In the capital of Catalonia, twentieth-century civilization and the mediæval spirit may still be called next-door neighbors. The airy boulevards and handsome villas of suburban Algiers are not more strikingly contrasted with the ancient Moorish streets than the new quarters of Barcelona with the old. The Rambla, its electric lights, its glittering shops, cafés, clubs, and theaters, recalls a Parisian boulevard. In many of the tortuous, malodorous streets of the old town there is hardly room for a wheelbarrow to be drawn along; no sunbeam has ever penetrated the gloom. Let us take a penny tramway from the Rambla to the gloomy, grandiose old church of Santa Maria del Mar. Between the city and the sea rises the majestic monument to Columbus, conspicuous as a lighthouse alike from land and sea. We follow a broad palm-bordered alley and pleasure garden beyond which are seen the noble harbor bristling with masts and the soft blue Mediterranean. Under the palms lounge idle crowds listening to a band, shading themselves as best they can from the burning sun of November! What a change when we leave the tramway and the airy, handsome precincts of the park, and plunge into the dark, narrow street behind the Lonja Palace. The somber picture is not without relief. Round about the ancient façade of the church are cloth-shops, the gay wares hanging from each story, as if the shopmen made a display of all their wares. Here were reds, yellows, greens of brightest hue, some of these woolen blankets, shawls, and garments of every description being gay to crudeness; grass green, scarlet, orange, sky-blue, dazzled the eye, but the general effect was picturesque and cheerful. The dingy little square looked ready for a festival. In reality, a funeral service was taking place in the church. If Spanish interiors are always dark and depressing, what must they be when draped with black? No sooner does the door swing behind us here than daylight is shut out completely as on entering a mine; we are obliged to grope our way by the feeble rays of light penetrating the old stained glass of the clerestory. The lovely lancets of the aisles are hidden by huge black banners, the vast building being only lighted by a blaze of wax tapers here and there. Sweet soft chanting of boys' voices, with a delicious organ accompaniment, was going on when I entered, soon to be exchanged for the unutterably monotonous and lugubrious intoning of black-robed choristers. They formed a procession and, chanting as they went, marched to a side altar before which a priest was performing mass. The Host elevated, all marched back again, the dreary intoning now beginning afresh. It is impossible to convey any adequate notion of the dreariness of the service. If the Spaniards understand how to enjoy to the uttermost what Browning calls "the wild joy of living," they also know how to clothe death with all the terrors of mediæval superstition. It takes