"Far above houses and palaces, far above the huge cathedral itself, soars the beautiful Giralda, its color a pale pink, incrusted all over with delicate Moorish ornament, so high that its detail is quite lost as you gaze upward; so large that you may easily ride on horseback to the summit, up the broad roadway in the interior.... "In the interior everything is vast, down to the Paschal candle, placed in a candlestick twenty-five feet high, and weighing twenty-five hundred pounds, of wax, while the expenditure of the chapter may be estimated by the fact that eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty litres of wine are consumed annually in the sacrament. Of the ninety-three stained windows many are old and splendid. Their light is undimmed by curtains, for there is an Andalusian proverb that the ray of the sun has no power to injure within the bounds in which the voice of prayer can be heard. In the centre of the nave, near the west door, surrounded by sculptured caravelas, the primitive ships by which the New World was discovered, is the tomb of Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great navigator (who himself rests in Havanna), inscribed,-- "'A CASTILLA Y Á LEON MUNDO NUEVO DIO COLON.' At the opposite end of the church is the royal chapel, where St. Ferdinand, who was canonized in 1627, 'because he carried fagots with his own hands for the burning of heretics,' rests beneath the altar, in a silver sarcophagus. Here also are his Queen, Beatrix, his son Alonzo el Sabio, father of our Queen Eleanor, and Maria de Padilla, the beautiful Morganatic wife of Pedro the Cruel.... "Many of the services in this church reach a degree of splendor which is only equalled by those of St. Peter's; and the two organs, whose gigantic pipes have been compared to the columns of Fingal's Cave, peal forth magnificently. But one ceremony, at least, is far more fantastic than anything at Rome." Frances Elliot, in her "Diary of an Idle Woman in Spain," thus describes this remarkable ceremony: "To the left, within the bars, I am conscious of the presence of a band of stringed instruments,--not only violins and counter-bass, but flutes, flageolets, and hautboys, even a serpent, as they call a quaint instrument associated with my earliest years, forthwith all beginning to play in a most ancient and most homely way, for all the world like a simple village choir, bringing a twang of damp, mouldy, country churches to my mind, sunny English afternoons, and odors of lavender and southern-wood. "As they play--these skilled musicians--a sound of youthful voices comes gathering in, fresh, shrill, and childlike, rising and falling to the rhythm. "All at once the music grows strangely passionate, the voices and the stringed instruments seem to heave and sigh in tender accents, long-drawn notes and sobs wail out melodious cries for mercy and invocations for pardon, growing louder and intenser each moment.