Admirable as is the church in its general structure, and in the detail and execution of its ornamentation, it is garish and ostentatious. There is a superabundance of light and luxury. Here there is no dim religious light, no suggestion of mystery or devotion. Prayer would seem incompatible with the whole character of the edifice. More favourable was the opinion of Théophile Gautier, who declared that “Gothic art never produced anything more suave, more elegant, or more fine.” Attached to the church is the convent, bestowed on the Franciscans, and pillaged by the French in 1808. It has been converted into a museum, which does not contain much of great interest. The most important exhibits are fragments of Visigothic inscriptions and Moorish tile-work. The cloister of San Juan de los Reyes is a gem of florid Gothic, and the finest part of the whole fabric. There are two galleries, one above the other, the lower with traceried openings, the upper with large open arches. As in the church, there is here an excess of decoration, hardly a square inch on pillar, arch, and vaulting being free from sculptured ornamentation. There is a bewildering profusion of statues of angels, men, and animals, of scroll-work and foliage, heraldic devices and inscriptions. The whole is dazzlingly white--more like a temple of the Sun than a shrine of “the pale Galilean.” The original effect, perhaps, was less crude, for the church and cloisters have been recently restored, and, it must be confessed, not too skilfully. A most beautiful specimen of azulejo work has been built into the north-west wall. It comes from the suppressed monastery of the Calced Augustines, and is said to have been a part of the ornamentation of the ancient palace of Don Rodrigo--wherever that may have been situated.