Next morning, I again claimed the good offices of Father Buendia, and was conducted by him to “the Tomb of the Kings;” perhaps the most magnificent sepulchre in the world. It is impossible to conceive any thing more gorgeous than this mausoleum: the descent is by a deep staircase, underneath the great altar of the church; the walls of the staircase being entirely of blood-jasper, of the utmost beauty and polish. The mausoleum itself is circular; the walls are of jasper, and black marble: and in rows, one over another, are ranged the coffins of the kings of Spain. They are all here, these masters of a hemisphere! a little dust in these gorgeous urns, is all that remains of the mighty kings whose deeds fill volumes--of Charles, who kept the world in a flame, and left it for a cloister,--of Philip, for whose ambition and crimes it was too narrow. Death certainly owns no other palace like this. The queens of Spain are not all here; only those who have given birth to an heir to the throne. There are eight kings, and eight queens, on opposite sides of the mausoleum; and a splendid urn stands empty and open, destined to receive the present inheritor of the throne, who, when he visits the Escurial, never fails to enter his tomb, there to receive, if not to profit by, a lesson upon the duties of kings, and the common destinies of all. A lamp, always burning, is suspended from the centre of the mausoleum, giving just sufficient light to make legible the names of its owners, inscribed in gold letters upon a bronze tablet. I did not enter the Pantheon of the Infantas, which contains no fewer than fifty-nine urns.