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:--