An Englishman by the name of Maurice, being high in the favor of Ferdinand, the saint and hero, laid the foundation, A. D. 1221, of the Burgos cathedral, which fairly challenges comparison with any or all of the finest specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in the world. Having been built in successive periods, and these at long distances from each other, there is a want of harmony in the parts, but this is observed only by the professional eye, while to others, and especially on one who enters this first of the great edifices of Spain, its interior bursts with a blaze of grandeur covered with beauty, that fairly dazzles while it awes and delights him. And after having visited and leisurely studied half a dozen others, including those of Toledo and Seville, I regard the cathedral of Burgos as exhibiting a degree of perfection in detail, an elaborate execution to adorn and embellish a sanctuary, not equalled by any of its rivals in Spain. And it is to Spain that we must come to see what the art and consecrated wealth of princes and priests can do to build temples in honor of God. Italy has nothing like them. St. Peter’s is the largest Christian church in the world, and perhaps more labor and money have been expended upon it. But as a Christian church it is a failure, without and within. Not so with any of these magnificent monuments of human power and devotion. The towers of this, at Burgos, with their graceful, open-worked pinnacles, spring up as if seeking the sky. The gates are grand, and surrounded and crowned with _bas reliefs_. Around the towers are seventy statues, of prophets and apostles, and over the transept are twenty-four life-size statues of female saints, each covered with a canopy, as guardian angels on this house of prayer. Moses and Aaron, in stone, stand by one of the doors, with Peter and Paul, and in the vestibule is the Saviour, and around him the four evangelists are writing the holy gospels, while at least fifty statues, apostles, angels with candlesticks, seraphs, and cherubs, add to the ornament of this one gate.