, and at the sides bold
carvings of leaves, dragons, sirens, or animals, while beautiful figures
of saints stand in round-headed niches under the pilasters. At the ends
are larger pilasters, and a cornice carried on corbels serves as canopy.
Each of the lower stalls has a carved panel under the upper book-board,
but the small figures which stood between them on the arms are nearly
all gone.

If 1560 be the real date, the carving is extraordinarily early in
character; the execution too is excellent, though perhaps the heads
under the paintings are on too large a scale for woodwork, still they
are not at all coarse, and would be worthy of the best Spanish or French
sculptors.

The cloister, nearly, but not quite square, has six bays on each side,
of which the four central bays are of four lights each, while narrower
ones at the ends have no tracery. In the traceried bays the arches are
slightly elliptical, subdivided by two round-headed arches, which in
turn enclose two smaller round arches enriched some with trefoil cusps,
some with curious hanging pieces of tracery which are put, not in the
middle, but a little to the side nearer the central shaft. The shafts
are round, very like those at Batalha, and, like every inch of the arch
and tracery mouldings, are covered with ornament; some are twisted, some
diapered, some covered with renaissance detail. Broad bands too of
carving run round the inside and the outside of the main arches, the
inner being almost renaissance and the outer purely Manoelino. The vault
of many ribs, varying in arrangement in the different walks, is entirely
Gothic, while all the doors--except the double opening leading to the
chapter-house, which has beautifully carved renaissance panels on the
jambs--are Manoelino. The untraceried openings at the ends are fringed
with very extraordinary lobed projections, and on the solid pieces of
walling at the corners are carved very curious and interesting coats of
arms crosses and emblems worked in with beautifully cut leaves and
birds. (Figs. 66 and 67.)

Outside, between each bay, wide buttresses project, of which the
front--formed into a square pilaster--is enriched with panels of
beautiful renaissance work, while the back part is fluted or panelled.
From the top mouldings of these pilasters, rather higher than the
capitals of the openings, elliptical arches with a vault behind are
thrown across from pier to pier with excellent effect. Now, the base
mou