ico.

Glancing at the plan as a whole, one cannot but deplore that a
conception of such daring proportions with no limitation of time nor
money, having centuries and the wealth of the Indies to draw on, was not
conceived with that most perfect of all Gothic developments, the
semicircular apsidal termination. The Spanish, as well as the customary
English eastern end, can never, from any standpoint of ingenuity or
beauty, be comparable to the amazing conceptions of Rheims or Amiens or
Paris.

The interior effect is expressed in one word,--"grandiloquence." It is a
true child of the age which conceived it, and the spirit which informed
its erection. If the fabric of the old Cathedral is essentially
Romanesque, with later Gothic ornamentation and constructional features,
the new is entirely Gothic, with Renaissance additions. The spirit and
form are Gothic,--Spanish Gothic,--and one of its last sighs. The fire
was extinct. By display and sculptural fire-works, by bold flaunting of
mechanical mastery, a last trial and glorious failure were made in an
attempt to emulate the marvelous structural logic and simplicity which
had marked the Gothic edifices of an earlier age.

The blending of the two styles does not jar, but has been effected with
a harmony scarcely to be expected. If one were not hampered with an
architectural education, one could admire it all, instead of criticizing
and wondering why a Renaissance lantern is raised upon a Gothic crown,
and why a fine Renaissance balustrade above Gothic band-courses
separates the nave arches from its clerestory, while those of the side
aisles are separated by a Gothic one. The interior fabric itself is
fine: it is more in detail, in the stringiness and multiplicity of
moldings, in the fineness, subdivision, and elaboration of carvings and
ornament that one feels the advancing degeneration. From being frank and
simple, it has become insincere and profuse.

The Gothic window openings, which had been steadily developing larger
and bolder up to their culmination in the glorious conservatory of Leon,
had again grown smaller and more fitted to the climate. In Salamanca
they are small and high up. Nave and side aisles both carry
clerestories; that of the nave consisting of seventy-two windows in
alternate bays of three windows and two windows with circle above, that
of the side aisle, of one large window subdivided within its own field.
The chapel walls are also pierced by smaller o