p, Don Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, called the Great Cardinal of
Spain. Although death prevented his witnessing the execution of his
project, his fortune, administered by his next relatives and
executors,--the Queen Isabella, and the Duke of Infantado,--was
employed in the erection of the buildings, and in the endowment of the
establishment. The plans and conditions were not even drawn up until
after the Cardinal's death; and they were never entirely put in
execution. The church consists of one nave, of a length out of all
proportion to its width and elevation. It was to have been crossed by
another of the same proportions, with the exception of the elevation,
which was to have been eighty feet in both. This combined with the
length--about three hundred and fifty feet, as is seen in the existing
nave,--would have rendered the edifice one of the most extraordinary in
existence. The altar was to have stood in the centre of the intersection
of the two naves. As it is, the long bare interior looks as though it
had been destined for a picture gallery or library, but rather for the
latter from the low-coved roof of cedar, and from the inadequate
distribution of light. To the left of the altar is seen a portrait of
the founder; and on the opposite side, about a hundred feet further down
the nave, a large Adoration,--a superior painting, especially with
regard to the colouring: the author unknown.

There are two large courts surrounded by arcades: one of them is a model
of lightness and beauty, and contains in one of its angles an admirably
ornamented staircase. The architect of the Santa Cruz was Enrique Egas,
who also built the celebrated hospital of the same name at Valladolid.
He designed the whole according to the style then introduced, after the
pointed style had been abandoned, and which in Spain received vulgarly
the appellation of Plateresco, from the ornaments resembling the
embossing of a silversmith. It is also confounded with the Renacimiento.
The Plateresco style, from the too great liberty it afforded the
architect, of setting aside the classic models, and following his own
inventions, has produced in Spain, more than in any other country, (from
there being at that period more wealth devoted to the construction of
public monuments there than elsewhere,) the evil effects resulting from
ill-guided and unrestrained powers of imagination. Fortunately, however,
a few architects existed whose more correct taste kept them