year 1734. He seems to have been educated at Granada, and became chaplain of the military college of Segovia. On returning to the Canaries, he became prebendary of Las Palmas, and subsequently treasurer in 1791. From bad health, however, and disappointments in his works at the cathedral, he retired to his native place, Laguna, in Tenerife, in 1779 [1797], and died in 1798. It is not stated when the new works at Las Palmas were commenced; "el aumento y conclusion de la catedral fueron decretados," is all that can be learned from the only account of this architect which is extant, -the "Memoria Biografica de Don Diego N. Eduardo," (p. 9,) a paper read before the Literary Society of Las Palmas, in March, 1848, by D. Juan Doreste. His plans were submitted to the S. Ferdinand Academy of Madrid, who passed on them the dignified compliment (la mas expresiva y elocuente censura) of retaining the original drawings, and simply returning copies for the prosecution of the work itself. It is only by an examination of the building that the internal work of Eduardo can be studied; and leaving Señor Doreste, who acknowledges his architectural knowledge is not very strong, we must identify for ourselves those parts of the existing church which are due respectively to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

We can approach to a tolerable estimate of the state of Pointed architecture in Spain at the commencement of the sixteenth century. Then the genius of Spain was rising to its zenith, when the foundations of S. Anne de las Palmas were laid; those were the golden days of Isabella the Catholic; and before the noon of Spain's brief but splendid monarchy had begun to decline, under Philip II., this cathedral had been consecrated. The first seventy years of the sixteenth century abounded in great artists. In the year 1500, the great cathedral of Seville, although exactly one century had elapsed since its commencement, yet wanted eighteen years of its completion. The fatal flood of Mexican silver and Peruvian gold had not yet, by over-encouraging the goldsmith's art, debased the architect's by the ingenious, but false, Plateresque;1i.e. the genius of pierced silver had not, to the obliteration of the principle of displaying construction, been introduced into masonry. The traditions and feeling of the grand Pointed work of Leon, Burgos, and Toledo, of the thirteenth century, survived. The Oriental element which broke up southern art after the conquest of Granada, had not yet so far prevailed as to corrupt the whole national taste; and in the north the cathedral of Salamanca was commenced, in 1513, in what we should call tolerably pure Pointed, and this after a general consultation of all the Spanish architects, by Juan Gil de Ontañon, who subsequently, in 1525, also began the cathedral of Segovia, "the last built in Spain in the Gothic style." (Ford's Hand-book, p. 826.) The days of Herrera were not yet; but it is too much to expect that the coming era of Leo X., and the revival of heathenism, had not cast a

1 From plata, silver plate. The untravelled ecclesiologist may form a sufficient estimate of this style, by recalling the Caroline south porch of S. Mary's at Oxford, which is decidedly Plateresque in feeling and composition.

2" Unrivalled, among churches in the Pointed style, for the airy grace of its design, and for its cunning, lace-like masonry." (Stirling, Artists of Spain, vol. i. p. 72.)

shadow, fatal even in its anticipation, and as early as A.D. 1500, over Christian art in each of its developements, and in every province of Christendom.

But we should misjudge the commencement of the sixteenth century, if we spoke of Spanish art as already in a state of irremediable debasement. Influences which were deadly to northern Pointed, might in Spain only expand into a true developement. Even the Moorish might work as a conservative element. As early as the days of S. Ferdinand, the Pointed churches of Seville which he built retained not only the Moorish towers, but much of the Oriental feeling; and if Pointed art were to travel southward to the Tropics, it had not been too much to expect that it would expand into more luxurious forms, yet not inconsistent with normal truth. The Pointed churches of the Peninsula were always more flowery and flowing than those of Germany or England. Leon-a work of fairy-like grace and delicacy, and elaborate minute. ness of detail, was actually commenced before the close of the twelfth century. Let any one compare the period of what is still perversely styled Early English," with the ripe "Tedesco" of Leon,-and they are synchronous,1—and he will at once see how rapid and mellowing was the warmth of a southern sun. We cannot, therefore, settle, that because the panelling and fan-tracery of English Third-Pointed was but too often a veneering, applied to hide poverty of invention, therefore what we might call an extravagantly fanciful and airy lightness, was other than consistent with true Pointed feeling in Andalusia. It is true that Spanish Pointed architecture did die out-or rather, die off-hopelessly and completely; but it was not bound to do so in A.D. 1500. It was not delivered over unto death, as in England under the Tudors. It was forcibly superseded and expelled by the purism of Italy; it never struggled and panted, and was choked by the vagaries of the age of Henry VIII. and his successors, miscalled the Elizabethan style.

It is under this sentiment that we would view the foundation of the cathedral of Las Palmas; and whatever else he is, we desire to vindicate the fame of Diego Montaude, its original architect, as a maker, a truthful and poetical artist.

The present church consists of a nave with double aisles, pseudo-transepts with eastern aisles, and a sanctuary. The nave and aisles are of four bays westward of the cross; the primary aisles are carried to the same height as the nave; the secondary aisles are low, and used for chapels; the wall between the two aisles carries a clerestory. The piers are worked in imitation of palm-trees. On a bold square base, five feet square, is imposed an octagon; on the octagon a circle of deeply-cut classicizing mouldings; from the circular mouldings rise columns circular in plan. These columns are finely moulded; four bold circular rolls at the cardinal sides; between each are three fluted

1 We cannot but observe upon the meagre poverty of the " Companion to the Glossary," on all subjects connected with the ecclesiology of the Peninsula. Its compilers seem to be in unalloyed ignorance of the work of Cean Bermudez, "Noticias de los Arquitectos y Arquitectura de España," which is nearly complete as a chronological manual.

members. The whole effect combines the Corinthian and Pointed. These columns are banded twice with a very rich and effective moulding, combining a cable, with a row of ball-flowers above it; below, a deeply-cut chevron, pointing downwards. These shafts have no capitals; they run up into a horizontal fillet, from which spring plain vaulting ribs, which flow from the shafts as palm-branches do from the trunk. The vaulting is good sexpartite. Between the two aisles are pure pointed arches. The responds to the circular piers,—that is, the responds on the wall between the aisles, into which the vaulting of the primary aisles falls,—are half shafts of ordinary Pointed work, without fillets, and of five foliaged heads; the caps of the aisle vaulting are also foliaged. The western responds to the circular shafts are also ordinary Pointed. It is plain, therefore, that the architect could only trust to his palmary development in the isolated shafts. This is the old work the church being left unfinished in the sixteenth century. Eastward of the four bays is Eduardo's eighteenth century work,1 exactly imitating Montaude's; it consists of a cross, with transepts, or rather pseudo-transepts, carried up throughout to the height of the nave and first aisles, but not extending laterally beyond the secondary aisles. Throughout the arches are scarcely pointed, as nearly as possible forming a semi-circle. The square of the cross is like the old work, except that the soffits of the four sustaining arches are enriched with featherings of shell-work, and above these is a deeply sunk hollow, enriched with ornaments. Above the arches rises a second pointed arch, sustaining a vaulted cimborium, entirely classical on the exterior, but pointed within. The space between the two arches is pierced with three windows; between each window is a statue. The transepts have eastward aisles, the piers of all which are exactly the same palm-trees as in the old work.

The sanctuary has one bay more, without aisles, to itself, making in all seven bays to the nave, cross, and sanctuary, and six to the rest of the church. As is frequently the case in Spain, a mass of sacristy and the "panteon "2 are attached to the east end, which has therefore no constructive architectural feature. The vaulting of the new work is more complex than-but not so satisfactory as the old. The dimensions of the church from the west are as follows:-four bays, each 23 feet long; three piers, each 5 feet in the square; two piers for the cross, each 5 feet in the square; the cross, 30 feet; the aisle of the cross, 25 feet; the sanctuary, 25 feet; equal to 197, total length, in English feet. The nave is 36 feet wide, and the aisles are each 27 feet; equal to 144, total width, in English feet.

1" Carecio antes de él la catedral de un crucero, de un cimborio, de los adornos que comportaba el género gótico moderno, digamoslo asi, que queria dar à su composicion." (Memor. Biograf. pp. 10, 11.)

2 This is a recognised term in Spanish ecclesiology, and signifies the crypt or catacomb beneath the high altar, in which the body or relics of the testator are enshrined. Here also the Bishops are often entombed. The startling significance of the phrase is enhanced by the fact, that in this and the surrounding crypts are generally stowed away the denuded or discarded processional images. Of its propriety few, after the sight itself, can doubt; and it is not a little curious that the old Pagan term should have been so strikingly re-appropriated.

The second and third bays from the west are filled, or rather walled up, with a vile classical "coro;" the erection of which, by the pertinacity of the chapter, was one of the annoyances which shortened Eduardo's life. The aisle windows are broad single-lights, and pointed. Many of them, however, are classicized internally, as the secondary aisles have been a good deal tampered with. Several are walled off for chapels, and in the two western bays of the north aisle the vaulting is plaistered over; and in one of the bays of the south aisle, the old piers have been cut away, and Corinthian shafts have been stuck on to the walls. There are two ambons against the easternmost piers of the cross. The exterior was intended to be entirely cased by Eduardo, and reduced to a so-called classical uniformity with the new works, which, though Pointed both in feeling and detail internally, are entirely classical on the exterior. His object was to fuse the whole cathedral, with its vast accessories of sacristies, &c., into a complete design. Only the eastern part is finished, in which the sacristy has a somewhat grand, though false, apsidal look, with very lofty columns and recesses; the northern and southern fronts of the transepts were to have been masked by huge, soaring, and deep portals, and the western façade was to have been resolved into a Corinthian arcade, with flanking campaniles. Of these latter only one is executed. The arcade is carried up to the architrave; but the second story has not been built. And, most for. tunately, this new work was set forward a few feet, so that the old western front is partly discoverable. It consisted of a centre gable for the nave, flanked by two octagonal Italian Romanesque campaniles. The primary aisles again are gabled; but it is impossible to say whether the secondary aisles were gabled, or again terminated westward by turrets. Whatever was their western finish, it is now embedded in the modern work.

Of the character of the Romanesque campaniles we are not left to conjecture; as, fortunately, in the pretty village of Teror, about four leagues from Las Palmas, celebrated for a curious legend of a miraculous pine tree, is preserved, in the fine parroquia, the old octagonal Italian Romanesque tower of the same date. This exactly reproduces the flanking campaniles of the cathedral, and was probably by the same architect. It rises simply from the ground, and consists of six equal stages; the mouldings are good and divided, and the alternate faces of the top stage are pierced for the bells with a Pisan-looking arcade. It has a pyramidal, and very Norman-looking, capping.1

Externally, the window-arches--there is one, of course, in each bay of the aisles-are moulded with a single bold roll imposed upon a shaft, with a good base and capital. The bases are some moulded, and some run into a string, enriched with the ball ornament. The buttresses have been cased and modernized; the old gurgoyles remain. The buttresses are joined to the clerestory walls by flying buttresses, of which the outline of the segmental arches remain. The clerestory windows

"Hizose la iglesia al pié del pino, la cual se incorporó á la catedral de estas islas, por el obispo D. Fernando de Arze, año de 1514."-Descripcion Historica y Geografica de las islas de Canaria, por D. Agustin del Castillo, (as above in Biblioteca Isleña, p. 211.)

are plain pointed single lights, with mouldings of three orders; the transept windows the same. Below each clerestory window is a single, recessed, narrow niche, or blank window, in the place of a triforium. There is a very pretty rose window in the western gable of the nave.

The rest of the exterior is classicized; the campaniles, or rather the one built, are very much like Sir John Soane's Trinity Church in the New Road; the cimborium, or dome over the cross, is very mean; its curtailment was another of the poor architect's death-blows; and the rest consists of the usual vases, flower-wreaths, knobs, pots and pans, and spikes, and scent bottles of so-called Italian art. Eduardo's elevation is still preserved; but inquiries were made in vain for any memorial drawing of the church before the eighteenth century.

In the westernmost chapel of the south aisle is the gigantic S. Christopher, the unfailing accompaniment of so many Spanish churches; here is also a door leading to a pretty semi-Moorish wooden cloister, somewhat too domestic and putio-like in effect; above this are the library and chapter-house, common-place Italian rooms. The sacristy has a very remarkable stone floor, forty feet square, which is cunningly jointed and dovetailed; how it is supported without piers, or girders, for vaulting, the under surface being entirely horizontal, is a crux to the Canarians and others. The natives always point this floor out as the triumph of Eduardo's genius. The plate and vestments are rich but late. A рах of Italian enamel is worth attention; and in the sacrarium, capilla mayor, is suspended a lamp of Genoese work-the offering of Bishop Ximenes, (1665-1690)—barbarously rich and massive. Both the altar and credence have frontals of beaten silver; on the latter, which is at the south side of the altar, are three large salvers arranged, heraldically speaking, 2 and 1. The gigantic paschal candle stands on the north side of the altar, and is as thick as a man's thigh, and about fifteen feet high. The sacrarium is lined throughout with crimson velvet, canopied into a baldachin over the high altar. The clerestory windows, and those of the cimborium, are basely filled with circular patches of plain coloured glass.

After this review of the church, it may be objected that the palmtree columns are an after thought, a mere ingenious piece of symbolism likely to suggest itself to an English traveller, who had not yet recovered from his first enthusiasm at the sight of a palm-tree-an enthusiasm likely enough to be stimulated in Las Palmas. In the City of the Palm Trees, it would be natural enough, it may be urged, to see every thing under a palmary aspect. But we are not left to the mere conviction which the sight of the church brings, though that the motif of the columns was actually taken from the palm-tree must be a visitor's instantaneous impression on entering the church. Speaking of the beautiful volcanic stone of which the Canarian buildings are constructed, a writer within a century of the completion of the cathedral says, "Como se deja ver en la Sta Iglesia catedral de esta Ciudad real de las Palmas, uno de los templos obstentosos del mundo . . . en lo material pues siendo tan eminentes sus columnas y pilares y viendose tan delgados rematar sus cornisas á manera de l'almas cuyas ojas de canteria turquesada se dividen en arcos, sustenten una fábrica de bóveda tan