The Escorial itself may be described as an enormous heap of granite formed into a tripartite whole--a church, palace, and convent. To enter into the spirit of the place the mind of the writer should be imbued with those cold and gloomy hues which characterised that of Philip II., its founder. The nature of the man, who was at once a despot and a bigot--in a word, a monarch educated by ecclesiastics--affords a key to the nature of the immense building which he reared. To be able to describe, one should feel. And here, in this vast tomb-like edifice, one does feel an indescribable awe, a sense of veneration in the contemplation of the mighty effort of the human intellect and imagination that must have been exerted in conceiving, planning, and executing a work of such stupendous proportions. Superstition is no doubt a great evil, but it has aided in developing that spirit to which we owe some of the grandest edifices that the past has transmitted to us--some of them, dreary follies, like this, even while we admit them to be magnificent works of art. The Escorial, in fact, is the mind of Philip in stone. It exemplifies no era in art, no national peculiarities. It is the costly caprice of a man--half monarch, half monk--of a proud and bigoted spirit, too superb to forego the haughty functions of royalty, too pious not to desire to perpetuate the fame of his religious devotion to all time and generations, although devoid entirely of that quiet humility and simple piety which are the characteristics of true devotion, and place a brighter diadem on the head of kings than either crowns of gold or a vain display of sanctity. The Escorial is said to owe its origin to a vow of gratitude made by Philip to his patron saint, St. Lawrence, on the occasion of the victory of St. Quentin, gained by him over the French, and to the constantly expressed desire of his father, the Emperor Charles V., to have a burial-house of suitable Grandeur for himself and his descendants. Approaching the building we were met by a melancholy ecclesiastic, who looked as if a glass of port wine would do him a world of good. This personage was to be our conductor through the extensive pile of buildings. We passed beneath a lofty portal into a long gloomy corridor, which seemed to dwindle away into endless distance. As we looked around and above, at the ponderous blocks composing this mountain of granite, the door closed behind us with a dull, heavy sound, shutting us up amongst the wide labyrinthine maze of innumerable passages and galleries, crossing and recrossing one another in incomprehensible order.[13] We could not help feeling at the moment as if we were bidding adieu to the world, to life, and to hope.