CITIES ON THE EAST COAST.

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the coast, was likewise an important Roman station. Coins, struck here under the empire, yet remain. Still farther to the north is Tarragona, once the abode of the Scipios, Augustus, and Adrian. It is said to have contained a million inhabitants at the time of its prosperity, and to have been styled an imperial city. Its population has now dwindled to less than twenty thousand. The fertile country in its rear still secures to it a commerce in fruit, oil, and wine, but it retains only a shadow of its former greatness.

In all these cities, and throughout the whole route from Valencia, we find the traces of bygone splendour. Temples, theatres, bridges, aqueducts, fortresses, attest the vigour and magnificence of the old imperial dominion. These have served as quarries for modern builders. The mole at Tarragona is constructed out of the stones of the amphitheatre. Suchet used the Temple of Diana and the Amphitheatre at Saguntum to strengthen his lines during the Peninsular War. Everywhere we meet with the same wilful and reckless dilapidations.

Barcelona has already been described as one of the most busy and thriving cities in Spain. Yet even here the streets at a short distance from the

quays and Rambla * are as stagnant and as purely Spanish as any in the peninsula. The Cathedral is a striking specimen of the stern, sombre, severe style of architecture in which the Spaniards delighted before the introduction of French taste under the Bourbons.

From Barcelona a railway runs past Lerida, through the old kingdom of Aragon, to Saragossa. Though stern and bare, the country is not devoid of picturesqueness and interest. The spurs of the Pyrenees run down into it, and afford a succession of bright smiling valleys enclosed by barren hills. The Pyrenees themselves are constantly in sight, and form the boundary on the north. Lerida is finely situated, and is very strongly fortified.

The Cathedral can only be visited with difficulty, and by permission of the commandant of the district, it having been appropriated by the military authorities. So eminent an authority on architectural matters as Mr. Street says, that "it alone is worth the journey from England to see," being one of the finest and purest specimens of the Early Pointed Style he has ever examined. A grotesque tradition of the district affirms that Herodias and

Rambla is a common name for the chief street in towns along the east coast of Spain. It is a Moorish word, meaning a river-bed, which, dry in the summer, serves as a roadway. Ramleh, near Cairo, is the same word.