There is a story concerning this señora’s work in the Escorial. It appears that after a tiff with her husband, Luisa Roldan carved the figure of San Miguel, and represented her own seraphic countenance in that of the saint, while the scowling demon at his feet exhibits the features of the irascible husband. The pictures in the vestry are mostly copies of Titian and Tintoretto, but the ‘Martyrdom of San Pedro’ is said to be an original work of Caravaggio. In the four Minor Cloisters are several pictures. One is an anonymous work, a landscape, and the others, of no great merit, are portraits of saints. The crucifix to be seen here was the work of an Indian convert to Christianity. The spacious Refectory has dining tables of wood on stone pillars. Over the foundation stone is the Prior’s seat, and there are two pulpits in the hall. The kitchens, wine cellars, and other domestic offices are in this part of the monastery. The Real Monasterio is the most characteristic portion of the huge pile of the Escorial, and its austerity and atmosphere of contemplation and piety testify to the religious and ascetic spirit of the royal recluse who founded it. This is no palace of mere delight and of luxury. It is a temple and a retreat, a sanctuary from the world of strife and unrest, and an asylum for the penitent and the devout. It is a monument of the Catholic faith, built with the devotion of artists and labourers inspired by a deep zeal for religion, erected without regard to the immense cost of its construction and furnishing, and dedicated in the name of the pious San Lorenzo to the worship of God and the Holy Virgin. Truly a strangely interesting memorial. Here, in the odour of piety, surrounded by friars and monks, Philip II. lived the life of renunciation and of calm meditation. This tabernacle in the wilderness is a symbol of the mind of Spain in the days of her power, the manifestation of her profound faith, and a tribute to the seriousness and quietism which were the ideals of one of the most remarkable and complex of her rulers. We feel that the very stones of the building reveal the nature of Philip, the king who would be saint, the ambitious patriot who longed for power and vivid life, and yet realised that the placid existence in the cloister is more excellent than the fevered life of courts. V THE LIBRARY