I have already alluded to the fine Square called _Plaza de Alonso XII._, of which the façade of the _Hospital Real_ and the Churrigueresque façade of the cathedral form two sides. Its other two sides are formed by the handsome _Consistorio_, which faces the Cathedral, and the façade of the _Colegio de San Jerónimo_. This last-named building dates from the first or second decade of the sixteenth century, and its striking façade is a mixture of the Romanesque and the Græco-Roman styles. At present the principal entrance is in the _Calle del Franco_, not far from that of the adjoining _Colegio de Fonseca_, and it is used as a normal school for boys, but it was formerly a college for poor students. An inscription on the southern wall of the Doric cloister tells us that in the year 1652 the ancient college of San Gerónimo (St. Jerome) was moved to this building. That was at the time when the monks of _San Martin Pinario_ were buying up the buildings round their monastery in order that the latter might be enlarged. When Philip II. was negotiating with England for the hand of our Queen Mary, he awaited in Santiago the return of his ambassadors, and was entertained at the _Hospital Real_ in the suite of rooms set apart for the reception of royalty. A curious account of Philip’s visit has just come to light in the pages of a diary kept by a village priest of that period. The document was accidentally discovered in a country rectory and handed to Dr. Eladio Oviedo, who, it is to be hoped, will shortly publish it, with valuable annotations. The writer, Amaro Gonzalez, was a _cura_ of Carril, in Galicia, and his entries in his diary remind us of those of Pepys. “In the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and fifty-four,” he writes, “on the twenty-second of June, King Philip entered the city of Santiago....” and he goes on to tell how on the following day the whole company attended Mass in the Cathedral, and how, after dinner, they were entertained by a bull fight in the _Plaza de Alonso XII._, the King watching from one of the lower windows of the Hospital. Three days later the Royal party embarked at Coruña and set sail for England with a great fleet.[210] In an earlier entry he tells how “a corsair coming from England, under the command of Drake, did much damage,” which he says he cannot attempt to describe. “Drake came with seventy ships, I believe he wants to intercept the king’s ships that are coming with gold from America.” And later on he writes: “An Armada is being fitted out against Lutheran England and against that Lutheran ---- Isabel” (our good Queen Bess!). The word he uses is too insulting to be translated. In another place he describes a very hard winter, followed by a remarkably cold summer, “so cold that in the hottest days of the year it was too cold to walk to church.” He adds naïvely that all the things he writes about happened in his own days, and, as it were, before his very eyes, and that he writes them down because (unlike Pepys) he