If my readers will refer to the engraving of the ground-plan, they will be struck by the extreme simplicity and uniformity of the original outline of the cathedral, and the entire absence of all excrescences, whether of transepts or chapels. In this respect it is not a little like some of the finest French examples, such as Notre Dame, Paris, and Bourges, and extremely unlike the ordinary early Spanish plan, in which the transepts, the lantern, and the three eastern apses, are always distinctly and emphatically marked. Here the excrescences are all later additions. The chapels of the chevet were very small, and almost contained within the semi-circle which forms its outline. There is no lantern, and the transepts are hardly recognized on the ground-plan. The aim of the great French architects of the period was to reduce their work to an almost classic simplicity and uniformity; and their ambition was evidently shared by the architect who presided over the erection of this Cathedral at Toledo. Let us now examine with some minuteness the arrangement of the plan of the chevet. This is rightly the first point to be considered; for this is always the keynote, so to speak, of the whole scheme of such a church; and it is here that the surest evidence is afforded of what I believe to be the foreign origin of the design; for not even in details is there anything by which it is more easy in some cases to trace the origin of an old church than in the general scheme of the ground-plan; and in large churches the plan of the chevet is that which regulates every other part. To this part therefore I must now address myself. [Illustration: Diagrams of Vaulting.]