Arab influence is only too evident in the buildings and houses, in the Alcázar, and in the streets; unluckily, these remembrances of a happy past depress the dreamy visitor obliged to recognize the infinite sadness which accompanied the expulsion of the Moors by intolerant tyrants from the land they had inhabited, formed, and moulded to their taste. Nowhere is this so evident as in Coria, a forgotten bit of mediæval Moor-land. The poet's exclamation is full of bitterness and resignation when he exclaims: "Is it possible that this heap of ruins should have been in other times the splendid court of Zeth and Mondhir!" * * * * * As an architectural building, the cathedral of Coria is a parish church, which, removed to any other town, would be devoid of any and all beauty. In other words, the impressions it produces are entirely dependent upon its local surroundings; eliminate these, and the temple is worthless from an artistic or poetical point of view. It was begun in 1120, most likely by Arab workmen; it was finished toward the beginning of the sixteenth century. Honestly speaking, it is a puzzle what the artisans did in all those long years; doubtless they slept at their task, or else decades passed away without work of any kind being done, or again, perhaps only one mason was employed at a time. The interior is that of a simple Gothic church of one aisle, 150 feet long by fifty-two wide and eighty-four high; the high altar is situated in the rounded apse; in the centre of the church the choir stalls of the fifteenth century obstruct the view of the walls, decorated only by means of pilasters which pretend to support the Gothic vaulting. To the right, in the altar chapel, is a fine marble sepulchre of the sixteenth century, in which the chasuble of the kneeling bishop portrayed is among the best pieces of imitative sculpture to be seen in Spain. To the right of the high altar, and buried in the cathedral wall, a door leads out into the _paseo_,--a walk on the broad walls of the city, with a delightful view southwards across the river to the prairie in the distance. Where can a prettier and more natural cloister be found? The western façade is never used, and is surrounded by the old cemetery,--a rather peculiar place for a cemetery in a cathedral church; the northern façade is anti-artistic, but the tower to the right has one great virtue, that of comparative height. Though evidently intended to be Gothic, the Arab taste, so pronounced throughout this region, got the better of the architect, and he erected a square steeple crowned by a cupola.