exquisite finish. The sickly paleness of his flesh
is sometimes unpleasing, and his personages are gainers by the addition
of drapery, in the arrangement of which he approaches to the excellence
of the best Italian schools. The life of this artist was varied by more
adventure than usually falls to the lot of those of his profession. His
talent as a painter had already become celebrated while he was still a
monk, having taken the vows very early in life. He had been from the
first an enemy to the subordination of the cloister, and at length a
series of irregularities led to his expulsion from his monastery.

Alonzo was not, however, the original inventor of this eccentric style.
A Roman architect, Francisco Borromini, the rival of Bernini, and of
whom it was said, that he was the first of his time in elevation of
genius, and the last in the employment of it,--is supposed to have first
introduced it. Followers and imitators of these sprung up in great
numbers, and Spain was speedily inundated with extravagancies: facades,
moulded into more sinuosities than a labyrinth,--cornices, multiplying
their angles like a saw, murderously amputated columns, and
broken-backed pediments. Juan de Herrera was not, probably, possessed of
more talent than the Roman; but of what he had he made a better use. His
reputation was beginning to make rapid progress when he was selected, on
the death of Juan Baptista de Toledo, to continue the Escorial. His task
there was not the simple one of continuing the unfinished pile according
to the plans already traced.

The religious fervor of Philip the Second was on the ascent, and during
the progress of the building he had resolved to double the number of
monks, for whom accommodation had been provided by the original plan. To
meet this necessity, Herrera raised the buildings to double their
intended elevation. His completion of this immense work, rendered more
difficult than it would have been had the original design been his own,
or even had that of his predecessor been persisted in (for various
other modifications were commanded, especially with regard to the plan
of the church,) fully established his fame; and the edifice would
probably have gained, had Philip not, at the last moment, yielded to a
new caprice, and called in another artist (the architect of the famous
country-house of the Viso) to erect the great staircase.

The object of Herrera, traceable in all his works, was the
re-establish