to the height of two hundred and fifty feet.  It is of a light pink color, and the sides, which are broken here and there by exquisitely proportioned double Saracenic arches, are covered from top to bottom with arabesque tracery, cut in strong relief.  Upon this tower, a Spanish architect has placed a tapering spire, one hundred feet high, which fortunately harmonizes with the general design, and gives the crowning grace to the work.

The Cathedral of Seville may rank as one of the grandest Gothic piles in Europe.  The nave lacks but five feet of being as high as that of St. Peter’s, while the length and breadth of the edifice are on a commensurate scale.  The ninety-three windows of stained glass fill the interior with a soft and richly-tinted light, mellower and more gentle than the sombre twilight of the Gothic Cathedrals of Europe.  The wealth lavished on the smaller chapels and shrines is prodigious, and the high altar, inclosed within a gilded railing fifty feet high, is probably the most enormous mass of wood-carving in existence.  The Cathedral, in fact, is encumbered with its riches.  While they bewilder you as monuments of human labor and patience, they detract from the grand simplicity of the building.  The great nave, on each side of the transept, is quite blocked up, so that the choir and magnificent royal chapel behind it have almost the effect of detached edifices.

We returned again this morning, remaining two hours, and succeeded in making a thorough survey, including a number of trashy pictures and barbarously rich shrines.  Murillo’s “Guardian Angel” and the “Vision of St. Antonio” are the only gems.  The treasury contains a number of sacred vessels of silver, gold and jewels—­among other things, the keys of Moorish Seville, a cross made of the first gold brought from the New-World by Columbus, and another from that robbed in Mexico by Cortez.  The Cathedral won my admiration more and more.  The placing of the numerous windows, and their rich coloring, produce the most glorious effects of light in the lofty aisles, and one is constantly finding new vistas, new combinations of pillar, arch and shrine.  The building is in itself a treasury of the grandest Gothic pictures.

From the Cathedral we went to the Alcazar (El-Kasr), or Palace of the Moorish Kings.  We entered by a long passage, with round arches on either side, resting on twin pillars, placed at right angles to the line of the arch, as one sees both in Saracenic and Byzantine structures.  Finally, old Bailli brought us into a dull, deserted court-yard, where we were surprised by the sight of an entire Moorish facade, with its pointed arches, its projecting roof, its rich sculptured ornaments and its illuminations of red, blue, green and gold.  It has been lately restored, and now rivals in freshness and brilliancy any of the rich houses of Damascus.  A doorway, entirely too low and mean for the splendor of the walls above it, admitted us into the first court.