There are two large courts surrounded by arcades: one of them is a model of lightness and beauty, and contains in one of its angles an admirably ornamented staircase. The architect of the Santa Cruz was Enrique Egas, who also built the celebrated hospital of the same name at Valladolid. He designed the whole according to the style then introduced, after the pointed style had been abandoned, and which in Spain received vulgarly the appellation of Plateresco, from the ornaments resembling the embossing of a silversmith. It is also confounded with the Renacimiento. The Plateresco style, from the too great liberty it afforded the architect, of setting aside the classic models, and following his own inventions, has produced in Spain, more than in any other country, (from there being at that period more wealth devoted to the construction of public monuments there than elsewhere,) the evil effects resulting from ill-guided and unrestrained powers of imagination. Fortunately, however, a few architects existed whose more correct taste kept them within some bounds; and who, in deserting the old models, replaced them by a style, if less pure, yet by no means inelegant. The architect Egas appears to have partaken of both natures at different moments; for, while his court above-mentioned is a specimen of consummate grace and good taste, the entrance front of the building is one of the bad examples of the style of the period. The establishment covers a large space, about half the extent occupied by the double palace of the Arab kings of Toledo. The remainder of the site contains two convents,--that of Santiago, and that of the Conception. The hospital was conducted formerly on a scale proportionate to the extent of its accommodation; but it is now no more than a reminiscence; the revenues having probably been incorporated in the recent registrations of national property. The number of inmates at present enjoying the benefits of the foundation amounts to fourteen only.