I need say but little of the Cathedral. Its design is said to be the greatest work of Herrera (A.D. 1585); but a small portion only of it has been completed. The complete plan is given by Ponz.[75] It was to have been cruciform, with four towers at the angles, four bays of nave, and four of choir, with aisles to both. The stalls of the Coro were intended to be in the choir behind the altar. There is a large cloister on the north side of the nave. The nave of four bays, with its aisles and chapels on either side of them, is all that is completed; and, large as it is, the parts are all so colossal that there is not the impression of size that there ought to be. The piers are some 60 feet from centre to centre north and south, and 45 feet east and west; they carry bold arches, above which runs a great cornice surmounted by a white (plastered and panelled) groined ceiling, which contrasts violently with the dark sombre grey of the stonework below. These vaults are of red tile; and if the plaster were altogether taken off, the vault covered with mosaic, and the mouldings of the cornices carefully removed, the interior would really be fine and impressive. Nothing, however, could ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying buttresses were of course an abomination; so in their place he erected enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry projecting about forty feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line at the top. However, it is only right to give Herrera his due, and to say, that after all he only did what Wren did at St. Paul’s, but had the courage and the honesty to let his deeds be seen, instead of spending a vast sum, like Wren, in concealing them. And again it is plain that he thought much more of the internal effect of his church than of the external;--how unlike ourselves, who but too often, if we can attract men to our new churches by a smart spire or a picturesque exterior, seem to forget that we must make the interior noble, winning, solemn, and instructive too, if we would keep them there! A few fragments of the old cathedral remain to the north-east of the present church, but I could not obtain access to them; and I think nothing now exists but a wall pierced with one or two fourteenth-century windows.