Church, it is some comfort to feel that our people have tried to retain due respect for some of the other daily uses of the Church, inferior though they be. In Spain, though I was in parish churches almost every day during my journey, I do not remember seeing the western gallery in use more than once. Sometimes it has been my fate to meet with men who suppose that the common objection to galleries in churches is, that there is no old “authority” for them. Well, here in Spain there is authority without end; and I commend to those Anglicans who wish to revive or retain their use in England the curious fact, that the country in which we find it is one distinguished beyond all others by the very decided character of its Romanism, and the period in which they were erected there, one in which Rome was probably more hostile to such as they than any other in the whole course of her history.[45] The gallery of San Nicolas is less important than most of its class are; and there is indeed little to detain any one within its walls. Externally there is a low tower rising out of the west end of the south aisle. This has a fine third-pointed south doorway with an ogee crocketed canopy, and a belfry stage of two lancet-lights on each face, roofed with a flat roof of pantiles. The remainder of the church has been much altered; but a good flying-buttress remains on the south side, and one or two lancet-windows which convey the impression that the first foundation of the church must have been in the thirteenth century. The east wall is not square, but built so as to suit the irregular site. The whole church is ungainly and ugly on the exterior, and its planning and proportions neither picturesque nor scientific. It is, in short, one of those churches of which we have so many in England, from which nothing is to be learnt save on some small matter of detail; and the alterations of its roofs, windows, and walls have in the end left it an ungainly and uncouth outline, which is redeemed only by its picturesque situation on the slope of the hill just above the cathedral parvise, with which it groups, and from which it is well seen.