The nave piers are very bold and vigorous in design; they are planned with triple shafts on each face of a square core, and have square caps and bases. The arches are very simple, but pointed. The massiveness of the piers is very remarkable, for though the clear width of the nave is only about twenty-three feet, the columns are not less than seven feet across. The nave is groined in square, the aisles in oblong compartments. There are no groining ribs in the aisles, though the vaults are quadripartite, and in the transepts there are pointed waggon roofs. The central dome is carried on pendentives, similar to those in the old cathedral at Salamanca. It has an arcaded and pierced stage above the pendentives, and then a dome or vault, divided into sixteen compartments by ribs of bold section, the filling in between which is a succession of small cylindrical vaults, so that the construction inside looks rather complicated. It is, moreover, so defaced by whitewash and plaster as to produce a much less fine effect than the dome at Salamanca; but, on the other hand, there can be but little doubt, I think, that it is the earlier of the two by some years. The exterior of the dome, though much decayed and mutilated, is still very noble in its design and effect. It will be seen that in many respects it is singularly like that at Salamanca. The circular angle turrets, the dormers on the cardinal sides, are similar in idea, though ruder and heavier here than there: here, too, the outline of the dome is more thoroughly domical. All the courses of stone in the dome seem to have been scalloped at the edges. The arches of the windows and arcades are all semi-circular, and the angles of the dome have a sort of sharp fringe of ornament, in which we see the very earliest kind of suggestion of a crocket: it is very simple, and extremely effective. Unfortunately this extremely interesting work is not only very much decayed, but also rent throughout with cracks, and I much fear that ere long it may cease to exist. The loss of such an example would be one of the greatest misfortunes for the student of Christian art in Spain, and for rarity and peculiarity I am not speaking too strongly when I say that we in England have no monument of the middle ages which is one whit more precious. It is to be hoped that the authorities of the church will do their best to preserve it from further decay as far as possible, and to repair it in the most tenderly conservative spirit. The aisles have very broad massive buttresses, and the corbel-tables which crown the wall are carried round them also. There were simple round-arched, shafted windows in each bay, and the clerestory was finished like the aisle with a corbel-table. [Illustration: No. 11. ZAMORA CATHEDRAL p. 94. EXTERIOR FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.]