ucifix
rises to the height of the very capitals which carry the lofty vaulting.

Inside the reja, a few steps above the tombs, rises Philip Vigarny's, or
Borgona's, elaborate reredos. To the Protestant sense this is gaudy and
theatrical, a strikingly garish note in the solemnity and grandeur of
the chapel. To the right and left of its base are, however, most
interesting carvings, among them the kneeling statues of Ferdinand and
Isabella. Behind the former is his victorious banner of Castile. The
figures are vitally interesting as contemporaneous portraits of the
monarchs, aiming to reproduce with fidelity their features and every
detail of their dress. There is also a series of bas-reliefs portraying
incidents in the siege of Granada,--the Cardinal on a prancing charger,
behind him a forest of lances, the lurid, flaming sky throwing out in
sharp silhouette the pierced walls and rent battlements. The Moors, very
much like dogs shrinking from a beating, are being dragged to the
baptismal font;--the gesticulating prelates hold aloft in one hand the
cross and in the other, the sword, for the tunicked figures to make
their choice. The scene has been described by Sir W. Stirling Maxwell,
who tells us "that in one day no less than three thousand persons
received baptism at the hands of the Primate, who sprinkled them with
the hyssop of collective regeneration."

Again, in another, the cringing Boabdil is presenting the keys of the
city to the "three kings." Isabella is on a white genet, and Mendoza,
like the old pictures of Wolsey, on a trapped mule. Ferdinand is there
in all his magnificence; the knights, the halberdiers and horsemen, all
the details of the dramatic moment, full of the greatest imaginable
historic and antiquarian interest, perpetuated by one who was probably
an eye-witness of the scene.

[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

CATHEDRAL OF GRANADA

The tombs of the Catholic Kings, of Philip and of Queen Juana.]

At the foot of the altar, in the centre of the chapel, stand the tombs
of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Philip and Joan. They are as gorgeous
specimens of sepulchral monuments as the reja is of an ecclesiastical
iron screen. Both sarcophagi are executed in the softest flushed
alabaster; that of Ferdinand and Isabella by the Florentine Dominico
Fancelli; that of their daughter and her son by the Barcelonian
Bartolome Ordenez, "The Eagle of Relief," who carved his blocks at
Carrara. The tomb