contain the
primate church of all the Spains.

The vanquished Romans withdrew, leaving to posterity but feeble ruins to
the north of the city; the West Goths built the threatening city walls
which still are standing, and, having turned Christians, their King
Recaredo was baptized in the river's waters, and Toledo became the
flourishing capital of the Visigothic kingdom (512 A.D.).

The Moors, in their northward march, conquered both the Church and the
state. Legends hover around the sudden apparition of Berber hordes in
Andalusia, and accuse Rodrigo, the last King of the Goths, of having
outraged Florinda, a beautiful girl whom he saw, from his palace window,
bathing herself in a marble bath near the Tago,--the bath is still shown
to this day,--and with whom he fell in love. The father, Count Julian,
Governor of Ceuta, called in the Moors to aid him in his righteous work
of vengeance, and, as often happens in similar cases, the allies lost no
time in becoming the masters and the conquerors.

Nearly four hundred years did the Arabs remain in their beloved
Tolaitola; the traces of their occupancy are everywhere visible: in the
streets and in the _patios_, in fanciful arabesques, and above all in
Santa Maria la Blanca.

The Spaniards returned and brought Christianity back with them. They
erected an immense cathedral and turned mosques into chapels without
altering the Oriental form.

Jews, Arabs, and Christians lived peacefully together during the four
following centuries. Together they created the _Mudejar_ style tower of
San Tomas and the Puerta de Sol. Pure Gothic was transformed, rendered
even more insubstantial and lighter, thanks to Oriental decorative
motives. In San Juan de los Reyes, the _Mudejar_ style left a unique
specimen of what it might have developed into had it not been murdered
by the Renaissance fresh from Italy, where Aragonese troops had
conquered the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

With the first Philips--and even earlier--foreign workmen came over to
Toledo in shoals from Germany, France, Flanders, and Italy. They also
had their way, more so than in any other Spanish city, and their tastes
helped to weld together that incongruous mass of architectural styles
which is Toledo's alone of all cities. Granada may have its Alhambra,
and Cordoba its mosque; Leon its cathedral and Segovia its Alcazar, but
none of them is so luxuriously rich in complex grandeur and in the
excellent--and yet frequently gr