omb before seeing the light.

When its walls and pilasters first rose above the soil Gothic art was
in its first epoch, and during the two and a half centuries that its
building lasted architecture made great strides. Gabriel could follow
this slow transformation with his mind's eye as he studied the
building, discovering the various signs of its evolution.

The magnificent church was like a giantess whose feet were shod with
rough shoes, but whose head was covered with the loveliest plumes. The
bases of the pillars were rough and devoid of ornament, the shafts of
the columns rose with severe simplicity, crowned by plain capitals
at the base of the arches, on which the Gothic thistle had not yet
attained the exuberant branching of a later florid period; but the
vaulting which was finished perhaps two centuries after the first
beginning, and the windows with their multi-coloured ogives, displayed
the magnificence of an art at its culminating point.

At the two extreme ends of the transepts Gabriel found the proof
of the immense progress made during the two centuries in which the
Cathedral had been rising from the ground. The Puerta del Reloj[1],
called also de la Feria[2], with its rude sculptures of archaic
rigidity, and the tympanum, covered with small scenes from the
creation, was a great contrast to the doorway at the opposite end
of the crossway, that of Los Leones[3], or by its other name, de la
Alegria[4], built nearly two hundred years afterwards, elegant and
majestic as the entrance to a palace, showing already the fleshly
audacities of the Renaissance, endeavouring to thrust themselves into
the severity of Christian architecture, a siren fastened to the door
by her curling tail serving as an example.

[Footnote 1: _Reloj_--Clock.]

[Footnote 2: _Feria_--Of the fair.]

[Footnote 3: _Los Leones_--Lions.]

[Footnote 4: _Alegria_--Joy.]

The Cathedral, built entirely of a milky white stone from the quarries
close to Toledo, rose in one single elevation from the base of the
pillars to the vaulting, with no triforium to cut its arcades and to
weaken and load the naves with superimposed arches. Gabriel saw in
this a petrified symbol of prayer, rising direct to Heaven, without
assistance or support. The smooth, soft stone was used throughout
the building, harder stone being used for the vaultings, and on
the exterior the buttresses and pinnacles, as well as the flying
buttresses like small bridges between the