diately recognizable as the conception of the same brain.
Segovia is, however, infinitely superior, not only in the magnificent
development of the eastern end with its semicircular apse, ambulatory,
and radiating apsidal chapels, as compared with the square termination
of Salamanca, but, throughout, in the restrained quality of its detail
and the refinement of its ornamentation. How far the abrupt and
uninteresting apsidal termination of Salamanca was Juan Gil's fault, it
is difficult to say, for we find records of its having been imposed upon
him by the Chapter as well as of his having drawn a circular apse.
Fortunately, the Segovian churchmen had the common sense to leave their
architect alone in most artistic matters and allow him to make the head
of the church either "octagonal, hexagonal, or of square form." Where
Salamanca has been coarsened by the new style, Segovia seems inspired by
its fidelity to the old.

The similarity of the two churches is visible throughout. The general
interior arrangements are much alike. The stone of the two interiors is
of nearly the same color, and the formation and details of the great
piers are strikingly similar. There is the same thin, reed-like descent
of shafts from upper ribs, the same, almost inconspicuous, small leaves
for caps, and, in both, the bases terminate at different heights above
the huge common drum, which is some three feet high. Externally, there
are analogous buttresses, crestings, pinnacles and parapets, and a
concealment of roof structure, but there is none of the vanity of
Salamanca in the sister church of Segovia. The last great Gothic church
of Spain, though deficient in many ways, was not lacking in unity nor
sincerity. The flame went out in a magnificent blaze.

Such faithfulness and love as possessed Juan Gil for his old Gothic
masters seems well-nigh incredible. He designed, and during his
activity there of nine years, raised the greater portions of Segovia in
an age when Gothic building was practically extinct, when Brunelleschi
was building Santa Maria del Fiore, and the classic revival was in full
march. Segovia and Spaniards were as tardy in forswearing their Gothic
allegiance as they had been their Romanesque. Not until the beginning of
the sixteenth century does the reborn classicism victoriously cross the
Pyrenees, and then only in minor domestic buildings. The last
manifestations of Gothic church-building in Spain were neither weak nor
decadent