Another palace in ruins belonging to the ex-Empress of the French is all that remains to-day of the magnificent _Casa de Vargas_. It was built by the celebrated architect, Juan de Herrera, and Antonio Ponz describes it at length as one of the architectural splendours of Toledo, as late as the War of Independence, when Bonaparte's soldiers laid it waste with shot and shell. "The façade," writes Ponz, "is perfect Doric, of exquisite marble, with fluted columns on either side, and the pedestals have military emblems in bas-relief. The frieze consists of helmets, heads of bulls and goblets. The coat-of-arms above the cornice is most beautiful, and the women's forms seated on each side are life-size. Nothing could be finer than the details as well as the whole of this façade, and for sure it is the most serious, the most lovely, and most finished of all I have seen in Toledo. You enter a spacious courtyard, with lofty galleries running round it, above and below, the lower gallery sustained by Doric pillars, and by the upper Ionic columns. The staircase is truly regal, and likewise the various inner chambers. They contain different chimney-pieces, ornamented with graceful fancies, executed in bas-relief; and thus in the lower quarters as in the principal, are other galleries with columns like those of the courtyard, with delicious views of the meadows and the Tagus." Nothing of all this remains but a mere unsightly ruin called the _Casa de la Direccion_, the property of the Counts of Mora. The list of these vanished palaces of Toledo is a long one, and is the subject of most melancholy musing. In the old forsaken quarter once known as the _Juderia_, the prosperous and magnificent ghetto of mediaeval Toledo, where the Transito, Samuel Levi's synagogue, stands, was the great palace of the Villenas. Henry of Aragon, lord of Villena, was a famous figure in those remote ages. Of royal blood, uncle of King Juan II., he was an erudite scholar, a mathematician, a man of science in advance of his times, a splendid prince, a collector of books, the possessor of a library as famous as Mendoza's, a wizard, a man of evil odour, of the black craft, who was gravely charged with putting his enemies alive into bottles, and of holding intercourse with the Evil One. All his valuable library, and in special his own manuscript tomes, for he was an indefatigable writer, were publicly burnt at Madrid by order of Fray Lope Barrientos, a Dominican, on the solemn accusation of witchcraft. Juan de Mena, in his celebrated _coplas_, protested against ecclesiastical iniquity, and lifted his voice in the learned prince's glory: "Aquel que tu ves estar contemplando En el movimento de tantas estrellas, La fuerza, la obra, el orden de aquellas Que mide los cursos de cómo, y de quando, Y ovo noticia filosofando Del movedor, y de los comovidos, De fuego, de razos, de son de tronidos, Y supo las causas del mundo velando: