e is
converted into a boy's school and lodging-house for numerous poor
tenants, the Casa del Infante at Saragossa, containing the most richly
sculptured Renaissance Patio in Spain, is chiefly occupied as a livery
stable-keeper's establishment; Cardinal Mendoza's famous Hospital of the
Holy Cross at Toledo is now an Infantry College; the great monastery of
the Cartuja near Seville, with one of the finest Mudejar wooden ceilings
in the country, is turned into Pickman's china factory; the "Taller del
Moro" a model Moorish house with its beautiful decorations, at Toledo,
is now only a carpenter's workshop and storehouse; the celebrated
establishment of El Cristo de la Victoria at Malaga, with all its
glorious associations with the "Reyes Cattolicos," is occupied as a
military hospital; and so on '_ad infinitum_.'

Every record the pen and pencil of any accurate observer can preserve at
this juncture of the fading glories of the past in Spain is, as it were,
snatching a brand from the inevitable fire which has already consumed
inestimable treasures upon its soil. It was to give a stamp of truth and
authenticity to the few such records I might be enabled to make, that I
determined to complete them in the actual presence as it were of the
object illustrated, and to admit of no intervention between my own hand,
and the eye of any student willing to honour my work with his
attention. My sketches might no doubt have gained in beauty by being
transcribed on stone or wood by some artist more skilful than I am, but
as any such alteration would detract from their simple veracity, I
preferred to make them at once upon the spot with anastatic ink, in
order that they might be printed just as they were executed. Working
with such ink in the open air is difficult, and the result capricious, I
have therefore to ask for some indulgence, and to express a hope that
any shortcomings in the drawings may be overlooked in the obvious
interest of the subjects pourtrayed. Could I but have known, on leaving
England, that my sketches could have been so successfully transferred to
collodion, and printed therefrom by the beautiful Autotype mechanical
process, as they have been since my return, I might have spared myself
much extra trouble and anxiety, and have probably attained a much better
result with less effort. In order to retain as much "local colour" as
possible, I have preferred, even in the binding of this volume, to take
its ornament in fac-s