I have said that the "coffer of the Cid" was made for carrying baggage. A very interesting Spanish baggage-chest, although more modern than the Cid's by several centuries, is now the property of Señor Moreno Carbonero (Plate iii.). This very competent authority believes it to have belonged to Isabella the Catholic, and says that it was formerly the usage of the sovereigns of this country to mark their baggage-boxes with the first quartering of the royal arms and also with their monogram. Such is the decoration, consisting of repeated castles and the letter Y (for Ysabel), upon this trunk. The space between is painted red upon a surface thinly spread with wax. Strips of iron, twisted to imitate the girdle of Saint Francis, are carried over all the frame, surrounding the castles and the letters. This box was found at Ronda.[12] [12] To keep the dust or rain from entering these trunks, they were covered, when on the march, with stout square cloths called _reposteros_, which were often richly worked and bore the owner's arms or monogram. The same word subsequently came to mean the tapestried or other decorative cloths displayed in Spain on gala days from balconies of public edifices, or the mansions of the aristocracy; but dictionaries which were printed at the close of the eighteenth century still define the _repostero_ as "caparison, a square cloth with the arms of a prince or lord on it, which serves to cover a led-horse, or sumpter-horse." [Illustration: III _ARCÓN_ (_15th Century_)] A handsome _arcón_, dating from the same period as this baggage-chest of Isabella the Catholic, namely, the end of the fifteenth century, is stated by its owner, Don Manuel Lopez de Ayala, to have belonged to Cardinal Cisneros (Plate iv.). The material is wood, covered inside with dark blue cloth, and outside with red velvet, most of the nap of which is worn away. The dimensions are four feet six inches in length, two feet in height, and twenty inches in depth. The chest, which has a triple lock, is covered with _repoussé_ iron plates representing twisted columns and other architectural devices, combined with Gothic thistle-leaves. A coat of arms is on the front. Such is an outline of the history of these Spanish chests. Most of the earlier ones are cumbersome and scantily adorned. Then, as time proceeds, we find on them the florid Gothic carving, unsurpassed for purity and charm; then the Renaissance, with its characteristic ornament of urns, and birds, and intertwining frond and ribbon; and finally, towards, and lasting through the greater portion of, the eighteenth century, the tasteless and decadent manner of Baroque. Yet even in the worst and latest we descry from time to time a flickering remnant of the art of Moorish Spain.