igned, as are the windows in the towers and all the
mouldings. Perhaps the only fault of the detail is that the Doric
pilasters and columns are too tall.

Now in its unfinished state the whole is heavy and clumsy, but at the
same time imposing and stately from its great size; but it is scarcely
fair to judge so unfinished a building, which would have been very
different had its dome and four encompassing towers risen high above the
surrounding apses and the red roofs of the houses which climb steeply up
the hillside.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Santa Clara.]

The new convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra was begun about the same
time--in 1640--on the hillside overlooking the Mondego and the old
church which the stream has almost buried; and, more fortunate than
Santa Engracia, it has been finished, but unlike it is a building of
little interest.

The church is a rectangle with huge Doric pilasters on either side
supporting a heavy coffered roof. There are no aisles, but shallow altar
recesses with square-headed windows above. The chancel at the south end
is like the nave but narrower; the two-storied nuns' choir is to the
north. As the convent is still occupied it cannot be visited, but
contains the tomb of St. Isabel, brought from the old church, in the
lower choir, and her silver shrine in the upper. Except for the
cloister, which, designed after the manner of the Claustro dos Filippes
at Thomar, has coupled Doric columns between the arches, and above,
niches flanked by Ionic columns between square windows, the rest of the
nunnery is even heavier and more barrack-like than the church. Indeed
almost the only interest of the church is the use of the huge Doric
pilasters, since from that time onward such pilasters, usually as clumsy
and as large, are found in almost every church.

This fondness for Doric is probably due to the influence of Terzi, who
seems to have preferred it to all the other orders, though he always
gave his pilasters a beautiful and intricate capital. In any case from
about 1580 onwards scarcely any other order on a large scale is used
either inside or outside, and by 1640 it had grown to the ugly size used
in Santa Clara and in nearly all later buildings, the only real
exception being perhaps in the work of the German who designed Mafra and
rebuilt the Capella Mor at Evora. Such pilasters are found forming piers
in the church built about 1600 to be the cathedral of Leiria, in the
west front of the cathedr