ust once have been common enough in the fashionable city
of Gil Blas, when the university numbered seven thousand students, and
eighty professors, with salaries of one thousand crowns each--a
bountiful payment in those days for the exercise of the noblest
talents--and swarms of assistants and "Pretendientes" on half-pay and
unattached.[12]

[Illustration: PLATE 23

AVILA

ENTRANCE TO THE CASA POLENTINA

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXIII.

_AVILA_.

ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

THE Portal which forms the subject of my twenty-third sketch serves as
the entrance to the dilapidated old mansion of the Condes de Polentinos
at Avila, a view of the remains of the Patio of which will be found on
turning over this page. The architectural characteristics of this
striking gateway are certainly very singular. On catching a glimpse of
it from a distance, and seizing the aspect only of its ponderous masonry
and deep machicolations, I fully believed I was coming upon an old bit
of castellated construction of the fourteenth or fifteenth century at
latest. On nearer inspection, however, I found out my mistake, and
arrived at the conclusion that the Senor Conde, late in the sixteenth
century, who had caused the whole structure to be built, had probably
charged his architect, either to preserve the general form of some much
earlier portal of the old house, which he may have caused to be pulled
down, or to imitate the general aspect of some other aristocratic portal
of early date, which the Count may have admired elsewhere. Different as
the corbelling, &c., looks to the gateway, and the window over it, I
found that ornamental detail of a similar nature to, but somewhat
coarser style than that of the door and window dressings was worked over
most of the corbelling, and part of the upper gallery carried by the
corbels, but apparently by a provincial hand. The stone work of the door
and window had probably been left in the rough for awhile, possibly for
some fifty years, and then its carving entrusted to some superior
artist, working according to the latest lights of the fashion of the
close of the sixteenth century. Although the style of all this carving
is plateresque, there are many indications about it of an inclination to
Greco-Roman work. For instance, the griffins, the lions' heads of
antique type, and the arms and armour arranged as trophies, all indicate
acquaintance with the prevalent materials of Italian arabesqu