The cathedral of Leon is first seen some three or four hours before the city is reached. It stands up boldly above the well-wooded valley, and is backed by a noble range of mountain-peaks to the north; so that, though the road was somewhat monotonous and wearying, I rode on picturing to myself the great things I was soon to see. Unfortunately I visited Leon a year too late, for I came just in time to see the cathedral bereft of its southern transept, which had been pulled down to save it from falling, and was being reconstructed under the care of a Madrilenian architect--Señor Lavinia. I saw his plans and some of the work which was being put in its place, and the sight made me wish with double earnestness that I had been there before he had commenced his work! In England or in France such a work would be full of risk, and might well fill all lovers of our old buildings with alarm; but in Spain there is absolutely no school for the education of architects, the old national art is little understood and apparently very little studied, and there are no new churches and no minor restorations on which the native architects may try their prentice hands. In England for some years we have lived in the centre of a church-building movement as active and hearty perhaps as any ever yet known; our advantages, therefore, as compared with those possessed by foreigners generally, are enormous; whilst perhaps, on the other hand, in no country has so little been done as in Spain during the present century. Yet in England few of us would like to think of pulling down and reconstructing one side of a cathedral, and few would doubt that art and history would lose much in the process, even in the hands of the most able and conservative architect. The two great architectural features of Leon are the cathedral and the church of San Isidoro; and to the former, though it is by much the most modern of the two, I must first of all ask my readers to turn their attention. Spaniards are rightly proud of this noble church, and the proverbs which assert its pre-eminence seem to be numerous. One, giving the characteristics of several cathedrals, is worth quoting:-- “Dives Toletana, Sancta Ovetensis Pulchra Leonina, fortis Salamantina.” And again there is another Leonese couplet:-- “Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza, Compostella en fortaleza, esta en sutileza.” So again, just as our own people wrote that jubilant verse on the door-jamb of the Chapter-house at York, here on a column in front of the principal door was inscribed-- “Sint licet Hispaniis ditissima, pulchraque templa, Hoc tamen egregiis omnibus arte prius.”