of the trade at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth centuries, and name as the chief rivals to Pamplona of the
cities of Spain, in the manufacture of splendid arms and armour, Tolosa,
Barcelona, and Calatayud.[15]

[Illustration: PLATE 27

J. ESCORIAL

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXVII.

_ESCORIAL_.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE ESCORIAL.

IN all Spain I saw nothing which so ill-agreed with my preconceptions as
the Escorial. As for beauty, I could find none whatever in it. The
building appeared to me thoroughly unsatisfactory alike as church,
palace, or monastery. Still, to omit it altogether from any series of
Spanish sketches with pen or pencil, would be to leave out the Monument
which reflects, probably, more perfectly than any other in the
Peninsula, the mixture of arrogant extravagance, and arid ascetism,
which characterized its most potent rulers in the plenitude of their
historical importance. In it, in my opinion, Herrera proved himself an
architect thoroughly worthy of the masters who employed him, formal,
pedantic, cold, extravagant to a degree, and yet mean. That the building
contains many most interesting works of art, is as true, as that a visit
to it should on no account be omitted by any one who would at all
attempt to realize what the Spanish Court may have been in the days of
Philip II.; but, after all, I am bound to confess that what most pleased
me in the vast edifice, with the exception of some few pictures and
illuminated books, was the work of Italians and not of Spaniards, viz.,
the marble crucifix of Benvenuto Cellini, the magnificent gilt bronze
statues of the Kings and Queens of Spain in the Church, by Pompeio
Leoni, and the decorations of the Library, principally by Pelegrino
Tibaldi. To such a judgment may be objected that the structure now is
not what it was, let us see what an acute observer says of it, writing
late in the seventeenth century:--

"A while after we went to the Escurial, which to give it no less than
its due, may in Spain pass for an admirable structure, but where
building is understood, would not be looked on as very extraordinary. In
a general consideration, it seems a mass of stone of great perfection;
but going to particulars, scarce any of them but falls very short of the
magnificence imagined, and that so much, that if Philip the Second, who
built it, and was called the Solomon of his age, did no more resemble
that wise king then this edifice doe