He Worked All Night, Like The Devil, And The Maiden, Opening Her Black Eyes At Sunrise, Saw Him Putting The Last Stone In The Last Arch, As The First Ray Of The Sun Lighted On His Shining Tail.

The Church, we think very unfairly, decided that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from her promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out of his sight again.

The bartizaned keep of the Moorish Alcazar is perched on the western promontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams Eresma and Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring times a palace, a fortress, a prison (where our friend - everybody's friend - Gil Blas was once confined), and of late years a college of artillery. In one of its rooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his orthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped a royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara will seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "La Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathless music of Donizetti.

Driving through a throng of beggars that encumbered the carriage wheels as grasshoppers sometimes do the locomotives on a Western railway, we came to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by Gil de Ontanon, father and son, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a delight to the eyes; the rich harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry of proportion, the profuse opulence and grave finish of the details. It was built in that happy era of architecture when a builder of taste and culture had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, and before the degrading influence of the Jesuits appeared in the churches of Europe. Within the Cathedral is remarkably airy and graceful in effect. A most judicious use has been made of the exquisite salmon-colored marbles of the country in the great altar and the pavement.

We were met by civil ecclesiastics of the foundation and shown the beauties and the wonders of the place. Among much that is worthless, there is one very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de Juni, of which that excellent Mr. Madoz says "it is worthy to rank with the best masterpieces of Raphael or - Mengs;" as if one should say of a poet that he was equal to Shakespeare or Southey.

We walked through the cloisters and looked at the tombs. A flood of warm light poured through the graceful arches and lit up the trees in the garden and set the birds to singing, and made these cloisters pleasanter to remember than they usually are. Our attendant priest told us, with an earnest credulity that was very touching, the story of Maria del Salto, Mary of the Leap, whose history was staring at us from the wall.

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