ck, amber, straw, scarlet, and crimson, encased in a
most delicate, strangely reckless, and bold-traceried framework of
stained ivory. Indeed, the jeweled portals of Heaven are wide open when
the sun throws all the colors from above across the otherwise colorless
fields of the pavement. "The color of love's blood within them glows."
There is glazing of many centuries and all styles. In some of the
triforium windows are bits of glass, which, after the destruction or
falling of the old windows, were carefully collected, put together, and
used again in the reglazing. Some of it is of the earliest in Spain,
probably set by French, Flemish, or German artisans who had immigrated
to practise their art and set up their factories on Spanish soil
adjacent to the stone-carvers' and masons' sheds under the rising walls
of the great churches. Like all skilled artisans of their age, the
secret of their trade, the proper fusing of the silica with the
alkalies, was carefully guarded and handed down from father to son or
master to apprentice. They were chemists, glaziers, artists, colorists,
and glass manufacturers, all in one. The heritage was passed on in those
days, when the great key of science which opens all portals had not yet
become common property. Some of the oldest glass is merely a crude
mosaic inlay of small bits and must date back to early thirteenth
century. Coloring glass by partial fusion was then first practised and
soon followed by the introduction of figures and themes in the glass,
and the acquisition of a lovely, homogeneous opalescence in place of the
purely geometrical patterns. Scriptural scenes or figures painted, as
the Spanish say, "en caballete," became more and more general. The best
of the Leon windows are from the fifteenth century, when the glaziers'
shops in the city worked under the direction of Juan de Arge, Maestro
Baldwin, and Rodrigo de Ferraras, and its master colorists were at work
glazing the windows of the Capilla Mayor, the Capilla de Santiago, and a
portion of those of the north transept. "Ces vitreaux hauts en couleur,
qui faisaient hesiter l'oeil emerveille de nos peres entre la rose du
grand portail et les ogives de l'abside." The glazing has gone on
through centuries; even to-day the glaziers at Leon are busy in their
shops, making the sheets of sunset glow for their own and other Spanish
cathedrals.

In some of the side aisles, they have, alas, during recent decades
placed some horrible