character as this one possesses. The fact is, however, rather thus—that after the expulsion of the Moors, and the institution of the Inquisition (the period of the construction of this Hospital), the Moorish artificers diminished very rapidly in number, and lost their individuality almost entirely in Northern and Central Spain; and that, whereas, during several centuries they had lived there in cities in which Gothic architecture was practised by Christians, and had thus made themselves partially acquainted with its details, they had but a short term of scarcely tolerated national existence wherein to learn the novelties which were beginning to be taken up by the Spaniards, at the commencement of the sixteenth century.

My sketch, while it indicates the elaboration of this late specimen of Mudejar stucco-work, shows by the figures I have introduced (from life) the class to whose tender mercies this gem is now confided. Let it be hoped that the "Genius loci," may protect it, for the respectable Spanish soldier of the nineteenth century can scarcely be regarded as a satisfactory Conservative element.

TOLEDO.

ENTRANCE GATEWAY TO THE ALCAZAR.

THE Royal residence, for such is the meaning of the word "Alcazar," of Toledo, is one of the two great Palaces which Charles V. caused to be constructed in order that Spain might, for the first time, have "Royal Residences" commensurate with her grandeur and wealth. He appears to have chosen the same architect for both in the person of Alonso de Covarrubbias. This distinguished artist was born in the locality, in the diocese of Burgos, from whence he derived his name. At an early age he allied himself with the family of the Flemish Egas, distinguished in the highest degree as architects in the persons of Anequin and his son Henrique. The wife of Alonso de Covarrubbias was a certain Maria Gutierrez de Egas, and by her he became the father of several sons, who in different ways (not in architecture) achieved great distinction and consideration. To return to the architectural career of Covarrubbias. Through the interest of Henrique de Egas, and probably in succession to him, Alonso Covarrubbias was appointed "Maestro Mayor" of the Cathedral of Toledo, whereupon he settled himself altogether in that city with his brother Marcos. His great work in Toledo Cathedral was the famous Chapel "de los Reyes nuevos," which he completed in the year 1534. He is then said to have given some plans to Cardinal D. Alonso de Fonseca, for the improvement of the Archbishop's Palace at Alcala de HeÑares (see my notes on that structure, Sketches, Nos. 33 and 34). He subsequently occupied himself, until 1537, in designing and carrying out the splendid entry to the Colegio Mayor (known as that of the Archbishop) in Salamanca, and other works.

TOLEDO.

PATIO OF THE HOSPITAL OF CARDINAL TAVERA.

THE great Cardinal Primate, whose name this gigantic Hospital still bears, was a worthy successor to Mendoza and Cisneros. In 1542 he employed the Architect BartholomÉ de Bustamente to design and construct the four faÇades of this enormous pile. Not particularly attractive from without, internally the extent, fine proportions, and simplicity of its great Patios are very striking. It is one of the most regular pieces of Italian architecture I met with in Spain, and would have produced a highly satisfactory effect if its upper arches had been semi-circular instead of elliptic. The Hospital is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and is placed without the walls of the city, whence its cognomen of "a fuera." The Church of the Hospital is older in style if not in date than the rest of the structure. Here in the room beneath the clock died the famous Berruguete in 1561, shortly after completing the portal of the Church and the marble monument within it which commemorates the cardinal virtues of the illustrious founder.

CORDOBA.

EXTERIOR OF THE CASA CABELLO.

THIS pretty entrance to a Spanish nobleman's house of the latter part of the sixteenth century has, like most of its class, little story to tell, and that little, could I but unravel it, would probably turn out to be only of the dullest. Let us see, therefore, from a contemporary witness, what manner of life was ordinarily led by the class of nobles for one of whom it may have been fitted up in the fashion of the century succeeding that in which it was built. "In the morning as soon as they are up they drink water cooled with ice, and presently after chocolate. When dinner time is come, the master sits down to table; his wife and children eat upon the floor near the table; this is not done out of respect, as they tell me, but the women cannot sit upon a chair, they are not accustomed to it; and there are several ancient Spanish women who never sat upon one in their whole life. They make a light meal, for they eat little flesh; the best of their food are pigeons, pheasants, and their olios, which are excellent; but the greatest lord has not brought to his table above two pigeons, and some very bad ragoust, full of garlick and pepper; and after that some fennel and a little fruit. When this little dinner is over, every one in the house undress themselves and lie down upon their beds, upon which they lay Spanish leather-skins for coolness; at this time you shall not find a soul in the streets; the shops are shut, all the trade ceased, and it looks as if every body were dead. At two o'clock in the winter and at four in the summer they begin to dress themselves again, then eat sweetmeats, drink either some chocolate or water cooled in ice, and afterwards everybody goes where they think fit, and indeed they tarry out till eleven or twelve o'clock at night; I speak of people that live regularly; then the husband and wife go to bed, a great table-cloth is spread all over the bed, and each fastens it under their chin. The he and she-dwarfs serve up supper, which is as frugal as the dinner, for it is either a pheasant-hen made into a ragoust, or some pastry business, which burns their mouth it is so excessively peppered; the lady drinks her belly full of water, and the gentleman very sparingly of the wine; and when supper is ended each goes to sleep as well as they can."

SEVILLE.

CHURCH OF LA FERIA.

"LA FERIA" in Seville, has been time out of mind the essence of all that is most "Picaresque" in the city. Not quite so thronged with Gitanos and Gitanas as the suburb of Triana, it makes up for shortcomings in that element of rascality and picturesqueness, by majos and majas, rustic beaux and belles, bull-fighters and beggars, dogs and donkeys, mules and muleteers, rags and tatters, and abundance of the most gloriously coloured fruits under the sun—and, above all, there reign such a sun and such a sky as denizens of the North have really little or no notion of. As if these elements of the picture were not enough, by way of background, stands a church in which the "battle of the Styles" seems to have been fairly fought out, with the victory now inclining to Moor, and now to Christian, while over all is seen a little of the Renaissance, with more than a suspicion, in the heavy scrolls of the highest belfry, of "Churriguerismo."

While I sat on a door-step making this poor little sketch, I think I must have seen Murillo's by the dozen, and John Phillips' by the hundred, not on canvas, but glowing with Nature's own light, and life, and colour.

SEVILLE.

CHURCH OF SAN MARCOS.

SOME notion of the richness of Seville, in the remains of old Moorish mosques converted into Christian churches, may be formed from the fact that this edifice, in which we trace the two styles blended in the most interesting way, finds no mention in the pages of Ford, O'Shea, Mellado, or any other guide books of Spain I have been able to meet with, except Bradshaw's. In that, Dr. Charnock thus briefly alludes to San Marcos. "Note," says he, "its beautiful western faÇade which has served as a model for several churches; the Retablo of the Altar de las Animas, contains a painting by D. Martinez; the tower rising to the left of the Church in imitation of the Giralda, is a fine monument of Arabian architecture." It is, of course, to the grand portal, rather than to the whole faÇade, that Dr. Charnock alludes, since the former from the purity of its apparently late fifteenth century work, merits his praise, while the latter cannot certainly be regarded as other than a "barbarismo."

The tower, particularly pleasing in the style of its Mudejar additions, has been engraved in elevation in "los Monumentos Arquitectonicos." It is about seventy-five feet high by ten feet wide.

SEVILLE.

REMAINS OF MUDEJAR HOUSE NEAR LA FERIA.

THE habit of the Moors was almost universally to make their exterior architecture plain, and to reserve richness and elaboration for the interiors of their houses. The fact that what is commonly internal architecture has been used by Moorish workmen on the external faÇade of the little house, which forms the subject of this fifty-second sketch, would be sufficient of itself to prove that it had not been executed for a Moor, even if the Gothic mouldings and ornaments of the buttresses, imposts, cornices, and string courses failed to assert the Christianity of those for whom the house may have been built. The date of its construction, judging from style, was probably about the middle of the fifteenth century, at which period, in Spain, Renaissance features had in nowise affected the integrity of either Gothic or Moorish architecture. In this case all the mason's work is Gothic, and all the stucco-work is Moorish; and this distinction of style, according to the technical mode of construction, is not an uncommon feature of Mudejar work. It was not only in stucco that the traditions of Moorish art-workmanship enriched all Spain, since both in metal-work and wood-work, the Moors continued to be employed long after their subjugation, preserving very many of their old and excellent types of form throughout many phases of transition. To this subject I may have occasion to recur. I was myself fortunate enough to meet with a beautiful little walnut-wood box, covered with Mudejar ornament, in the midst of which a Moorish workman of the sixteenth century had carved the I.H.S. of Christianity, and the sword of Sant' Iago.

SEVILLE.

MUDEJAR WINDOW IN THE FONDA DE MADRID.

THIS window which is of the class known as "Ajimez," or literally "through which the sun shines," i.e. in an external wall, is a specimen of Mudejar work left as a "waif" in a part of Seville which, with this exception, has been entirely modernised. It belongs to exactly the house where one would least expect to find it, viz., one of the best hotels, if not the best hotel, in Seville, the "Fonda de Madrid." All of this pretty window is made of brickwork, once covered apparently in Moorish fashion with thin plaster, excepting the column which is of white marble. The room it lights is an ordinary nineteenth century inn bedroom, with square casements, and not a vestige of the fifteenth century left about it. I could learn nothing about this relic, or perfect reproduction of the past, from any one in the hotel, so that all I could do was to sketch it. While doing so, I could not but wonder how with so sensible, and, at the same time, so pretty a window ready to their hands as a model, the builders of the Fonda could have been contented to execute the regular expressionless square-headed windows I found everywhere else. After a few minutes moralising in this vein, I began to ask myself whether, as an Englishman, I was not assiduously "plucking the mote from my brother's eye," with a beam all the time in my own?

SEVILLE.

VIEW IN THE UPPER STORY OF ONE OF THE PATIOS OF THE CASA DE PILATUS.

THE principal monument of Moorish magnificence still left in Seville, is, of course, the "Royal Residence," the "Alcazar," commenced in 1181, by Jalubi, the architect of Toledo. Next to it in importance is the "Casa de Pilatus," as it is called, from which this sketch, and the succeeding one have been taken. From the first named of these buildings I did not sketch at all, feeling myself entirely baffled by the extreme elaboration of all that was most interesting and admirable in the old Moorish, Mudejar and Plateresque work. Such a building can be in no wise now satisfactorily illustrated, excepting by one who may be in a position to devote much time and study to the task. "Restoration," and the adaptation of the structure to the necessities of nineteenth century life have so mystified the work and intention of the original designers, that although one may readily admire, it becomes exceedingly difficult to analyse, all that meets the eye. I have, therefore, preferred giving my attention, so far as this publication is concerned, to other, although less noteworthy, specimens of the domestic architecture of Seville.

The student of the Fine Arts, and even the ordinary traveller, are sure, without any urging on my part, to visit and enjoy the Alcazar, as a Royal Palace; but may possibly, and, indeed, unless advised on the subject, probably, may overlook the great beauty and curiosity of the old, and now sadly neglected, Moorish and cinque-cento garden which lies in the rear of the building. How to make a garden a delight the Mahommedans learnt from the Persians, and taught by example, if not by precept, to the Christians. Throughout these antique, orange, lemon, box, and myrtle, groves, the Moors carried their system of irrigation. Fountains and fishponds, baths and open water channels, even in the hottest summer, still cool the favourite haunts. Many of these, Pedro "el Cruel" caused to be formed in 1364 by architects specially brought from Granada to rebuild a large portion of the Palace, for his accommodation and that of his celebrated and beautiful mistress, Maria de Padilla. Much more modern, and far less beautiful, gardening was done by Charles V, but it is to the Moors the spot owes all its great charm.

To return to the "Casa de Pilatus," so called from an old tradition, that it was intended as a reproduction of the house of Pilate at Jerusalem. It was built in 1533, by Fadrique Henriquez de Ribera, after his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519. From him the Palace, for such it was, has descended (and, oh, how much descended!) to its present owner, who is said to rarely visit it, a Duke of Medina Coeli. From the SeÑor Duque, it has again descended to his Administrador, who does his best to keep it (for Spain) clean, and in tolerable order. My sketch has been taken in the upper gallery of the third Patio.

SEVILLE.

DETAIL FROM A DOORWAY IN THE UPPER FLOOR OF ONE OF THE PATIOS OF THE HOUSE OF PILATE.

THIS sketch represents, to a larger scale, a portion of the doorway shown upon a small scale in the preceding sketch. It illustrates two of the special points of architectural value in this fine old Palace, viz., the entirely Moresque character of the stucco-work at a comparatively late date, and the profuse use of "Azulejos" or coloured tiles. Some of these may be recognized, although in a sketch in black and white, it is not easy to make them apparent, in the coverings of the lower part of the door jamb. It is, however, in and about the splendid staircase, that this charming tile lining, of the use of which we have here of late years commenced a very satisfactory revival, asserts its value as a beautiful mode of introducing clean and permanent polychromatic decoration—the only mode, indeed, as I believe, suitable for our changeful climate, and smoky ways.

I regret that my sketch is not sufficiently minute to show a favourite habit of the Moors of Granada and Seville, in the technical working of their stucco, by the use of which they give an appearance of extraordinary elaboration to their decorations. It consists in working different patterns on different planes of the same piece of stucco-work. At a distance the dominant lines of the pattern only are apparent, on a nearer approach the pattern comes into sight which fills up the bold openings left between the dominant lines of the top pattern; and on a still closer inspection, a third series of forms running counter to the main lines of the pattern on the second plane and filling up the interstices of it may be traced. I am inclined to believe, from their peculiar sharpness, that few, or none, of the repeats of these patterns were done from moulds by the operation of casting, but that wire, or cut metal stencils, were used as guides for the pointed tools and knives, by which superfluous plaster was removed, whilst the whole was yet in a plastic state.

This method of shaping semi-plastic stucco with sharp tools, was, I have no doubt, derived by the Arabs from Roman tradition, as I have seen many examples of a similar mode of working at Rome, Pompeii, Naples, and elsewhere in Italy.

"HOW are the Mighty fallen," is the predominant sensation, as one wanders through these "banquet halls deserted." One may fairly paraphrase Byron, and declare that "in Seville Alba's echoes are no more." Ford and O'Shea, whose notes on the relics of domestic edifices in Spain are invaluable, both tell us that this still beautiful, though sadly destroyed, whitewashed, and dilapidated, old Palace, once "contained eleven patios, nine fountains, and one hundred marble columns." Of the elaboration of its workmanship, my sketch may serve to give some idea. It was probably next to the Alcazar, the most important residence in the City, far surpassing in extent the "Casa de Pilatus."

This house presents one of the rare instances in Spain, in which the Moorish stucco-workers have lent themselves to the rendering of Renaissance details. For these, no doubt, they were furnished with drawings or models, since in other parts of the same building, and especially in many beautiful rooms in the interior, where they have apparently been left to themselves, they have reverted partly to Mudejar work, and partly to the old types of geometrical enrichment, which may be regarded as specifically their own. Much of this is almost reduced to a flat surface by repeated coats of whitewash. I was very much pleased, however, to meet with one Spanish gentleman, occupying a suite of rooms in the house, who was fully alive to the beauty of the Palace he lived in; and who had, with his own hands, cleared off some of the whitewash, and restored much of the fine ornamental detail of his rooms to its original sharpness. Would that there were more like him in Spain!

SEVILLE.

DETAIL FROM THE PATIO OF THE CASA ALBA.

TURNING from a consideration of the grand scale upon which the houses of the old Spanish nobility have been usually constructed, and the elaboration with which, as in the present sketch, the profuse ornamental detail has been combined with heraldic insignia to set forth the splendour and dignity of the family and its alliances, to the ruin and dilapidation which seem to have fallen alike upon the architecture and the families, one naturally wonders at the causes of the almost total wreck. Some may, no doubt, be found in active assailment from without, invasion, revolution, "y otras cosas de EspaÑa;" but it is from within that the real main enemy—pride—has undermined all. During the latter part of the sixteenth, and early part of the seventeenth century, this national infirmity reached its acme. Witness emphatically the sketch given by an eye-witness towards the close of the last named century.

"It would grieve a body to see the ill-management of some great lords; there are divers who will never go to their estates (for so they call their lands, their towns, and castles) but pass all their lives at Madrid, and trust all to a steward, who makes them believe what he judges most for his own interest. They will not so much as vouchsafe to inquire whether he speaks true or false; this would be too exact, and by consequence below them. This, methinks, is one considerable fault; the strange profusion of vessels only for an egg and a pigeon is another. But it is not only in these things which they fail, but it is also in the daily expences of their houses. They know not what it is to lay up stores, or make provision of anything; but every day they fetch in what they want, and all upon trust, at the bakers, cooks, butchers, and all other trades; they are even ignorant what they set down in their books, and they put down what price they will for every thing they sell; this matter is neither examined into nor contradicted. There are often fifty horses in a stable, without either corn or straw, and they perish with hunger. And when the master is in bed, if he should be taken ill in the night, he would be at a great loss, for they let nothing remain in his house, neither wine nor water, charcoal nor wax-candle, and in a word nothing at all; for though they do not take in provisions so near that there is nothing left, yet his servants have a custom of carrying the overplus away to their own lodgings, and the next day they furnish themselves with the same things again. They observe no better rules with the tradesmen. A man or woman of quality had rather die than to haggle for, or ask the price of a stuff, or lace, or any other thing, or to take the remainder of a piece of gold; they rather chuse to give it the tradesman, for his pains of having sold them for ten pistoles that which was not worth five. If there is a reasonable price made, he that sells to them is so honest not to take the advantage of their easiness to give whatever is asked them; and as they have credit given them for ten years together, without even thinking of paying, so at last they find themselves under great difficulties with their debts."

SEVILLE.

ARCHES FROM THE CASA DE LOS ABADES.

SEVILLE.

VIEW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS ABADES.

IN spite of all the habits of reckless extravagance, in the days when America poured its countless riches into the mother-country, described by travellers; and in spite of the quantity of money which must have been lavished on building by nobles and superior ecclesiastics, (as in the case of the extremely elegant Renaissance "Casa de los Abades" which forms the subject of our fifty-eighth sketch,) the home-life of Spain never approached the contemporary plenty and comfort which obtained in Italy, France, and England. In spite of the occasional prodigality of wedding feasts, such as that of Camacho in Don Quixotte, and in spite, perhaps, of a little occasional "gourmanderie" on the part of the "SeÑores Abades" of this Calle, neither cooking nor service appear to have been carried to much perfection. It is in fact very curious, in wandering over any fine old Spanish house, to observe how little provision appears to have been made in them architecturally for the kitchen and its service. Ornament appears to have been much more general in the public parts of the richest houses than good fare in the interior and private parts. Nor was there any such movement towards excess in this particular, as usually accompanies the passage of a wealthy and powerful people from wealth and power, through laziness, to poverty and weakness.

SEVILLE.

A PEEP INTO AN ORDINARY PATIO.

CADIZ.

INTERNAL VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL.

MALAGA.

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ALAMEDA.

IN almost every Spanish town there exists a feature, too often wanting, under similar circumstances, in England, in the shape of a public walk, or "paseo." In these popular airing places in the summer-heats the inhabitants turn out, take exercise, meet and chat with one another, the poor with the rich (by mutual consent) under the shade of green trees, usually within compass of the scent of flowers, and almost invariably within hearing of the pleasant trickle of some pretty fountain. Such places, which, as their name imports, the Spaniards have inherited, with almost all that makes life pleasant, from the Moors, are called "Alamedas." In this particular Malaga is especially favoured, for not only is her Alameda, which forms the principle Plaza of the city, cooled by refreshing breezes from the sea,

but it is adorned by one of the prettiest fountains in the world. It is made of pure white marble, and of such exquisite workmanship that it would betray its Italian origin at a glance, even if it did not possess a history of its own which places the fact beyond a doubt.

MALAGA.

RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANT' AUGUSTIN.

NOT only is Malaga endowed with an "eternal summer" by its lovely climate, there being actually no "winter of its discontent," but it has also enjoyed historically a splendid and long summer of prosperity, its present state being comparatively autumnal. This "golden age" existed under the Moors for many centuries preceding the dreadful siege laid to the city by the Catholic kings, which ended on the 18th of August, 1487. It has never altogether recovered from the christianising influences then brought to bear upon it, though the charms of its position and climate prevented its being altogether deserted at any time. They indeed produced an after-crop of splendour, in the shape of fine residences of powerful nobility, enriched many of them by the spoils of the Moors, and yet more by the silver of America and the great profits of the foreign trade, to say nothing of the smuggling carried on in its port. Of such our sketch presents a specimen, more Italian in its character than would be likely to be met with in Spain, in any other locality than a "Port de Mer." The great establishment of the Genoese merchants, the "Casa de los Genoveses," may have exercised a powerful local influence upon the arts and especially the architecture of Malaga, as that of our "Merchants of the Steleyard" did upon those of London.

In the distance is seen one of the cupola-covered towers of the vast Cathedral—most promising and picturesque from a distance, but unsatisfactory in its incompleteness, when visited by the Ecclesiologist.

MALAGA.

OLD WINDOW OF THE OSPEDALE DE SANTO TOMÉ.

THIS pretty window of, as I believe, the early part of the sixteenth century is evidently of Mudejar design with little of the Moorish element left in it, excepting the obvious Orientalism of the workman. Take away the engrailed intrados of the arch, and the little dove-tailed break in the line of the archivolt, and all that is Moorish in the design would disappear; but still the particular mode of combining the brick and tile work would be left to show the disinclination of the Moor to quit or alter his old technical habits as an operative.

MALAGA.

KNOCKER OF THE MONASTERY OF SANT' JAGO.

TRAVELLERS in Spain rarely fail to observe and comment on the great strength of ordinary entrance doors, the thick planks forming which are frequently held together by iron bars, or plating, with ponderous bolts, or nail-heads, often of very pretty design. Such doors have descended apparently from Roman days, and the retention of the type, by Moor and Christian down to the present day, has been regarded as an evidence of the proverbially jealous temperament of the Spaniard. I think it bears a much clearer testimony to the want of good police in the streets, and the frequency of quarrels and rows, to say nothing of marauders and more serious fighters in disastrous times. One is strengthened in this belief by the inclination ever shown by the old Spaniards to have as few external windows as possible on the ground floors of their houses, and those few raised high above the pathway, and protected by close and strong iron grilles and thick shutters. These may have been useful restraints on the love-making propensities of the Spanish Lotharios; but the difficulties they presented to pilferers and "Soldados de Fortuna," when a little out of luck, were, perhaps, of even greater importance to the householder.

The portion of the door I have sketched, formed part of a solid defence against a formidable class in Spain, bold in attack, and not easily cast down even in retreat—the beggars. Much of the enormous sums given by the devout to God in Catholic times, this class believed they had as good right to scramble for as the monks; and it behoved the latter to fortify themselves, as they never failed to do, pretty strongly against the importunity of the former. No doubt the coronetted knocker of the Monastery of Sant' Jago was intended to inspire the beggars with fitting awe, and an intimation that it was not to be audaciously handled by vulgarity. Some such scarecrow was certainly locally necessary, for I well remember being driven away by clustering beggars no less than four times before I could accomplish my very hasty sixty-fifth sketch.

GRANADA.

REMAINS OF THE ALHAMBRA AS SEEN FROM THE ALBAYCIN.

NO one looking from the quarter of the city to which, after its conquest by the Christians in 1480, the Moors who lingered behind the bulk of their fellows, were relegated, (as the Jews by the Popes to the Ghetto at Rome,) would be justified in supposing that the stern-looking and dilapidated fortresses, and lines of walling of vast height and apparent strength, which meet the eye, contained nearly complete specimens of the loveliest and most elaborate system of ornamentation, both in form and colour, which has ever existed. The position of the Alhambra is worthy in every respect of the treasures of art it contains. It overlooks the Vega, an extended plain, which in the days of the city's prosperity was literally one vast garden, and even in the present day is, to most of central Spain, pretty nearly what an oasis may be supposed to be to a desert.

On the extreme left in this sketch is seen the great mass of the "Torre de Comares," which contains the celebrated Hall of the Ambassadors; next to it on the right are the ancient buildings of the Patio de la Mezquita or Mosque. Behind these, and further to the right, rises the great rectangular mass of the Palace of Charles V. The flat space, in front and on the right of the Palace, is known as the Plaza de los "Algibes" (of the tanks) and the mass of towers and buildings beyond are those of the Alcazaba, (the fortress) with, conspicuous on the extreme right, the Torre de la Vela, (the Watch-Tower,) from which a constant look-out was kept far and wide over the city to the west, and the far spreading Vega to the west and south. On the horizon stretched the great range of snow-clad mountains, the Sierra Nevada.

The beauty of the view from this tower cannot be exceeded, and I never shall forget the aspect of the scene upon one especially lovely moonlight night. By such soft illumination, the desolation of which one saw so much by day was passed over in the breadth of the great masses of light and shade. As the moonlight caught the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada and traced itself in the silver lines of the winding River Genil, coming from the far off distance to the city beneath, and losing itself in the thousands of twinkling lights of the suburbs in which its silver threads seemed to get entangled and lost, everything was perfect; and as one turned away towards the nearer mountain heights, and saw, upon their hilly eastern slopes, the Generalife and the Alhambra, almost close at hand, one felt inclined to forget the present in the past and to think of ruin as perfection, and of death as life.

By day the illusion was destroyed, the young Alhambra of the night faded away, and in its place one saw all the seams and stains and wrinkles age had left upon its hoary head and face, all the more painfully perhaps from the efforts one recognise as having been made here and there, by loving and anxious hands, to mend and palliate conspicuous decay.

GRANADA.

ENTRANCE TO THE BOSQUÉ DEL ALHAMBRA.

OUR sixty-seventh sketch illustrates the road by which the traveller usually ascends from the City of Granada to the delights of the Alhambra. On passing through the massive gateway, seen in the middle of the sketch, he finds himself in a thickly-planted wood or "bosquÉ," cool, shady, refreshing, and beautiful. At several turns in the winding road, fountains, abundantly supplied with crystal water, charm his eye and ear at the same moment. With his pulse just quickened by the gradual ascent, everything seems to conduce to ease of body, and to throw him into a happy frame of mind for enjoying the feast of beauty which lies in store for him. As a preparation for such a banquet, I know nothing better calculated to insure a healthy digestion of the artistic "pabulum" the Alhambra furnishes, than a thorough acquaintance with the views of Owen Jones upon the subject of Moorish art generally.

If in his noble work on the Alhambra he has described the system "no work so fitted to illustrate a grammar of ornament as that in which every ornament contains a grammar in itself. Every principle which we can derive from the study of the ornamental art of any other people is not only ever present here, but was by the Moors universally and truly obeyed."

"We find in the Alhambra the speaking art of the Egyptians, the natural grace and refinement of the Greeks, the geometrical combinations of the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs. The ornament wanted but one charm, which was the peculiar feature of the Egyptian ornament, symbolism. This the religion of the Moors forbade; but the want was more than supplied by the inscriptions, which, addressing themselves to the eye by their outward beauty, at once excited the intellect by the difficulties of deciphering their curious and complex involutions, and delighted the imagination when read, by the beauty of the sentiments they expressed and the music of their composition. To the artist and those provided with minds to estimate the value of the beauty to which they gave a life, they repeated Look and Learn."

GRANADA.

PUERTA DE JUSTICIA.

GRANADA.—THE ALHAMBRA.

SALA DE EMBAJADORES.

TO describe the progress of the visitor through the Courts and apartments of the "Casa Real," as the Palace of the Alhambra is called, would be to echo a more than thrice-told tale. For present purposes, it may suffice to say, that in the Hall of the Ambassadors he reaches the acmÉ of Moorish magnificence. My sketch represents one of the nine windows by which the hall is lighted on the level of the floor. The space from the single arch, which is on the internal face of the apartment, to the coupled arches which are on the external face of the building, represents the thickness, no less than about eight feet, of the wall of the Tower of Comares. The window I have chosen for sketching, looks towards a Renaissance addition to the Alhambra, made by Charles V. for the accommodation of his Queen.

This elegant pavilion, from which is obtained a view of almost unparallelled loveliness over the Vega, is known as the "Tocador de la Reina," or, Boudoir of the Queen.

The Hall of Ambassadors occupies the whole of the internal area on plan of the Tower, and is an apartment thirty-seven feet square and seventy-five feet high. It is entered from the Court of the "Blessing," (as Mr. O'Shea considers the Patio de la BerkÀh to be more properly called, than the Court of the Fish Pond,) or "de la Alberca," the title by which it is usually known. Advancing from the Patio, the visitor traverses the Sala. In the wall opposite to the door of entrance to the Hall are three windows. In the central one appears to have been placed the throne of the Sultan. In each of the walls, on the right and left of the entrance, are three nearly-similar windows: the one I have selected for representation being the middle one of the three in the wall on the right upon entering.

The dado which runs round the whole of the splendid Hall, is made of Mosaic and Azulejos for a height of about four feet from the pavement; and above it run bands with inscriptions and medallions. Over these, the walls, covered with lace-like diapers in stucco, to a height of about seven and twenty feet from the floor, run up to a second tier of windows, five on a side, lighting the upper portion of the Hall.

IN describing the subject of the last sketch, our theme was the general aspect of the "Sala de los Embajadores." I have chosen to let this minute specimen of its detail follow the statement of its large dimensions, in order the more forcibly to convey an idea of its wonderful elaboration. The elegant morsel of stucco-work now presented to the student has been actually traced from a portion of the stucco-work of one of the window recesses immediately above the dado. It affords an admirable illustration of two principles constantly followed by the Moors in their treatment of decoration—viz., to preserve the continuity of all scroll work from root to fully developed foliation—a principle entirely disregarded in all previous ornamentation based upon classical practice—and to care first for larger surfaces to satisfy the eye with harmonious relations of those surfaces to one another, and to the spaces they have to enrich, from a distance; and then to provide minor fillings and intersections so as to supply adequate elaboration for close inspection. In addition to the decorative effect produced by variations in relief, still greater refinement was obtained by patterns in colour, painted upon the surfaces of the modelled ornaments. Although almost everywhere the colour has either been rubbed off, or rubbed into confusion, the abrasion has affected for the most part only the pigment and its albuminous vehicle, leaving the surface of the stucco bare, and showing the outline of the delicate ornament which has been drawn in by the pencil of the artist.

It is on the nature of the stucco itself I think it may be well to offer here a few remarks. It certainly appears to be harder, closer in texture, tougher, and much less absorbent, than gypsum or plaster of Paris, when set in the usual manner. Lime alone, as ordinarily slacked, would not I believe give any such texture, even if it could be manipulated into similar ornamental forms. I believe the Moorish Stucco to be almost if not quite identical with the Indian "Chunam," and that in its turn to be a substance produced much in the same way that the fine Stucco of the Romans was ordinarily wrought by that people. In the native treatment of all of these substances, I believe four peculiarities to have been generally used. Firstly—to employ the finest lime only. Secondly—to mix it with pounded earthen-ware. Thirdly—to beat it thoroughly. Fourthly—to use saccharine substances to retard the setting and keep the mass plastic under the tool.

GRANADA.—THE ALHAMBRA.

DETAIL OF GLASS INLAY FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS.

THIS little pattern which forms the centre, or eye—the point of departure in fact—of an elaborate geometrical mosaic has been most carefully traced and copied from the original, which yet remains in the centre of the dado on the side of the window on the right of the Sultan's throne in the Hall of the Ambassadors. It may thus be said to occupy an especial post of honour and so to challenge, as it were, curiosity and admiration. Both these a close inspection thoroughly justifies, since in all the history of the manufacture of vitrified substances I know nothing more curious and puzzling. The pattern is in bluish-black on a white ground; and both ground and inlay are made apparently in two separate pieces of glass, and in two only. The most minute inspection shows no joint whatever on the surface of either coloured material; at the same time it establishes the fact that the ground has been made with the whole pattern sunk "en creux," and that the inlay has been made in one piece—practically a specimen of glass lace—and fixed into the cavity of the ground with a very fine calcareous cement, made probably of lime and white of egg. To inlay glass in glass involves little difficulty, if ground and inlay are as it were fused together; but to produce a ground apparently in glass, and to inlay it with so fine a pattern, both "au froid," is a perfect marvel in vitreous manufacture.

The only way in which I can imagine that such an effect could be produced is as follows, but in offering any such explanation I desire to do so with all due deference to practical glass-workers. I believe that two metal-moulds were made, one with the ornament in relief, and the other with the same ornament sunk in intaglio. From each mould, glass reproductions having been made of about equal substances (so as to contract equally in cooling), and, with the exception of a black film in one case, of the same glass, the two reproductions were stuck together firmly by the calcareous cement. The black glass in "cameo" would then be encased within the white glass in "intaglio;" and the pattern would of course be invisible, the two reproductions being firmly stuck together face to face, making apparently one white glass tessera of double the requisite thickness. The back of the cameo side would then have to be ground away, probably at a lapidary's wheel, until the back of the black pattern in cameo should be reached. At the same moment the face of the white intaglio would be exposed; and the tessera, being reduced to its proper thickness for insertion with the rest of the adjoining glass mosaic, would be fit to permanently combine with it; showing an elaborate black pattern held in by calcareous cement, on a white face, exactly as it now appears.

Any such resolution of a difficult technical problem exhibits the Moors to us as excelling in two of their favourite Arts, viz., inlaying and glass manufacture.

GRANADA.—THE ALHAMBRA.

MOSAIC FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS.

IN the description of the last sketch I alluded to the sources whence the Moors derived much of their knowledge of glass-making and mosaic-working. In the specimen now given, the full size of the original, on the opposite page, a considerable advance is shown upon what was usual in the contemporary, "Opus Grecanicum," as executed, either in Italy or in Greece itself. The advance is principally to be seen in this particular, that whereas in the last mentioned work, every complicated pattern is made up out of tesserÆ, or glass strips cut into squares, oblongs, triangles, or other simple figures; in the Moorish work, arbitrary shapes of considerable geometrical complexity are given to each separate piece of mosaic. When these tesserÆ, so shaped, are brought together, their combination immediately results in the formation of perfect patterns, such as the one now illustrated. TesserÆ of this description were no doubt formed by squeezing plastic clay into metal moulds, and almost perfect identity was obtained between the tesserÆ obtained from the same mould. These, after firing, were then apparently covered with coloured vitreous glazes by a subsequent operation.

In illustration of the advantages possessed by the Moors over the Greeks, in working such mosaics as the one I have sketched, it may be noted, that while a Greek would have required one hundred and nineteen separate pieces to make up what is shown, the Moor wanted only forty-nine. Moreover, instead of having to chip every one of the one hundred and nineteen pieces to a definite size and shape, and then to place them slowly so as to ensure the truth of his angles of forty-five and twenty-two and a half degrees, as the Greek or Italian had, the Moor had only to place one of his forty-nine pieces with precision; and, provided he never took any of the eleven patterns, of which his repeats are composed, out of their right turn, his mosaic would work itself with scarcely any other attention on his part. Another source of anxiety was saved to him; viz., constant heedfulness as to the working of the interlacement of his lines—i. e., their running, as it were, under and over one another. The result, in this particular, is far clearer and more effective in the Moorish, than according to the Greco-Italian method; since, while in the former there are no joints which do not help to define an interlacement, according to the latter, the joints occurring on the line of mitre of every angle become confused with the joints which express interlacement. A comparison of the Sicilian, with the Alhambrese, geometrical mosaics, would show in a moment the superiority of the last mentioned method.

No people, except perhaps the Chinese, have ever equalled the Moors in devising patterns of most complicated appearance, in which colours were, as it were, counterchanged by combining tiles, or tesserÆ, of similar geometrical forms, but made in different tints or tones.

Beautiful examples are given in profusion in the works of Mr. Owen Jones, M. Girault de Prangey, Herr Hessemer, M. Coste and many others.

GRANADA.—THE ALHAMBRA.

NICHE IN LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS.

THAT the Moors themselves were fully conscious that in creating the Alhambra they were creating types of beauty for all generations, would be clearly manifest from the inscriptions of the Hall of the two Sisters, (from which our illustration is taken), even if every other of the hundreds of inscriptions the building contains in other apartments were destroyed.

"I am the garden, and every morning do I appear decked out in beauty. Look attentively at my elegance, and thou wilt reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration."

"Indeed, we never saw a palace more lofty than this in its exterior, or more brilliantly decorated in its interior; or having more extensive apartments—markets they are, where those provided with money are paid in beauty, and where the judge of elegance is perpetually sitting to pronounce sentence."

"Here is the wonderful cupola, at sight of whose beautiful proportions, all other cupolas vanish and disappear."

Such inscriptions are not all of them of this hyperbolic stamp, since some of them serve to record the names of illustrious founders, and to explain the uses of various parts of the structure. To an inscription of this kind we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of the uses of such niches as the one represented in my sketch. Many travellers and writers had supposed that their purpose had been to hold the slippers of the visitors, but this theory was entirely dispelled, when M. Pasqual de Gayangos read the inscription of the left niche of the Hall de las dos Hermanas.

GRANADA.—THE ALHAMBRA.

STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE SALA DEL TRIBUNAL.

THE correctness of this sketch, as to dimension at least, has been ensured by the mode in which it was obtained, viz., by gently pressing a piece of paper against the surface of the piece of ornament (so as to obtain a slight impression of its outline,) then marking it faintly with pencil, pressing it out again quite flat, and finishing it in ink on the spot. It may be looked upon, therefore, as giving, as nearly as is possible on a plane surface, an accurate transcript of the elegant ornament from the Sala del Tribunal selected for illustration. My reason for this selection was, chiefly because I desired to show the minute scale and extreme delicacy of much of the decoration in relief with which the walls of the principal apartments of the Alhambra are covered. It was partly also because this particular specimen retained faint tracing lines drawn, most likely with a silver or lead point, and a free hand, upon the flat surfaces of certain parts of the ornament in relief. These served as guide lines for the yet more delicate labour of the painter, who carried the subdivision of parts, by means of the application of contrasting colours and gilding, into yet more microscopic superficial enrichment.

As this is the last illustration I have to offer of the Alhambra, it may be well to direct the reader's attention briefly to the general system upon which such Art as the Moors practised, and most dearly loved, was based. Those who would know "all about it," must give themselves diligently to a study of all Owen Jones' works; from the ponderous "Alhambra," with its magnificent illustrations, to the little guide to the "Alhambra Courts of the Crystal Palace," not forgetting to test his theory by his practice in the beautiful reproductions of Moorish Art he has created for their edification at Sydenham. In the pages of the smaller volume they will find the system epitomised simply and delightfully in nine propositions under the following heads.

First, to decorate construction, never to construct decoration.

Second, to let all lines grow out of each other in gradual undulations—always so as to conduce to repose.

Third, to care first for general forms and then for harmonious subdivisions and fillings.

Fourth, to balance straight, inclined, and curved forms so as to produce harmony and repose by contrast.

Fifth, to let all lines flow out of a parent stem, traceable throughout its course.

Sixth, either radially (as in nature with the human hand or in a chestnut leaf.).

Seventh, or tangentially,—as stems from branches.

Eighth, to avoid the simpler curves and use only those of a higher order.

Ninth, to treat all ornament conventionally, i.e., not in direct imitation of Nature, but in a mode of imitation subordinated to the architectural conditions of the surface or form to be ornamented.

GRANADA.

VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR

IT is always interesting to watch the first rays of light which dissipate clouds of darkness or prejudice; and this, by the aid of the annals of the early printing press, we are enabled to do (with comparative certainty as to chronology) in the case of the dawn of the revival of classical architecture in every country of Europe except Italy. In that favoured land, the sacred fire of Roman tradition was never quite extinguished, and in its great cities the renascent flame was already lambent, and gaining strength, before Sweynheim and Pannarz started their celebrated press at Subiaco.

The first edition of the ten books of Vitruvius printed by G. Herolt at Rome, circa 1486, was immediately followed by the edition of Florence, under the editorship of Leon Baptista Alberti, bearing the imprint of the previous year. At least two other editions were exhausted in Italy before the close of the century, and succeeded by many more previous to the middle, of the sixteenth century.

Alberti's own admirable writings on Architecture and the other Fine Arts moved all Italy, giving a thoroughly practical direction to the lessons somewhat obscurely inculated by Vitruvius; whose writings, without Alberti's comments, would have been of little practical use in countries in which ample remains of classical art were not at hand for reference and study.

The first French edition of the text of Vitruvius is of 1523; the first German is of 1543. The first French translation dates from 1547; the first German from 1548, published at Nuremburg. It was "volgarizzato" in Italy from 1521.

The Latin text was translated into Spanish by Miguel de Urrea and printed after his death at Alcala de HeÑares in 1587. Its publication had however been long preceded in Spain by the digest of the views of Vitruvius under the tide of "las Medidas del Romano o Vitruvio," published by Diego de Sagredo in 1526. Sagredo had no doubt been stimulated to such studies, (as Alberti had previously been) by his admiration of the vestiges of Roman architectural greatness, still abounding on the soil of his native land.

GRANADA.

THE REJA OF THE REYES CATOLICOS.

I WAS tempted to sketch this magnificent screen for four reasons:—

Firstly, because it is, I believe, entirely of iron, which most of the Spanish Rejas are not.

Secondly, because it is, I also believe, the earliest specimen of anything like equal importance in Spain.

Thirdly, because of its historical interest in enclosing the tombs of "the Catholic Sovereigns" on the spot before which the greatness of their lives had been achieved.

Fourthly, because I considered it to be the best in design of all I saw.

It is by no means the richest, but it appeared to me to be arranged upon the justest principles. Its chief merits, as compared with many others, I considered to be as follows:—

GRANADA.

VIEW OF THE ARZOBISPADO.

A CAREFUL contrast of this stately old mansion in which, if not the hand, at least the influence of the architect, Henrique de Egas, (son of Anequin de Egas de Bruselas, so greatly patronized by the celebrated Cardinal Mendoza,) may be clearly traced, with the great Palace of Charles V., ascribed to the artist Machuca, (both at Granada,) may afford a useful lesson to the architectural student. In the earliest of the two monuments—the Arzobispado—a window of which I now offer a slight sketch, the florid Plateresque style, as exemplified by the celebrated Hospedal de la Santa Cruz, at Toledo, (Sketches 44, 45, 46) is at once recalled to the memory. In the latest, we find a marked sympathy with the symmetrical style of the then fashionable Italian architects. The Circular Cortile of Vignola's masterpiece at Caprarola, is exceeded in dimension, and indeed in dignity of style, by the vast round Patio of the Palace of Charles V., with which it is probably nearly contemporary.

Such sober architecture, though enriched by the chisel of sculptors who, like Berruguete, had been ardent admirers of Florentine and Roman models, was the form of Plateresque which, intervening between the first form of Renaissance, founded on French and Burgundian models, and the austere Italian of Herrera, found special favour in the eyes of the most judicious critics in Spain.

GUADALAXARA.

PALACIO DE LOS DUQUES DEL INFANTADO.

GUADALAXARA.

DOORWAY OF THE MONASTERY OF SAN MIGUEL.

IN and about Guadalaxara may be found many indications of the traditional preservation, long after the expulsion of the Moors, not only from New Castille, but from Spain generally as well, of their excellence in the technical arts, amongst which brick-making, combining, and laying were conspicuous. Hence, especially throughout the two Castilles, Aragon, and Andalucia, the common method of using brick-work is peculiarly Oriental and effective. The entrance doorway to the Monastery of San Miguel, which forms the subject of our seventy-ninth sketch, illustrates this mixture; as well it may, since traces are yet to be found of the structure having been originally a mosque converted, probably, shortly before the year 1500 to Christian uses. The round instead of square buttresses, with conical terminations, the segmental arch, with its ponderous archivolt, the great strength and almost heaviness given by the regular rectangular setting out of the woodwork—and a coarseness and yet spirit in the execution of carving, are marked features of Aragonese style; the echoes of which may not unfrequently be met with at Naples, especially in the entrance gateways to many an old house. I well remember being puzzled by several of those which I sketched there, and which appeared to me to differ from ordinary contemporary Italian architecture in other localities. I subsequently recognized similar features in Palermo, and elsewhere in Sicily.

GUADALAXARA.

CASA DEL DUQUÉ DE RIBAS.

THE traveller who takes his seat for an hour or so before some old portal of a Spanish provincial mansion, garnished with heraldic insignia, proclaiming the rank, if not the dignity, of the possible owner, can scarcely fail to be struck by the usual incongruity between the assumption of the structure, and the modesty, not to say meanness, of those who pass in and out of it generally at long intervals. The sketcher's operations naturally, after a little while, attract the attention of some few, and "their name is legion" throughout Spain, of those who have nothing to do; or who, at any rate, do nothing, but wander lazily but restlessly up and down to while away the time. After a compliment or two, and probably a request that the spectators will not stand exactly between the artist and the object he may be drawing, an inquiry very generally follows as to "whose house that may be?" If the answer extends beyond the usual "Quien sabe Caballero?" it may chance to be "del SeÑor DuquÉ," or "del SeÑor Marques," something or other, or at any rate of a "SeÑor somebody," "somebody," "somebody." To the next inquiry, as to where the Hidalgo, if he be such, may be? the usual answer will be "Madrid" or "Paris," or at any rate the "chef-lieu" of the Province. The next demand may likely enough be, "Who lives there then, now?" If the answer is not the usual "No puedo decir a Usted," it may possibly be, "El SeÑor Administrador," the Steward, or "Algunos Pobres," or "Don Manoel, the shoemaker," or "Don Juan, the carpenter."

Where the nobility live, if they are not all absentees, it seems very difficult to find out; and hence it is that instead of ladies and gentlemen, and liveried servants, who pass in and out of these grand looking "portone," the sketcher usually sees only extremely picturesque poverty. Sometimes this presents itself in the shape of a ragged girl or two, carrying antique-shaped earthen water-jars, sometimes an old woman with a heap of long-haired unkempt children sitting down to spin, or reel off yarn, or lolling against the wall, distaff in hand; and sometimes, possibly, two or three boys or young men assemble, who, after smoking out some cigarrilos or stumps of cigars, coil themselves up on the threshold, and go off into a comatose condition closely resembling sleep.

Such were my experiences whilst trying to gain some local information as to the mansion of the very noble, the DuquÉ de Ribas at Guadalaxara.

GUADALAXARA.

DOOR HANDLE FROM THE CALLE DEL BARRIO NUEVO.

THE outskirts of Guadalaxara are very picturesque, and the traveller who wanders about in quest of beauty, old or new, cannot fail to be rewarded; not only by glimpses of scenery, but by the discovery of many quaint little fragments of art which have escaped the attention of the many despoiling locusts—native as well as foreign—who have done their best at different times to "devour the land." Of such, a specimen is given in the "knowing" little knocker, or door-handle illustrated in my eighty-first sketch. It is no doubt a joke on the part of some cunning smith, of the last century, mindful of the still greater cunning of his handicraft, traditions of which may have descended to him, from the days when the armourers of Spain rivalled those of Milan and Augsburg.

SARAGOSSA.

VIEW OF THE PATIO OF THE PALACIO DE LA INFANTA.

PONZ speaks with great complacency of the sumptuousness of the houses of Saragossa—particularly those with columns, (such as that of the Marques de Monistol) and those the Patios of which are adorned with sculptures—"such costly and sumptuous works," he says, "as no one undertakes now a days." Amongst these he particularises the house which forms the subject of the present sketch. Before his time it appears to have belonged to the Citizen Gabriel Zaporta, "muy distinguido y rico," as Ponz calls him. From him it was bought by the widow of a certain Don Gabriel Franco. At the close of the last century it was the home of the Infante Don Luis, (uncle of Charles IV. of Spain), a Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo! who married "La Vallabriga," earning exile to Saragossa for his pains. She lived here with him, and procured for the house its popular and best known name, la Casa de la Infanta. Their eldest daughter was bestowed, as an Infanta of Spain, upon the detestable Godoy—"Prince of Peace,"—the recognised lover of her first cousin by marriage, the Queen, wife of Charles IV., thus crowning a double mÉsalliance.

SARAGOSSA.

DETAIL OF THE ARCADING OF THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE CASA DE LA INFANTA.

THIS sketch gives to an enlarged scale some of the architectural features represented in little in the preceding sketch. Many of the arches which were once open in a beautiful arcading are now closed up in lath and plaster; with a heartless indifference to everything else than getting as much room as possible to let to the poor lodgers who swarm in this once splendid Palace. The whitewash brush goes recklessly over any surfaces with which it is brought into contact at the command of sanitary inspectors, who enforce perfunctory cleansings from time to time of at least the "outside of the platter." As I sat sketching and "poking about" for some hours in this apparent "rabbit warren" of a house, I could not but become conscious that the Arragonese had by no means lost their old character for devotion, not to say bigotry. "Our Lady of the pillar," the tutelary of Saragossa in spite of all alleged pilferings from her shrine, seemed still at a premium in popular estimation; and casts of her in the poorest plaster were multiplied even in the poorest tenements. In fact, this seemed to be the very place for meeting with the truly Spanish couple of the lower middle class, so well sketched by the German Fischer in his travels at the close of the last century. "I cannot conclude this letter," says he, "without saying a word or two of my hosts. Both the man and his wife are originals not to be met with but in Catholic countries; both bigots to excess, but each in a different way. In the husband, this disposition has assumed a silent and gloomy cast of character, while in his wife it bears all the symptoms of tenderness. The husband has filled the whole house, and especially his own apartment, with images of saints, resembling an entire collection of the little Augsburg toys so well known in Germany. In fulfilment of a vow, he mutters his prayers three times a day before these idols, an occupation which daily employs two full hours. He also imposes on himself very painful mortifications, talks very little, reads gloomy books, and remains whole hours with his eyes shut, so that he is on the high road to become either a madman or a saint. The wife's fanaticism is much more social, and her pious imaginations bear the stamp of the mildness and softness of her sex. She has got herself received a "slave of the Holy Trinity" (esclava de la Santissima Trinidad), of which she has obtained a certificate in form from her confessor, and in consequence of which she is bound every day to decorate a large picture with flowers and tapers, to repeat a certain number of prayers before it, and to pay a certain sum weekly to her confessor, an agent of the Trinity; yet all this does not seem to her sufficient for salvation, and she has besides an image of the Holy Virgin, which she very punctually supplies with all the necessary habiliments, both for day and night, besides tapers, flowers and all that can contribute to ornament the happy idol.

"This devout esclava is a little woman very affable and complaisant, whose religious sentiments do not at all interfere with other terrestrial feelings, while her impassive husband seems to have arrived at all the spirituality of the blessed."

THERE is something about the exterior of this fine building essentially Florentine in style. The bold overhanging and crowning cornice, the Ricardi-Palace kind of windows, the simplicity of the Mezzanine, and indeed the introduction of a Mezzanine at all, associated with the severity of the rectangular structure, massive in a noble simplicity, rather recall the work of the grand masters of Tuscan Architecture at the end of the fifteenth century, than any styles, Plateresque or Greco-Roman, one recognises as peculiarly Spanish.

The name of the architect appears to have been lost, but there is no question as to the date of its erection, which is given by an inscription which runs beneath a cornice in the interior, and states that it was completed in "1551, reynando Donya Jona y Don Carlos su hijo."

SARAGOSSA.

PATIO OF THE CASA DE COMERCIO.

THIS house, originally a Gothic one, in some of its earliest details, still acknowledges its allegiance to the noble family of the Torrellas, its founders. Their arms, with a lion, and the three little towers which pun heraldically upon their name, as charges, still exist upon a Gothic escutcheon over one of the doorways. The house is locally stated, I know not on what authority, to have been occupied, and altered by a company of Genoese merchants, whence, no doubt, its popular name "de Comercio." It is situated in the Calle de Sant' Jago, and is now the property of the Marquis de Ayerve.

Although retaining the usual Saragossan bracket-capitals and "Anillos," in the shape of quasi bases and dies or pedestals united, the symmetry of the plan and the regularity of the cinque-cento ornament and Arabesque of the panels and pilasters certainly bear out the tradition of the Genoese occupation and alteration of an original mediÆval structure early in the sixteenth century.

SARAGOSSA.

PATIO OF THE HOUSE OF THE MARQUIS OF MONISTOL.

THE great dimensions of this house, and its massive strength and solidity are no bad emblems of the old sturdiness, wealth, and pride of the Aragonese nobility, whose Plateresque architecture "differed" as Mr. O'Shea justly remarks, "in many points from its countertype the Seville Moro-Italian, or strictly Andalusian style, applied to private dwellings." Although apparently far ruder in execution than either of the other two houses I sketched—that of the Infanta and that known as de Comercio—in the same city, I have little doubt that this is of considerably later date. The florid Spanish Plateresque of the former, and the cinque-cento carving of the latter, took precedence of the more regular Greco-Roman architecture aimed at by the architect of the house now under notice. The retention of the bracket capital in lieu of either arches or a lengthened column, and of the "anillo" or ring dividing the shaft into two heights, illustrate the way in which local habits interfered with the adoption of the rigid rules prescribed by the writers on architecture, and practised by contemporary architects, of the Herrera type.

Considering the terrible "fortunes of war," to which Saragossa has been exposed, and its frightful hand to hand fighting in the heart of the city, it is only wonderful that so much of the past should still linger within the lines of defence. If the ruinous sieges have left Saragossa poorer than they found her, they certainly do not appear to have left her weaker or less fierce. She struck me as being poorer and prouder than any other city I visited in Spain. At the same time, both men and women show a hardy activity and lively inclination to pugnacity I did not see elsewhere. The only answer I got from a MadrileÑo to my question as to "why the Saragossans did not work?" was, that "they preferred fighting," adding that "while they would look hard at a peseta before they would undertake even a trifling job for it, they would at any time do a good day's fighting for one half of that coin."

SARAGOSSA.

BRONZE RENAISSANCE KNOCKER OF A HOUSE IN THE PLAZUELA ADUANA.

THE quaint little animal, or rather conventionalised notion of an animal, which I found in an out of the way "Plazuela," or "little place," of Saragossa, doing duty as a knocker, furnishes a good illustration of the ready dexterity in his craft of the old Spanish smith and brazier. Of splendid bronze work (in spite of the intrinsic value of the material which has no doubt led to the fusion of thousands of treasures of Art all over the Peninsula) Spain yet possesses invaluable treasures. Amongst these the most salient which occur to my memory as single pieces, are the magnificent eleven gilt life-size portrait statues of the greatest of the Spanish Royal Family from Charles V. to Philip II. with which Pompeio Leoni decorated the "Entierros Reales" of the Escorial—and the same sculptor's still finer statues of the celebrated prime minister and favourite, the DuquÉ de Lerma, and his Duqueza, founders of the Convent of San Pablo, at Valladolid, whence they have been transferred to the museum of that city. As semi-architectural, semi-sculpturesque works in bronze, occasionally with an admixture of iron upon a large scale, of course the most important and abundant are the late Rejas, or metal screens, of the great Spanish churches and cathedrals. Of these, ample notices are given by both Ford and O'Shea—authorities, at once so excellent, and so readily accessible, as to render unnecessary any more on my part than a passing reference to them.

Another form in which copper and bronze have been well and plentifully used by the Spaniards is in the shape of coverings and strengthenings to doors. In this guise the models have been mainly derived from the Moors whose doors may generally, whether in wood or metal, be regarded as perfection itself, for beauty, strength, and fitness for the circumstances under which they have been used. The Spaniards (at Toledo Cathedral for example) have produced many admirable doors in which, by the judicious strengthening of the joiner's work with embossed and occasionally perforated bronze plates, they have combined strength with moderate substance, and the appearance of great richness with fairly simple and not costly labour.

LERIDA.

TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO.

THE interest of every other building in Lerida altogether pales before that of its noble, but now much desecrated Cathedral. Its ancient glories may be well studied in Mr. Street's pages, but its present humiliation can only be appreciated upon the spot. Toiling up from the city through streets and open platforms on the hill-side, thronged with soldiers, gipsies, beggars, and ragged boys innumerable, the traveller at last arrives, not at a church, but at a monster-barrack. In lieu of a sacristan he has to engage the services of a corporal as Cicerone, and with the consent of, I am bound to say, an exceedingly polite Spanish officer, he is free to examine, at his leisure, a Cathedral which, as Mr. Street says, "is in itself worth the journey from England." Its construction, and that of its splendid cloister, occupied almost the whole of the thirteenth century, and the vastness and regularity of its plan, its solid and perfect execution, and the just proportion of its structural and ornamental details certainly, to my mind, justify the praise bestowed upon them by that accomplished architect.

It was sad to see such a building cut about by the insertion of floors and partitions, and to hear the piquant, not to say ribald, jokes, "refranes, seguidillas" and songs of the soldiers, echoing from vaulting which once rang only with peals from the organ, and chants and hymns from the priests and people.

As my stay was bound to be short in Lerida, and I remembered that Mr. Street had done full justice to the Cathedral, I looked elsewhere for a subject for my note-book, and found it in the picturesque tower of the Church of San Lorenzo, given by my eighty-eighth sketch.

The legend runs that this Church, and that of San Juan, were originally mosques; and that after the taking of the city from the Moors in 1149, they were applied to Christian uses. I am inclined to think this probable, although the detail is not anywhere Mahommedan, so far as the darkness of the interior would allow me to form any opinion. The great thickness of the walls, the mode of lighting, the form and proportions of the entrance archways (shown in my sketch) and the materials and mode of building of the base of the tower all seem to favour the supposition of an original Moorish construction. The octagonal form of tower is a favourite feature of this district, and occurs on a grand scale in the old Cathedral. The upper portion, at least, of this tower of San Lorenzo, may probably date from early in the fifteenth century.

BARCELONA.

OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE SANTA LUCIA.

BARCELONA.

PATIO OF THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION.

BARCELONA.

DETAIL FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION.

BARCELONA.

WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION.

THIS quaint and very late specimen of Gothic, although Ecclesiastical enough in its sculpture, is purely domestic in its architecture. The latter is in its character rather French or Burgundian than Spanish, while the former was, I have little doubt, the work of a native of the Peninsula. So far as I could see, no preparation had ever been made for glazing this window, and the wooden shutters, both in their form and mode of joinery, were rather Moorish than Spanish. No one can be surprised at such symptoms of internationality, in works executed at a sea-port like Barcelona—in which the Arts, like the prevalent language, may have had a "lingua franca" of cosmopolitan freedom from prejudice. In most of such Gothic work, and indeed in every kind of building in Spain, however fantastic and not unfrequently over intricate the detail may be, we scarcely ever observe any flimsiness, or want of due substance in the constructional parts. In this matter the Spanish architects merit, for attention to the erection of permanent structures in all their styles, the praise bestowed by Mr. Street upon those mainly who wrought in the mediÆval ones. Of those last, the Spanish critics, who have been sometimes accused of overduly estimating what they call Greco-Roman architecture, early showed what I regard as a fair appreciation. Antonio Ponz, for instance, in the last century certainly praised Berruguete, Covarrubbias, and even Herrera in very glowing terms, but I know few writers who have better expressed an opinion as to the fitness of the mediÆval styles, and especially the old Spanish system of the sturdiest construction, for ecclesiastical purposes.

BARCELONA.

DOORWAY IN THE TOWN HALL.

BARCELONA.

KNOCKER OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

IN the vicinity of the old church of Sta. Lucia yet exist at Barcelona several interesting stone houses of the fifteenth century. Upon the doors of these are to be still found specimens of excellent iron work of the same period. It is not however to be supposed that the Barcelonese possessed any very special gifts in this line, since evidences of almost equal dexterity are to be found scattered over the whole extent of the Peninsula. In the north and south alike, the "Rejas," or vast screens, sometimes of iron only, sometimes of brass and bronze, and sometimes of mixed metals, are yet to be found of great importance and interest. The most famous of the "Rejeros," as they were called, or makers of Rejas, were Francesco de Salamanca who flourished in 1533; Christobal Andino of 1540; Francesco de Vilalpando of 1561; and Juan Bautista Celma of 1600. Because these men's names have become "household words" amongst all students of Spanish Art, it should not be forgotten that great men "to fortune and to fame unknown" lived before those whose good deeds and works encountered fitting record. By some of these were executed many of the various admirable specimens of metal work commented upon in terms of high praise by Ford, Street, O'Shea and other writers. The finest metal worker who really startled his contemporaries by the beauty and splendour of his workmanship, its "elaboracion y prolixedad," was the celebrated Henrique de ArfÉ, gold and silversmith of Leon, founder of a family which for several generations supplied artist-workmen in the precious metals whose fame rests upon the same platform as that of Cellini and Caradosso di Milano. His principal works were, according to the account given to us of them by his grandson Juan, in the "Varia Commensuracion," the custodias (or "ciboria" for holding the sanctified wafer) of the Cathedrals of Leon, Cordova, Toledo, and Sahagun. Of crosses, paxes, censers, pixes, feretories, candelabra, monstrances, lamps, &c., he scattered specimens broadcast throughout Spain. In all of them he showed, as his descendant declared, "El valor de su ingenio raro, con mayor efecto que puede escribirse."

As the present is the last occasion on which, in this volume at least, I may have to speak of mediÆval metal work, and especially iron work, I may be allowed to allude very briefly to the two principal tools by which it was worked, viz.: the hammer and the pliers. In England and in France the first was used in preference at least to the last; while in Germany, Burgundy and the Low Countries, the last was specially affected, and by its means foliage, both natural and conventional, was rendered with great skill, facility and taste. The Spaniards, as is proved by the present sketch, and that which follows it, were at an early period dexterous in the use of both tools; uniting the massive style engendered by the predominant use of the hammer with the more florid and fanciful manner springing out of the light and convoluted forms created by a more liberal use of the pliers.

BARCELONA.

KNOCKER TO AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

IN this fanciful little object we meet with another illustration of the spirit of humour as well as of dexterity in their craft, manifested in abundance by the excellent old ironworkers of Spain. Still good as the blacksmiths unquestionably were, the triumphs of Spanish metal working were chiefly embodied in the precious metals. It is rather in the cabinets of connoisseurs than in the churches of the country that specimens should be sought for to justify the splendid reputation those artist-workmen enjoyed in the palmy days of the Spanish Court and Church. Everywhere the traveller comes now only upon exhausted treasuries and emptied sacristies. Even since the days of Ford's inimitable handbook the spoiler has been rampant, and of the custodias and virus, the "blandones" and "portapaces" in which he delighted, so far as my perquisitions extended, scarcely a vestige was to be met with. Even since my sketches were made, the contents of the treasury of "Nuestra SeÑora del Pilar" have been brought to the hammer; and the pressure of other engagements alone prevented my return to Saragossa empowered to secure a share of those artistic curiosities for our National collection.

No doubt many beautiful specimens of Gothic precious metal work once adorned the principal mediÆval ecclesiastical structures of Spain, but it was not till a later date that the most important and famous works, other than those already noticed (by Henrique de ArfÉ,) were produced. A brief notice of some of these from the pen of a contemporary may not be altogether uninteresting.

BARCELONA.

COURTYARD OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE MONCARA.

IN noticing my ninety-first sketch I took occasion to comment on the difference which existed between Spanish and Catalonian architecture, and Spanish and Catalonian character. Both are pressed upon one's attention in looking over a house which, like the one I have sketched in the Calle de Moncara at Barcelona, appears to have been the comfortable home of a well-to-do merchant, with roomy stores and warehouses on the ground floor facing the entrance, domestic offices to the left, and counting-house and living rooms on the first floor, with bedrooms above. As is becoming in the house of one welcoming alike buyer and seller, we find a total absence of that almost Asiatic privacy which the Spaniards generally, and especially the Andalusians, appear in their homes to have adopted from Moorish models. Under the old Counts of Barcelona the architecture of the city had no doubt been mainly French. After the annexation of the city to the crown of Aragon, the architecture became tinctured with detail corresponding with much yet to be seen at Saragossa and elsewhere in Aragon, and finally after the consolidation of the whole monarchy by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the expulsion of the Moors, Barcelonese architecture fell under the Plateresque revival and the subsequent Greco-Roman mania which affected all Spain. The date of erection of the house of which I now give a sketch, appears to have brought it under the second of these two sets of conditions. In the twisted column, its cap and base, and some other features, we may recognise the Aragonese style, while in the staircase and some of the windows there is to be traced, I consider, a decided French influence.

BARCELONA.

STAIRCASE OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE MONCARA.

I AM induced to give this one little specimen of what the Spaniards call "Churriguerismo" for these reasons: 1stly, because it is a prettier example than usual of the style practised early in the eighteenth century by the fashionable JosÉ Churriguerra—the William Kent of Spanish architecture; 2ndly, because it affords a good specimen of the comfortable house of a rich Barcelonese merchant of the last century; and 3rdly, on account of the singular arrangement of the jointing of the masonry, which converts the apparently double arch into very little else than one tolerably stable spanning of the whole space.

IF my last sketch illustrated the regular rich merchant's house of the eighteenth century—symbol of peace and plenty, police and protection—the kind of residence I now submit to the reader's attention is cast in quite a different key. It is essentially a fighter's house, the only kind of structure in which (before the use of gunpowder) a family could hold its own for months of foreign siege or protracted street fighting. Gerona has always been, as we shall have occasion to recognize in examining its fine old walls, almost a frontier city, struggled for repeatedly by Christian and by Moor. The house I have sketched is one of the earliest and most complete of its class I have ever seen, the lower half alone having been materially altered from its original construction. It dates in all probability from the middle of the twelfth century, and yet stands strong and stalwart in a quarter of the city in which very little of anything not comparatively of yesterday meets the wandering visitor's eye. On comparing this sketch with that from a house at Barcelona (No. 96) erected at least three hundred years later, it will be found that the type furnished by the earliest in date had changed but little in the interval. Hence we may fairly infer that the conditions of insecurity affecting domestic life had scarcely varied in Catalonia during the whole of that term. In fact, it was not until the invention of printing spread abroad the elements of education, and brought about changes in social systems, that men began to dream of peace and security ensured by other preservatives from danger than heavy armour and fortress-like houses.

GERONA.

UPPER PART OF OLD HOUSE AND SPIRE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN FELIU.

THE west front of the Cathedral at Gerona stands at the top of a noble flight of eighty-six steps, and these ascended, platforms are reached on the west and south of the splendid pile from which fine views over the city and its environs are obtained. The sketch now under notice was taken from the southern platform, the wall enclosing which upon the west cuts off something like thirty feet in height of the fine old house which forms the principal object in the sketch. Its uppermost story, with its continuous arcade, has a symmetrical and agreeable effect, and appears to have been the only portion of the building really suitable for habitation according to modern views as to the value of abundant light and air. On the right is seen the cathedral well, the waters of which have no doubt alike served for the bodily and spiritual ablutions of Mahommedan and Christian, since cathedral, mosque, and then again cathedral, have existed in turn upon the same site from the days of Charlemagne to the present time. During the Moorish occupation in the eighth century the Christians were permitted to worship in the original church of San Feliu (Felix) the truncated spire of the successor to which appears in my sketch between the old house, and the south-west angle of the cathedral, shown on the extreme right. The present church, dedicated to San Feliu, dates probably from the early part of the fourteenth century. Its history has been clearly traced by Mr. Street from a comparison of the building with the particulars given and documents quoted in the "EspaÑa Sagrada." "The steeple is said to have been finished in 1392. Pedro Zacoma having acted as architect as late as A.D. 1376." It was struck by lightning in the year 1581, and has remained ever since shorn of its fair proportions, as we now see it.

San Feliu, as he is popularly called, was an early Spanish Christian, deacon to San Narciso, the Martyr, Protector and "Generalissimo" of the See of Gerona.

GERONA.

OLD WALLS NEAR THE MONASTERY OF SAN PEDRO.