talls is at once
restrained and rich. Beautiful Gothic tracery surmounts in both tiers
the figures that fill the panels above the seats. Below are characters
from the Old Testament,--Daniel, Jeremiah, Abel, David busily playing
his harp, Joshua "Dux Isri," Moses with splendid big horns and tablets,
Tobias with his little fish slit up the belly. Above stand firmly
full-length figures of the Apostles and saints. With the exception of
some of the work near the entrance, which is practically Renaissance in
feeling, all this carving is late Gothic from the last part of the
fifteenth century and executed by the masters Fadrique, John of Malines,
and Rodrigo Aleman. Two of the stalls, more elevated and pronounced than
the rest, are for the hereditary canons of the Cathedral, the King of
Leon and the Marquis of Astorga. Excellent as they are, these stalls are
not nearly so rich in design nor beautiful in execution as the Italian
Renaissance choir stalls, in the Convent of San Marcos directly outside
the city walls, carved some decades later by the Magister Guillielmo
Dosel.

The crossing is splendidly broad, the transepts appearing, as one
glances north and south, as much the main arms of the cross as do the
nave and choir. The southern arm is quite new, having been completely
rebuilt by D. Juan Madrazo and D. Demetrio Amador de los Rios. The
glazing of its window and the arabesques cannot be compared to those of
the original fabric in the northern arm. The four piers of the crossing,
though slender and graceful, carry full, logical complements of shafts
for the support of the various vaulting ribs, intersecting at their
apexes.

The retablo above the high altar is in its simplicity as refreshing as
the light and sunniness of the church. In place of the customary gaudy
carving, it merely consists of a series of painted fifteenth-century
tablets set in Gothic frames. Simple rejas close the western bays and a
florid Gothic trasaltar, the eastern termination. Directly back of the
altar lies a noble and dignified figure, the founder of the church, King
Ordono II. At his feet is a little dog, looking for all the world like
a sucking pig in a butcher's window. And above him is an ancient and
most curious Byzantine relief of the Crucifixion. The lions and castles
of his kingdom surround the old king. The greater portion of the carving
must belong to the oldest in the church.

In looking at the vaulting and considering the difficult