Externally the lantern is even more remarkable than internally. As seen from within, it is faced alternately by four tympanums and four turrets. These are broken by long, narrow, round-headed openings, vivified by ball moldings ornamenting the heavy rounding of their splays. The tympanums, as well as the windows between them, and the turrets are flanked by a series of Romanesque columns. Their grouping, the deep reveals and resulting shadows, the play of light and shade brought out in the foliage of their various caps, which is but indicated in the simple manner of the style, and the adjacent moldings, all give a most archaic impression. The roofing of the turrets, as well as that of the outer dome, suggests a stone coat-of-mail. The flags are laid in scallops or stepped rows, like the scales of a fish, giving a far tighter joint than the stone channels covering the roofing of Avila Cathedral. The outline of the dome is that of a cone with a slightly modulated curve, perhaps unconsciously affected by a Moorish delineation. The angles are marked by bold crockets. Above, crowning the apex, perches the cock, gayly facing whatever part of the heavens the wind blows from. There is an everlasting triumph in it all, reminding one not a little of that won at a later date in Santa Maria del Fiore. Salamanca holds the religious triumph of a militant age; Florence, the sacred glory of an artistic one. The lofty aspiration, boldly hewn in the Spanish fortress, is no less admirable than the constructive genius rounded in Brunelleschi's dome. The remainder of the interior is now singularly undecorated and severe. The entrance has been so much transformed by later additions that, in place of the original portal and vestibule, there remains only a vestibule considerably narrower than the nave, compressed on one side by the huge towers of the new Cathedral, and on the other by later alterations. The two older towers which contained, one the chimes and the other the dwelling of the Alcaide, have quite disappeared. The vestibule has excellent allegorical sculptures and Gothic statuary. The northern aisle still has a few mural paintings, but the larger part of those which once illuminated the bare walls were washed off by a bigoted prelate in the fifteenth century and the present gray of the stone, as seen in the dim light, looks cold compared to the rich gold of the exterior masonry bathed in sunshine. The excellence of the vaulting is such that to-day hardly a fissure or crack is visible. The old pavement consists of great rectangles marked by red sandstone borders and bluestone centre slabs, the size of a grave, with central dowels for lifting and closing. In the southern transept-arm leading to the cloisters, some of the original windows are still preserved with their fine columns, archivolts, and carved moldings. The ribs of the vaults are decorated by zigzag ornamentation, and here a few magnificent old tombs remain intact in their ancient niches.