alone worth a journey to Salamanca to see. It is
in the richest period of Ferdinand and Isabella,
whose badges are worked into the arabesque
lace-like scrolls, together with the inscription in
Greek : 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom', Equally elaborate is the carving
of the fegade of San Esteban, in a ' plaza ' a little
below the cathedral. The beautiftil creamy colour
of the stone adds immensely to the eflfect of all
this work. But the French destroyed and dese-
crated every religious building in Salamanca :
only ruined cloisters, bare refectories, and muti-
lated doorways remain to testify to past beau-
ties.
From the cathedral our travellers went up the steep hill to the Irish College, having a letter from the English minister at Madrid to the principal ; but he was ill and unable to see them. His students, however, received them with hearty expressions of welcome, and offered to be their cicerones during their stay in Salamanca. It was so curious to hear a very decided Irish brogue in the 'patio ' of a Spanish convent. But their numbers are few ; and the University itself has dwindled down to 400 or 500 students instead of the 17,000 talked of in the sixteenth cen- tury. Cardinal Ximenes was once tutor in a
