inity of Madrid, on
the opposite banks of the Manzanares, where a chapel was erected to his
memory sometime in the seventeenth century. Of the many miracles this
saint is supposed to have wrought, not one differs from the usual deeds
attributed to holy individuals. Being a farmer, his voice called forth
water from the parched land, and angels helped his oxen to plough the
fields.

Save the effigy of the Virgin de la Almudena, and the life of San
Isidro, Madrid has no ecclesiastical history,--the Virgin de la Atocha
has been forgotten, but she is only a duplicate of her sister virgin.
Convents and monasteries are of course as numerous as elsewhere in
Spain; brick parish churches of a decided Spanish-Oriental appearance
rear their cupolas skyward in almost every street, the largest among
them being San Francisco el Grande, which, with San Antonio de la
Florida (containing several handsome paintings by Goya), is the only
temple worth visiting.

As regards a cathedral building, there is, in the lower part of the
city, a large stone church dedicated to San Isidro; it serves the stead
of a cathedral church until a new building, begun about 1885, will have
been completed.

This new building, the cathedral properly speaking, is to be a tenth
wonder; it is to be constructed in granite, and its foundations stand
beside the royal palace in the very spot where the Virgin de la Almudena
was found, and where, until 1869, a church enclosed the sacred effigy;
the new building is to be dedicated to the same deity.

Unluckily, the erection of the new cathedral proceeds but slowly; so far
only the basement stones have been laid and the crypt finished. The
funds for its erection are entirely dependent upon alms, but, as the
religious fervour which incited the inhabitants of Segovia in the
sixteenth century is almost dead to-day, it is an open question whether
the cathedral of Madrid will ever be finished.

The temporary cathedral of San Isidro was erected in the seventeenth
century; its two clumsy towers are unfinished, its western front,
between the towers, is severe; four columns support the balcony, behind
which the cupola, which crowns the _croisee_, peeps forth.

Inside there is nothing worthy of interest to be admired except some
pictures, one of them painted by the Divino Morales. The nave is light,
but the chapels are so dark that almost nothing can be seen in their
interior.

This church, until the expulsion of the Jesuit