retrace your steps; then your memory becomes confused, and you remember nothing more; you seem to have walked ten miles, to have been in that labyrinth for a month, and not to be able to get out of it. You come to a court and say, 'I have seen it already!' but you are mistaken; it is another.... You seem to be dreaming; catch glimpses of long frescoed walls ornamented with pictures, crucifixes, and inscriptions; you see and forget; and ask yourself, 'Where am I?'... On you go from corridor to corridor, court to court; you look ahead with suspicion; almost expect to see suddenly, at the turning of a corner, a row of skeleton monks, with their hoods drawn over their eyes and their arms folded; you think of Philip II., and seem to hear his retreating step through dark hallways; you remember all that you have read of him, of his treasures, the Inquisition, and all becomes clear to your mind's eye; you understand everything for the first time; the Escurial _is_ Philip II., he is still there, alive and frightful, and with him the image of his terrible God.... The Escurial surrounds, holds, and overwhelms you; the cold of its stones penetrates to your marrow; the sadness of its sepulchral labyrinths invades your soul; if you are with a friend you say, 'Let us leave;' if you were alone you would take to flight. At last you mount a staircase, enter a room, go to the window, and salute with a burst of gratitude the mountains, sun, freedom, and the great and beneficent God who loves and pardons. What a long breath one draws at that window! "An illustrious traveller said that after having passed a day in the convent of the Escurial, one ought to feel happy throughout one's life, in simply thinking that one might still be among those walls, but is no longer there. This is almost true. Even at the present day, after so great a lapse of time, on rainy days, when I am sad, I think of the Escurial, then look at the walls of my room, and rejoice!" During the sixteenth century there were many palaces erected in Spain, but nothing can be added to the impressions you will get from the descriptions we have quoted of the cheerful, gay Alhambra, and the gloomy, sad Escurial. The domestic architecture of Spain is unattractive. There are no fine _châteaux_, as in France, or elegant parks, as in England. Ford compares the front of the residence of the Duke of Medina to "ten Baker-street houses put together," and this is true of many so-called palaces. This state of modern Spanish architecture is fully accounted for by the following quotation from Fergusson, the learned writer on architecture: