tially Spanish. To the Granadines it is as
marvelous as Saint Peter's to the Romans. Its view is obstructed on all
sides by a maze of crumbling walls, yellow hovels, and shop fronts
shockingly modern and out of keeping. It is all very, very provincial.
The stream of the world has left it behind and its pageants and glories
had departed centuries ago. Donkeys heavily laden with baskets of market
produce stand--personifications of wronged and unremonstrating
patience--hitched to the iron rails before its main portals. Goats
browse on the grass in its courtyards, and are milked between the
buttresses. Immediately to the south of it lies the old episcopal
palace, where the archbishop preached the sermons criticized by the
ingenuous Gil Blas.

The main entrance is to the west. This front is the latest portion of
the building with the exception of certain portions of the interior.
Though not as corrupt as some of the surgical decorations in the
trascoro, it is the heaviest and least interesting part of the church.
It bears no relation to the sides of the building, but seems to have
been clapped on like a mask. The central portion is subdivided into
three huge bays, the spring of the arch, which rises from the
intermediate piers, being considerably higher in the centre than those
of the two to the north and south. Diego de Siloe probably designed the
composition, intending that it should be flanked and terminated by great
towers. Three stages, rising to a height of some 185 feet, stand to the
north. Corinthian and Ionic orders superimpose a Doric entablature over
a plain and restrained base. Arches frame more or less meaningless and
unpierced designs between the pilasters and engaged columns of the
orders. The whole is as painfully dry as the transfer of a student's
compass from a page of Vignola. Old cuts and descriptions represent this
northern tower crowned by an octagonal termination with a height of 265
feet. Despite the apparent massiveness of the substructure, this soon
made the whole so alarmingly insecure that it was pulled down. The
present tower scarcely reaches above the broken lines and flat surfaces
of the roof tiles and, particularly at a distance, has the effect of a
huge buttress. The southern tower was never erected, but in place of it
the front was supported by a makeshift portion of base. The northern
tower is the work of Maeda, the facade principally by Cano, although
much of the sculpture, such as the Inc