urrounding edifices
clinging to its masonry. An indifferent husk, encasing a noble interior.
Only one tower is completed, and no two portions of the decoration are
symmetrical. The exterior has no governing scheme, no "idee maitresse,"
no individual style, and is the outgrowth of no definite period.
Successive generations of peace or war have enriched or destroyed its
masonry. You stop with an exclamation of admiration in front of certain
details of the exterior; before others, you only feel astonishment. The
want of order and unity in the execution of its various portions and
elevations is distressing.

Order and harmony may be preserved, even where an edifice is carried on
by successive ages, each of which imparts to its work the stamp of its
own developing skill and imagination. Very few of the great cathedrals
were begun and completed in one style. Most of the great French churches
show traces of the earlier Norman or Romanesque; most of the English
Gothic, traces of the Norman or of the different periods of English
Gothic architecture; but one dominating scheme has been followed by the
consecutive architects. The lack of such a governing and restraining
principle is felt in the exterior of Toledo. Further than this, although
successive wars and religious fanaticism have with their destructive
fury injured so many of the beautiful statues and exquisite carvings and
much of the stained glass of the French and English religious
establishments, still the architecture itself has in the main been left
undisturbed. In Toledo, there is hardly a portion of the early structure
and decoration of the lower, visible part of the Cathedral which has not
been altered or torn down by the various architects of the last three
centuries.

As an obvious result, the portions of the exterior which are interesting
are individual features, and not a unified scheme; and they are
interesting historically, rather than in relation to or in dependence
upon one another.

The west front, which is the principal facade, the various doorways and
completed tower form the most interesting portions of the exterior.

The west front is flanked by two projecting towers, dissimilar in
design. To the south is the uncompleted one, containing the Mozarabic
chapel,[11] roofed by an octagonal cupola and surmounted by a lantern,
strangely betraying in exterior form its Byzantine ancestry.

[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO