cost Napoleon 15,000 men. Here, as at Saragossa, the women fought beside the men and worked the guns, under the banner of St. Barbara. Unconquerable Gerona! Well might the heirs to the crown of haughty Aragon have been proud to bear the title of your prince. Towns with such stories invariably reflect them in their physiognomies. Gerona’s aspect is eloquent of history and legend. Her balconied houses--yellow and white--seem to rise out of the waters of the river Oñar, reminding one at moments of a Venetian canal. But to dispel such an illusion you have but to lift your eyes to the castled hill of Montjuich, in which the defensive power of the town resides and whose sides have borne the brunt of every battle that has raged round Gerona. Penetrating into the labyrinth of streets behind the river front, we find them dark, narrow, and silent enough to be haunts of the muse of history; but here and there--often, indeed--we find animated squares and thoroughfares that show us that Gerona is not outside the brisk Catalonian current. The vast cathedral lifts its towers near the river’s marge. It was founded, after the expulsion of the Moors, by Louis the Pious, in 786, and was rebuilt in the year 1016. It was consecrated by the Archbishop of Narbonne, on the French side, assisted by bishops both Cispyrenean and Transpyrenean. Extensive alteration and restoration went on in the fourteenth century, among the architects being two from Narbonne. Perhaps I may be pardoned the digression when I remark that natural boundaries seem to have been of less importance in the Middle Ages than now; a fact which may, it seems to me, be partly attributed to the relative facility with which great mountain barriers could be passed by the usual means of conveyance in those days. If you travel only on horseback, a mountain pass presents little more difficulty than a high road. Street, who extracted these particulars of the cathedral’s history from various Spanish works, tells us of the deliberations as to the adoption of the architect Guillermo Boffy’s plan for a nave of a single span. Fortunately the twelve architects composing the jury (Pascasio de Xulbe, Juan de Xulbe, Pedro de Valfogona, Guillermo de la Mota, Bartolomé Gual, Antonio Canet, Guillermo Abiell, Arnaldo de Valleras, Antonio Antigoni, Guillermo Sagrera, Jehan de Guinguamps, and Boffy himself) pronounced in favour of the plan, and the work was put in hand that same year, 1417. The first stone of the campanile was not laid till 1581, and the west front was begun as lately as 1607.