the whole is a bas-relief of the Annunciation, with the statues of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, half the size of the Virtues below." Ponz is of opinion that this magnificent work of art is of two distinct periods, the frame work having been wrought later by Toledan sculptures after the tomb within had been brought from Palermo, and revealing the delicacy, the finish and unerring taste of the finer Italian school. Nothing could be more graceful, more effective than the curtains held apart by the angels, or more delightfully touching than the slight shadow thus cast upon the recumbent statue, lending it something of the immediate stillness and impressiveness of recent death. Santa Isabel is worth a visit. Some good azulejo and the artesonado ceiling testify to Moorish influences and a queen and a royal princess, daughter of Isabel the Glorious, were buried here, and the whole forms an agreeable note of quaintness and dimness without however any special attraction in architecture or decoration or art. Not so San Clemente. The façade is what my Spanish friends call _una preciosidad_, the strong and beautiful work of Berruguete. The architecture rests on two Ionic pillars, and above is the statue of the titular saint. The reliefs of the porch are exquisite, and the frieze abounds in all the wild and exuberant fancies of the Spanish renaissance, every caprice in figure, in leafage, in image, and phantasmal suggestion. Like Santa Fé the convent prides itself upon aristocratic traditions. In the church is buried the infante, Don Fernando, son of the founder, Alonso VII., the emperor, the tomb a restoration by order of Felipe II. in 1570. The interior is pleasing with an air of sober wealth, but has nothing to show in the way of art that can compare with the noble façade. It is stated that the archives contain 500 Arabian manuscripts, but these statements the intelligent foreigner must take on trust. _Santo Domingo el Real_ is another aristocratic convent of historical interest. It was founded by an illegitimate daughter of Pedro the Cruel, Doña Maria de Castilla, who was its first abbess. Two sons of Pedro were buried here, results of the thousand vagabond caprices of this crowned Blue-Beard; the infanta of Aragon, Queen of Portugal, hence the qualification, St Dominick the Royal, the Guzmans, the Silvas, and Ayalas reconciled first by marriage and then by death. There is a fine retablo if there were only light enough to see it by. * * * * *