first to last, there never seems to have been any other attempt to imitate the Christian architectural idea of which it was so grand an exponent. I have purposely avoided going to those parts of Spain in which the Moors were undisputed masters during the middle ages; but here it is impossible to dismiss what they did without proper notice, seeing that, after Granada and Cordoba, perhaps nowhere is there so much to be seen of their work as in Toledo. The buildings to be examined will be best described under certain heads, reserving the cathedral for the last, because some of the Moorish buildings are the oldest in the city, and these lead naturally on to the later works of the same class. The order in which I shall attempt to take them will be therefore as follows:-- I. The Moorish mosque; II. The Jewish synagogues; III. The Moorish houses; IV. The Moorish work in churches; V. The gateways, walls, and bridges; VI. The cathedral and other examples of Christian art. There are, indeed, some works anterior to the rule of the Moors, for below the walls, in the _vega_, are said to be some slight remains of a Roman amphitheatre;[209] in addition to which there are still some fragments of work _possibly_ Visigothic, and anterior therefore to the Moorish Conquest of 711. These are confined to a few capitals which have some appearance of having been re-used by the Moors in their own constructions, such _e.g._ as the capitals of the Mosque now called the “Cristo de la Luz,” and those of the arcades on either side of the church of San Roman, together with some fragments preserved in the court of the hospital of Sta. Cruz. They are very rudely sculptured, and bear so slight a resemblance to the early Romanesque work of the same period, that it is difficult, I think, to decide positively as to their age. It is certain, however, that the earliest distinctly Moorish capitals are entirely unlike them in their character, and quite original in their conception; and it is, of course, very possible that the Moors, pressed by the necessity of the case, would, after their conquest, not only have retained some of the existing buildings, but also have re-used the best of their materials in their new works. [Illustration: S. Cristo de la Luz, Toledo.]