school may be a thing to be admired, it naturally makes very difficult the giving of an exact and adequate account of that school's activities. Few countries in Europe, and assuredly none in America, are richer in fine old edifices than Mexico, and they are of various types, the penitentiary of Puebla, for example, recalling some French châteaux, or Scottish castles of the Middle Ages, when building in both France and Scotland was largely carried on by Flemings. Needless to say, architecture of an inherently Spanish character is paramount in Mexico, not merely because of her inheritance, but because, in her early years, many of her great ecclesiastical structures were wrought from designs sent from Spain. Thus the veredos in the chapel of Los Reyes, in Puebla Cathedral, was designed by Juan Martinez Montanes, whose portrait, as the reader may recall, was painted by Velasquez. Before the seventeenth century was over, however, there were busy in Mexico many talented architects of native birth, among the best being Fray Diego de Valverde, who built the Palacio Nacional in Mexico city. And these early masters, far from betraying any inclination to depart from the architectural traditions of Spain, manifested in abundance their motherland's fondness for the quaint and the rococo, likewise giving their structures that bizarre glitter which is a striking characteristic of many Iberian churches, thanks to the Spaniard's large strain of Moorish blood. Nor have the Mexican architects of yesterday and of the present time disclosed any marked desire to forsake this course, hitherto accepted by those practising the builder's art throughout their country. To quote from an article in that highly interesting, but now defunct, American periodical, Modern Mexico: "Architecture, in Cuernavaca to-day, differs so little from that of centuries ago, that it is almost impossible to tell a new building from the oldest . . . "; and these words are hardly more applicable to Cuernavaca than to large sections, at least, of many other towns and villages—Puebla, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Colima. It is true, that in the entrance to the spacious
