Of the many hospitals of Toledo, two alone are famous, one what the Spanish guides very properly call "a sumptuous work of art." Descending the steps through the Moorish archway of the Zocodover, you leave Cervantes' inn on the right, and a little lower down on the left is the Hospital of Santa Cruz, the hospital of Mendoza, "The Cardinal of Spain," now incongruously enough a school of infantry. The traveller, enamoured of the picturesque, in awed surrender to the charm of noble ruins, grows to loathe the military all over Europe. They take up their quarters so profanely in monuments one hardly dares to lift one's voice in. They sprawl in their motley uniforms over the loveliest homes of romance and memories, and burthen the silence with their futile miseries, labours, and tyrannies. In times of war the army makes a gallant figure. Then each man is a hero, and we willingly tend his wounds. But in times of [Illustration: DOOR OF SANTA CRUZ] peace the soldier is frankly an anachronism and a nuisance. He desecrates ruins and spoils the view; he vulgarises the atmosphere of legend, and cheapens the majesty of dismantled walls. There is, of course, no reason but a sentimental one why the sabred heroes of Spain should not sleep within the walls of a magnificent monument, and exercise their muscles in the lovely chapel of Mendoza, now their gymnasium, but what will you?--a traveller is necessarily sentimental. The great cardinal of Spain designed to build an hospital for foundlings, and had engaged the architect, Enrique Egas, and with him traced the plan, when death overtook him at Guadalajara in 1495, and he bequeathed his idea, with over 75,000 ducats for its completion, to Queen Isabel and his relative the Duke of Infantado. The Queen chose the spot on account of the wide view of the hills rolling upward from the opposite river banks, and the hospital was called Santa Cruz because of the founder's devotion to the Holy Cross. It was originally a royal Gothic palace, converted later into a Moorish palace, it is said, the town residence of Galiana's father, Galafré. Possibly here may have dwelt Casilda, the King's daughter, who from her earliest years, loved the Christians and pitied them, and carried food to the Christian prisoners. She vowed to devote herself to the poor and live a maid, to King Almenor's dismay, who proposed one after another brilliant match to her in vain. Standing at the palace gate one day he found her carrying a basket of provisions to the prisoners, and asked her what the basket contained. "Roses," said Casilda like St Elisabeth of Hungary, and opening the basket, to her surprise discovered it full of red and white roses. There, too, may have taken place that strange bridal of Doña Theresa, sister of the King of Leon and the Moorish king Abdallah, when, it is said, an angel interposed to prevent the union of Christian princess and Moorish monarch, and the King thus convinced of the