[Note *: Instances of this lofty spirit are frequent in the history of the Spanish peoples. When, after their first uprising against the mother country, the people of Honduras (Central America) met in Congress to frame a Constitution, a priest rose and proposed that before anything else was done, every slave in the country should be set free. And the measure was carried unanimously and enthusiastically by the Congress, which must have included many slaveholders. It took the United States forty years to follow this example.] The Cathedral took one hundred and seventeen years to build, the first stone having been laid in 1402 and the lantern having been finished by Juan Gil de Hontañon in 1519. Of the mosque certain portions were left: the Giralda, the Patio de los Naranjos, and the portal called the Puerta del Lagarto. The latter is named after the wooden model of an alligator which hangs from the roof. Three or four centuries ago the mummified form of a real alligator hung there. It was one of the gifts of an Egyptian khalifa to the daughter of a Castilian king, whom he sought in marriage. The saurian was accompanied from the banks of the Nile by various animals peculiar to that fertile region, but these interesting offerings failed to make any impression on the heart of the Infanta. Thus the forlorn-looking effigy of the reptile is in reality an affecting memorial of unrequited love. Churches, it has been remarked, were considered in the Middle Ages very proper repositories for curiosities of all sorts. The cloister of the Lagarto contains also an elephant's tusk, weighing seventy pounds, and a horse's bit, said to be that of Babieca, the Cid's charger. Very grateful is the sudden cool of the great church when you enter it from the sun-scorched plaza. Then there comes over you a feeling of profound reverence, followed very soon by an infinite restfulness. There is no place in Seville where you more willingly linger. A holy calm pervades the whole building, and you wonder that it should have suggested to Théophile Gautier such fantastic comparisons. If it were not the temple of Christ, I could believe it to be the temple of Silence.