The situation chosen for the Escurial accords well with the gloomy character of its royal founder. There is no town or city nearer to it than Madrid, which is thirty-four miles distant; a wild and deserted country forms its horizon; and the dark defiles and the brown ridges of the _Sierra Guaderrama_ are its cradle. In the building itself, Philip royally acquitted himself of his vows; for a structure so stupendous in its dimensions, or so surpassing in its internal riches, is nowhere to be found. The building was begun in the year 1563, under the direction of Juan Bautista de Toledo, and finished in 1584; Juan de Herrera presiding over the work during several years preceding its completion. My meditations were interrupted by the welcome entrance of Father Buendia, whom I found an agreeable and rather intelligent man, although a great worshipper of the memory of Philip II. I was first conducted into the church of the monastery, which certainly exceeds in richness and magnificence any thing that I had previously imagined. It is quite impossible to enter into minute descriptions of all that composes this magnificence: the riches of Spain, and her ancient colonies, are exhausted in the materials;--marbles, porphyries, jaspers, of infinite variety, and of the most extraordinary beauty,--gold, silver, and precious stones; and the splendid effect of the whole is not lessened by a nearer inspection; there is no deception, no glitter,--all is real. The whole of the altar-piece in the Capilla Mayor, upwards of ninety feet high and fifty broad, is one mass of jasper, porphyry, marble, and bronze gilded; the eighteen pillars that adorn it, each eighteen feet high, are of deep red and green jasper, and the intervals are of porphyry and marble of the most exquisite polish, and the greatest variety of colour. It is, in fact, impossible to turn the eye in any direction in which it does not rest upon the rarest and richest treasures of nature, or the most excellent works of art; for if it be withdrawn from the magnificence below, by the splendour of the ceiling above, it discovers those admirable frescos of Lucas Jordan, which have earned for him the character of a second Angelo. It would be tedious to enlarge upon the subject of Jordan’s frescos; they are too numerous indeed to be described within the limits of a chapter; but they comprise, it may be said, the whole history of the Christian Religion, beginning from the Promises, and are excelled only by the works of Angelo. The battle of St. Quintin, which ornaments the ceiling of the great stair-case, is considered to be one of the most excellent of Jordan’s frescos.