hite-wash, a victim of the zeal for
cleanliness of a Sanitary "Administrador." In short to visit a Spanish
city now, by the light shed upon its ancient glories by the industrious
Ponz, is simply to have forced upon one's attention the most striking
evidence of the "vanity of human things," and man's inherent tendency to
destroy.

One of the most painful sensations the lover of the Art of the Past
cannot but experience in Spain, is the feeling of its dissonance from,
and irreconcileability with, the wants and economical necessities of
to-day. The truth is that at the present moment, amongst the many
difficult problems which surround and beset the ruling powers, one of
the most puzzling is to find fitting uses for the many vast structures
which have fallen into the hands of the Government. Churches in number
and size out of all proportion to the wants of the population,
monasteries entirely without monks, convents with scarcely any nuns,
Jesuit seminaries without Jesuits, exchanges without merchants, colleges
without students, tribunals of the Holy Inquisition with, thank God! no
Inquisitors, and palaces without princes, are really "drugs in the
market;" too beautiful to destroy, too costly to properly maintain, and
for the original purposes for which they were planned and constructed at
incredible outlay they stand now almost useless. For the most part, the
grand architectural monuments of the country are now like Dickens'
"used-up giants" kept only "to wait upon the dwarfs." Among a few
instances of such, may be noticed the magnificent foundation of the
noblest Spanish ecclesiastic, Ximenez. His College at Alcala de Henares
(see etext transcriber note) is turned into a young ladies'
boarding-school; the splendid Convent of the Knights of Santiago at
Leon, the masterpiece of Juan de Badajoz, dedicated to Saint Mark, and
one of the finest buildings in Spain, is now in charge of a solitary
policeman and his wife, awaiting its possible conversion into an
agricultural college; the grand Palace of the Dukes of Alva at Seville
is let out in numerous small tenements and enriched with unlimited
whitewash; the Colegiata of San Gregorio at Valladolid, another of the
magnificent foundations of Cardinal Ximenez, and the old cathedral at
Lerida, the richest Byzantine monument in Spain, are now both
barracks;--the vast exchanges of Seville and Saragossa are tenantless
and generally shut up; the beautiful "Casa de los Abades" at Sevill