RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 25 



It is said that the architect was told that it would fall if it 

 remained as he built it ; thereupon he placed an elaborate 

 pillar in the centre of the vaulting underneath, and requested 

 his critics to examine it. They walked over the vaulting again 

 and again and pronounced it entirely safe. Whereupon he 

 took them down into the church below and showed them that 

 the central pillar did not reach the vaulting by nearly an 

 inch and that it was made of painted paper! The choir loft 

 also contains a huge reading-desk some fifteen feet high for 

 the great antiphonals to rest upon, and yet at the slightest 

 touch of the hand it will turn in any direction, so delicately 

 is it balanced. 



Under the high altar, down a long staircase, lie the sarco- 

 phagi of the kings of Spain and their wives who have borne 

 kings. Queens who were childless, or whose sons did not 

 succeed to the throne, are not interred in these vaults. There 

 they range from Charles V (or rather Charles I, as he is 

 known in Spain) down to Alfonso XII, the father of the 

 present king, and there are yet thirteen granite coffins un- 

 named and to be filled. Beyond here and to the south lie 

 the tombs of the Princes of Spain, some of them quite beauti- 

 ful and all quite modern. The most beautiful is the tomb to 

 Don John of Austria, the famous victor of the naval battle of 

 Lepanto against the Turks in 1571. 



The monastery of St. Lawrence covers the whole of the 

 southern portion of the building and possesses a fine library 

 with some magnificent early Greek and Latin manuscripts. 

 A peculiarity about the placing of the books on the shelves 

 is that the gilt edges are turned towards the on-looker while 

 the backs are turned towards the wall — the reverse of the 

 ordinary book shelf. In the great courtyard of the Hebrew 

 kings (so-called because of the gigantic statues of David, 

 Solomon, Josias, Josaphat, Ezechias and Manasses) the sol- 

 diers and sailors of the ill-fated Armada were blessed before 

 they set sail for England. High up on the side of the great 

 central dome over the church is what looks like a speck of 

 gold, but is actually half the size of a man's hand, placed there 

 by the bravado of Philip, as a proof that he had not, as his 

 enemies said, spent all the gold of his kingdom in building 

 the Escorial, but had still some to spare to adorn the roof. 

 The palace is on the northern side of the vast pile, but is too 



