Santa Fé was originally a royal Moorish palace beautifully situated on the north edge of the Zocodover, which Alonso VI., the conqueror, at the instance of his French queen Constance, bestowed upon a French order for noble ladies. A charming and perfect suggestion of its antique moresque beauty may be had from the view of its wall in an old garden above the river where you see the Moorish apse and brick arcading. The ground covered by the palace must have been enormous, since in the time of Alfonso VIII. the priory of the Knights of Calatrara was established here. Nothing now remains but the Moorish choir and arcaded wall, and the best of it is to be seen from the wild patch of garden outside the convent walls. It is another case of senseless destruction, a monument we are only permitted to rebuild in imagination with the help of a few Moorish arches and brown brickwork half-hidden by exuberant foliage. A stately dream, if mournful and evanescent, San Juan de la Penitencia ineffectively situated below the Cathedral in a broken and dilapidated quarter, is a Franciscan convent founded by Cisneros for poor girls, where after six years' free schooling they may remain as nuns, and if they prefer marriage the convent dowers them with about £15, with a life-seat in the choir. The church is one of the minor sights of Toledo. It was finished by the secretary of Cisneros, who lies buried here, Francisco Ruiz, Bishop of Avila. About the convent halls and corridors are still traces of Moorish ornamentation in which the Castillian conquerors delighted quite as much as the Moslem. The chapel ceiling is a good specimen of artesonado in terrible decay alas, and the architecture is a medley of Gothic, Moorish, and renaissance. Above the porch are the arms of Cisneros. Within it is of a gloomy and depressing simplicity: a single nave, a high altar, a tribune. True the plateresca frieze of the tribune is graceful, and the iron railing of the high altar is quite the best of the minor churches, and admirably decorative, while the tomb of the Bishop of Avila brought from Palermo is a most beautiful work of art. Writing of it, Ponz says:--"Above a large stone divided by three pilasters to form three pedestals, there are an equal number of statues seated, almost life-size, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. Between the pilasters are the arms of the Bishop, five castles. In a framed niche are contained the urn, couch, and recumbent statue. In front of the urn there are two weeping children, and in the depths of the niche four angels hold up the curtains. On either side are two Doric pillars sustaining the architecture, frieze, and cornices, and along the frieze runs: _Beato mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur_. On the edge are two wrought columns of a very antique taste, excellently executed.... Between these columns and pilasters on either side is a statue, St James and St Andrew, and above the figures of children. Over