epistles and verses, in which, unfortunately, the taste, acquired from the Byzantines, for long-winded, flowery and involved phrases is painfully apparent. Recceswinth interested himself in the collection and revision of ancient manuscripts. In his reign flourished the learned and saintly Ildefonso, who was publicly thanked for his work on the perpetual virginity of Mary by the martyr Saint Leocadia, who came expressly from Heaven for the purpose. One of Ildefonso’s successors in the see of Toledo, Julian, was a Jew by birth, or at least descent. He was renowned for his erudition and especially as a polemical writer. Though he narrowly escaped excommunication as a heretic, he is now venerated as a saint, and was buried beside St. Ildefonso. As the seat of a Court which did something more than ape the culture of the Latins (_pace_ Mr. Leonard Williams), Toledo rose from an obscure Roman colony into a city of dignity and importance. It is supposed to have reached its highest stage of development in the reign of King Wamba (672-680), whose mutilated statue confronts the traveller on approaching the town from the railway-station. Most of the buildings ascribed by the chroniclers, however, to that king were in all probability only restored by his orders, and were originally constructed by his predecessors. Isidore Pacense enumerates among the edifices existing in his time in Spain, basilicas, monasteries, oratories, and hermitages; the _Aula Regia_, or royal residence, “distinguished before all other buildings by the richness of the four porticos which encircled it”; the _Atrii_ of the nobility, which were allowed only three porticos; hospitals, guest-houses, and _Repositaria_, or treasure-houses. It is reasonable to assume that the capital of Spain would have possessed buildings of all the kinds specified during the hundred years that elapsed between the death of Athanagild and the accession of Wamba.