The Convent of San Geronimo, now transformed into barracks, contains a Gothic cloister with two arteries of arcades of rare character and beauty. The capitals of the columns are ornamented with foliage and fantastic animals of the most capricious nature and charming workmanship. The church, at present profaned and deserted, exhibits the peculiarity of having all its ornaments and architectural reliefs painted in imitation on grey grounds, like the roof of the Bourse, instead of being executed in reality: here lies interred Gonzalvo of Cordova, surnamed the great captain. His sword used to be preserved there, but it was lately taken away and sold for a few _duras_, the value of the silver which ornamented the handle. It is thus that many objects, valuable as works of art or from associations, have disappeared without any other profit to the thieves than the pleasure of doing wrong. It appears to us that our revolution might be imitated in something else but its stupid Vandalism. It is this sentiment we all experience on visiting a tenantless convent, on beholding so many ruins and such devastation, the utter loss of so many _chefs d'œuvre_ of every kind, and the long work of centuries destroyed and swept away in an instant. No one has the power to prejudge the future: I, however, doubt if it will restore what the past had bequeathed us, and which we destroy as if we possessed wherewithal to replace it. In addition to this something might be put _on one side_, for the globe is not so covered with monuments that it is necessary for us to raise new buildings on the ruins of the old ones. With such reflections was my mind filled, as I wandered, in the Antequerula, through the old convent of San Domingo. The chapel was decorated with a profusion of all sorts of gewgaws, baubles, and gilding. It was one mass of wreathed columns, volutes, scroll-work, encrusted work of various coloured breccia, glass mosaics, checker-work of mother-of-pearl, and burgau, bevilled mirrors, suns surrounded by rays, transparencies, and all the most preposterous, misshapen, ugly, and strange embellishments that the depraved taste of the eighteenth century and the horror of straight lines could invent. The library, which has been preserved, is almost exclusively composed of folios and quartos bound in white vellum, with the titles written on them in black or red ink. They consist, for the most part, of theological treatises, casuistical dissertations, and other scholastic productions, possessing but little attraction for the mere literary man. A collection of pictures has been formed at the convent of San Domingo, composed of works from the various monasteries that were either abolished or suffered to go to ruin, but, with the exception of some few fine heads of ascetics, and a few representations of martyrs which seem to have been painted by the hangman himself, from the proficiency in the art of torturing which they exhibit, there is nothing remarkably good, which proves