SALAMANCA--ZAMORA--BENAVENTE. The long dreary road which leads over the corn-growing plain from Medina del Campo is at last relieved some two or three miles before Salamanca is reached by the view of its imposing group of steeples and domes, which rise gradually over the low hills on the northern side. The long line of walls round the city still in part remains, but seems daily to be falling more and more to decay, and indeed generally all its grand buildings speak rather of death than of life. Few even of Spanish towns seem to have suffered more at the hands of the French during the Peninsular war than did Salamanca, and we ought not perhaps to be surprised if its old prosperity comes but slowly back again to it. The public buildings here are generally grandiose and imposing; but almost all of them are of the period of the Renaissance, and there are no very remarkable examples of this bad age. Still when they were perfect there must have been a certain stateliness about them, befitting the importance of a great university. The main objects of attraction to me were the two cathedrals, the one grand and new, of the sixteenth century, by whose side and as it were under whose wing nestles the smaller but most precious old cathedral of the twelfth century, fortunately preserved almost intact when the new one was erected, and still carefully maintained, though, I believe, very seldom used for service. The remarkable relative positions of these two cathedrals will be readily understood by the accompanying ground-plan,[88] in which, as will be seen, the vast bulk of the later church quite overwhelms the modest dimensions of the earlier. I know indeed few spots, if any, in which the importance, or the contrary, of mere size in architecture can be better tested than here. Most educated artists would, I dare say, agree with me in rating size as the lowest of all really artistic qualities in architecture; and here we find that the small and insignificant old church produces as good an effect as the large and boastfully ambitious new one, though its dimensions are altogether inferior. This is owing to the subdivision of parts, and to the valuable simplicity which so markedly characterizes them. On the other hand, it would be wrong to forget that from another point of view mere size is of the primest importance, for we may well feel, when we compare, for instance, an extremely lofty church with one of very modest height, that in the former there is on the part of the founders an evident act of sacrifice, whilst in the latter their thoughts have possibly never risen above the merest utilitarianism; and it would be a spirit entirely dead to all religious impressions that could regard such an act of sacrifice otherwise than with extreme admiration.