In the interior the same disparity is everywhere visible, as well as in the unfinished state of the temple. Greek columns are prevalent, and, contrasting with their simplicity, the high altar, as grotesque a body as ever was placed in a holy cathedral, attracts the eye of the vulgar with something of the same feeling as a blood-and-thunder melodrama. Needless to say, the art connoisseur flees therefrom.
WESTERN FRONT OF VALLADOLID CATHEDRAL
To the rear of the building the remains of the Romanesque Church of Santa Maria la Mayor are still to be seen; what a[{301}] difference between the rigid, anti-artistic conception of Herrero, ridiculized by Churriguera, and left but half-completed by successive generations of moneyless believers, and the simple but elegant features of the old collegiate church, with its tower still standing, a Byzantine recuerdo of the thirteenth century.
II
AVILA
To the west of Madrid, in the very heart of the Sierra de Gredos, lies Avila, another of the interesting cities of Castile, whose time-old mansions and palaces, built of a gray granite, lend a solemn and almost repulsively melancholic air to the city.
Perhaps more than any other town, Avila is characteristic of the middle ages, of the continual strife between the noblemen, the Church, and the common people. The houses of the aristocrats are castles rather than palaces, with no artistic decoration to hide their bare nakedness; the cathedral is really a fortress, and not only apparently so, as in Salamanca and Toro, for its very apse is embedded in the city walls, of which it forms a part, a battlemented, turreted, and warlike projection, sure of having to bear the brunt of an attack in case of a siege.
Like the general aspect of the city is also[{303}] the character of the inhabitant, and it is but drawing it mildly to state that Avila's sons were ever foremost in battle and strife. Kings in their minority were brought hither by prudent mothers who relied more upon the city's walls than upon the promises of noblemen in Valladolid and Burgos; this trust was never misplaced. In the conquest of Extremadura and of Andalusia, also, the Avilese troops, headed by daring warrior-prelates, played a most important part, and, as a frontier fortress, together with Segovia, against Aragon to the east, it managed to keep away from Castilian territory the ambitions of the monarchs of the rival kingdom.