The choir blocks the third and fourth bays of the nave, while the Capilla Mayor occupies the eighth. Over the sixth soars the lantern. The platform of the Patio Chico separates the sacristy and the old Cathedral that practically abuts the entire southern front. At the southwestern angle, the intersection of the two cathedrals is hidden by the gigantic tower. The northern front is admirably free, the whole structure being visible on its high granite platform. The western front is entered through the great triple doorway, the central being that of the Nacimiento; the northern, through the Puerta de las Ramos, the southern, through the Puerta del Patio Chico. Glancing at the plan as a whole, one cannot but deplore that a conception of such daring proportions with no limitation of time nor money, having centuries and the wealth of the Indies to draw on, was not conceived with that most perfect of all Gothic developments, the semicircular apsidal termination. The Spanish, as well as the customary English eastern end, can never, from any standpoint of ingenuity or beauty, be comparable to the amazing conceptions of Rheims or Amiens or Paris. The interior effect is expressed in one word,--"grandiloquence." It is a true child of the age which conceived it, and the spirit which informed its erection. If the fabric of the old Cathedral is essentially Romanesque, with later Gothic ornamentation and constructional features, the new is entirely Gothic, with Renaissance additions. The spirit and form are Gothic,--Spanish Gothic,--and one of its last sighs. The fire was extinct. By display and sculptural fire-works, by bold flaunting of mechanical mastery, a last trial and glorious failure were made in an attempt to emulate the marvelous structural logic and simplicity which had marked the Gothic edifices of an earlier age. The blending of the two styles does not jar, but has been effected with a harmony scarcely to be expected. If one were not hampered with an architectural education, one could admire it all, instead of criticizing and wondering why a Renaissance lantern is raised upon a Gothic crown, and why a fine Renaissance balustrade above Gothic band-courses separates the nave arches from its clerestory, while those of the side aisles are separated by a Gothic one. The interior fabric itself is fine: it is more in detail, in the stringiness and multiplicity of moldings, in the fineness, subdivision, and elaboration of carvings and ornament that one feels the advancing degeneration. From being frank and simple, it has become insincere and profuse.