The Moors were always distinguished by the beautiful use they made of plaster; and whether or no these Segovian buildings were executed by Moorish architects, it is quite certain that at any rate we owe them to their influence and example. The patterns used are generally such as in stone-work would be unhesitatingly attributed to the end of the fifteenth or first half of the sixteenth century, and to this period no doubt the works I have been describing belong. They deserve a detailed notice because they prove, as do most Moorish works, that plaster may be used truthfully and artistically, and that without any approach to the contemptible effect which the imbecility and dishonesty of the nineteenth-century designers of plaster-work have contrived to impress on almost all their productions. My last work in Segovia was to go to the Alcazar to get a sketch of the town, with the cathedral rising in a noble mass in its very centre, backed by the line of the Guadarrama mountains, looking black and angry with the storm-clouds which swept over the sky and around their summits at sunset; and then strolling quietly back into the town, I went into the cathedral, to be impressed, as one always must be in such a place, by the aweful solemnity which even the latest Gothic architects in Spain knew how to impart to their buildings. [Illustration: SEGOVIA:--Ground Plan of the Cathedral: Plate XII. W. West, Lithr. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.] CHAPTER X. MADRID--ALCALÁ--GUADALAJARA--SIGÜENZA. On my first journey to Madrid I travelled most of the way from Valladolid by diligence, and though the way was long and weary, the passage of the Sierra de Guadarrama was very fine, and I remember few pictures more lovely than that which we saw at sunrise, as we climbed the northern side of the mountains amid groups of stone-pines; whilst the steep descent to the village of Guadarrama, on the south, with a slight distant view of Madrid, and a near view of the Escorial, was quite a thing to be remembered with pleasure. Now, however, instead of arriving at Madrid hot, dusty, and sore with a diligence journey, the railway is completed, and the line of country it takes is so beautiful between Avila and Madrid as to leave no room for regrets for the old passage of the mountains by road.