considerable height above the springing of the dome, in order to resist its thrust, and are finished at the top with a rich projecting corbel-table, from which, at regular intervals, five divisions are brought still further forward, looking much like machicoulis, and yet evidently introduced only for the sake of effect, as there is no access to them. These projections are square in plan, carried on very large corbels, and the cornice under the eaves has a course of square stones set diagonally--a kind of enrichment very common in brickwork, and which I saw in the early church of San Pedro at Gerona. The great depth of this cornice is very imposing. The stone roof above it abuts against a gable-wall, carried by the arch on its western side; but owing to the destruction of the original finish of the staircase turrets, and the erection of a steeple in the angle between the choir and the transept, the general view has to some extent lost its original stern Romanesque character. [Illustration: Apse of Choir.] [Illustration: Newel Staircase.] The exterior of the other apses on the south has the same appearance of age. The wall of one of them has been raised several feet at a later date, but the other is still altogether in its original state. Both are, of course, very low and insignificant as compared with the choir. The whole detail of the great eastern apse appeared to me to have much more the air of having been the work of an Italian than of a French architect. The masonry is in extremely large square blocks, many of the window-heads being cut out of one block of stone, and in this part of the church I found a large number of masons’ marks on the face of the stones. These tally, like most of those I have seen in Spain, very closely with those which are found in our own buildings, and indeed with those which are used by our own masons at the present day: it is, however, comparatively rare to find them on the outer face of the stones.[269] The stones marked in this way are tooled on the face, and I observed that stones worked by the same man were marked indifferently with perpendicular and diagonal tooling lines. On the south side of the choir, just at its junction with the principal apse, is a staircase which leads to the roof: this is carried up in a large square turret, and is of remarkable construction. The newel is 1 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and worked in stones, each of about 2 ft. 3 in. in height. Each of these has three corbels, with sockets for the steps, which are thus supported by the newel and yet independent of it. The aisles on either side of the choir seem to have been intended to form the lower stage of steeples. On the south side the Romanesque tower seems to have been built no higher than the height of the side walls of the church; but subsequently--circa A.D. 1300-1350--it was carried up as an octagonal steeple, with buttresses against the canted sides of the lower stage over the angles