One can understand the bigotry of Henry VIII and the Roundheads, which in both cases wrought frightful havoc in art, but it is truly incomprehensible that mere artistic conceit in the eighteenth century could compass such destruction. The second tier of the screen facing the nave, below a large pointed arch, is broken by a magnificent rose. Above this are two finely traceried and subdivided arches with eight statues set in between the lowest shafts. The central body is crowned by an open-work balustrade forming the uppermost link between the towers. The Virgin with Child reigns in the centre between the carved inscription, "Pulchra es et decora." Three rows of pure, ogival arches, delicate, and attenuated, break the square sides of the towers above the entrance portals; blind arches, spires and statues ornament the angles. Throughout, the splays and jambs are filled with glittering balls of stone. Inscriptions similar in design to that finishing the screen which hides the roof lines crown the platform of the towers below the base of the spires. The towers remained without steeples for over two hundred years until the good Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena, returning to his city in 1442 from the Council of Basle, brought with him the German, Juan de Colonia. Bishop Alfonso was not to see their completion, for he died fourteen years later, but his successor, Don Luis de Acuna, immediately ordered the work continued and saw the figures of Saint Peter and Saint Paul placed on the uppermost spires, three hundred feet above the heads of the worshipping multitude. The spires themselves, essentially German in character, are far from beautiful, perforated on all sides by Gothic tracery of multitudinous designs, too weak to stand without the assistance of iron tie rods, the angles filled with an infinite number of coarse, bold crockets breaking the outlines as they converge into the blue. When prosperity came again to Burgos, as to many other Spanish cities, it was owing to the wise enactments of Isabella the Catholic. The concordat of 1851 enumerated nine archbishoprics in Spain, among which Burgos stands second on the list. Such is Burgos, serenely beautiful, rich and exultant, the apotheosis of the Spanish Renaissance as well as studded with exquisitely beautiful Gothic work. She is mighty and magnificent, speaking perhaps rather to the senses than the heart, but in a language which can never be forgotten. Although various epochs created her, radically different in their means and methods, still there is a certain intangible unity in her gorgeous expression and a unique picturesqueness in her dazzling presence. III AVILA [Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid CATHEDRAL OF AVILA]