LEÓN—VIEW TAKEN FROM THE CEMETERY.
Among all the choral stalls treasured in Spanish churches those in the cathedral at León stand out prominently. Unfortunately, the names of the master who designed them, and of the artists who assisted him to carry that marvel of ogive art into effect, are not known; but it must have been executed during the last thirty years of the fifteenth century, for it is known that in 1468 the necessary bulls were obtained from his holiness through Archbishop Antonio de Veneris in order to arrange means for meeting the cost of the stalls, and in 1481 the work was still proceeding.
SALAMANCA—GENERAL VIEW.
Salamanca has a great name, a florid Gothic cathedral, and a square of handsome proportions and pleasant prospects. In other respects, it is quite without attractions. The streets are badly paved and dull, the climate is shrewd, and fuel, I was told, is scarce and expensive. Even the cathedral, though grand, is bare; and when one has visited the cathedral and lingered awhile in the pleasant garden of the Plaza Mayor—one of the largest and handsomest squares in Spain—and tested the accommodation of “La Comercio,” one can find little else to entrance one in the disappointing old city which was once a world-famed seat of learning. In the fifteenth century, when its university gave precedence to Oxford alone, it boasted of 10,000 students. In the following century its scholars had declined to one half that number, and to-day only some few hundred students are on its books. The sun of Salamanca commenced to set at a period of the world’s history that to all the rest of Europe was one of awakening and advancement. Decline and decay are writ large on the face of the city. From a distance its noble situation and fine buildings, built of beautiful creamy stone, gives the place an imposing and picturesque appearance. But though the shell of Salamanca remains, its spirit has departed. The ravages of the Romans, the Goths, the Moors, the Spaniards, and the ruin which the neighbourly French inflicted less than a hundred years ago, have left their cruel marks upon its historic walls. Salamanca is but a broken hulk spent by the storms that, from time to time, have devastated her. Her narrow, tortuous, ill-paved streets, which skirt its multitude of grandiose buildings, her squalor and poverty, her inferior art work, but even more the uncorrupted art of the grand old cathedral, all remind us of what Salamanca was, and turn our eyes backwards from what it is.
SALAMANCA—VIEW OF THE COLLEGE FROM THE IRLANDESES.
