But there was no
city I visited in Spain where I was not sorry to leave some boy behind
with the immense rabble of boys whom I hoped never to see again.
VI
After this passage of real life it was not easy to sink again to the
level of art, but if we must come down it there could have been no
descent less jarring than that which left us in the exquisite _patio_ of
the College of San Gregorio, founded for poor students of theology in
the time of the Catholic Kings. The students who now thronged the place
inside and out looked neither clerical nor poverty-stricken; but I dare
say they were good Christians, and whatever their condition they were
rich in the constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us
more than we merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the
neighboring Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort
of sumptuous delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque
from the silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The
wonderfulness of it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like the
stucco fretting of the Moorish decoration which people rave over in
Spain, but has a strength in its refinement which comes from its
expression in the exquisitely carven marble.
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