On the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun.  The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the town and crowns it.  Its bold yet elegant facade gives a noble aspect to the little maritime city.  Is it not a picture of terrestrial sublimity?  See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slender shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials:  religion dominating life:  offering to man the end and the way of living,—­image of a thought altogether Spanish.  Place this scene upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky; plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through the tree-tops from their little gardens.  Below, in the harbor, are the white sails.  The serenity of night is coming on; listen to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the echoing bells of the ships at sea:  on all sides sound and peace,—­oftenest peace.

Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious.  The fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lateral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between which little chapels are usually constructed.  Thus the strong walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building.  Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by enormous beams.  The great nave and its two small lateral galleries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass, which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great portal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture miscalled Gothic.

The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabitants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the Church.  In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest.  The screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery within the choir which contains the organ.  This construction, in harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are supported by the pillars of the great nave.  Thus it is impossible for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind the high altar.