The worshipers who tread the narrow lanes leading to and from the altar have changed, but little else. The square, mediæval castles with their angular towers still command the approach of the main thoroughfares. The crabbed old watchman with lantern and stick under his cape treads his doddering gait across the courtyards through the night hours, crying after the peal of the bell above, "Las doce han dado y sereno," "Las trece han dado y aleviendo," "Las quince han dado y nublano," just as in the middle ages, so that the good peasant may know time and weather and merely turn in his bed, if neither crops nor creatures need care. Santa Maria de Regla too stands to-day as she stood in the middle ages, a monument to the care and affection of her children. She has the same spirituality, harmony of proportions, slenderness, and purity of lines, and she looks down and blesses us to-day with the same serenity and queenly grace which she wore in the fourteenth century. She is the finest Gothic cathedral in Spain. V TOLEDO [Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO] I withdrew at once with the Morisco into the cloisters of the Cathedral.--_Don Quixote._ I The peace of death is over Toledo, unbroken by any invasion of modern thought or new architecture since her last deep sighs mingled with the distant echoes of the middle ages. But she still wears the mantle of her imperial glory. She sleeps in the fierce, beating sunlight of the twentieth century like the enchanted princess of fairy tales, undisturbed by, and unconscious of, the world around her. The atmosphere is transparent; the sky spreads from lapis-lazuli to a cobalt field back of the snow-capped, turquoise Sierra de Gredo mountains, while a clear streak of lemon color throws out the sharp silhouette of the battlements and towers. There is sadness and desolation in the decay, a pathetically forlorn and tragical widowhood, strangely affecting to the senses. A blackened ruin, lonely and forsaken, Already wrapt in winding-sheets of sand; So lies Toledo till the dead awaken,-- A royal spoil of Time's resistless hand. Toledo! The name rings with history, romance and legend. Enthralling images of the past rise before one and vanish like the ghosts of Macbeth. Capital of Goth, of Moslem, and of Christian; mightiest of hierarchical seats,[8] city of monarch and priest, she has worn a double diadem. Gautier says, "Jamais reine antique, pas même Cléopatre, qui buvait des perles, jamais courtisane Vénitienne du temps de Titien n'eut un écrin plus étincelant, un trousseau plus riche que Notre Dame de Tolède." But the flame of life which once burned warm and bright is now extinct and all her glory has vanished. Neglected churches, convents, palaces, and ruins lie huddled together, a stern and solemn vision of the past, waiting with the silence of the tomb, broken only by the continual tolling of her hoarse bells.