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 mediæval aspect. You observe with delight a humpbacked bridge, such as (with a total disregard for beasts of burden) 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. Lerida--which the Catalans, by the way, call Lleyda--was known to the Romans as Ilerda, and when they turned Christian, they built a church on this site. This, it is supposed, became a mosque during the brief Moorish period, to be reconsecrated on the reappearance of the Christians. The first stone of the actual building was laid on July 22, 1203, in the presence of King Pedro II., and the consecration took place on October 31, 1278. (People often wonder why we do not build cathedrals nowadays equal to the old. One of the reasons may be that we are in too great a hurry. In the Middle Ages no man expected to see the completion of the work he began. They were animated by a strong communal sense, different from the individualism of to-day.)