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Adjoining the church is the dark gloomy cloister, which existed in the early twelfth century, and in which Street recognised "one of the main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into Spain" from south-eastern France. The galleries, with marble columns and stone roofs, enclose a court with tall trees and a cistern in the centre. Numerous black memorial tablets let into the walls have failed to keep alive the memory of the dead.

Not far from the cathedral, and nearer to the river O?ar, is the collegiate church of San Feliu or San Felix rising proudly above the town. Its tall campanile is visible from every part of the town and is a familiar landmark for miles around. It was built in 1392, and is in three stages: the first or lower stage, quite plain, the second adorned with graceful windows, the third putting forth shoots in the shape of tapering finials. "It is seldom," says Street, "that the junction of tower and spire is more happily managed than it is here; and before the destruction of the upper part of the spire the whole effect must have been singularly graceful." Though the church seems to have been almost entirely rebuilt in the fourteenth century, as a foundation, St. Feliu dates back to the eighth century and was used by the Christians during the Moorish occupation, which, by the way, only lasted sixty-eight years. The interior seems, like the cathedral's, to have consisted of a single nave, but to this aisles have been added, the whole terminating in a tri-apsidal chevet. The west front dates from the seventeenth century. The high altar has some good paintings and sculpture, the canopies over the tomb of San Feliu and the statues of the Virgin and St. Narcissus being especially notable. The modern chapel of the last-named saint is gorgeously enriched with jasper of many colours. In this church is buried the heroic Don Mariano Alvarez de Castro, beneath a monument, dating from 1880, executed in Carrara marble and in the reddish yellow stone of the country. The tomb is crowned by a mourning female figure, which I have been told is a portrait of the general's wife. The sepulchre of San Feliu dates from the thirteenth century and is sculptured with compositions representing scenes from the saint's life. Leaving San Feliu by the south door, we pass through the dark and massive Portal de Sobreportas, formed by two huge round towers, connected by a modern intervening story, and at the end of a long gloomy lane reach a Capuchin convent. The object of our visit is a soi-disant Moorish bath, covered in by a graceful little pavilion with eight slender columns.

"The whole character of this church," remarks Street, "is very interesting. The west front reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque, and the rude simplicity of its interior--so similar in its mode of construction to the great church at Santiago in the opposite corner of the Peninsula--suggests the probability of its being one of the earliest examples of which Spain can boast."

North of Gerona lies FIGUERAS, accounted the strongest fortress in Spain. Like so many other "impregnable" strongholds, it has been taken again and again, so often, in fact, as to give rise to the saying, "Figueras belongs to Spain in peace, and to France in war." It is only fair to add that in several instances its fall has been due to treachery. In a miserable chamber in the castle of San Fernando died Mariano Alvarez de Castro, a prisoner in the hands of the French. The guide-books speak of a religious procession which takes place here on the last Monday in May, and is called the Profaso de la Tramontana, after the north wind, which blows here with great violence.

In the vicinity of Figueras is the church of Villabertr?n, dating from the end of the eleventh century. Designed by a priest it exhibits, remarks a Spanish writer, in every detail the ecclesiastical bias. All animal figures are excluded as tending to disturb religious recollection. The interior is nobly designed but destitute of all ornament. "In this temple everything appeals to the reason, nothing to the imagination; these low dark vaults dissipate illusions; the thought of death oppresses the mind; but the eyes discern a gleam of light in the darkness of the sanctuary, and the soul hungrily seeks a gleam of faith in the gloom of doubt."

Of a similarly severe character is the adjacent cloister. The campanile of the church alone presents any airy or graceful features. The whole foundation would have been spared even by Knox or Calvin.

On the bay of Rosas, the town of Castell?n de Ampurias recalls the great city of Empurias which was founded by the Greeks, and utterly perished at the end of the twelfth century. It was among those great maritime powers which for long resisted the encroachments of the Carthaginians, and which fell in turn before the irresistible arms of Rome--reminders for us of the days when the fate of the Mediterranean still hung in the balance, and it was yet uncertain whether the civilisation of Europe should be Hellenic, Punic or Latin. The destruction of Empurias is ascribed partly to the Saracens, partly to the Normans. Whoever accomplished the work did it thoroughly, for nothing but the name survives of this once rich and puissant colony of Hellenes.

Castell?n de Ampurias is a Latin foundation, with which time has dealt unkindly. Its parish church of Santa Maria is a noble monument of its prime. It was consecrated in 1064 and finished in the late Gothic period. To this last style belongs the west porch, with a pointed arch of six orders, and the figures of the Twelve Apostles beneath canopies in the jambs. The tympanum shows a relief of the Adoration of the Magi. Contrasting strikingly with this carefully chiselled and graceful Gothic work is the stern square campanile to the left, a remnant of the Romanesque days. The interior is early Gothic. The combination of this with the preceding style is strikingly shown in the principal apse. The altar, a single piece of marble, is carved with reliefs which exhibit the artist's breadth of imagination rather than his skill.

Further inland is the venerable abbey of San Pedro de Roda, founded in the tenth century, and abandoned by the religious in the year 1799. To-day the monastic buildings are in utter ruin, but enough of the church remains to fill us with admiration for the loftiness of its nave, the harmonious admixture of the Romanesque with the pure classic forms, the skilful decoration of the various parts, and the sombre majesty of the whole.

THE VALLEY OF THE TER

The river Ter, which washes the walls of Gerona, is born among the snows of the Puigmal, the loftiest of the Eastern Pyrenees. Its stream is still ice-cold when it flows past the little town of San Juan de las Abadesas, which changed its name from Ripollet upon the foundation of an abbey within its precincts by Wilfred the Hairy, Count of Barcelona, in the year 877. The Count's daughter was the first Abbess. The present abbatial church replaced the original structure in 1150. It is strictly cruciform, consisting of a nave and transept without aisles. There are only two columns in the church, these being planted at the entrance to the presbytery. The chancel is in the florid late Gothic style, contrasting oddly with the extreme simplicity of the rest of the fabric. Behind the altar is a figure of Christ, sculptured in the year 1250; in the forehead, it is believed, is contained a Host, which has preserved its integrity for seven centuries, and which it was found impossible to remove in the year 1598. The church has two choirs, both blocking the nave. The north and south porches were reserved respectively for men and women. The adjoining cloister is in good fifteenth-century style, and was probably designed or improved by the architect of the Palacio de la Diputacion at Barcelona.

Five or six miles farther down the valley stands Ripoll, one of the towns that suffered most severely during the Carlist wars. It has, however, long since recovered from its reverses. Unfortunately the damage done to the monastery founded by Wilfred the Hairy cannot be repaired. As the Mausoleum of the counts from the ninth to the twelfth century, it possessed great interest. The church, built by Bishop Oliva about the thousandth year of our era, is roofless. The nave terminates in an apse, and there are three smaller apses opening from the east into each transept. The special glory of the building is its west porch, formed by a rounded arch with three shafts in each jamb. The middle shafts are carved into life-size figures of St. Peter and St. Paul; the others are most beautifully chiselled. The orders of the arch are variously treated; caprices, grotesques, masques, mythological designs being interwoven with more appropriate religious symbols. One series of reliefs appears to represent the twelve months.

The fa?ade on either side of this portal is similarly decorated with graphic reliefs in six courses, the lowest representing scenes in which centaurs, lions, &c., figure; above this is a row of figures of knights, princes, and prelates; above this, battle scenes, then come two rows of sacred figures and subjects, and finally the figure of God the Father attended by angels and princes. The whole of this portal is of profound interest to students of the Romanesque.

The interior of the church was restored as lately as twenty years ago. All styles seem to have entered into its architecture. Instead of columns, massive piers support the vaulting, and mark off the aisles from the nave. The chancel--merely a shallow apsidal prolongation of the nave--is strewn with the ruins of the high altar and the roof.

The cloister of the monastery is the most interesting part. It is composed of an upper and lower gallery of round arches, uninterrupted by any piers or buttresses. The harmony of the whole is admirable. The columns are of Gerona marble, and pinkish grey in hue. Variety is imparted by the capitals whereon the unknown sculptor has expended his fanciful, nervous genius. The upper gallery was not completed till the end of the fourteenth century, though the cloister had been begun as far back as 1172.

Farther down stream is Vich, a town constantly referred to in the annals of the Carlist wars. As the history of that insurrection is not well known to foreigners, visitors are more likely to be interested in the monuments that have survived those troubled times. The cathedral was built in 1040--a date which sounds promising; but alas! the architects of the eighteenth century have forestalled us, and have worked their wicked will upon a once noble church. The artistic eye will not linger upon the exterior, but it may find some refreshment in the majestic nave, divided from the aisles by six clustered columns, with Corinthian capitals. When the church was rebuilt, all the tombs were swept away, and none of the altars spared, except the high altar, which is a meritorious work of the early fifteenth century. As at Ripoll, there is a fine cloister built five hundred years ago. The gallery, with its pointed openings and trefoil and quatrefoil tracery, is built over a substructure with round arched open vaults. The centre of the quadrangle is occupied by the statue and monument of the philosopher Balmes, who was born at Vich and died in 1848, aged only thirty-eight years. He is buried in the cathedral nave.

Outside this church there is little to be seen in the old Catalan town. The remains of a Roman temple are worth examination, and the artist may find plenty of material for sketches in the picturesque Plaza Mayor.

From Vich it is about forty-five miles to Barcelona.

LERIDA

Lerida is another of those Catalan cities that remind one of the saying about new wine in old bottles. Seen from afar it is clearly one of those old human hives that have existed on the same spot ever since man felt the need of a permanent abode--you have the hill-site, the walls, the towers, the flowing river, the mediaeval aspect. You observe with delight a humpbacked bridge, such as our pious ancestors loved to build. And over all rises the cathedral--or, as we shall soon learn, what was the cathedral. But on a closer inspection we find that time has by no means left Lerida untouched. Already she has overflowed into the opposite side of the stream, and there is a big new suburb with wide white streets, spaciously planned squares, and avenues along which the trees are beginning to grow. And as you cross the humpbacked bridge, you observe that the centre arch is quite new, and as you enter the old town, you are astonished by the stir and the modernity of it all. It is just like Smyrna or Damascus. Every one has been too busy to build the town over again. Its poor old rickety houses, in which men designed to lead only the sedatest of lives, have been hastily requisitioned for the service of modern industry and commerce. The low rooms are packed with merchandise, the frail houses seem like to burst. The underground cellars come in very handily. Lerida is very much alive. Some day she will have to pull her house down and build a new one altogether.

Probably no one would have come to Lerida--no strangers of the uncommercial variety, that is--if Street had not told us about the old cathedral, since turned into a barracks. Nor without his detailed and professional description would the average traveller be able to make much of the building. The purposes to which it has been put have obscured the outlines of the features of the original fabric. But you cannot overlook it for it stands high on the hill like a citadel, which, indeed, it has now become.

The lay traveller in attempting to understand this church has always to refer himself to the explanation of Street or else to that of Piferrer, which is certainly not so intelligible. In plan, then, the church is cruciform with three eastern apses and square transept arms. Another apse projects eastward from the south transept, which is flanked on the other side by a semicircular chapel, pointing south. Over the crossing rises an octagonal lantern, roofed like the whole church with stone, and pierced in each face with double windows with varied tracery. At its north-west angle is a slender octagonal staircase turret, rising from the south-west angle of the north transept. There is a similar but stouter tower, detached from the lantern, rising over the south transept. These towers give the whole pile a romantic and beautiful appearance.

The principal portal, called in the Catalan dialect the Puerta dels Fillols, opens into the middle of the south aisle. "This is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an archivolt enriched with chevrons, mouldings, dog-tooth, intersecting arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice over the arch, and above this is a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and other animals; whilst the soffit of the cornice in each compartment is carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate trailing branch of foliage; and the labels and two or three orders of the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage, and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers nowadays, but in its place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be praised. The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic by a later--probably fifteenth-century--vaulted porch, which occupies the space between two added chapels. The effect is very good and picturesque."

The transept doors are also very fine, especially the southern one. The cornice is beautifully sculptured and the wheel window above reveals in its details the influence of the Italian Romanesque. These entrances make us regret the effacement of the west porch, which is concealed by the vast square cloister covering that side of the church. This remarkable building, now occupied by troops, is the grandest, Street declared, he had ever seen. In its present desecrated state, it must be confessed it needs a highly trained eye to appreciate its beauty. The arcades are walled up, and there is some ground for supposing that when in ecclesiastical occupation the galleries were used as dormitory and refectory. The details vary greatly. The bays vary in width, the sculpture is of all sorts of design, and of all periods. Adjoining this vast cloister on the north side is a long barrel-vaulted hall, lighted only at one end. On the west side the cloister is entered through an enormous western doorway with a pointed arch. South of this and almost detached from the cloister stands that beautiful octagonal steeple which served Pedro Balaguer as a model for the Micalet Tower at Valencia. It is 170 feet high and divided into five stages, "the whole construction being of the most dignified and solid description."

Concerning the position of this tower, Street remarks: "Here, as often happens with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible, until after a thorough investigation."

The interior of the church is now cut horizontally by a plank flooring, and no features of interest can be distinguished, except in a single apsidal chapel, which is still used as such, and where is buried a natural son of King Pedro the Catholic, who died in 1254. Whitewash has obscured all the details of capitals and columns.

Adjacent to the cathedral on the north side is the ruin of a once noble hall, with traces of Moorish influence in its carving--possibly the remains of a chapter-house or episcopal palace.

Far exceeding the cathedral in antiquity is the church of San Lorenzo hard by, though it is not safe to accept the tradition of its Gothic origin. It was certainly built prior to the twelfth century. Originally just an apse and a nave, with walls eight feet thick and a span of thirty-three feet, aisles each ending in an apse were added to it at a much later period. They communicate with the nave by very simple pointed arches, and their windows have good traceries of the late thirteenth century. "The apse has a semi-dome and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside."

The octagonal campanile dates from the fifteenth century, to which period belongs the western gallery. There is a good deal of pointed work in the church, which is gloomy and religious. The high altar, dating from about 1400, has a reredos which is highly praised by some critics.

Probably none of the ancient edifices of Lerida will interest you as much as the market-place, surrounded by quaint old houses; entering, you find the whole house is a great wine-press, the grapes, trodden on the ground floor, pouring their juice into the cellars below.

Higher up the Segre is the historic town of Balaguer, the Bargusia of Livy, and the capital of the ancient county of Urgel. The counts had their residence in the "Beautiful Castle" which overlooked the town and has now totally disappeared. There are a few ruins of the once famous priory of Santo Domingo. The site of the castle is occupied by the church of Santa Maria, built in 1351. It is a dignified, simple edifice, of a single nave with lateral chapels. The Trappist monastery of Bellpuig de las Avellanas a little way out of the town is another and better preserved monument of the piety of the old Counts of Urgel whose line expired with Jaime el Desdichado at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Returning from Lerida to Barcelona we pass the castle of Bellpuig, the seat of the great family of Anglesola--a massive fortress of red stone, restored in the sixteenth century. Its magnificent staircase still gives one some idea of the pomp and state of its former lords. The village extends from the castle to the church--a situation which inspired the erudite topographer of this country with reflections that remind one of Don Quixote's address to the goatherds. The church contains the tomb of Don Ramon de Cordova, one of the ablest lieutenants of Gonzalo de Cordova. His effigy, armed and holding his helmet, reclines in a sleeping posture on an urn adorned with reliefs of marine gods and monsters and upheld on the backs of sirens, whose hands are webbed; the sepulchral arch is formed by six Ionic columns, against which lean figures expressive of mourning; over the tomb is a relief of the Entombment. In niches on each side of the arch are two life-size figures emblematic of Victory; above them, two figures leaning forth from medallions appear to extend laurels toward the hero. The plinth and cornice of this superb tomb are adorned with reliefs illustrating the victories and achievements of the deceased, who was as distinguished as an admiral as a general. His body remains in the urn practically incorrupt. The tomb is the work of Juan Nolano.

This work has been brought here from the ruined Franciscan friary, founded a few miles from Bellpuig by the knight in the year 1507. The cloister is fairly well preserved. The two lower galleries--a third has been added since the foundation--are in debased Gothic style. The second gallery is formed by eleven rectangular columns, like those of the Lonja at Valencia, with four bands of moulding wreathed round each and gathered in at the capitals. The convent church is also of interest and is connected with the cloister by a fine staircase.

TARRAGONA

High over the town, on the crest of the slope, towers the cathedral. "This," says Street , "is one of the most noble and interesting churches in Spain. It is one of a class of which I have seen others upon a somewhat smaller scale and which appears to me, after much study of old buildings in most parts of Europe, to afford one of the finest types from every point of view that it is possible to find. It produces in very marked degree an extremely effective internal effect, without being on an exaggerated scale, and combines in the happiest fashion the greatest solidity of construction with a lavish display of ornament in some parts to which it is hard to find a parallel." Roughly speaking, it may be described as Romanesque, with adornment of the Gothic period. The delicacy and richness of the later style has relieved the crudeness of the earlier, while the severity of the original plan has kept in check the tendency to be profuse of ornament.

Schemes were on foot to rebuild the church at the end of the eleventh century and Street thinks the oldest part--that is, the eastern apse--may date from 1131, though the greater portion of the fabric seems to have been executed at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.

The west front is striking; it was begun in 1278, but not completed for another hundred years. The lower half is occupied by a deep-set portal of four orders, rising to a point. The jambs are occupied by figures of saints under canopies, and these are continued round the two buttresses which flank the doorway and end in pinnacles. The shaft is formed by a statue of the Madonna upon a pedestal, the sides of which exhibit in relief the scenes of the Creation and Fall. "These subjects are very fitly placed here, the Fall in the centre coming just under the feet of her who bears Our Lord in her arms, and thus restores the balance to the world." The tympanum is pierced with rich geometrical tracery. Over and behind the cross surmounting this grand doorway is an enormous rose-window. The whole is surmounted by a gable, the central portion of which has disappeared, giving a somewhat ruinous appearance to the church when seen from a distance. Flanking this, the front of the nave, are the round-arched entrances to the aisles, with round windows above, betraying Norman influence. Ford states that the great rose-window is Norman work.

The interior is grand and impressive in the extreme, though a trifle marred by the heaviness of the pillars. There is no triforium. The pointed windows of the clerestory are filled with glass vividly coloured, much of it modern, some of it the work of Juan Guas, specimens of whose craftmanship are to be seen at Toledo. The aisles are half the height of the nave, the intervening space being pierced with small rose-windows. At festivals the arches are hung with precious tapestries, designed after the Italian fashion with scenes from the histories of Joshua, Samson, David, and Cyrus. They are believed to have been presented by some potentate to the chapter about the year 1600.

While the columns are massive and plain, the bases are finely moulded and the capitals are carved with exuberant foliage. The choir screen is of marble and jasper; the stalls are plainly and chastely carved. Over the crossing rises a low, simple, but effective octagonal lantern. "The old outside roof is destroyed; but the finish of the lanterns of Lerida and of the old cathedral of Salamanca made it pretty certain that it was intended to have a pyramidal or domical stone roof." The transepts are square, except for an apsidal recess at the east side of each. The nave and aisles end in apses--the oldest part of the edifice. The roof of the chancel apse is considerably lower than the choir's, and the wall-space is pierced with a small rose-window. This part of the church is pure Romanesque. The high altar, however, is Gothic, and adorned with admirable reliefs, illustrating the martyrdom and apotheosis of St. Thecla, the patron of Tarragona. The centre is occupied by a colossal statue of the Virgin, covered by a very high peaked canopy of wood. To the right of the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Alfonso de Aragon, who died in 1514, and to the left a tomb older by two hundred years, that of Juan de Aragon, Patriarch of Alexandria. The remains of Cyprian, a Visigothic bishop of the see, are contained in an urn behind the reredos. The tombs are not very fine or numerous for a cathedral so ancient and so splendid.

At the south side of the chancel, at its junction with the apse, is a very remarkable stone turret stair, leading up to a square tower which rises over the end of the south aisle. There was probably at one time a corresponding steeple on the north side.

The chapels, though they have undergone considerable restoration, are interesting and possess much architectural interest. In the beautiful north transept is the fourteenth-century chapel of the Tailors . Close by is the Capilla del Sacramento, formerly a Roman work, and incorporated with the cathedral by Archbishop Augustin whose fine tomb, by Pere Blay, it contains. The chapel was at one time the canon's refectory. Several ancient tombs from the other parts of the cathedral have been placed in this transept. On the opposite side of the church is the gorgeous eighteenth-century chapel of St. Thecla.

The cloister adjoins the north-east angle of the cathedral--a most unusual position. The door communicating with it is the finest in the building. It is a round-arched doorway richly and curiously sculptured in the Romanesque style. This cloister is considered one of the best of the many beautiful works of the kind in Spain. "Each bay has three round-arched openings divided by coupled shafts, and above these two large circles pierced in the wall. The arches and circular windows are richly moulded and adorned largely with delicate dog-tooth enrichments. Some of the circular windows above the arcade still retain their filling-in, which was of a very delicate interlacing work, pierced in a thin slab of stone, and evidently Moorish in its origin, though at the same time probably the work of Christian hands, as in some of them the figure of Christ is very beautifully introduced." The sculptors have adorned the capitals with all sorts of quaint conceits, notably in one case with a pictorial rendering of the story of the rats who went to bury the cat without first tying her limbs. On another capital there is shown a spirited gladiatorial combat; on another, a cock-fight. These purely secular subjects where the sculptor seems to have indulged his humour and fancy absolutely without restraint, remind us of the "topical" carvings at Oviedo. Their humour has not escaped O'Shea, who, speaking of the Adoration of the Magi, carved on one of the pillars of the doorway from the church, says: "The three kings of the east are economically sleeping three in the same bed, and wakened early by a winged valet de chambre, that they may rise and proceed on their journey to Bethlehem." The words "6th Company," &c., to which this writer and others call attention, to be seen on the walls, are reminders of the passage of British troops here.

The chapter-house, the scene of many important councils, opens out of the south gallery of the cloister. The door is Norman. The exterior, like that of the cloister and cathedral generally, is most striking. The apse and the Tailors' chapel are particularly fine seen from the outside.

Contented with their magnificent cathedral the people of Tarragona have done little to adorn their city with smaller churches. Adjacent to the seminary there stands the graceful little chapel of San Pablo, the origin of which is still a matter of conjecture. Its architectural features suggest the first half of the thirteenth century, with the exception of its west porch, which belongs to no recognised style. The chapel is first mentioned in a document of the year 1234.

Within the city itself not much remains from Roman times. The sites of the forum, the praetorium, and the great temples may be traced easily enough, and stones hewn by Roman hands and commemorating often enough Roman dead, are embedded in the walls of houses and churches all over the town. The local museum contains a few of the spoils of antiquity. There is a beautiful statue of Dionysus in Parian marble, and a great variety of votive inscriptions. For more substantial memorials of the Roman era we must leave the city and follow the Barcelona road some four or five miles. Here we reach the celebrated monument known as the Tomb of the Scipios, consisting of a rectangular base and an upper body, on one face of which are sculptured in high relief the figures of two warriors. The cornice is engraved with a legend in which the words "perpetuo remane" are alone decipherable. There is no ground whatever for supposing that the figures represent the brothers Scipio or that this monument marks their resting-place. It is more probably the sepulchre of some wealthy Roman settler.

The Arco de Bara is one of the best preserved monuments in Spain. The arch itself is flanked on each side by two fluted columns of the Corinthian order, supporting an entablature. It is simple and majestic, like all the Roman works of the kind. An inscription records its restoration in commemoration of the pacification of Spain during the regency of Maria Christina and by order of Don Juan van Halen, the Spanish general who in 1830 assisted at the defence of Brussels against the Dutch.

The noblest handiwork bequeathed to Catalu?a by the conquerors of the world is, however, the Aqueduct, which may be compared favourably as regards preservation and solidity with the more famous work of the same kind at Segovia. Where it spans a valley it is composed of two series of arches, eleven below and twenty-five above, and rising to a height of 217 metres. The stone of which it is built was Obtained from the caves of Monte Loreto, where the quarries may still be seen.

POBLET

The north side of the church abuts on the great cloister, dating in its greater part from the thirteenth century. The windows on the south side are round-headed, those on the other three sides pointed, with good traceries. Through a round-headed arch we enter the chapter-house, divided into three aisles by four pillars, so slender as in no way to interrupt the view of the whole. The groining springs so gracefully from the capitals that the pillars themselves have the appearance of shooting up and bending like the branches of a tree. Then there is the library which once contained 10,145 volumes, including 385 valuable codices, and 250 MSS. in various styles of handwriting--forming a complete museum of calligraphy. This library is a noble chamber divided by four columns. Its walls were once hung with the portraits of the Kings of Aragon and their great nobles. Reminiscent of the brave days of old is the charming fa?ade of the palace built by good King Martin and intended by him to be a retreat in his old age. He died before its completion and the work was abandoned.

You may still traverse miles of cloister and hall at Poblet strewn with broken tablets, overgrown with shrubs and climbing plants. One of the most beautiful of the galleries is the Novices' Dormitory, roofed in with timber; then there are the locutorium, the only spot where conversation was permitted between the recluses; the infirmary and the beautiful cloister of San Fernando, built in 1415 by order of the first king of that name, the little chapel of the saint, founded by the Count of Barcelona, and the royal apartments, built in 1375.

SANTA CREUS

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