The cathedral is a building of picturesque angles, but, except that it is spacious, as so many of the Mexican churches are, makes no particular boast of architecture. A copy of the marvellous tilma, over the altar, poetically represents Our Lady in a blue cloak covered with stars, and a robe said to be of crimson and gold, her hands clasped, and her foot on a crescent supported by a cherub. This is the substance of a description of it given by a traveller who had better opportunities for seeing it closely than had the present writer during the fiesta of Guadalupe in 1867. Whether the original picture is rude or not, from being impressed upon a blanket, he has not personal knowledge, though aware that it has been described as rude. Nevertheless, its idea and design are beautiful and tender. Everywhere in Mexico it is the favorite and, indeed, the most lovely presentment of Our Lady. Like a compassionate angel of the twilight, it looks out of many a shrine, and, among all the images for which the Mexican Church is noted, none is perhaps more essentially ideal, and, in that point of view, _real_. Where it appears wrought in a sculpture of 1686, by Francisco Alberto, on the side of San Agustin's at the capital, it is, though quaint, very admirable for its purity and gentleness. Time respects it, and the birds have built their nests near it. The various chapels in and about the city dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe are recognized by the star-mantled figure. The Baths of the Peñon, the cathedral at the Plaza, the suburb of Tacubaya, have each their pictorial witnesses of the faith of Guadalupe; and to say that its manifestation abounds in Mexico is but to state a fact of commonplace. Rich and poor venerate the tradition of the Marvellous Appearance, now for three centuries celebrated, and always, it seems, by multitudes.