sacrilege, sent his bride away with camels loaded with gold and silver and jewels, which she carried to the convent of St Pelayo, where she became abbess. When Alfonso reigned over Toledo, he gave the property to the nuns of San Pedro de las Dueñas, and in 1504 the building of the cardinal's hospital was begun. It is the first sample of plateresque architecture then introduced into Spain by Covarrubias. The façade is superb, one of the many glories of Toledo. Impossible to conceive anything more charming than all this wonder of chiselled stone, with its delicate arches and most exquisite reliefs. One represents St Helena holding the cross, and kneeling in front of her, Cardinal Mendoza; behind the cardinal is St Peter, and behind the empress is St Paul; a suite of pages hold mitre and hat. The decoration of leafage, flower and cross is rich and fanciful. One particularly lovely relief represents Charity, with statues on either side, while the architecture, the friezes and cornices are elaborately wrought in every Gothic fancy, bucklers, arms, and armour mingling with flower and foliage, and the cardinal's arms held reverently by little angels. Between the magnificent columns are the four cardinal virtues, and above are other reliefs whose general effect is beautiful enough, but whose details it is difficult to follow at such a height (one is supposed to represent St Joachim and St Anne embracing, and is somewhat crudely defined by the Spanish guidebooks), while the whole is surmounted by the cardinal's favourite Jerusalem cross. The large windows are extremely harmonious, with their Toledan railings so grimly artistic, with all the sombre beauty of a taste more largely decorative than prettily fanciful. On entering you face three sculptured doors leading to the chapel, now the gymnasium, and to the splendid patios, to-day fallen into a scandalous state of neglect and decay. The superb staircase, despite the fact that all the wealth of its beautiful ornamentation is half defaced, gives some indication of what a work of art it once was in its mingling of arabesque and plateresque note, and something of the delicate finish of details may still be seized. The chapel forms a Greek cross, degraded, too, like the rest of the edifice, showing remains of what was once a singularly fine specimen of the artesonado ceiling. The heavy Gothic pillars are richly wrought in an incredible variety of reliefs, and we have no difficulty in believing that this was once one of the architectural gems of the Gothic capital. But what is still more impressive, as unique as the great staircase, is the immense empty patio, with its long galleries and pillars of Italian marble, its reliefs and armorial bearings. I know nothing in Toledo that seizes the imagination so vividly with the tragic sensation of vanished magnificence as this great courtyard. Not a courtyard surely, but an esplanade enclosed within arcaded marble galleries, where a prince might