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_The New Cathedral._--It was begun in 1513, the old temple having been
judged too small, and above all too narrow for a city of the importance
of Salamanca.

Over two hundred years did the building of the present edifice last; at
times all work was stopped for years, no funds being at hand to pay
either artists or masons.

The primitive plan of the church, as proposed by the congress of
architects, was Gothic of the second period, with an octagonal apse; the
lower part of the church, from the foot to the transept, was the first
to be constructed.

The upper part of the apse was not begun until the year 1588, and the
artist, imbued with the beauty of Herrero's Escorial, squared the apse
with the evident intention of constructing turrets on the exterior
angles, which would have rendered the building symmetrical: two towers
on the western front, a cupola on the _croisee_, and two smaller turrets
on the eastern end.

The building as it stands to-day is a perfect rectangle cut in its
length by a nave (containing the choir and the high altar), and by two
aisles, lower than the nave and continued in an ambulatory walk behind
the high altar.

The same symmetry is visible in the lateral chapels: eight square
_huecos_ on the exterior walls of the aisles, five to the west, and
three to the east of the transept, and three in the extreme eastern wall
of the apse.

Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new
cathedral. The primitive part--pure ogival with but little
mixture--contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the
most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by
the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise
majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir--all suffer from the same
defect.

The double triforium--one higher than the other--in the clerestory
produces a most favourable impression; this is heightened by the wealth
of light, which, entering by two rows of windows and by the _cimborio_,
falls upon the rich decoration of friezes and capitals. The general view
of the whole building is also freer than in most Spanish cathedrals,
and this harmony existing in the proportions of the different parts
strikes the visitor more favourably, perhaps, than in the severer
cathedral at Burgos.

[Illustration: NEW SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL]

The exterior of the building reflects more truthfully than the interior
th