Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) Transcriber's note: The etext attempts to replicate the printed book as closely as possible. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected. The spellings of names, places and Spanish words used by the author have not been corrected or modernized by the etext transcriber. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text body. Letters within square brackets preceded by = indicate a letter with a line over it in the original text. [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL. PORTICO DE DA GLORIA.] SOME ACCOUNT OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN. BY GEORGE EDMUND STREET, A.R.A., HONORARY MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, VIENNA. [Illustration: SEGOVIA, FROM THE ALCAZAR.] “The old paths, where is the good way.” JEREMIAH vi. 16. _SECOND EDITION._ LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1869. _The right of Translation is reserved._ TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, _&c. &c. &c._, THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED AS A TESTIMONY OF THE AUTHOR’S RESPECT AND ADMIRATION. PREFACE. The book which I here commit to the reader requires, I fear, some apology on my part. I feel that I have undertaken almost more than an artist like myself, always at work, has any right to suppose he can properly accomplish in the little spare time he can command. Nevertheless, I have always felt that part of the duty which every artist owes to his mother art is to study her developments wherever they are to be seen, and whenever he can find the opportunity. Moreover, I believe that in this age it is only by the largest kind of study and range of observation that any artist can hope to perfect himself in so complex and difficult an art as architecture, and that it is only by studying the development of Gothic architecture in all countries that we can form a true and just estimate of the marvellous force of the artistic impulse which wrought such wonders all over Europe in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. In a day of revival, such as this, I believe it to be necessary that we should form this just estimate of bygone art; because I am sure that, unless our artists learn their art by studying patiently, lovingly, and constantly the works of their great predecessors, they will never themselves be great. I know full well how much hostility there is on the part of some to any study of foreign examples; but as from my boyhood up I have never lost any opportunity of visiting and studying our old English buildings, and as my love for our own national artistic peculiarities rather increases than diminishes the more I study the contemporary buildings of the Continent, I have no hesitation in giving to the world what I have been able to learn about Spanish art.