Gone are the days when Tolaitola was a peerless jewel, for which Moors and Christians fought, until at last the Believers of the True Faith drove back the Arabs who fled southward from whence they had emerged. Long closed are also the famous smithies, where swords--Tolesian blades they were then called--were hammered so supple that they could bend like a watchspring, so strong they could cleave an anvil, and so sharp they could cut an eiderdown pillow in twain without displacing a feather. Distant, moreover, are the nights of _capa y espada_ and of miracles wrought by the Virgin; dwindled away to a meagre shadow is the princely magnificence of the primate prelates of all the Spains, of those spiritual princes who neither asked the Pope's advice nor received orders from St. Peter at Rome. Besides, of the two hundred thousand souls proud to be called sons of Toledo in the days of Charles-Quint, but seventeen thousand inhabitants remain to-day to guard the nation's great city-museum, unsullied as yet by progress and modern civilization, by immense advertisements and those other necessities of daily life in other climes. The city's history explains the mixture of architectural styles and the bizarre modifications introduced in Gothic, Byzantine, or Arab structures. Legends accuse Toledo of having been mysteriously founded long before the birth of Rome on her seven hills. To us, however, it first appears in history as a Roman stronghold, capital of one of Hispania's provinces. St. James, as has been seen, roamed across this peninsula; he came to Toledo. So delighted was he with the site and the people--saith the tradition--that he ordained that the city on the Tago should contain the primate church of all the Spains. The vanquished Romans withdrew, leaving to posterity but feeble ruins to the north of the city; the West Goths built the threatening city walls which still are standing, and, having turned Christians, their King Recaredo was baptized in the river's waters, and Toledo became the flourishing capital of the Visigothic kingdom (512 A.D.). The Moors, in their northward march, conquered both the Church and the state. Legends hover around the sudden apparition of Berber hordes in Andalusia, and accuse Rodrigo, the last King of the Goths, of having outraged Florinda, a beautiful girl whom he saw, from his palace window, bathing herself in a marble bath near the Tago,--the bath is still shown to this day,--and with whom he fell in love. The father, Count Julian, Governor of Ceuta, called in the Moors to aid him in his righteous work of vengeance, and, as often happens in similar cases, the allies lost no time in becoming the masters and the conquerors. Nearly four hundred years did the Arabs remain in their beloved Tolaitola; the traces of their occupancy are everywhere visible: in the streets and in the _patios_, in fanciful arabesques, and above all in Santa Maria la Blanca.