SARAGOZA.

From a Drawing by J. F. Lewis.

"IN the Plaza de San Felipe," says Locker, in his "Views in Spain," "stands a very singular building, used as a belfry, called El Torre Nuevo,—a name now somewhat inappropriate, as it was erected so long ago as the year 1594. It leans in a fearful manner towards a church on the other side of the street, but has hitherto betrayed no further tokens of slipping from its foundations, having stood unmoved upwards of two centuries. It is built of brick, curiously ornamented, and has a flight of 280 steps leading to the top.

"At first sight of this curious edifice, the question How came it so?' instantly occurred to us; but we found it not so easy to obtain a solution, for the critics of Saragoza seem as much divided in opinion as those of Pisa; and though their tower is not so old by four centuries, the cause of its declination is involved in equal perplexity. It is not improbable that the foundation may have sunk during its erection, and that the architect carried up the remainder of his work as a triumph of his art, counterbalancing the inferior side in order to prevent the fabric from oversetting, in the

same manner as the antiquaries profess to have discovered in the construction of the Pisan tower."

It does not appear to have struck the disputants about leaning towers, that the silence of history upon such structures is a proof that they did not lean when they were built, but have gradually settled, owing to an imperfect foundation, to their present inclination; and this unequal settlement and consequent leaning has been so slow as not to have been perceived until long after the completion of the building, and, therefore, when it commenced or stopped was too uncertain to record. That such imperfect and dangerous structures should have been purposely raised, as some have conjectured -or, that, during their building, if a settlement and leaning had been perceived, the architects would have had the folly to go on-to shew their skill-or that those who employed them would still spend their money upon a dangerous or falling structure, since no one could tell to what extent it would lean before the settlement should support it,—are conjectures too absurd to entertain. Here is a building, little more than three hundred years old-within the time that records of such public works have been kept-yet no mention is made of its commencement or completion in this state; it is therefore obvious to common sense, that such buildings as the leaning towers of Saragoza, of Bologna, and of Pisa, have leaned from the partial settlement of their foundations, since their completion.