their archivolts crowded
with angels, pierce the interior walls, while the vaults themselves are
most elaborately groined, the arches and vaulting being later filled
with Renaissance bosses and rosettes. In the sunny courtyard are piled
up the Renaissance turrets and sculptures that once usurped on the
facades the places of the older Gothic ornamentation. The northern
portal itself is practically hidden by the chapels and cloisters. It is
fine Gothic work. A Virgin and Child form a mullion in its centre, while
very worldly-looking women parade in its archivolts. Everywhere are the
arms of the United Kingdoms. A great portion of the ancient tapestry
blue and Veronese red coloring is still preserved, throwing out the old
Gothic figures in their true tints.

This aerial tabernacle, so rich and yet so simple, lies in the heart of
a city so fabulously old that the Cathedral itself belongs rather to its
later days. The old houses and streets have a dryness and close smell
like that in the ancient sepulchres of parched countries. Monuments and
walls and turrets of Rome crumble around the houses and vaults of
Byzantium. The naive frescoes and carvings of the eighth and ninth
centuries seem to look down with childlike wonder and amazement on the
pedestrians now crowding the patterned pavements, or pressing against
the shady sides of the time-worn arches.

The worshipers who tread the narrow lanes leading to and from the altar
have changed, but little else. The square, mediaeval castles with their
angular towers still command the approach of the main thoroughfares. The
crabbed old watchman with lantern and stick under his cape treads his
doddering gait across the courtyards through the night hours, crying
after the peal of the bell above, "Las doce han dado y sereno," "Las
trece han dado y aleviendo," "Las quince han dado y nublano," just as in
the middle ages, so that the good peasant may know time and weather and
merely turn in his bed, if neither crops nor creatures need care.

Santa Maria de Regla too stands to-day as she stood in the middle ages,
a monument to the care and affection of her children. She has the same
spirituality, harmony of proportions, slenderness, and purity of lines,
and she looks down and blesses us to-day with the same serenity and
queenly grace which she wore in the fourteenth century. She is the
finest Gothic cathedral in Spain.

V

TOLEDO

[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid