But there was no humour then in grim and blood-saturated Toledo. The mob rushed from the church to the synagogue, tore the obnoxious Jews limb from limb, thrust them into the streets and the highways, robbed, tortured, wounded, took possession of their beautiful temple, sacked their houses, carried off their money-bags, (naturally), hooted, hissed, and kicked them precisely as it would to-day in Paris, for all our enlightenment and progress, if it dared. All this in the pacific name of Christ! Centuries after the synagogue became a Magdalen's Asylum, under Cardinal Siliceo, until 1791, when it was converted into a barrack and military stores. It was only rescued from this ignoble use thirty years ago, and restored by public subscription. Nothing could be more miserable than the exterior of _Santa Maria la Blanca_; nothing more squalid than its surroundings. A deserted quarter, mean little laneways, towzled babies, unfortunate beggars. "As soon as you descend the steps that lead to it," writes Quadrado, "you are arrested by the surprise of this singular mingling of magnificence and nakedness, of capricious strangeness of lines, the exquisite taste of the ornaments; you fancy yourself transported to a fantastic pagoda. The glance is lost in the midst of this forest of great octagonal pillars, which from the point of view of proportion, lack half of their height. They are seven in a line, forming five naves, and holding Moorish arches of a bold curve. The capitals in stucco are of different forms, composed of branches, of leaves and garlands, mixed with fir-cones, reminiscences of the old Byzantine style. Varied ornaments, arabesques, lovely rose windows along with arches, and prominent above the central nave a frieze in slight relief, formed of lines crosswise and intermingling, and even still of a remarkable precision and purity. No dome, not even a ceiling; a roof of wood, of miserable aspect, descending from the height of the central nave to the two lateral extremities, gives to the whole edifice an appearance of ruin and abandonment." The restorers, with customary clumsiness, have coated the whole temple in plaster, like the cloisters of San Juan de los Reyes, with a result almost facetious, taking into consideration the name of the building. It is now white with a sorry vengeance. The ceiling is said to have been made from beams of the cedars of Lebanon, and the soil the synagogue is built upon to have been brought from Mount Zion. The Moorish and Byzantine style mingle most artistically, with the accumulated delicate and artistic effects of both and the enchanting azulejos, here of an admirable beauty of colour and design; but arabesque, tiles and horse-shoe arches are sadly out of harmony with the Gothic altars of the chancel. One finely sculptured, is supposed to be by Berruguete or one of his pupils. Elsewhere it would show to better advantage than here. Curious detail, the wells may still