Very fine are the reading-desks, with friezes of gilded bronze, executed by the two Vergaras in the middle of the sixteenth century. Those on the Epistle side are carved in low relief with the stories of David and Saul, the Blessed Virgin and St. Ildefonso, and the Apocalypse; those on the Gospel side, the stories of St. Ildefonso, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Passage of the Red Sea. In the centre of the Choir is a magnificent brass lectern upheld by a great eagle with wings outspread; its eyes are of red stones and it crushes with its talons a struggling dragon. It was executed in 1646 by Salinas. The pedestal on which it stands is older by two hundred years, and is thoroughly Gothic in character, with buttresses, pinnacles, and statuary. The work is said to be German. The pedestal is borne by six lions, finely sculptured. The northern entrance to the transept, which separates the Choir from the Capilla Mayor, affords the best and least interrupted view of the Cathedral. That view impressed the writer with its calm majesty and sanctity, but by way of contrast it is worth while recording the impressions of a traveller only lately returned (Mr. Stewart Dick): “My first feeling was one of disappointment--a feeling that even now has hardly worn away. “It is vast and cold. A white expanse. Huge pillars towering up to a great height. A blaze of harsh daylight. In the middle, blocking up the view down the nave, the tawdry gilt of the Coro. Doors opening and banging all round, people promenading, sitting on the bases of the pillars and talking with undropped voices. You ask yourself with amazement, Is this a church? The form is here, but where is the spirit? “In fact, it is only in the evening that Toledo Cathedral comes into its own. It is quiet and peaceful then. The promenaders have all gone away, the blaring of the organ has ceased, and through the open door you hear the twittering of birds in the cloisters. The shadows darken among the pillars, the beautiful windows begin to glow, and a soft light fills the upper part of the church. It is like the opening of a flower. “Then at last you begin to feel the impressiveness and the dignity of those avenues of mighty pillars. The trivialities that annoyed you are lost, the effects are broad, grand, and majestic, and at last the building is a temple; it seems as if the Holy Spirit had entered with the fall of the twilight.”