GAZPACHO: OR, SUMMER MONTHS IN SPAIN. BY WILLIAM GEORGE CLARK, M.A. FELLOW OF TftllflTY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. LONDON : JOHN W. PAEKEE, WEST STKAND. MDCCCL. CONTENTS. Page PBEFACE T CHAP. I. FRANCE 1 II. To BUEGOS 10 III. BUEGOS 18 IV. To MADEID 29 V. THE G-ALLEBY 38 VI. THE BULL-FIGHT 49 VII. MADEID 60 VIII. LA GBANJA AND SEGOVIA 71 IX. THE ESCORIAL 80 X. TOLEDO 88 XI. To GEANADA 102 XII. THE ALHAMBEA, &c 110 Xni. GEANADA . . . 120 XIV. GBANADA 128 XV. THE ALPUJABBEZ 139 XVI. THE SIEBBA 154 XVII. To MALAGA 164 XVHI. MALAGA 172 XIX. To GlBEALTAB . . 175 15140547 IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER Page XX. GlBBALTAB 183 XXI. TO RONDA . . . 189 XXII. KONDA 197 XXIII. To SEVILLE 205 XXTV. THE CATHEDBAL 213 XXV. SEVILLE 223 XXVI. SEVILLE 235 XXVII. COBDOVA 249 XXVIII. CADIZ AND XEBEZ 251 XXIX. THE. BAT OF VIGO AND THE BAY OF BISCAY 257 APPENDIX (LETTEB FBOM G. H. A.) 261 PREFACE. T AM going to make, at the beginning of my book, certain apologies and explanations, which would have come more appropriately at the end. But custom, which prescribes a Preface, proscribes an Epilogue, thus leaving me no alternative but to cry * peccabo,' and impudently demand absolution for a prospective offence. Nevertheless, I hope that my preliminary confessions may take the wind out of my critics' sails. First, as to the title : Gazpacho is the name of a dish universal in, and peculiar to, Spain. It is a sort of cold soup, made of bread, pot-herbs, oil, and water. Its materials are easily come by, and its concoction requires no skill. Many a time have I seen a whole family, old and young, provided each with a long wooden spoon, sitting round the bowl, and devouring its contents with infinite zest. My Gazpacho has been prepared after a similar recipe ; I know not how it may please the more refined and fastidious palates VI PREFACE. to which it will be submitted ; indeed, amid the multitude of dainties wherewith the table is loaded, it may well remain untasted. If Mr. Ford should chance to dip into it, he may find that some of the ingredients have been filched from his pantry, and, possibly, spoilt in the cooking. When one takes as a companion an author so racy and vigorous, one cannot but appropriate and * assimilate' his thoughts, and afterwards, uncon- sciously, reproduce some of them as original. Once for all, I beg his pardon for any unwitting plagiarisms. I shall be more than content if he relishes the meta- phorical Gazpacho half as much as he is said to relish the reality. My readers may possibly be offended by the fre- quent recurrence of ' I,' < I,' ' I.' In a record of personal experiences, in fact, a passage of auto- biography, it is hard to see how this could have been avoided, since the gods and Lindley Murray have not provided us with any less objectionable form for the nominative singular of the first personal pronoun. Lastly, I have to apologize for writing a book at all. In my visit I enjoyed no particular facilities, and I went with no definite purpose such as circu- lating the Scriptures, or surveying for a railroad; consequently, I was exempt from the persecutions PREFACE. Vll and obstructions which a person engaged in either would have had to encounter. From the Pyrenees to the Pillars of Hercules (that is, I think, the correct phrase), my journey was deplorably void of misad- venture. So there is nothing in the subject-matter to distinguish my little book from a hundred other little books Tours, Ramblings, Letterings, Danglings, and what not. Yet there will be a difference in the result. I tell you, not what Spain is, but what it looked like to me ; the other Tourists and Ramblers tell you what it looked like to them, and my Spain may differ from their Spain as much as a view (of Hastings, say) by De Wint differs from the same view by Fielding or Turner. Besides, it may be said, if the public are sick of trifles, and want solid information, they have now the Red Book before mentioned to go to, which is as copious as any Blue Book, and readable into the bargain. After all, in so wide and rich a field, however skilfully it may have been reaped, however diligently gleaned it will go hard if there be not a few ears left to reward the latest comer. All that I have to offer is a mere handful not a sheaf. Whatever be its destiny to be thrashed out by merciless critics, to be trodden under foot by the unconscious crowds, or to be laid up in cedar by a few indulgent admirers Vlll PREFACE. I, at all events, have had no little pleasure in the gathering and tying together. An author on a small scale (if he be happy enough not to be writing for his daily bread) risks little by his venture; in case of success, there is his modicum of dear fame ; in case of failure, the worst he need fear is to share in the quick oblivion which befals all but the lucky * one in a thousand.' GAZPACHO; OB, SUMMER MONTHS IN SPAIN. ERRATA. Page 47, line 2, for Philip II. read Philip IV. Page 78: The Cathedral of Segovia, I find, is of the 16th, not 17th century. My guide misled me. one ; ( you'll be roasted alive !' ' By the Inquisition ?' ' No ! by the sun !' ' At all events,' said another, 'don't go by Paris you'll get the Asiatic cholera.' And a third, pointing to the 'alarming news!!' placarded in sesquipedalian letters on the walls, said ' you'll get the Red Republic !' But being resolved to go, and preferring the hypothetical dangers at Paris to the certainty of quarantine at Gibraltar, I left the evil prophets in their own country, and started that same evening for Folkestone. Early the GAZ. B Vlll PREFACE. I, at all events, have had no little pleasure in the gathering and tying together. An author on a small scale (if he be happy enough not to be writing for his daily bread) risks little by his venture; in case of success, there is his modicum of dear fame ; in case of failure, the worst he need fear is to share in the nuick oblivion which befals all but the lucky t one in GAZPACHO; OB, SUMMER MONTHS IN SPAIN. CHAPTER I. ONE necessary preliminary to the tour of Spain is the tour of London, which I performed on the 14th and 15th of June, 1849, from Kensington to King William-street, collecting by the way pass- ports and ( Pratts,' letters of introduction and circular notes. As usual at that season in London, an acquaintance turned up at every corner. ' Going to Spain ?' said one ; ' you'll be roasted alive !' ' By the Inquisition ?' ' No ! by the sun !' ( At all events,' said another, 'don't go by Paris you'll get the Asiatic cholera.' And a third, pointing to the 'alarming news!!' placarded in sesquipedalian letters on the walls, said ' you'll get the Red Republic !' But being resolved to go, and preferring the hypothetical dangers at Paris to the certainty of quarantine at Gibraltar, I left the evil prophets in their own country, and started that same evening for Folkestone. Early the GAZ. B CHANGES IN FRENCH SENTIMENT. next morning \ve set sail (metaphorically) for France. The passengers, thanks to the attempted gmeute, were only four in number. There were two little French milliners, who, having come to London to see the fashions a proud tribute to our advancing civilization had been suddenly recalled 'by the alarming news' aforesaid. One was going back for the lave..of jher husband, the other for company. V ifosi 31 Vtf/ said Adele, tearfully ; < il se battra dans , : ; .; r -:lc/fti6s & ooup^sur.' 'How old is he?' I asked. * ** *' *J[ a virigt'ans/monsieur.' ' Et le mien, au contraire,' said Louise, coldly, ' est tres prudent ; il restera chez soi.' ' And how old is he ?' ' II a soixante ans, monsieur.' Poor Louise ! The weather was so fine, that if Adele was sick at heart, she was at least free from the mal-au-coeur, and La Manche, smooth as satin, floated us in two hours into the harbour of Boulogne. On landing, the gens-d'armes saluted me as ' Monsieur.' We were not under a Red Republic ! Nor, if I might judge from the sentiments of my fellow-travellers to Paris, were we likely to be. They purchased chiefly the Assemblee Nationale, and ap- plied more epithets to Ledru Rollin than I care to record or remember. True it is, I travelled in the first-class ; but subsequent experience convinced me that reactionary views were very generally enter- tained by the lower classes too, by cabmen, &c., whose vehicles had been confiscated for barricades, and bakers, who had suffered from the fraternal visits of the sovereign mob, breaking bread and windows PARIS. 3 from house to house. The minds of coachmen were no longer unsettled ; the very postillions had forsaken the movement party. One of them, after exhausting his rich national vocabulary of abuse on a lazy horse, ground his teeth, and shrieked out, as a final maledic- tion * Bribon de Raspail, va!' But I am travelling faster than the railway-train. At four P.M. I found myself at Paris. The city was, in many respects, changed since < the days when good King Philip reigned.' The place of the Boulevard trees was ill supplied by the sickly saplings, whose French leaves might be taken at will by any passing gamin. By the way, you may always estimate the time which has elapsed since the last revolution, by the age of the trees on the Boulevard. The former lot had attained astonishing longevity seventeen years and seven months. Will the present planta- tion last as long? Jpoubtless the old king, (for he had once been a schoolmaster,) in planting his trees, recalled complacently that touching passage in the Delectus c Serit arbores quae alteri sseculo prosint.' But he reckoned (as he acted) without his host, and the row he himself had planted in the streets, helped at ' the barring-out.' Every here and there one saw closed shops and empty houses, showing like the scars of revolution. The arcades of the Rue Rivoli and the walls of the Tuileries were covered with parti-coloured placards a deformity which would not have been tolerated under the tasteful regime of either Bourbon. At the B2 4 EXHIBITION AT THE TUILERIES. Varietes, there was less variety than before, and the Vaudeville had become a sort of evening lecture on political economy for the working classes. The Place Vendome was marred by two unsightly trees of liberty, which, in spite of holy water and priests' blessings, had not taken kindly to the soil. Each had been decorated with a tricolor flag ; but fifteen months of stormy weather had rent the red stripe into tatters, and washed the rest into a uniform dirty white, which thing may, for aught I know, be an allegory as well as a fact. I could not get admission to the Chamber. Up to the 13th of June, certain illustrious members had turned an honest penny by selling tickets of admis- sion, to be had at Meurice's and elsewhere, for four or five francs; but since that affair they were no longer to be had for love or money. En revanche, I went to the exhibition of pictures, just opened in the state-rooms of the Tuileries. The crowd was dense, but it was good-humoured, and averaged five feet high, so that a middle-sized Englishman could get a fair view. Of the acres of canvass on which my eye rested that day, I only remember Muller's * Lady Macbeth in her sleep,' which attracted many gazers, and gave rise to many ingenious conjectures. The walls were scrawled over with inscriptions 'Jean this,' or * Pierre that,' ' entra le vingt-quatre Fevrier, 1848.' I have heard that the culinary art of Paris rises and falls with monarchical institutions. For my part, POICTIERS. 5 I did not detect the least smack of democracy in the cutlets at the Trois Freres or the Cafe Anglais. But cooks, as a body, have very reactionary consti- tutions, and have not caught the Republic. Indeed, nine-tenths of France have either escaped infection, or have had a speedy recovery. A friend of mine, walking through the Exposition des Arts, saw a crowd following an individual through the rooms: Who is that ? he inquired of an attendant. ( Mais,' said the man, quite simply, * c'est Sa MajesteV It was the President. The habit of centuries will sur- vive a few months of revolution. On Monday evening (June 18) I left Paris, perched up in the banquette of the diligence, for Bordeaux. One wearies of the same monotonous panorama presented to the eye from sunrise to sun- set. It is change, without variety. Yet everything was in itself green and cheerful. La Belle France ! In the gracious month of June, what country on earth would not deserve the epithet ? At Poictiers, I was willing to forego my breakfast in order to visit the field ;' but no one there had ever heard of such a battle. Our lively friends have a convenient trick of forgetting the dark half of their history. So I breakfasted, and * carried a toast' (as their phrase is) to the memory of the Black Prince in solemn silence. Well, we reached Bordeaux at last stateliest of provincial capitals ! The citizens are very proud of their cathedral (which the English built for them, on the ( vos-non-vobis' principle of bees and other 6 BORDEAUX. industrious classes); of the Palace of Cardinal de Rohan, the hero of the ' diamond necklace ;' of the theatre, which is one of the finest in the world, but, above all, they glory in a subterraneous collection of mummies, which are so supremely revolting, that they would cut a respectable figure in the chamber of horrors in Baker-street. The ghastly sacristan vvho precedes you with his flambeau, tells you, with a chuckle of satisfaction, that you are standing upon a conglomerate of human bones, ten feet in depth. It was like a scene in Rookwood. I went to the Opera Comique, to charm away the recollection before bed-time. The play was, Ne touchez pas a la Reine' quite a needless injunction, for her scenic majesty was very plain unlike the Bordelaises generally: let me do them this justice in passing. Before daylight on Friday, I embarked in the malle poste for Bayonne. I might descant on the Landes, which have a grandeur of their own a vast breadth or" fern, bounded by a horizon of pines; on the picturesque Mont Marsan, with its vine-covered ravine and stately bridge : I might recount the details of an accident, whereby we were more frightened than hurt ; but in the far distance I can discern the faint blue outline of the Pyrenees, and beyond the Pyrenees lies Spain. The thought lengthens out that eternity of poplars, at the end of which, says the conductor, we shall find Bayonne. I did not believe him till we got there. The hotel (or fonda) St. Etienne, semi-Spanish in name, is thoroughly French in its good cheer. But the table-d'hote was spoiled by those everlasting politics, which had formed the sole subject of converse from Boulogne to Bayonne. And most unprofitable chat too! They 'pooh pooh' the President; don't want Louis Philippe; consider Henri V. a chimera; dissatisfied with all that is or has been, and unable to provide for what shall be. Like people -in sea sick- ness, they nauseate all food while dying of hunger. Everybody sets up a little theory of government for himself, and proves from incontestable premises, by irrefragable logic, that everybody else's little theory is untenable and absurd. Like the particles of a gas, they have a mutual repulsion ; and if confined in the completest and soundest constitution in the world, it will go hard but they will find some loophole to explode by. The Abbe Sieyes said one day at dinner (and a Frenchman is always wisest in his table- talk), ' avec un peuple qui pense, on n'est jamais sur.' Who was it that said, ( the traditions of the past are the ballast of the state-vessel, and the hopes of the future its sails'? Well, the French crew have pitched their ballast overboard, don't know how to set their sails, and wont let any one take the rudder. And so they are drifting on over an untraversed sea to an undiscovered coast. How many years will elapse before a new Columbus shall seize the helm and guide the ship to port ? Meanwhile, France is paying the penalty that BIARRITZ. every nation must pay when it breaks with its history. But a truce to metaphors. If France could have been helped out of her troubles by metaphors, the journalists and M. de Montalembert would have done it long ago. Unfortunately, figures of speech will not pay 300 millions of debt, keep 500,000 soldiers in soup and shoes, or extract sixty millions per annum from the pockets of an unwilling people. I find I have caught the prevalent infection, and am discussing politics instead of my dinner. Return'we to our mutton. I found myself seated next M. H n, a celebrated violinist, still remembered by the subscribers to the Philharmonic Concerts. He, with his wife and a young lady, who accompanied him on the piano and harp respectively, had just returned from a professional expedition to Madrid. The adventure had been ill-starred in many ways, and they came back in no good humour with Spain and the things thereof. The climate was ' d'une chaleur-r-r ...!!' and the public, on the other hand, 'd'une froideur-r-r ...!!' and not one amiable person in Madrid, except La Vizcaina, at whose hotel Madame earnestly conjured me to stop. Next day I accompanied my new friends to Biarritz, a gaunt, straggling watering-place, built about a quarter of a mile from the rocky coast. There is a little recess in the cliffs, called the Vieuxport, where both sexes bathe together the men in a Robinson Crusoe-like costume, and the women dressed like Lady Macbeth PUBLIC BUILDINGS AT BAYONNE. 9 in the fifth act. In spite of the multitudinous ablu- tions, the deep remained of the same flashing green and blue as before ; and a glorious sight it was to see it from a high rock, breaking along the coast in a wavy line of white foam. Somebody compared it to a shot silk mantle for Nature's wear, trimmed with swan's-down a simile which the two ladies rewarded with the epithet of e ravissant.' A day or two passed very pleasantly at Bayonne, sight-seeing on a small scale. There is the cathedral, with its fine flam- boyant cloisters ; the citadel, to which your passport is the never-failing courtesy of French officers, and which a civilian should visit for the view ; and the pine-dotted sand-hills below the town, famous for some murderous work in 1814, when the Eagle, beaten home, clutched her nest with such strong gripe. But my pleasantest recollection is a balcony of the Hotel St. Etienne, filled with flowers, where I sat one fine morning listening to M. H n's violin, as it was discoursing some of those strange wild merry-pathetic German pieces, which leave one in doubt whether to get up and dance, or lie down and cry. A fresh breeze from the Atlantic was coming in, and stirring the rich languid odours of the southern blossoms. We shall bid farewell to-morrow both to sea and breeze for some time to come. B3 10 CHAPTER II. JUST before my arrival at Bayonne, the old Dili- gence Company for the north of Spain had been routed from their drowsy monopoly by a brisk new vehicle a la Franqaise ; and at that time the two companies were contending for the public favour, by successive reductions of fare and accelerations of pace. So it resulted that the public might be whirled from the frontier to the capital in fifty hours, for twenty-five francs, instead of spending, as of old, thrice the money and twice the time. I chose the banquette in the French diligence: an airy perch, from which one gets a bird's-eye view of the earth, and may practise for a prospective scramble after wild goats or waterfalls in the Sierra Nevada. At half-past five, A. M., a prudent old gentleman had commenced the ascent; by half-past -six the con- ductor bounded to the summit, and the mountain began laboriously to move. However, once off the rugged pavement, (a truly pre-Macadamite forma- tion,) the pace was not to be complained of. My companions were 1st, a French bagman, some- what vinous and scorbutic, who occupied the corner; 2nd, a Spanish cura, going to St. Sebastian, who was dressed in a suit of dilapidated black, such as is worn THE BIDASSOA. 11 in England by nonconformist divines; 3rdly, the conductor; and, 4thly, a merry little Gascon, coiled up among the baggage behind, who was being im- ported into Spain as a gardener; for in Spain the gardeners are as surely French, as in England they are Scotch. I suspect the poor fellow was striving to hide an uneasy regret for La Belle France, or some belle Franchise, by a forced gaiety. At all events, his hilarity was so stupendous that it cannot be expressed without a bull: he talked and laughed incessantly, and sung between whiles. His ditties, however, one and all died away in an indescribably dolorous twang, and the word * amour-r-r.' We had need of all Jean's powers of being jolly under creditable circumstances, for the weather was wretched, as bad as if I had brought* it with me from home. The rain pattered on the roof, and the wind blew in misty gusts; and the Atlantic, by the side of which we were passing, was chequered between sullen black and angry foam. (Mem: Let no one about to travel in a hot country, even at Midsummer, come unprovided against cold; you will need the plaid as well as the blouse.) About seven we reached the frontier stream the Bidassoa, which, with its Isle of Pheasants, would have recalled many passages of Hispano-French history, if I had ever read them. It would seem as if the famous fiat of Louis XIV. had taken a partial effect hereabouts: 'II n'y a plus de Pyrenees.' The only division between the two nations, is a deep hatred and the Bidassoa, 12 IRUN ST. SEBASTIAN. which an active French dancing-master might almost skip over, and which would not drown him if he didn't. On the one side of the bridge we had to get permission to go out on the other, permission to go in. After the passports had received the requisite endorsement, we were suffered to proceed to Irun, where the luggage was examined for the first time. In my case, it was rather I stand than I-run, for there was no chair in the room, and we were detained at least an hour. I must do the officials the justice to say, that they treated me with a distant politeness, for which I felt duly and humbly grateful. We stopped at St. Sebastian to breakfast, and very ill I fared ; but I felt that the good folks had wrongs to avenge, and so forbore to complain. The less an Englishman says of St. Sebastian the better. On some ruined houses outside the town, I could still trace the marks of balls memorials, as the cura said, of the siege of 1813. Between this and Vergara the country improves ; corn and vines below, the woods above, and, over all, the green * Alps. 7 It is Switzer- land on a small scale, and the exigencies of the Basque climate have dictated a similar domestic architecture. Every traveller makes the same re- mark. Theophile Gautier, who, like a true French- man, has the drop-curtain always before his eves, says ( I expected to see Ketlys and Gretleys coming out of every cottage, mais heureusement PEspagne ne porte pas 1'opera comique jusqu'a ce point-la.' A DILIGENCE RACE. 13 It is only after penetrating some distance into the interior of Spain, that one discerns any Peninsular peculiarity in the costume, manners, or features of the natives. Vascon and Gascon are physically and morally, as well as etymologically, identical on either side of the Bidassoa. A bull-fight was just going to begin as we arrived at Tolosa, and the sight of the picadors riding in state to the arena was cruelly tanta- lizing. In the evening we had some long and steep hills to climb, which was effected by the aid of two huge oxen, whose docility and resignation formed a truly edifying contrast to the savage yells and ferocious gestures of two animals (believed to belong to the genus man species, peasant,) who goaded them on. Just as we commenced the descent on the other side, the rival diligence came in sight. The consequence was, a race to the bottom, conducted with the same disregard for the limbs and feelings of the passengers as was shown in the palmy days of the road in old England. Our top-heavy vehicle swayed fearfully as we dashed round each sharp tourniquet, and a super- stitious reverence for the powers of centrifugal force led me to expect that every turn would be a turn over. I am still convinced that we ought to have been upset, on strict mathematical principles, and am truly grateful to the unknown disturbing forces which interposed, and brought us safe to Vergara. This is the place illustrious for the final triumph of the Duke of Victory. We supped, for aught I know, in the very room where his grace definitively routed the 14 VITORIA. Carlist forces, by giving their leader a check for a few million reals. The gallant generals met hand to hand, and struck a bargain ! Shall I confess that I passed through Vitoria at night, and spent but one quarter of an hour there ? I own it is not what England has a right to expect. However, for a sensitive patriot there are other asso- ciations, less agreeable, connected with Vitoria. There it was that those poor devils, whose collective name was ' legion,' died by hundreds of disease and want (as may be read in the simple and pathetic narrative of ' a working-man'). Now the Spaniards, who have cheated them out of the pay promised, ease their consciences by depreciating the services rendered adding insult to injury making light of deeds which they could not emulate, and sufferings which they would not alleviate. Meanwhile, the poor fellows f sleep on, little reck- ing,' a few thousands more, added to the long list of their countrymen who lie below the battle-plains of the Peninsula, at Montiel, Almanza, or Albuera, having lost their lives in a foreign land for a stranger's quarrel, fighting for a Peter or a Ferdinand. Even rtow, if a Protestant Englishman has the misfortune to die in Spain, his body is an unclean thing, and must be buried like a dead dog. Truly, intervention is a profitless and thankless task. Day dawned, and I woke just as we rattled into Miranda-on-the-Ebro, where our luggage was hauled down, and inspected for the third time. Yet, in spite THE DEFILE OF PANCORBO. 15 of the Argus eyes which insisted upon peering into my dressing-case, Spain is deluged with prohibited manu- factures. If they are not belied, the carabineros invariably speed the smuggler for a share of his gains, and make a show of activity by pestering the tourist : Dat veniam corvis, &c. A whole hour passed before the doves in question, with ruffled plumes and tem- pers, again ascended to their respective perches, and crossed the bridge into Old Castile. Another hour or so brought us to the Defile of Pancorbo, a narrow gorge, through which the stream, scanty and inter- mittent, of traffic and travel flows into the Castilian plains. It reminded me of the Pass of Llanberris (all passes have, by the nature of the case, a strong resem- blance) ; but whether the Iberian rocks are 500 feet higher or lower than the Celtic, I have no notion : some people (and I envy them) have an eye for measurements. It is only on emerging from the Defile of Pancorbo that the traveller feels himself to be indeed in Spain. Nowhere else will he have seen a prospect such as the one before him. To left and right spreads a plain, with gentle undulations, covered with alternate patches of corn and fallow-land, fallow and corn-land, changing insensibly, from the hard yellows and browns of the foreground, to the soft blue distance, and then blending with the summer haze on the low and far horizon. Directly in front, at a vast distance, rises the next of those successive sierras, which divide Spain like so many ribs. Divisions these, not merely 16 TILLAGE AND POPULATION. geo- but ethno-graphical, and justifying the official designation of the country, namely 'Las Espanas,' 'The Spains.' One peculiarity, however, I have remarked as common to most of the Spains Old and New Castile, La Mancha, &c. viz., the apparent scantiness of the population as compared with the amount of tillage. In traversing this same plain which leads to Burgos, you see the ripening corn and the new-turned furrow, but where do the labourers live ? There are no isolated cottages as in England, and the villages are few and far between. One would think the quantity of corn on the ground would suffice ten times over for any mouths there are to eat it. The Spaniards, to be sure, eat much more bread and much less meat than we carnivorous northerns. Whatever the cause, a Spanish plain presents the aspect of a cultivated desert Elsewhere, the traveller may see cultivation and may see deserts, but Spain is the only country where he will see them united. In truth, it is a land of jumbled antitheses. Not one picturesque tower, not one green dell, relieves the dreary monotony of the way from Pan- corbo to Burgos. The sun climbed higher and higher through a cloudless sky, till we were almost suffocated in the flood of heat which poured unrelentingly on our heads. What a contrast to the cold mountain mists and sea breezes of yesterday I But in these central plains, all summer long, that irresponsible tyrant rules the Spanish day, without a cloud to limit his prerogative. Let me vent my spleen, now that I BURGOS. 17 am safe under the shelter of an English November. Whether it was that I became somewhat acclimatized in course of time, but I certainly never afterwards suffered so much from heat as in that ride to Burgos. I was fain to refresh myself by dipping into ' Ford,' who, unlike his namesakes in Spain, is never, dry. ' Sir,' once said a table-d'hote acquaintance ' Sir, he is the traveller's vadum mecum.' The pun was unin- tentional, for the speaker was a Scotch gentleman in the muslin trade. Right glad I was, an hour before noon, to see the twin towers of Burgos rising over the plain, and doubly long seemed the leagues as we neared the city. A league off we came upon the shrunk river, winding its way between a double row of alders and poplars, which feebly attempted to be green. Just at the entrance of Burgos were a vast number of soldiers, in their auto-da-fe-coloured jackets, engaged in wash- ing the greatest possible number of indescribable garments in the smallest possible quantity of water. Had they been washerwomen, they could not have made more noise about it. Excepting the soldiers at wash, Burgos was as still and quiet as fifteen thousand grave Castilians can make it, and that, let me tell you, is very still indeed. You will hardly match it westward of Palmyra, unless it be Ferrara, or Phila- delphia, U. S., which, I understand, is brim-full of Quakers. 18 CHAPTER III. T MUST confess that I experienced a sensation of loneliness as the diligence moved off on its way to Madrid. Sitting on a portmanteau, ' warranted solid,' under an archway, I watched the vehicle till it turned the corner, as Ariadne may have watched the sails of Theseus Sinking with all she loved beneath the verge. Nor did I find the same consolation, for the wine of Burgos is detestable to a northern palate. There I was, a stranger, blundering over the first rudiments of Spanish conversation, in the very heart of the pride and prejudice of old Castile, in Burgos, which is no city of the interpreter, where no laquais-de- place proffers his services in Biscayan-French or Maltese -English. If the traveller cannot speak Spanish enough to ask for a bed-room, or cannot muster impudence enough to occupy one without asking, he runs great chance of having to take up his quarters with the other dumb animals in the stable or kennel. Just at that time the silent city was doubly silent, for it was taking its siesta. I resolved to follow so good an example, and accordingly pro- ceeded to seize and possess myself of a room, followed by a casual boy from the streets, whom I had bribed THE POSADA. 19 to carry my luggage upstairs, no waiter or 'boots' being forthcoming. But, in respect of the anticipated nap, I had reckoned without my host. The posada in which I was lodged was infested by diligences, which came lumbering in at intervals all that after- noon, with a cargo of hungry 'insides.' Conse- quently, this was precisely the one noisy place in Burgos. Stairs creaked, doors banged, knives clat- tered, women screamed, and, worse than all, an incense-smoke of fried oil and garlic spread into every nook and corner. Your true Castilian never does anything quickly and quietly. He knows no medium between apathy and fuss ; and the tumult of the one (when he is roused) equals the quietude of the other. When the ( he ' is a ' she,' the same holds true, a fortiori. Now, in this establishment, the entire personnel was female. Sleep was impossible, so I resolved to dine with the Santander diligence, at two. The waitresses, with a ferocity quite appalling, flung on the table a profusion of strong meats, entirely unknown to the Cis-pyrenean cuisine. Every kind of meat was brought to a horrid uniformity by a thick disguise of garlic. But (as I afterwards discovered) even garlic is nothing when you're used to it. The passengers contrived to eat enormously, maintaining the while a stately and dignified reserve. As for me, if I did not satisfy my appetite, I at least received a lesson in manners: I had dined with half-a-dozen Dukes Humphrey and their duchesses. The feast over, I sallied out; for the scanty strip 20 THE CATHEDRAL. of shadow in the street had now widened to a com- fortable breadth, and the town was waking, after its own drowsy fashion. Here and there I saw a dame or damsel, wearing a mantilla, and that awful, don't- speak-to-me countenance which ladies generally assume on their way to church. I followed one of these black angels accordingly, for my first object was the cathedral ; and I was not mistaken, in two minutes I stood before the gate of the south transept. Enter ; and what a change ' from glow to gloom !' from the common glare of day to a charmed twilight ! from prose to poetry ! Then you can feel the joy with which the weary traveller in the desert flings himself down to rest on the far-seen, long- wished-for oasis, by the fountain beneath the palms. And those vast pillars, with that arched roof, are more impervious to the sun than the trunks and leaves of any banana, and those streams of gentle music flow sweeter than falling water. In a southern climate the exigencies of nature aid the endeavours of art, and endue the cathedral with a new significance. The fierce sun and fiercer sirocco, against which no common dwelling is proof, are not felt in the house of God. It is the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The superstition which in England consigned the north side of the church, with its dank mould and green lichens, to the evil one, is unknown in other and sunnier lands. f On the north side,' says the great poet-prophet (as true to nature in the one THE CATHEDRAL. 21 capacity, as he is true to God in the other) f On the north side lieth the city of the Great King.' The north side is ever the chosen place for beggars, the halt and the blind, who, else homeless, gather under the shelter of its liberal shadow. For a moment after you enter the church all is night, but gradually its glories dawn upon you one by one. Round the massive pillars are clustered niches and canopies, rich in fantastic tracery, and from each an Evangelist with a book, or bishop with pastoral staff, looks down on the few worshippers who kneel below, almost as motionless. The grand old Gothic that catholic mould in which all Christian Europe has striven best to express its devotion is varied here by details which epitomize the character and the history of Spain. The stern, grave figures cut in the white stone represent well the patricians of Old Castile, proud of their unblemished honour and unconquerable resolve ; the costly and varied marbles, and graceful foliage enwreathing many a tomb, and the altar-screens blazing with gold, recal the days when Spain had at her command the quarries of Carrara, the pliant fancy of Genoa, and the untold treasures of the New World. You will be roused from your day-dream by the cessation of the music and the pattering feet of the departing worshippers, or probably by some hobbling old verger, who taps you on the shoulder with his wand, and intimates that, vespers over, he is now at liberty to serve Mammon in a small way, by showing 22 PICTURES. you the chapels. Let us go with him by all means we shall not grudge the fee. He will take you first to the Capella del Con- destabile, a gorgeous specimen of florid Gothic in full bloom. In the centre, on separate tombs, lie the effigies of the said Constable and his wife, all in white marble, in their habit as they lived. A long inscription records the titles of the founder, whose only title to posthumous fame, after all, is the splen- did mausoleum which preserves his memory and name. Pedro Hernandez de Velasco was wiser in his generation than all the Pharaohs of Egypt Let us go on, and look at a picture attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and quite in his manner. It is a Magdalen, calm, yet full of sorrow, with all her golden hair hanging in wavy tresses about her face. You can see the fair smooth skin gleaming through. There is yet another picture, attached to a still greater name, to Michael Angelo himself. A Virgin, robed in red and blue, holds the child in her arms. Two little angels, with palm-branches, hover above. In the distance is a green landscape. The child is exquisite, like one of Raphael's happiest creations. The sweet face of the Virgin has something Spanish in its character, but the picture is Italian beyond doubt. Is it Michael Angelo's? It appears to me (speaking with the diffidence which becomes a lay- man in art,) that in hardness of outline, and strongly- contrasted colours, this picture has a decided resem- blance to that which bears the name of Michael Angelo in the tribune of the Uffizii, at Florence. PLAZA MAYOR. 23 But the genuineness even of that is questioned. Nay, I believe it is a moot point whether he ever painted an easel picture at all. But the good verger is show- ing signs of impatience. Let us permit him to draw the curtain over the picture and the discussion. Let us now turn down to the great square, the Plaza Mayor, of late re-baptized ' de la Constitucion ;' it is quite empty, excepting the grim statue of some dead king or other in the centre. All round is an arcade, in that ragged tumble-down state that artists love ; and underneath are a number of diminutive shops, in which the smallest possible amount of busi- ness is transacted. Business ! there is no business in Castile, except the barber's. Elsewhere custom is most unfrequent, saving ' the custom always of an afternoon.' These little shops are so still and quiet, that they might be Columbaria or Egyptian tombs, and the master, stretched motionless on the counter, might be the mummy smoking a cigarett. When abroad, I always read the names over the shop-doors. It's so improving. In the course of this interesting investigation, my eye fell upon the inscrip- tion e Don Pedro Smith' over a haberdasher's. I started, like Robinson Crusoe when he discerned the foot-print of a fellow-man in the desert island. I entered, for I hoped to get some useful information, in English, from Mr. Peter Smith. He was a little fat man, lolling on his counter as lazily as any Castilian of them all. This was discouraging, yet I ventured to address him in English. But, no ! though he did not deny his father, and had not forsaken his name, he 21: SUPPLY AND DEMAND. had forgotten the ancestral language of all the Smiths, and was merged in the Don Pedro. So I left him, with the usual blessing, which was all I took by the motion. It is a marvel to me how Don Pedro and his fellows get their bread. They toil not, neither do they spin. They are so supremely indifferent, that I am sure two hundred of a trade might live together in the most perfect agreement They pass their lives in the same dull routine, varied, at far intervals, by some such scene as this: Let C stand for customer, D for dealer (be the wares what they may). D is discovered lying at full length on the counter, smoking. Enter C. Ave Maria purissima. D. Sin pecado concebida, (without disturbing himself. ) C. Have you got such-and-such a thing ? D. God knows. Does your worship want to buy it? (A pause.) Well, I'll look by-and-by. (He finishes his cigarett, and proceeds slowly to examine his stores. Then, somewhat surprised,) Holy Mary, here it is ! we have got it. C. What's the price ? D. God knows! Will your worship call again to-morrow, or next day, and I'll tell you ? C.andD. G Usted con Dios. Exit C. D lies down again in his former position, and rolls another cigarett. By and bye I was corisoled for my first disappoint- SWISS CAFE. 25 merit by discovering a cafe, under the management of a communicative Swiss. If I had known more of Spain, I might have been sure of finding a Swiss cafe in the town. These Swiss turn up everywhere, in the most out-of-the-way corners. Couriers, valets, body- guards, and pastry-cooks, nothing comes amiss to them. Like other children of the mist, Asturians and Scotch Highlanders, they care not how far they wander to make a livelihood, but always cherish the hope of returning to their native hills to die. A little before sunset the good folks cheered up wonderfully, and turned out en masse to the Alameda, in the highest state of satisfaction and contentment. The Alameda affords a singular combination of scents and sounds, proceeding from stagnant pools and blow- ing roses, croaking frogs and chattering women. This night, however, the innocent gaieties of the promenade were cut short by a thunder- shower, scaring a whole flock of mantillas to the cafe, where they devoured huge mers-de-glace and mountains of pastry, to the detriment of their own digestions and the purses of attendant cavaliers. Early next morning I stormed the castle, which enjoys a military reputation quite unique for having repulsed Lord Wellington. It opened its gates to me on the first summons, or rather, I found them open and walked in. A few soldiers were lounging or lying about in the shade, keeping up a constant fire of paper-cigars to kill time withal. I found, however, no stores of in- GAZ. c 26 MIRAFLORES. terest to reward my pains, so I evacuated the fortress, and divided the rest of the day between the cathedral and the cafe. The morning after, I made an excursion to Mira- flores, in a vehicle peculiar to the country called a calesa, in which you are carried at a slow trot, at4the imminent risk of dislocating every joint, over a track termed by that extravagant Spanish courtesy a road, which, in winter, is a slough of despond and mud, and, in summer, is hardened into something that resembles a raised map of Switzerland. However, Miraflores will repay you for the trouble of going there. The church, as you approach, looks so like Eton Chapel, that one involuntarily begins Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, That crown but here the applicability ceases, for at Miraflores, alas! there is no watery glade, nor science, nor gratitude, to adore the holy shade of Isabel. We drove into a deserted court, where, after sundry shoutings and knockings, we were joined by a dilapi- dated attendant, quite in keeping with the place, who conducted me, through hollow-sounding corridors and cloisters, to the church, now silent as the tombs it covers. Here are the sepulchres of Juan II. and his wife, and their son Alphonso, unrivalled memorials of what filial and sisterly love can accomplish when it wields the wealth of a kingdom. In the centre of the church, just before the high altar, lie the effigies of the king and queen, and round the sides of the CHURCH OF MIRAFLORES. 27 tomb are clustered saints and evangelists, personified virtues and heraldic monsters, with a profusion of flower-wreaths, carved in the boldest alto relievo and of the whitest Carrara marble. The artist's design was, doubtless, to typify their regal grandeur, their moVal worth, and the faith whereby they looked for unfading crowns. Isabel was peculiarly happy in her artist. His work displays a teeming fancy, guided by a pure taste, and executed with surpassing skill and delicacy. Unhappily, the beauty of the work pleaded in vain with the invaders of 1808. It spoke a language they did not understand. The flower- tracery was mutilated, and many of the statuettes have been pocketed for relics. Over the altar is a magnificent skreen of carved wood. In the centre stands Jesus with the cross, and round him the prin- cipal events of his life, the whole encircled by a wreath of cherubs ; and outside that, figures of Saints, full-size, each under his gilt canopy. Here, there is none of that ghastly reality which so often disturbs the pleasure of examining these gorgeous ' things of Spain;' all is artistic and in tasteful keeping, down to the minutest details, one lingers long, loth to look for the last time on so much beauty. At length I left the church, and followed my guide through the convent. There used to be twenty-one monks at Miraflores, whose occupation was singing masses for the repose of the royal dead ; but Espar- tero ' broke into the spence and turned the cowls adrift.' Three only are left, old men, who will not cumber the c 2 28 DISSOLUTION OF MONASTERIES. ground long. I saw one of them, wandering like a melancholy ghost among the once pleasant places, fast becoming a wilderness of weeds and ruin. I visited the kitchen, now fire-less ; the cellars, innocent of wine ; the refectory, which has been robbed even of its picture of a supper. In the sala capitular, nearly a hundred freshly-gathered roses were arranged in the form of a cross on the floor, the pious morning's work of one of the old fathers. The fountain in the middle of the garden has ceased to play, but the water wells through the disjointed stones, and keeps the life in a few straggling garden shrubs. Close by is the cemetry, covered with rank weeds, a tall cross marking, as usual, the place where the last brother was buried. It will be shifted three times more. The whole scene forcibly brought to my mind the description of the monastery of Kennaquhair, after the Reformation. One cannot help feeling some sympathy with any reverent and time-sanctioned custom, just swept away for ever ; but I do not consider the late dissolution of the monasteries a matter for real regret. The appro- priated revenues may have been misapplied and wasted ; solemn promises may have been broken on the part of the government, and thousands of un- offending men driven out to face the hardships of a world where they were as strangers ; but, withal, it is a happy thing for Spain that some hundred thou- sand pairs of stalwart arms, formerly employed in telling beads or swinging censers, will now be at their country's service, to fight her battles and to till her fields. 29 CHAPTER IV. HHHAT same day, at 2 P.M. I set out for Madrid. The diligencia differs from the diligence in having no banquette. The coupee was full, so I was compelled to go in the interior. I took my place for the south, with much the same feelings that a Scotch covenanter may have had when seating himself in the chair of torture ; in each case, it is a painful and necessary transit to a land of palms. If I were to speak from recollection of the tract between Burgos and Lerma, I should say that it was a region where fire had usurped the place of all the other elements, licking up the water, and crumbling the earth into an impalpable powder, which, in its turn, rose and ousted the air. That day's experience has corrected my notion as to the indispensable necessity of Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Co. as a Life Insurance; I then found that the lungs could perform their functions for several successive hours, while inhaling and expiring equal portions of dust and tobacco-smoke. The tra- veller will generally find that his mental powers and spirits are elevated or depressed in exactly inverse proportion to the altitude of the sun ; accordingly, as it was towards evening when we passed Lerma, I had sufficient life in me to look out upon the huge factory- 30 DESOLATION. like old palace of the famous Duke of that ilk, to call up faint recollections of Gil Bias, and to listen to a long story from one of my travelling companions about a troop of bandits, who, in this unromantic nine- teenth century, had taken up their abode in the vaults of the said palace, and pillaged, with long impunity, all who passed by that road. The whole story was merely one of those pleasant extemporary fictions with which these semi-orientals beguile the time, quite content if you listen in patience, and not making the smallest claim on your credulity. Before we reached Aranda, I remember crossing enormous plains, covered for the most part with cistus and lavender, the flowers of the latter deepening the rich purple of the distance, and contrasting gloriously with the trans- parent yellow and crimson of the sunset. Besides the diligence and its team, creeping like a long snake over the white road, there was not a living thing to be seen not a trace of man's handiwork. The shrieks of the driver, and the crack of his whip, were the only sounds which broke the stillness. The desolation of a plain is always more awful than the desolation of a mountain. In the latter case it is natural, and a thing of course, in the former, it seems the result of a curse on the place. The existence of such vast deserts, within half-a-day's journey of the capital, points to something rotten in the state of Spain. And yet this is the country which once peopled a continent with its overplus. The Spanish monarchy is a tree which has decayed from the core outwards ; A SPANISH FAMILY. 31 the leaves, meanwhile, flutter out their season gaily enough, caring little for the old trunk. At Aranda, we were allowed half-an-hour to regale ourselves with the never-failing, ever-excellent chocolate. With a Spanish diligence, half-an-hour means half-an-hour and something more. You are not liable, as in France, to be bustled out of your last ten minutes by the conducteur's noisy summons, < En voiture, messieurs les voyageurs;' so I had time to observe my companions. The rotonde was occupied by a father, mother, and some half-dozen children. The father was a little, timid, small-voiced man, implicitly obedient to his better-half, a lady of herculean proportions and stentorian voice, who took advantage of her palpably interesting situation to be unusually exacting. The children regarded the mother with awful reverence, and the father with contemptuous pity. I mention this because, doubt- less, such a state of things is quite unheard of in our well-regulated English homes. From the roof of the diligence descended a well- made, ill-conditioned fellow, who called lustily for aguardiente to keep the cold out. Like certain other persons, he made all the world participators of his 'confidences' unasked. He had served under Cavaignac in Algeria, (on whom he vented, by the way, sundry military oaths,) had deserted, and earned a scanty pittance by sitting to the artists at Seville as a model for bandits, &c. &c. I dare say, on a fitting occa- sion, he would have acted the character to perfection. 32 THE SOMO SIERRA. Next morning, as the day broke, we were climbing the first slopes of the Somo Sierra, the pass which leads over the Guadarrama chain to Madrid. I got out, and walked for some miles ahead of the diligence, drinking deep draughts of the keen air, and storing up a famous appetite for breakfast, which we found prepared for us at a mountain venta. In so lonely a district, one may eat of dubious dishes with compara- tive security ; cats thereabouts must be considerably scarcer than hares. Here our deserter made himself very obnoxious. He had been repeating his draughts of aguardiente at every stage, till he became unable to take care of himself, and decidedly unfit to be intrusted with a carving-knife. He was at last, by dint of force and fraud, hoisted back on to his perch, where he fell fast asleep, and lay there with the burning sun full upon him all the way to Madrid. It would have killed anybody but a chasseur d'Afrique. Whether it killed him or not nobody cared to inquire. As we descended the southern slopes of the mountain, the breeze grew fainter and fainter at every turn, and at last died of sheer exhaustion, leaving us to repeat the same vitally interesting series of experiments on the organs of respiration, and, I am happy to add, with the same result. The vast plain which surrounds Madrid presents almost universally traces of the plough, though the land lying idle bears an enormous disproportion to that actually productive. It is, in fact, an ocean of grey fallow, dotted with sporades of PLAIN OF MADRID. 33 yellow stubble. Here and there you see a glaring village of white-washed mud; and as the vehicle stops at each of these to change horses (mules, I should say), it is surrounded by a swarm of maimed and decrepit old folks and preternaturally active urchins, with or without rags, who solicit your charity and make liberal promises of repayment in the name of the blessed Virgin Mary. I did not see Madrid till we were close to the walls, for the simple reason that I was not equal to the exertion of putting my head out of the window to look for it. I was then strongly reminded of exterior views which I have seen of certain Oriental cities, a mud wall, surmounted by paltry minarets and towers, with a desert all round and touching the very gates. What a contrast to the environs of London, where the country melts into the town by insensible gradations, Wimbledon Common, parks, gardens, villas, bough- pots, and Bow-bells ! The citizen of Madrid does not go beyond its walls twice in a year, and he is quite right Once enter Madrid, and all traces of Orientalism vanish. It is the least Spanish of all Spanish towns. The Gallo-mania, which is universally, and the Anglo-mania, which is partially, prevalent in the capital, have destroyed all that was characteristic and national in architecture, customs, and costume, except the Plaza Mayor, bull-fights, and Isabel the Second. After my luggage had undergone a polite pro forma examination, I proceeded in quest of La Vizcaina, who occupies the second floor of the Casa Cordero c 3 34 SPANISH TABLE-D'HOTE. an enormous house in the very centre of the town. I was received at the door by the lady herself, a beaming, bustling housewife, still so fat and fair that I should have pronounced her forty. I have since learnt that, (to use the language of mediaeval romance,) she has numbered sixty winters. May she double the reckoning, for the benefit of travellers yet unborn ! A delicious warm bath washed away the memory of fatigue, and prepared me for the olla, promised at five o'clock precisely. The company at the * round table ' (so a table-d'hote is termed in Spain), some twenty persons, formed a little quadruple alliance, for it contained representatives of each of the four powers, and of none other. In this case, the French had it all their own way. They carried on a clamorous discussion on the politics of Europe ; and if any slow-spoken Englishman or Spaniard ventured upon a deprecatory mais,' he was immediately borne down by a dashing, reckless Polish-lancer-like charge of assertions and inferences, so rapid that you had no time to comprehend, much less reply to them. After dinner, sundry silver or pseudo-silver dishes, with handles to them, filled with glowing charcoal, were placed on the table, whereat every one lighted his cigar. A lull ensued, and the discussion ended, as usual, in smoke. By this time, it was becoming what is called by a pleasant irony ' cool,' so every one sallied out to commence the real life of the day. I did the same, with the more eagerness, as I was anxious to cultivate THE CALLE DR ALCALA. 35 my new acquaintance, Madrid. The eastern part of the city, the quarter in which all the world lives, except the queen, the people, and the British am- bassador, is like an outstretched hand, of which the Puerta del Sol is the palm, and the Calle de Alcala the middle finger, being the broadest and longest of all the streets which centre in the Puerta. The * Gate of the Sun,' by the way, is now as mythical as Aid Gate or Bishop's Gate. This street of Alcala is affirmed by the people of Madrid to be the finest street in Europe, and I am not sure that the boast is wrong ; I will maintain its claims against Regent- street or the Unter den Linden. The Rue de Rivoli is out of the question, because there is only one row of houses ; and nobody calls the Boulevards 'a street.' I never saw St. Petersburg or New York, nor, in all probability, has 'the gentle reader' either. As the street begins to sink towards the Prado, it is bordered by double rows of acacias, planted by Espartero, and watered by Narvaez. The principal cafes are in this quarter; as, for instance, the Suizo, long established and unpretend- ing ; and that yclept ' del Espejo,' which, in cheap magnificence, outshines all its Parisian prototypes. There you find ices, orgeat, and lemonade; and (besides the usual temperance beverages) wines and liqueurs innumerable. Upstairs is a suite of rooms devoted to various games; billiards, played with a set of dwarf nine-pins, and cards with strange out-Englandish devices (observe the players they are 36 THE PRADO. performing a tableau-vivant after Caravaggio). In another place you see a fierce Don, knitting his brows and twisting his moustache over a perplexity at dominoes. It is a pleasant lounge for a new comer to sit at one of these windows about sunset, and watch the stream of pedestrians, carriages and horses, flowing down towards the Prado. Let us by all means go thither with the stream. The most frequented part is that which extends about five hundred paces south of the Calle de Alcala, with a broad carriage drive, and a still broader space for the promenaders. Here all the able-bodied population of Madrid circulate of an evening, from the queen down to whatever may be the other extremity of the social scale. Except her majesty, who looks best in a mantilla, and knows it, the ladies chiefly wear bonnets of the last Parisian fashion but ten a dreadful disenchantment. Thou- sands of rush-bottomed chairs may be hired for a cuarto a-piece, to accommodate the wives, mothers, and daughters of the people, as they watch the gay world prancing by. The saddle-horses are mostly Andalucians, trained to paw the air and make a great show of going but it's all pretence. Besides the bit in their mouths, the poor animals have often a band fastened across the nose, provided internally with a small saw, by means of which they may be brought down on their haunches any time, without any unseemly exertion of strength on the rider's part. The carriages are built after the Long Acre THE PRADO. 37 mould, and are got up generally in what is conceived to be the English style i. e. the footmen are in top- boots. After the daylight is gone, the fair (I mean, dark) occupants descend, and promenade till ten or eleven o'clock. Altogether, the Prado at that time is very like what Hyde Park might be by gas-light. Fashion, truly, is a sad leveller of oddities, national or individual. For myself, I confess this treadmill- like mode ceases to be amusing after a time, whether in London, Paris, or Madrid. Vamos. 38 CHAPTER V. first impulse of every stranger on waking, the first morning after his arrival at Madrid, is, or ought to be, to visit the Gallery. Indeed, but for that magnet, few would encounter the slow torture of diligence-travelling through the interior, when they might go by steam from port to port all round the coast (cholera-time excepted). Let the stranger, then, having duly fortified himself with chocolate, sally forth, pass intrepidly through the midst of the soldiers who are lounging about the post-office door (fierce as they look, they wont harm you), and then take the Carrera San Geronimo, carefully hugging the shady side till you come to the Prado. The scene you left so full of life, and fans, and flirtation, last night, is now abandoned to sunshine and solitude two synonymes at this time of year. You must, however, endure the glare for a minute or two, cross right over ' the dust that once was love/ and before you stands a large, massive, but not inelegant building of red stone, with white facings and pillars (in the British infantry style). That is the Gallery. Unless your object be the sculptures (which I can't for a moment conceive), go to the door at the north end ; enter, present your passport to the old doorkeeper, THE MADRID GALLERY. 39 who returns it to your worship with a grave bow ; write your name and occupation (' proprietor' of course, even if you are conscious that the only thing you hold in fee-simple is your portmanteau), buy a catalogue, and then go in and look at it. * What do you mean by 'it'?' Why the Pearl, of course; what else could it be ? It is placed on the left hand, half-way up the long gallery 9 which faces you on entering (No. 726 in the catalogue). Its title was conferred by Philip the Fourth, who bought it at the sale of our Charles the First's pictures, through the medium of his ambassador in London, D. Alonso de Cardenas, for two thousand pounds sterling. I dare say old Noli chuckled over the great price. But that the gallery was saleable, it would probably have been burnt as idolatrous, for pictures to the Puritans were, indeed, as pearls before swine. The first view of this precious jewel is disappointing. It has been repolished in Paris, and thereby lost that venerable mellowness, which from habit we associate with all great pictures. One might take it for a first-rate copy turned out yesterday. Its harmony has been marred by some rude northern hand. The purple and gold of the evening sky are contrasted in a savage manner, quite unlike Raphael, whose landscapes and skies always seem to retire, and fade, and wane, in the presence of the Infant God and the Blessed Mother. The faces, however, are uninjured. The child John is offering flowers to Jesus, who looks up to his mother's face, as if to ask for the smile of 40 THE MADRID GALLERY. permission. The whole group is conceived in that spirit of gentle humanity which reveals the glories of Raphael even to babes in art, and which has made his creations the household-gods of every hearth. A little further on (No. 741) is the ' Virgin of the Fish/ where the painter seems studiously to have rejected all accessory decorations, unless the wide green curtain behind can be so called. The maid- mother, babe in arm, sits, not * beneath branch work of costly sardonyx/ but on a chair of plain deal, with foot-stool to match. The face of Tobit, who, kneeling, makes his humble offering, is full of mingled love and awe. It is but justice to state, that if the French have damaged some pictures by over-care, we are also indebted to them for the preservation of others. This very picture, which was rapidly peeling off the wood when taken to Paris, was there transferred to canvas with consummate skill, and preserved for the admiration of many centuries to come. On the other side of the Gallery is the famous Spasimo di Sicilia, whose chief merit is its magni- ficent colouring. It is swathed in sunshine, and all a-glow with that mellow brilliance which distinguishes the master and (in a less degree) the master's master, Perugino. This quality takes off in the painting from the defect so obvious in the engravings namely, the prominence given to the ruffianly mus- cular fellow who is holding the cross in such a con- strained and unnatural attitude. The prancing horse, THE MADRID GALLERY. 41 too, with his rider bearing the proud standard, are too conspicuous, and divert the attention from the fallen Saviour, on whom, as the interest centers, the eye should rest. How seldom, in Raphael's easel- pictures, do we meet with the Saviour except as a child ! Besides this picture, there is the * Entomb- ment,' in the Borghese palace at Rome, and the ( Transfiguration.' It would seem that Perugino also, to whom Raphael owed so much, loved to contemplate the Saviour as an infant rather than a man. On the whole, the Spasimo, splendid as it is, lacks the profound and tender devotion which prevails in the earlier works, and reminds me of a saying of Over- bech (whom I saw in his studio in the Cenci palace in 1847), 'When Raphael left Perugino, God left him.' On turning away from these ' world-famous' pictures of Raphael, one is perfectly embarrassed by riches. Names only less celebrated than his solicit your attention on every side. The eye is puzzled by profusion. It is only after a second or third visit that one can commence anything like a systematic examination of this vast treasure-house of art. Scarcely any kind of classification has been at- tempted in arranging the pictures. It is true, the two first rooms to the left and right of the Rotunda are devoted to the Spanish school; but then you find Murillos and Riberas scattered about in all the other rooms. In truth, any system of arrangement which should show the history of the various schools, 42 THE MADRID GALLERY. as at Berlin, would in this case expose the poverty amidst wealth which marks the gallery at Madrid. For instance, while there are hundreds of master- pieces of the Venetian school, there is not a single picture of the Tuscan previous to the time of Leonardo da Vinci not even one of Fra Beato. This profusion on the one hand, and dearth on the other, is, however, easily accounted for, by considering the circumstances under which the collection was made. It was made chiefly by the Austrian princes, Charles V. and his three immediate successors, who selected the pictures with a view to furnishing palaces for their own pleasure not fitting up a gallery for the instruction of their people. Hence, they followed their own individual likings. It would have been natural to suppose that Philip the Second, stern and bigoted monk that he was, would have preferred the purely devotional pictures of Perugino or the Gaddis to the warm and worldly creations of the Venetian school. But, at the time of his accession, Titian had witched the world with noble colouring, and the noontide blaze of his fame had for a time blotted out the fixed stars of art. In sublunary language, Titian was in fashion; and to imperious fashion even the monk-king, in his lonely palace on the Guadarrama, was constrained to bow. Besides, Titian had been a favourite with Charles, so, for a two-fold reason, he was chosen to be the king's art-purveyor-in-chief; and his less celebrated countrymen and scholars picked up the crumbs THE MADRID GALLERY. 43 which fell from the royal table. And very pretty pickings doubtless they had of it, if one may judge by the number of paintings by Venetian hands now in the galleries and palaces of Spain. In the Madrid collection, there are fifteen by that cattle-jobber Jacopo Bassano. As the glory of the Venetian school declined, that of the Flemish school arose. Rubens borrowed the free pencil and glowing tints of Titian, and infused new life into art by adopting, in place of the hacknied conventionalisms of Italy, the novel types suggested by northern life and manners. These pictures were congenial to the hereditary tastes of the Spanish sovereigns, who, moreover, would naturally feel nattered at the pro- ficiency of their subjects, as reflecting a glory upon themselves. The Flemings, too, by their alternate fits of implicit obedience and unsuccessful rebellion, afforded golden opportunities to any viceroy who might wish to make a picture-gallery without paying for it (a la Fra^aise). The vast accumulation of Flemish and Venetian pictures in Spain so similar in their grand characteristics undoubtedly con- tributed to impress upon rising Spanish art the character which it developed in its culmination and preserved in its decline. Doubtless, the visit of Rubens (1628) was not without its influence, though he did come as ' Sir Peter,' and plenipotentiary for Great Britain. He was probably closeted many more hours with Velazquez in his studio than with the Conde Duque in the premier's office. 44 THE MADRID GALLERY. Thus, the three great schools of Venice, Flanders, and Spain, which are so amply represented in the Madrid Gallery, have a close historical connexion. The Bolognese school, of which there are also many specimens here, is in reality as great a misnomer as the Lake school of poetry. It is merely a collective local name for a number of clever eclectics. The other three each deserve the name of school, because, while they developed the naturalism of the later Romans (Michael Angelo, &c.), they preserved a distinctive difference, by engrafting their respective nationalities on the common stock. In the first, we discern the gorgeous magnificence of the semi- oriental Queen of the Adriatic, in the second, the rude joviality and boisterous merriment of the Fleming, under his grey northern sky, in the third, the gay sunshine of Andalucia, half eclipsed by the cold shadow of the Inquisition, where a central oppression forced all into extremes, where men durst not be serious without being austere, and could not be light of heart without being also light of head. Spain may be thankful that this blighting curse was powerless in the palaces oOjdr kings, else many a fair picture would have been marked for destruction, on the ground of its displaying the Virgin's foot, or some such twaddling reason. Indeed, one is tempted to suppose that these monarchs, being them- selves a Pabri, took a pleasure in possessing such pictures as were forbidden to their subjects. All the maniacs want to have what nobody else has. THE MADRID GALLERY. 45 This love for the arts is a golden thread, running through the dark history of the Austrian house. The memory of Philip IV. is rescued from utter contempt by his patronage of the genius of Velazquez a genius which can be estimated at Madrid, and at Madrid only, for, as he painted almost entirely for the palace, his works have not been subject to dispersion, and have made no longer migration than from one end of the capital to the other. Hence, till lately, the painter was honoured solely in his own country a fortunate circumstance, since his works may be seen without the external polish acquired by so many others during a recent trip to Paris. The earliest specimen of the master is the portrait of Gongora (No. 527), which he painted in his first visit to Madrid in the year 1622, when the poet was sixty-one, and the artist twenty-three years old. The famous ' Forge of Vulcan' was painted at Rome in the year 1630. If, instead of Phoebus, who stands simpering on the threshold with his good-natured message, there had been a donkey waiting to be shod, it would have made a capital representation of a common every-day blacksmith's shop. The series of landscapes (118, 128, 132, &c.), evidently studies from the scenery of Rome, were probably done about the same time. In 1639 he painted the Crucifixion (No. 51). Ob- serve how carefully he has represented even the grain and knots in the wood. The Saviour's hair hangs dishevelled over one side of his face, a peculiarity to 46 THE MADRID GALLERY. be noticed in the Christ of ( La Coronacion,' also by Velazquez. The equestrian portrait of Isabel de Bourbon is of the year 1643. By the way, there is a curious mis- take in Bermudez as to the second visit of Velazquez to Italy. He says that Velazquez left Madrid in November, 1648, remained one year away, and re- turned in June, 1651. On his return, according to this same authority, generally trustworthy and accu- rate, he painted the portrait of Philip with his gun. The king had ordained that no one but Velazquez should take his likeness, * nequis se praeter Apellem pingeret ;' and, as he seems to have had a passion for ' sitting,' could therefore not bear with patience the painter's absence. One of his last and greatest works is ' Las Meninas' (No. 155), painted in 1656, four years before his death. It is especially interesting to us, as it contains the portrait of the artist himself. The pretty story about the red cross of Santiago on the breast, told by Cean Bermudez, and repeated by every- body, is horribly spoilt in the version of that dull pedant Palomino. The versatility of Velazquez is admirably illustrated by those two glorious pictures of ' the Taking of Breda, 1 and ' the Drinkers.' The much- vaunted ' Coronation of the Virgin' appeared to me cold and flat, and unaerial, unworthy, not merely of the subject, but even of the painter. It is only when he confines himself to man that he is divine. It would seem that the manner of Velazquez was THE MADRID GALLERY. 47 not in the least affected by his studies in Italy. He painted Philip II., when he was sixty, precisely in the same style that he had painted Gongora at three-and- twenty ' nee imitator nee imitabilis.' The gallery contains sixty-two pictures of Velaz- quez, and forty-six of Murillo. We would counsel a visitor, after blunting the edge of his curiosity by looking at some of the grandest things of these two masters, to commence an examination of the Spanish school in chronological order, and trace its progress, from the first feeble imitations of Italian art, to the glorious burst of national genius in which it finally exhausted itself, though there are some gaps even in the Spanish department, we find only one specimen of Roelas, and none at all of Luis de Vargas. The pieces by Juanes, Morales, Pantoja, and others, look like productions of a much earlier date than they really are. The * Ecce Homos' of Morales look like those of Correggio reflected lengthwise in a spoon ; in fact, for a long time Spanish art trod in the steps of Italian a considerable way behind. They were at once slow in adoption and blind in imitation, just as they are at the present day with respect to French bonnets and English harness. But, to make up for it, Spanish art was enjoying its golden age when Italian was fast sinking into leaden mediocrity. A stranger generally comes pre-occupied with the notion, that, with the exception of the works of the two great masters, the predominant character of the school is moroseness and gloom. The pictures of Ribera, com- 48 THE MADRID GALLERY. bined with his nick-name of Spagnoletto, have con- tributed to foster this idea. Yet they were produced at ' Soft Parthenope,' away from all national in- fluence. The Spanish gallery at the Louvre also leaves this impression. But one should not judge from that collection. The lively Baron who was Louis Philippe's agent in the affair does not seem to have been endowed with the most catholic of tastes, and often gave a great deal of money for a few square feet of rubbish, with a sounding name. Most assuredly, the works of the genuinely Spanish masters, such as Navarrete, Cano, and Roelas, are conspicuous for healthy cheerfulness of tone and manly vigour of execution. We must remember, too, that the artists of Spain had not a fair chance their hands were tied by the Inquisition. If the hands of the modern artists, Aparicio and others, had been tied, too, by somebody, many acres of unoffending canvas would have been spared. As it is, their great daubs, Brobdignag teaboards, are hung up in most con- spicuous places, and attract a crowd of astonished natives, especially the * Famine at Madrid/ It has that pseudo-classic air which is peculiar to one time and place to the Theatre Francais and the French Empire, le plus bas empire de tons. The poor imitator has exaggerated the faults of his master, and diluted his strength. It is the school of David ( break- ing up.' We can only wish that school a long holiday. 49 CHAPTER VI. THE first questions a traveller will be asked on his return from Spain are, Have you seen a bull- fight ? and have you encountered a bandit ? Some- times a country clergyman will inquire across the table whether you have seen an auto-da-fe ? As the two latter are out of fashion just now, a bullfight is, par excellence, the thing of Spain. Accordingly, as a professed student of national manners, I was on the look out for the first opportunity of witnessing one, just as an inquiring Spaniard would, on his arrival in London, spell over the advertisements in the Times, expecting to find an announcement of the next prize- fight, under the immediate patronage of H. R. H. In Spain, these things are not done in a corner. In my first stroll through the city, I observed placards stuck up in prominent places in the streets, each making a nucleus for a crowd of idlers, informing ' the loyal inhabitants of this court,' that a bull-fight would take place on the following Monday at 5 P.M. pre- cisely, 'weather permitting' (it was piously added). It happened that I was invited to join a party of natives, who kindly undertook to procure me a ticket, and I gladly accepted the invitation, in order that I might have some one at my elbow to refer to for ex- GAZ. D 50 BULL-FIGHT. planations, such as my barbarous ignorance needed. And very useful I found them. The day came, big with the fate of six bulls and an indefinite number of men. The weather, too, permitted; indeed, during the whole course of the summer, I never knew it do otherwise. Half-an-hour before the appointed time we left the Casa Cordero, all in a flutter of ex- pectation. The whole city was a-foot, those who could afford to pay for places going to the arena those who could not afford it watching the lucky people that could. Omnibuses were rushing to and fro, depositing one cargo and returning for another. We hailed one of them, were allowed five seconds to tumble in, which we effected, to the imminent risk of life and limb, and were immediately whirled off at full gallop, too happy in getting a place at all to inquire how many insides the vehicle was licensed to carry. We were put down just outside the Puerta de Alcala, a fine arch, celebrating the triumphs of Charles III., which, but for this their monument, might have escaped the recollection of posterity. Close by stands the Plaza de Toros, to which we made our way through six inches of dust and two rows of cavalry on guard. There is no attempt at external decoration in the building. Alexander Dumas (greater as a cook than a dra- matist, since I am credibly informed that he can make a very edible salmi without collaborateurs,) compares it to a standing pie. Certainly the best part of the feast is to be found inside, so we wont stand BULL-FIGHT. 51 gaping, but enter with the crowd. By dint of great patience and a little pushing, we squeeze our way up the thronged staircase and passages, and finally emerge into the arena. We have capital places front seats in the balcony; on the shady side. The tickets bear three prices, according as they are in shade, in sun, or half-and-half. None but a native, well seasoned to Iberian summers and protected by a twopenny fan, could stand the sun. Yet almost every place is filled, for the coming fight is expected to be first-rate. Altogether there are about 15,000 people present, including a fair sprinkling of the softer sex in the balconies. In the centre is a box for the queen, gay with crimson velvet and gold tinsel (for her majesty loves the sports of the people, and the people love her majesty all the better for that). Close by is the chair of the president, who gives the word of com- mand all through. As the bull-fight is a purely Andalusian invention, it is considered the correct thing to appear in Andalusian costume, so one sees tier upon tier sparkling with crimson sashes and parti-coloured jackets, like dahlias at a Chiswick show. But the metaphorical dahlias in question belong not to the silent vegetable kingdom; and if they steal and give odour, it is through the medium of paper cigars. Each individual shrieks, doubtless, the purest Castilian, but they produce in the aggre- gate such a Babel of sound as was never heard, except at Exeter Change or Exeter Hall. But stay, the gate is opened, and an alguazil, in D2 52 BULLFIGHT. his official cloak of inky black, prances in on an Andaltisian horse, or rather the horse prances in with him. This functionary is always received with a shout of derision, for an alguazil is supposed to be as remote from a centaur as an English alderman, and, by profession, quite incapable of sitting a horse. However, in spite of the shouts doubtless made with the kind intention of frightening the animal the official man rides up in safety to the front of the president's box, doffs his cap, and catches in it a key which the president flings to him. If he misses the catch, which may sometimes happen, the shouts are more hideous than ever. The key is supposed to belong to the door by which the bulls are to enter, and, having received it, the alguazil makes his bow and exit. Then enter the biped heroes of the day the three matadors, attended by a dozen subordinates, called ' Chulos ' or * Banderilleros,' each dressed in a spangled jacket, tight knee-breeches, and silk stockings, the hair plaited and tied behind in a knot of ribbon, and each carrying a cloak of some gay colour. Next ride in the picadors, padded out to an enormous bulk, armed with long lances, and wearing great slouched hats. As soon as they have doffed these to the president, they take their stations at one side of the arena, and the vast crowd is stilled at once into the hush of breathless expecta- tion. It is not an ordinary silence, not the mere negation of sound, but something positive, intense, almost appalling, the silence which 15,000 people BULL-FIGHT. 53 make together. All eyes are fixed on yonder opening gate, there is yet a pause of a few moments, that seem an age, and then forth rushes the expected of all expectants EL TORO and earth shakes with a shout such as it hears nowhere else, except where it has the luck to be the site of a bull-ring. The six * bulls of death,' as the bills term them, destined for the day's sport, have been driven over-night into a small court-yard attached to the arena, and have been kept all day without food, that the pangs of hunger may be brought to aid their natural ferocity. As they pass in one by one to the arena, a practised hand hooks on to their shoulders a knot of ribbon, the colours of which indicate to the initiated the breeding establishment from which each animal comes. The smart of the hook gives him the first foretaste of the death-struggle he is about to engage in. As soon as he has reached the middle of the ring, he pauses, and looks wildly round, as if frightened by the yells of the spectators ; then he lowers his head, and rushes at the picador, who awaits his coming, lance in rest. The brave beast ( receives but recks not of a wound,' flings the lance aside as if it were a reed, and, plunging his horn into the flank of the horse, repeats, with frantic rage, thrust upon thrust. For a moment horse and rider are lifted in air, and then down they fall crashing on the sand ; then sally forth the foot- men, some with their cloaks teazing the bull away from the fallen foe, while others extricate the picador and help him to his legs (no easy matter to rise 54 BULL-FIGHT. * unaided, with all that padding). The poor horse, too, if the horn has reached no vital part, staggers up, and is again mounted, and spurred on to a second encounter. Meanwhile the bull, his head all crimson with its baptism of blood, has received another lance- thrust, and overthrown another enemy. The same process is repeated, till the president considers a sufficient number of horses have been killed, and then the trumpet sounds, and one of the chulos advances with the banderillas. The banderillas are sticks of three feet long, decorated with fluttering coloured paper, (such as economical housewives put in their grates horresco referens ! as an excellent substitute for fire during the summer months,) and terminated by a barbed dart The thing is to stick a couple of these banderillas into the animal's shoulders, one on each side. To do this, of course the chulo has to stand in front of the bull for a moment, so it is a service of some danger. Each successive pair of wounds stir him up to a display of vain rage, though it is evident that his strength is becoming exhausted. Then the trumpet sounds again, and the last act of the drama begins. The matador whose turn it is to kill the bull advances, with a crimson cloak and sword, he bows to the president, and solicits permission to do his office. This being accorded, the matador flings his cap, with a semi-burlesque air of determined resolution, to the further part of the ring, marshals his men, and directs them to entice the bull to the place fixed on for the BULL-FIGHT. 55 deed, and then confronts him alone. It is a moment in which the world seems to have rolled back upon its youth, and man is again to contend for the mastery with the brute. Calm intelligence and furious strength are brought face to face, to do battle for victory and life. For a few seconds, the two adversaries stand mo- tionless within a yard of each other, the man with quiet mien, and lip curled in affectation of contempt, the beast with bloodshot eyes, wildly rolling in their sockets. Then he makes a charge ; the crimson cloak is flashed like blinding lightning before his sight, and he spends his fury on the empty air. Again he re- turns to the attack, and again is foiled. Again and again, till the wished-for opportunity is presented the sword flashes above his lowered head, and then is buried hilt-deep between the shoulder-blades. A moment more there is a gush of blood from mouth and nostrils he sinks slowly on his knees, and then falls prostrate, his great flanks heaving laboriously as the life- tide ebbs, wave by wave, away. A burst of martial music and thunders of applause greet the con- quering hero of the hour. Then an underling, armed with a pointed knife, creeps stealthily behind, and cuts short the death agonies of the still struggling bull. Four mules, gaily caparisoned, and harnessed together in a line with ropes, are driven in, the bull is taken by the horns (any one may do that now), and hooked on behind ; the mules wheel round to that end of the arena which is directly opposite to 56 BULL-FIGHT. the gate of exit, and then, lashed to a furious gallop, drag after them the ponderous carcass, which, as it goes, ploughs a long straight furrow in the sand : Et Ionium media sulcum diducit arena. In Juvenal's time, Christian folks were not mere spectators. And what are the feelings of a Christian man when he sees, for the first time, a combat in this modern amphitheatre ? At first, the predominant sensation is a sickening disgust at sight of trickling blood and protruding entrails ; but this is soon over ; and as it decays, one becomes conscious of a kind of savage joy a fierce beating of the heart indicative of the wakening of the wild beast within, which we bridle with texts of religion, and cram with scraps of morality; which we may lull, but cannot kill; which, if it sleep, sleeps lightly. Moreover, the contemplation of another's danger and toil enhances the sense of personal ease and security. A stranger's sympathies are with the bull. He is overmatched, and yet faces the heavy odds so gallantly. I was delighted to see him scatter, at one charge, a whole flock of jaunty chulos (who fly in all directions, like a scared aviary of gay Indian birds), and I must confess to a wicked half-wish that he might catch some of them. The horses are such wretched anatomies, that they hardly deserve the name. When a horse is strong and useful, we love him better than our neighbour, and only less than our dog. When he is old and worn out, we consign him unpitied to a more inglorious fate. BULL-FIGHT. 57 Again, when the matador stands so fearlessly single- handed before the infuriated beast, our sympathies change sides, and we are as ready as the rest to give all our hands to hail the victor, It must be added that a man's emotions are swayed, in his own despite, in unison with those of his fellows. A crowd earnestly bent on one point, and unanimous in expression, is like a torrent that sweeps all obstacles along with it. Accordingly, before you have been half-an-hour in the arena, you watch the various chances of the fight with as much pitiless enthu- siasm as if the northern star had never shone on your cradle. Now what is the moral effect of these spec- tacles ? The masses, already predisposed, like their brethren of the East, to hold life cheap, are fami- liarized with the sight of blood, and this, I cannot doubt, contributes to the frequency of assassinations. The sight of a streaming wound, so far from chilling an Andaluz with horror, recals the hours of intense enjoyment he has spent in the bull-ring. And since, as we have said, a selfish sense of security is a large ingredient in that draught of pleasure, a man is not likely to be thereby made more ready to expose him- self to danger. So the people become neither the better nor the braver for these diversions. On the other hand, in the case of what are called the upper classes, I question whether the evil be altogether unmixed. A bull-fight may be to the grandee of Spain what deer-stalking or fox-hunting is to an English gentleman. It may D3 58 BULL-FIGHT. tend to restore a healthy tone to the mind, by giving rude shocks to the crotchety tastes and false delicacy naturally engendered by high education and the habits of artificial society. A man of any rank may be over ' neat and trimly dressed,' and be none the less truly gentle for seeing a 'slovenly,' unhandsome sight now and then. I would give a piece of advice to travellers in Spain : However barbarous they may think a bull- fight, if they wish to keep on good terms with the natives, they had better not say so ; there is no point on which the patriotism of a Spaniard is so sensitive. Only constitute yourself the apologist of the national sports, your Spanish friend is highly flattered, and out of politeness affects to take a foreigner's view of the matter, says something about ' relics of barba- 'rism,' 'advancing civilization,' and such like trans- parent cant. On the contrary, once begin to attack them, this same friend is up in arms to the rescue, and, by way of a tu quoque, will accuse you of having killed a man in a pugilistic encounter in Regent's Park, or having sold your wife, with a halter round her neck, in Smithfield Market. It must not be supposed that I had time to make these reflections in the bull-ring. No sooner has one gate closed upon the dead than another is opened for the living, and so on till the whole six have fallen. If any bull is apathetic and insensible to the insults he receives, a cry is raised for 'fire, fire,' and the banderillas have squibs and crackers attached to BULL-FIGHT. 59 them, which explode about the animal's ears, to his great annoyance. If this will not suffice, the specta- tors begin to call for ' los perros,' (the dogs,) in a kind of monotonous Red Indian-like chant, laying a savage stress on the litera canina. The bull-ring is a pure democracy. The will of the multitude is supreme, so the obedient president orders the dogs to be brought, and then, for once, you may witness an amusement which the descendants of good Queen Bess's lieges have forgotten, as well as some better things. In this way, some three hours have stolen over us unnoticed three crowded hours of glorious life, or death. In all the vast circle nothing is still, but here and there a beast's stiffening carcass, nothing silent but the creeping shadow, which has at last embraced in its grateful coolness three-fourths of the spectators. And now that all is over, we have to elbow our way out with more trouble than we had to get in. I must repeat to my countrymen the caution given by my Spanish friends, ' Cuidado, seiiores, d las faltriqueras,' (Anglice, ' Take care of your pockets, gentlemen.') That night, 'wearied' (as the novelists say) 'with conflicting emotions,' I went early to bed, and slept as soundly as if my conscience were being lulled by a sermon from the dear old rector of Muddlecombe Parva. 60 CHAPTER VII. IN any foreign country, the traveller ought to adopt the habits of the natives (as a general rule), being such as the climate dictates, and the continuous ex- perience of centuries has sanctioned. This is a truth so obvious that it is almost a truism, and yet many of our wandering countrymen perpetually belie it in practice, and, with obstinate Bullism, persist in trans- planting the manners and usages of the temperate into the torrid zone. What wonder if the result is frequent coups-de-soleil and gastric fevers ? Now, for my part, as I dread such contingencies more than I love my bed, I gave the ' mozo' (or waiter) orders to call me at five A.M. punctually. At half-past five I made him bring my worship's chocolate, with a plate of sweet biscuits. The chocolate in Spain is invariably excellent, the coffee generally indifferent, and the tea bad. The two latter are foreign luxuries the first is a neces- sary of life. It is also the most wholesome, for it soothes the nervous irritation to which we children of the mist are liable in these hot and arid climes. Im- mediately afterwards I sallied out, generally without any definite purpose, visiting first one part of the town, and then another. In this way I left, I sup- pose, scarcely a street in Madrid which I did not GENERAL SURVEY OF MADRID. 61 traverse, or a church which I did not enter. The result is hardly worth the trouble. One street and church are exactly like another street and church. In the latter, one always finds the same profusion of wooden Christs, and Madonnas in real petticoats, on the walls, and the same scanty sprinkling of wor- shippers, also in petticoats, on the floor. The images out-number the devotees here, as in all other Roman- catholic countries (except Ireland, which is an excep- tion to every rule). To a stranger, the markets are always the most interesting haunts. A Spaniard, he or she, talks more while making the daily bargain than in all the rest of the twenty-four hours. The fruit and vegetable market was my especial lounge. There is such a fresh, sweet smell of the country, and the groups throw themselves, or are thrown, into such pretty tableaux after the Rubens and Snyders fashion. The shambles one avoids instinctively, and fish market there is none, for Madrid is fifty-hours' journey from the nearest sea, and the Manzanares has every requisite for a fine trout stream, but water. The stroll over, I re- turned at eight to take a Spanish lesson. My instructor was an old cura, who, after saying mass every morning, came to me for an hour, and talked the most irrational and irreverent Rationalism. Not content with saying the severest things of the Tower of Babel and Balaam's Ass, he proceeded to assail the miracles of the New Testament, and professed his surprise at hearing that f persons of illustration' in England (so the Spanish phrase runs) either believed, or were 62 THE MORNING PAPERS. loth to disbelieve lightly. I have since had reason to think that these opinions are frequently assumed, from a false politeness, out of deference to the sup- posed creed of heretical nations, and from a desire of vaunting the complete emancipation of thought in Spain. With this exception, my cura was a very worthy man, and honest, for he charged me, on leaving Madrid, a ridiculously small sum for his services. After the lesson came the dejeuner, for which each of the Biscayan's guests chose his own time. The bill of fare comprised cutlets, bifsteks (which, in de- fiance of etymology, consisted occasionally of mutton), eggs, cooked in the various forms of which that ver- satile production is susceptible, cherries, wine, and the morning papers. These last are clearly no indigenous growth. In form, size, price, and arrangement, they betray the prevailing weakness of Madrid, ' un faux air Parisien.' The average price is about twelve reals a month, about one penny sterling per diem. They are scarcely one-fifth of the size of a London paper; and the editors are obviously put to no trouble or expense in collecting authentic intelligence. It is, therefore, a grievous wrong to compare their cost invidiously with that of our journals. Taking all things into consideration, the Times is the cheapest article going cheaper than your quartern loaf even since the free-trade tariff. The bottom of each of these papers is cut off from the rest, and called the ' folletin' (a manifest Gallicism), devoted to light THE HUNGARIAN WAR. 63 literature, translations of Sue, and the great Alexander of modern fiction. The political articles appeared to me to be as inferior to their French prototypes in vigour and spirit, as to our ' English leaders' in know- ledge and good sense. Fortunately for them, the polysyllabic and pleonastic gorgeousness of the Cas- tilian idiom covers the poverty of meaning, just as the manifold Castilian cloak covers a threadbare coat, or a too literal sans-culottism. The grand topic of the day was the Hungarian war, on which ground both parties joined battle, and lied furiously. The Moderados were not a whit behind the Progressistas in that. Every day the Heraldo detailed grandiloquently the defeats of the rebels, and the Clamor Publico the triumphs of the patriots. To judge from the articles to which they give insertion, these journals must count largely on the ignorance and credulity of their readers. The Heraldo was then publishing a series of verbose epistles from Italy, the writer of which illustrated the marches and operations of the Spanish forces by a profusion of passages, parallel or divergent, from the Latin classics, showing at every step his own consummate ignorance and assurance. I remember, in one letter, he invoked our old friend Soracte in feigned rapture, as * Mount Socrates beloved of Ovid and Prospertius /' In the Clamor I read another series of letters, written by a Spaniard from London, in which facts and inferences were equally false. The intelligent traveller gave a glowing description of Regents Park, crowded every afternoon with the 64 TEMPERATURE. carriages of the nobility, each drawn by four horses; of the Opera, where brass buttons and applause were strictly forbidden ; of the placards in the streets, an- nouncing that ' the Reverend Wilkinson would repeat, for the fourth time, his favourite sermon on Justifica- tion by Faith,' &c. Among his statistical facts he mentioned that 3500 persons had committed suicide in London alone, during the year 1848, and pro- ceeded to account for it after his fashion. In con- clusion, he proved to his own satisfaction, that * the English are far from being so advanced in poli- tical and social progress as Nosotros " I always thought La Patria the calmest and most rational of all these prints. I had a good opportunity of forming a judgment, for nobody read it except myself. After breakfast I generally adjourned to the gallery for some hours during the heat of the day. It is the only cool spot within ten leagues of Madrid. The delightful temperature makes the body so com- fortable, that it leaves the mind free to revel in the * sunshine of picture,' on the walls. Indeed, it re- quired no slight effort to tear oneself away and pass through the fiery purgatory of the streets, where a thermometer, on the shady side, sometimes marked 35 Reaumur. Multiply by nine, divide by four, and add thirty-two, and you find that you are immersed in a fluid whose temperature is 110 Fah- renheit : that is to say, 10 hotter than a hot warm- bath. About that time (as I saw from the papers afterwards,) all London was groaning under the HOSPITALITIES. 65 insupportable heat of 85. God clothes the lamb against the untempered wind; and a man can bear much more than what is insufferable. In this case, too, sweet thoughts of dinner would recur diurnally about four p. M., and emboldened one to go through the ordeal of fire. The only way of getting to the roast, was to run the chance of being roasted one- self. Nothing venture, nothing have. After dinner came the same round of lazy amuse- ments, in the Cafe, and the Prado, and the * tertulia.' Anglice, (I dread the inevitable bull,) Anglice, * soiree.' A letter of introduction will always pro- cure for the stranger admission to these very agree- able, because unceremonious, entertainments. I was furnished with letters to all kinds of people ; French, English, German, and Spanish ; and by almost all, I was received with that genuine kindness and hos- pitality, which I am glad to think are not peculiar to any nation, only displayed in a different fashion. With an Englishman, the types of hospitality are roast beef and brown sherry ; with a Spaniard, cho- colate and sweet cakes; with a Frenchman, coffee and cognac ; with a German, pipes and Riidesheimer. There were a good many of our countrymen resident at Madrid, unwillingly tarrying to watch the progress (if I may use such a law-term) of a suit, instituted for the recovery of debts due to them from the Spanish government, or some Spanish company ; the money having been advanced years ago, for the sinking of impossible mines, or the construction of 66 THE THEATRE. improbable railways. They could not comprehend how it was that their adversaries did not acknow- ledge the force of their syllogism ' You owe the money you've got the money why don't you pay the money?' Somehow or other, the Spaniards did not see things in that light. I met, also, sundry Frenchmen who indulged in vehement abuse of Madrid, and all that it contained. If you asked them why they stayed there so long, it was easy to anticipate the shrug of resignation and the wry face which accompanied the lachrymose response ' Mon- sieur, j'ai un proces !' However, after sunset, their cares were forgotten ; and at tertulias these melan- choly victims of hope delayed, sang, if they could, and chattered if they couldn't sing, very gaily and pleasantly. In default of a soiree, there was always the theatre to go to. There was only one company then playing, of inferior actors, (for all the stars at that season wander about to enlighten the provincial darkness). Be the acting never so bad, it is always a good lesson in Spanish. This company had ad- journed during the summer, for coolness, to the Circa del Barquillo the Astley's of Madrid; an edifice with wooden walls and canvas roof. All the arrangements are decidedly veterinary. Stalls and loose boxes are fitted up as dressing-rooms for the nonce, and there is a very pervading odour of saw- dust. The entree behind the scenes (that hopeless ambition of the London youth,) is here accorded to the whole audience; and between the acts the kings SIGHTS. 67 and queens of the stage walk about in their royal robes in the adjoining yard, sipping lemonade or smoking cigarettes, utterly regardless of dramatic effect. The comedy in Castilian is generally followed by a dance, and that by an Andalucian farce, then another dance and another farce, to conclude. As fresh pieces are produced every night, the actors have no time to learn their parts, and thus they repeat, like so many parrots, after the prompter, whose sug- gestions are audible to the whole house. Apparently the spectators are not critical, and seem to care very little what is done on the stage, except during the ballet. The chief attraction at that time was La Senorita Vargas, a stately southern beauty, with a latent ferocity in her dark eyes, that made her look rather like a queen of tragedy than a dancer. Who knows whether she may not become a queen in reality some day ? Germany has a few thrones left still. Madrid has one peculiarity which conduces very much to the visitor's comfort namely, that there are very few inevitable 'sights' to be gone through. The armoury, said to be the finest in the world ; the palace, ditto (which people who are addicted to up- holstering may go and see, if they don't mind break- ing the tenth commandment) ; the museum of natural history, where is the largest loadstone in active operation between this and Medina ; and the Academia, nearly complete the list. Everybody should devote a morning to the last-named, were it 68 CHAMBER OF PEERS. only for the sake of the Murillos. The famous picture of * St. Isabel giving alms to the sick' has been arrested at Madrid on its return from Paris to Seville. As the Sevilians have instituted a ' process* for its recovery, it is likely to stay where it is some time longer. ' The Patrician's Dream ' is quite cheering to look upon, so rich and glowing it is. Shut your eyes to the semi-ludicrous effect of husband, wife, and dog, in a decreasing series, like the three genders in Lindley Murray, all asleep. The gardens of the queen, sunk in a deep hollow below the palace, deserve a visit The head-gardener, of course a Frenchman, struggles gallantly against all kinds of difficulties of soil, climate, and lack of water. By a series of ingenious artifices he has concocted a plot of grass, some ten feet square, to the great astonishment of all natives. One day my kind friend, Colonel S., took me to hear a debate in the Senado, the Spanish Chamber of Peers, which holds its sittings in the chapel of a suppressed convent near the palace. By dint of paint, gilding, and carpets, the room has been divested of its sanctified aspect, and made to look like a hand- some modern room. They have not thought it neces- sary that a place in which a hundred gentlemen in surtouts meet to discuss secular matters in this nine- teenth century should be made to resemble a chapel of the fifteenth. Antiquity is here represented in the persons of two halberdiers, who stand to guard the door, dressed in extravagant costume, like Beef- NAVAEZ, DUKE OF VALENCIA. 69 eaters in fuller bloom. Rows of raised seats extend on each side of the room ; in the centre, facing the beefeaters, are the chair and desk of the president, and on each side a little tribune from which the clerks read out documents from time to time. The spectators are accommodated in niches round the walls. Each member speaks from his place, and the voting is by ballot. First a footman hands round a tray of beans, and then each advances, when his name is called, to a table in the centre, where he drops his bean into the box. The beans are then counted, and the result proclaimed by the president. On the right of the chair, in front, is the bench assigned to the ministers; and there I had the good luck to see Narvaez, otherwise called Duke of Valencia, and a great many fine names besides, and in reality, abso- lute Master of all the Spains. His face wears a fixed expression of inflexible resolve, very effective, and is garnished with a fierce dyed moustache, and a some- what palpable wig to match. His style of dress was what, in an inferior man, one would have called ' dandified.' An unexceptionable surtout opened to display a white waistcoat with sundry chains, and the extremities terminated, respectively, in patent leather and primrose kid. During the discussion he alter- nately fondled a neat riding-whip and aired a snowy pocket handkerchief. Those who know him give him credit for good intentions and great courage, but do not expect that he will ever set the Thames on fire, whatever he may do to the Manzanares. He is a 70 CHAMBER OF PEERS. mixture, they say, of the chivalric and the asinine, a kind of moral mule. His personal weakness is a wish to be thought young, and hence he was naturally angry when Lord Palmerston wanted to give him ' a wrinkle.' I saw, likewise, Mon, the Minister of Finance, smiling complacently, like a shopkeeper on his customers ; and the venerable Castaiios, Duke of Bailen, who, as he tottered in, stooping under the weight of ninety years, was affectionately greeted by Narvaez and others. On the whole, the debate seemed to be languid, and to be listened to with little interest; but that is the general fate of debates in July. 71 CHAPTER VIII. AT eight o'clock on the evening of Thursday, July 13, there was a great crowd assembled round the diligence, which was on the point of start- ing for La Granja. Some had come 'to see their friends off,' but the great mass were there out of pure idleness. I was one of the few who had any real business to be there at all, having engaged a place in the ' Interior,' the only place vacant. When I had elbowed my way up to the vehicle, I found that (the luggage having been packed) it was now taking in its live stores. The ' Interior' is privileged to contain six persons, and I found, to my dismay, that it was already occupied by a family consisting of three ladies, two children, a nurse with a baby in arms, and several enormous dolls. The latter and myself were the most uncomplaining sufferers of the party. I must do the ladies the justice to say, that they supplied the clamorous wants of the children most bountifully from a large reticule, and larger bottle, thus producing a temporary calm ; and that they bore throughout their own inconveniences (and mine,) with unfailing equanimity. The day was just dawning as we stopped to change mules at Nabacerada, a lonely post-house half way up 72 THE ESCORIAL. the mountain. It is surrounded on all sides by cheer- less, treeless moorland, which looked bleak and deso- late, in spite of the gilding of a summer's morning. On one of the mountain slopes, some four leagues off to the left, I could see a huge building, with vanes and roofs sparkling in the sun. From its position I of course knew it to be the Escorial. My fair com- panions, born and bred at Madrid, and in the habit of going to La Granja once a year, had not the least idea what it could be. The children, by this time satiate with sponge cake, had lapsed into a dormant state ; I availed myself of their tacit permission to do likewise, with the less reluctance, as I intended to return by the same road, on horseback, in a few days. I was half-wakened by the stopping of the diligence at an iron gate, and a simultaneous demand for pass- ports ; but a few minutes after I was thoroughly roused by a rude shock, the women shrieked dire- fully, and I found myself entangled in a ruinous heap of children and dolls. It seems that in turning a corner in the ill paved street of La Granja we had run over a great stone, and had recovered our equi- librium by mere miracle. Loud and long was the recrimination which ensued between the conductor and the postillion, as soon as we came to a final halt, in the midst of which I went off to the Fonda de los Ynfantes, where I was lodged in a huge bare room, at the cost of six francs per day, (nothing included). As La Granja is crowded to excess during two months of the year, and abandoned to solitude for the LA GRAN J A QUEEN ISABEL'S GARDENS. 73 other ten, everything is very dear, as in all places in a similarly abnormal state ; but I suppose I, a mere passing stranger, was ' taken in' by more than the due proportion. A two hours' sleep, by way of supple- ment to the broken night, and a good breakfast, in- vigorated me for the long wandering I had in view. The inn where I was lodging is a great gloomy build- ing, surrounding a dank, mouldy courtyard. It for- merly belonged to Don Carlos, and is the only large house in the village. The whole place has a comfort- less, half-ruinous appearance, excepting always the palace, which is trim and neat enough. It is a long, low building, in that Gallo-Italian style which the Bourbons introduced into Spain. Next to it is the house of the Queen-Mother, who has not forsaken La Granja, in spite of. its humiliating associations. The great open space in front is flanked by huge barracks, containing accommodation for above a thousand troops, who do guardsmen's duty without the name. In spite of these traditional precautions, Queen Isabel is by no means an exclusive sovereign. She permits all classes of her people to wander at their pleasure through her gardens, and to promenade close to the windows of her palace. The gardens are of immense extent, and present boundless variety, from the geometrical patterns and clipped hedges on the Versailles model, to the shaggy copsewood, with serpentine paths, over- grown and nearly impassable, which is here christened by the name of ' English garden.' A large artificial lake, which reflects overhanging natural woods, itself being GAZ. E 74 LA GRANJA. on a level considerably higher than the palace, is the reservoir which supplies the cascades, and the numer- ous fountains of bronze and marble, which, however, play only on special holidays. I have been assured that these royal gewgaws cost five hundred millions of reals, (i. e., more than five millions sterling,) but a Spaniard is always reckless of facts and figures. After many successful attempts to lose myself, I finally climbed over a stone wall which separates the garden from the moor, and set off towards an isolated pin- nacle of rock which tempted me to ascend it, looking deceitfully near in the bright atmosphere. My path lay among low oaks, along sheep tracks, or through thick grass and aromatic shrubs, where every variety of insect life was expressing its intense enjoyment of the sunshine by humming, buzzing, and chirruping, each after the fashion of its kind. The summit gained at last, I had a fine view of the white village, half girdled by its sweet succession of garden, grove, and wilderness, and nestling beneath the dark pine-woods of the Guadarrama. I descended by the side of a stream, which, being small by nature, seemed determined to display itself to the utmost by taking extraordinary steps and making a great noise about them. The sun was almost setting as I arrived at La Granja. I lingered outside the gate, to watch a review on a small scale which was going on under the avenue. There were about a thousand men in all, making a very gallant show, for, however other departments of the public service may be neglected LA GRAN J A. 75 under the present regime, the army at least is well cared for. All at once the trumpet sounded, as a shabby fly, drawn by a spavined horse, came out of the gate. It contained a priest, who was carrying the sacrament to some sick man. As it passed, all the soldiers sank on one knee and presented arms. There was something very impressive in seeing the pomp and circumstance of war thus doing homage to religion in such humble guise, At sunset all the world turns out, those who have carriages, to drive ; those who have none, to walk. I saw the queen in a carriage by herself, and the king in a carriage by himself, after the most approved fashion for married people. Then came the queen- mother, side by side with her husband, (but then, she is not required to set an example,) and afterwards various i infants of Spain,' adult and adolescent. After the promenade I went to tea with one of the ambassadors, who generally follow the court in its summer peregrinations. I found his excellency, family, and suite, crowded together in a house which, they said, afforded a minimum of accommodation at a maximum of cost. Not a floor was horizontal, nor a wall vertical. The tables obstinately refused to stand, and the chairs warned you not to sit down on them. However, the whole party enjoyed greatly the novelties of discomfort. For the rich, it is a new pleasure to be put to shifts in pleasure's pursuit. That is the charm of a pic-nic. The next day was consecrated to Segovia. Segovia, E2 76 SEGOVIA. that city of immemorial antiquity, christened by Iberians, and walled by Phoenicians, which the Romans furnished with its aqueduct, the Moors defended with its castle, and which the Spaniards of later days crowned with its cathedral ; that epitome of Peninsular history is now, I grieve to say, accessible by means of an omnibus, an every-day omnibus !- which leaves La Granja at nine A.M., and returns at four P.M. My only companion in this omnibus was an old gentleman of the most mild and pacific manners, who had, however, as he told me, served through the Peninsular war under the Duke (Wel- lington, not Bailen). He spoke with great admira- tion of his old commander, and especially praised his intuitive sagacity in discerning the military capa- bilities of a district at the first glance. We had plenty of time for conversation, as nearly two hours are required to traverse the two leagues. Segovia is built on and about a salient angle of rock, formed by the junction of two deep ravines, a site exactly resembling that of old Veii, of the modern Civita Castellana, and several other towns in the vicinity of Rome. Rome is forced on one's remem- brance in an especial manner at Segovia by the aqueduct, which bestrides the lower town like a colossal polyped, a most characteristic memorial of the strong practical people, whose works were never purposeless and never mean. It is still in active operation, employed on the beneficent work for which it was first destined that of conveying water in SEGOVIA. 77 purity and plenty into the middle of a thirsty city. The houses which cluster round its base, compara- tively things of yesterday, are already toppling to their fall, and clutching, as it were, to its pillars for support, like many generations of houses before them. Meanwhile, the masonry of old Rome stands un- moved, bidding fair to defy 'the tooth of time' almost as long as her poetry. Ascending, you pass through a narrow gate into the old town Segovia proper, as the geographies say: go straight on till you come to the prison. This prison, like most prisons in Spain, is easily discoverable, by its being the noisiest place in the whole town. What would the advocates of the silent system say to it? , I know what it would say to them. It would stretch out its many hands from, the lower windows, and supplicate alms, in dolorous tones, for the sake of the blessed St. Peter, once similarly afflicted; while from the upper windows too high for hope of charity it would salute them with derisive laughter, and a chorus of that peculiar har- monization commonly termed ' Dutch.' (The student of history need scarcely be reminded of the connexion between Spain and the Low Countries.) I have been particular in pointing out the prison, because directly behind it is the best inn in Segovia, a very respect- able inn too, according to the Spanish standard, the Parador de las Diligencias, set up since the last edition of the Hand-book. It is a large square house, with pillared galleries surrounding a court- 78 SEGOVIA. yard, and a tower at one corner, with machicolated battlements, once the mansion of a noble family. Many palaces in this and other countries have, by a similar revolution, lapsed to the public use. After making the proper amount of reflections on the insta- bility of human things, a prudent man will order dinner, and then visit the prescribed lions of the place. First, he will come to the Plaza Mayor, whose tall white houses have a most artistic aversion to straight lines. Close by stands the cathedral, a specimen of seventeenth-century Gothic, crowded with pinnacles and stinted of buttresses, looking like the pictures of our grandmothers in the prime of life, with scanty gowns and over-gay caps. Bat we ought not to be too severe on the cathedral of Segovia, for in the rest of Europe, at the time of its erection, Gothic had been dead and buried a hun- dred years at least. Besides, the tower is magnificent, from its height The trouble of ascending will be well repaid by the grand and strange view of the mountains, with their thick woods and deep shadows, frowning over the bare plain as it basks in unbroken sunlight. (Mem. Always go up towers, there is no exercise so elevating.) As I was wandering about the streets, looking, I suppose, as Sir Walter says, ' like a cow in a fremd loaning,' I was hailed by a voice in broken English, or, rather, English a little bent. The owner of the voice then introduced him- self as the Marquis del A , lately attached to the Spanish Embassy in London, and ' anxious,' he SEGOVIA. 79 said, e to repay his obligations to English hospitality by befriending any individual of the country.' He accordingly took me to the Alcazar, and introduced me to the commanding officer, by whom I was con- ducted over the whole building. Some rooms still retain the old Moorish ceilings; otherwise, there remain scarcely any traces of its builders, externally or internally, except the name. The place now serves as a school for military engineers. My new friend then took me to his house, an edifice of the sixteenth century, where capitals have degenerated into the wildest forms, and arches support them- selves at the most fantastic pitch. None of the seven lamps have shone upon its conception ; it is mere Gothic run mad, the embodiment of an architect's sick dream. On parting, we expressed a mutual hope that the speedy renewal of diplomatic relations might enable our individual selves to shake hands in Pall Mall. 80 CHAPTER IX. IF the ' entertainment for man' at La Granja is dear, that 'for horse' and groom must be remarkably cheap, judging from the price I paid for two of the former animals, and one of the latter, to convey me and my luggage to the Escorial. The distance is eight and a half leagues, (thirty-odd miles,) and the price fifty reals (ten shillings") not half what I afterwards paid in Andalucia. We set off at noon, and reached the summit of the pass in three hours. There I paused to take breath and give it, and to look at the view, which here would really merit that much abused word panorama. The north side of the mountain is, as I have said, covered with pines; the south side is merely dotted with shrubs, which have tried to be trees and failed, from scarcity of water and plethora of sun. North and south from the mountains' bases stretch identical yellow plains, bounded in the far distance by a circular belt of azure, which one might fancy to be Homer's ' River Ocean' girdling the earth. At Nava Cerada our road turned off to the right. Thence to the Escorial it is four short leagues, or three long ones (for the Spaniards are as lax in their measurement as the Scotch). In a large field near THE BLIND GUIDE. 81 the village of Guadarrama we saw several thrashing floors, with oxen, not muzzled, treading out the corn in truly oriental style. This Guadarrama was pro- bably, in the Arab time, a place of greater importance, at least relatively, than at present, and so it gave its name to the whole Sierra. The word signifies ( lofty valley,' (as Ab-ram signifies * Lofty Father,') and precisely describes the locality. We arrived at our destination just as the sun set to us was reddening the highest rocky peaks of the mountains. A ride of eight hours, performed for the first time on a Spanish saddle and at a Spanish pace, (that pace which, in reference to Abbots' palfreys in the middle ages, is called ambling, and known to beneficed clergymen in modern times as fidge-fadge,') left me in no mood to criticise the supper or the bed pro\ 7 ided at the Fonda de Correos. The former I devoured greedily, and on the latter slept refreshingly, notwithstanding that, all night long, I was riding an old familiar horse among well-known green lanes, and under the shadow of well-known elms, in that dear dream-land which is so like home. It was still early morning when I was recalled to Spain by a knock at the door, and an announcement that, according to order, my chocolate and ' Cornelio' were awaiting my pleasure. Cornelio is a blind man, who acts as guide to the Escorial. I had become acquainted with him through the Hand-book. He had been blind, he told me, since nine years old. By a happy compensation his other senses, from E3 82 THE ESCORIAL: increased acuteness, in some degree supply the place of the sense lost. It is curious to watch him feeling his way along the wall without touching it, and sud- denly stopping at the best point of view before a picture or statue, and describing it in detail with unerring memory, though without the dreary sing- song tone peculiar to ciceroni. Among other great men, he said he had shown the Escorial to Mr. Cob- den and Alexander Dumas at the same time. If this is true, Mr. Cobden was doubtless one of the Englishmen whom the prolific novelist robbed so ingeniously of their supper. Our Manchester friends will do well to observe, that even Mr. Cobden may be taken in sometimes, and on a food question, too. The Escorial, being one of the numerous eighth wonders of the world, ought to console anybody for the loss of a supper. Its outward form naturally calls to mind the inspirations of the cook, not the archi- tect. Here, then, is a recipe for this chef-d'oeuvre of Philip II. take a score of Manchester factories, with an acre of dead wall ; mix well, and arrange in the form of a gridiron ; put St. Paul's cathedral (slightly compressed) into the centre ; serve up the whole on the side of the barrenest Ben in all Scotland, and garnish with a scanty sprinkling of ruinous houses and dwarfed trees. The concoction of the dish will cost the wealth of a kingdom, and it will neither be palatable nor palatial when done. The palace itself stands isolated on a wide platform, round two sides of which run the offices destined for ITS GLOOMY ASPECT. 83 the accommodation of the royal horses and suite, These, with the village, are fast going to decay, for the present queen rarely visits, and never resides in, this gloomy old abode of her ancestors. She does not like, it is said, to live so near to her future tomb, and prefers the cheerful woods and waters of La Granja or Aranjuez, to the now doubly dreary Escorial. The place was more lively when tenanted by monks than now, when it is not tenanted at all. There is something (as the Scotch say) ' eerie' about the loneliness of those innumerable chambers and interminable corridors. The place is curst,' not that it was ever very ' merry' in its best days. In- deed, a troop of noisy children, who accompanied us, taught the echoes to repeat sounds such as they never heard in the good old times of the founder and his successors. We were first conducted to the church, the centre, and, as it were, nucleus, of the whole mass. I have already compared it to St. Paul's ; but the resemblance is only external. Inside, the characteristic of St. Paul's is blank dreariness that of S. Lorenzo is oppressive solemnity, for the one is all whitewash, the other grey granite. Here you see few or none of the tawdry decorations which, in most Spanish churches, mar the general tone of the building. Navarrete's colossal saints on the wall, and the effigies of the founder and his family gravely kneeling before the high altar, are the fittest tenants of the place. The sound of a human voice, or a human step, seems 84 THE ROYAL VAULT. almost like a profanation. The vault, or c pantheon,' into which we next descended, is scarcely more still and gloomy, though the horror of the vault is in- creased by its cost and magnificence, so unseemly in a charnel-house. The monarchs of Spain have left few good or great deeds to gild their memory, and, by encasing their bodies in marble and granite, have succeeded in suspending the execution of the decree, * dust to dust.' By the light of a wax candle, we could just discern the marble sarcophagi, ranged in niches round the wall, some inscribed with the names of the royal dead contained therein, others still unappro- priated. None but kings, queens, and heirs-apparent, are permitted to rest here, for the etiquette of old Spain relaxed not in its exclusiveness even after death. The ' infants' are consigned to another tomb, less elegantly, Jbut more truly, named the podridero, or 'rottery.' As may be supposed, I declined my guide's proposition to visit that, and was right glad to breathe the upper air once more. In the sacristy is a picture by Claudio Coello, worth notice in the history of art, as being the last great work of the Spanish school. When I afterwards saw the masterpiece of Zurbaran in the museum at Seville, it struck me that Coello must have had that picture before his eyes, or in his mind, when painting this. It contains fifty portraits; but very little interest attaches to the courtiers of Charles II. a monarch whose annals could furnish no grander subject for the painter than the presentation of a pyx to S. Lorenzo. In the APARTMENTS OF PHILIP II. 85 ante-sacristy is a fine Descent from the Cross by Albert Durer. Indeed, drained as the Escorial has been for the supply of the museum at Madrid, it still contains many treasures of art. The great Titian, the Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, is still suffered to remain, from the religio loci. There is also, in the sala capitular, or chapter-room, a beautiful picture by him of St. Jerome, kneeling,- the sunshine is stream- ing through the trees full upon a crucifix. I can hardly understand how it was that this picture was not one of ( the hundred best' removed to Madrid from fear of the Carlists. Any one who fancies second-rate frescoes will find allegories by the acre, and apotheoses by the score, described in the Spanish guide-book with appropriate prolixity. The most interesting portion of the whole palace are the rooms occupied by Philip II. There remain still a few chairs which belonged to him, and his writing-desk, still visibly stained with ink. In a corner of the little oratory he was brought to die. A narrow window close by looks out upon the high altar in the church, and the king could see, as he lay, the host lifted daily. There is something almost heroic in the unyielding and undoubting bigotry of Philip, and as a hero his countrymen are agreed to regard him. The Escorial is his temple, which should never have been profaned by the cabinet-making and up- holstery of Charles IV. and Ferdinand. There is nothing in the whole world more unsatis- 86 THE LIBRARY. factory than a brief visit to a great library. You come hungry to the banqueting-room your appetite is whetted by the sight of an abundant feast, duly spread you look over the bill of fare (the catalogue), which offers you dainties without end but time presses, and your guide, equally inexorable, waits for no man, and you must rise from table without having tasted a morsel. Notwithstanding all this, the tra- veller, whose mission it is to see all sights, however unprofitable, will scarcely leave the Escorial without peeping into its famous library. He will see a hand- some room painted in fresco, with many thousands of books turned with their backs to the wall At a table will be seated a bearded, blear-eyed man, with his head below his shoulders, diligently copying a manu- script. He is, it is needless to say, a German. In the middle of the room, with his hands in his pockets, stands the stupidest or sulkiest of underlings, whose business it is to show the books, and therefore pro- fesses, perhaps truly, the most profound ignorance of everything. With him, ignorance is bliss, for it saves a world of trouble. I asked in vain to look at some of the MSS. obtained from Mount Athos by Hurtado de Mendoza, the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, whose collection was the nucleus of the whole library. Circumstances never presented a more favourable combination for a book-collector than in the case of Mendoza. He was an ardent bibliomaniac, resident in Italy, with almost imperial power delegated to him, and without any scruples as to the exercise thereof; RETURN TO MADRID. 87 and the result was, a store of literary treasure fit to present to a king. I could not but wish that Men- doza were alive again, that he might, as his manner was when angry, pitch the stupid custode out of the window. Two sides of the building look on to a terrace- garden, full of formal gravel-walks, flower-beds shut in with clipped box, and here and there a fountain, very diminutive and inefficient. The tree under which Gil Bias sat, in his famous conference with the Count-duke, must have been in the orchard below. I wandered about half the day, unchallenged, startling innumerable lizards from their sunny day- dreams, till the long shadows warned me that it was time to return. I found the diligence, with its long straggling team, or rather troop, just ready to start for Madrid. Two huge Andalucians had left me an apology for a place in the coupee, which I had no alternative but to accept. Our road lay at first through shaggy, ill-conditioned woods, then over undulating ground sprinkled with shrubs, and last over a flat waste, clothed only by such shadowy forms as a dusky night and an idle fancy create between them. A four hours' ride brought us safely to the capital, while the streets were yet busy with crowds of promenaders. 88 CHAPTER X. SPEND a few weeks at Madrid in the height of summer, and you will realize in your own person the fable of the Lotus Eaters. The exhaust- ing heat, and the influence of example, produce an intense laziness, both of mind and body, and you remain day after day, without knowing why, from sheer disinclination to move. In these circumstances, my advice would be, take a cold bath, to string the nerves to the necessary pitch, and engage a place in some diligence or other. The plan, in my own case, was completely successful, and I accordingly found myself, one fine evening towards the end of July, seated in the vehicle which was on the point of start- ing for Toledo. The archway was filled with the usual crowd of leave-takers ; a little troop of my own accompanied me, to protest for the last time the eternity of a friendship, which had already lasted a fortnight or more : but the clock struck seven, the postillion cracked his whip, there was a vehement agitation of hats and fans, and then we turned the corner. For some hours, our course was smooth and our slumber deep, but at last a series of terrific jolts recalled us to the hard realities of time and place. TOLEDO. 89 The time was three in the morning, and the place half-way between Aranjuez and Toledo. We could see a grim, unlovely desert, bisected by a road, of which the stones were rocks and the ruts chasms. Glad I was when they pointed out to me a grey mass in the distance, which, as the light grew stronger and we approached more nearly, developed into the Alcazar and church spires of Toledo. But two hours elapsed before we crossed the bridge, crept up the narrowest and steepest of streets, and finally came to a halt in the court-yard of the Fonda del Lino. I was fortunate enough to have a letter pf intro- duction to Colonel Alva, who^ holds a responsible post under government, which 1 hastened to present. I found him truly Spanish in kindness and courtesy, and truly un- Spanish in his love for books and antiquities. I told him my object in visiting Toledo, which was simply to see the sights, and was glad to hear that he had both the will and the power to further my wishes. He accompanied me indefatigably up and down to all the chief sights, no easy task, for nothing is level at Toledo. The city stands on a rocky eminence, nearly surrounded by a deep and narrow gorge, into which the river Tagus (or Tajo) squeezes itself, not without pain. (Hence I suppose it is, that every gorge is called a Tajo ; just as, in the Roman States, every river is called by the peasants a Tevere, or Tiber. In both cases, the metropolitan proper name has been transformed into a generic name.) On the land side, it is defended by double or 90 TOLEDO. treble walls, very useless and picturesque. Two fine bridges span the stream. This peculiarity, together with the semi-insular position of the town, first brought old Shrewsbury to my mind ; and as I wan- dered about, I kept, in my own despite, drawing out in detail an elaborate parallel between the two places, finding or making for every feature of the one place a counterpart in the other. A lonely traveller in a foreign country is especially prone to these unprofit- able reveries ; memory will anchor fast by the haunts of boyhood ; and hence it was that in the Zocodover, and on J;he Puente de Alcdntara, I was thinking of ' Market-hill' and the Welsh Bridge.' But I would not wrong the fair and fertile hills and plains of Shropshire by likening them to the unlovely vicinage of Toledo, nor would I pollute the glassy, cool, trans- lucent wave of Severn with so much as a thought of the muddy Tagus. Toledo, moreover, is fast crumbling into ruin, but floreat Salopia. The bridge of Alcantara, on the Madrid side, is in itself a grand object, with its lofty arch and antique gates, and commands a fine view of the river shining far below, and the castle frowning far above. It is a pleasant, airy lounge at sunset. It is worth while to make acquaintance with the fat, jolly gatekeeper, for he possesses a store of most curious information, which the gift of a cigar will place at your disposal. He told me some strange stories of the cave of Hercules, ' a famous enchanter who once lived in these parts, who spirited away the daughter of the king of Granada, THE ALCAZAR. 91 and so it came to pass that the Moors made war upon the Christians and conquered Toledo.' A specimen this of historical tradition in that lowest stage of degradation, when not only has truth been disguised in fable, but also fable itself corrupted into foolishness. The mythology, too, is startling to those who have held from early youth the orthodox creed, wherein the voracious hero is anjnhing but a conjuror. The cave in question is, or is said to be, two miles up the river, and at present under water. I acquiesced in the statement, for it was too hot to go a-foot, and a hired vehicle is hardly to be met with at Toledo. I beg pardon of the shade of Southey for the omission. Seen from a distance, Toledo is like a throned queen, seen from the inside, a widow sitting in sack- cloth and ashes. It contains scarcely a tenth part of its ancient population, and the shrunk city is girdled by a belt of ruin. The Alcazar, which puts so bold a front on the matter, is, within, mere desolation and decay. It is like a good Castilian fallen on evil days, from whose proud bearing you would never guess the raggedness concealed beneath the ample cloak. The oldest por- tion is Moorish, attached to which is a magnificent incongruity of Charles the Fifth's time. The noble court, with its pillars, the vaulted corridors, and the spacious double staircase, are now in the filthiest state ; but once ascend the rickety steps which lead 92 THE CATHEDRAL. to the top story, and all disgust will be merged in delight at the glorious prospect around and beneath. At your feet lies the city, clustering in many a pic- turesque mass, and beyond it the river, half encircling it, like a silver zone unclasped. Eastward and west- ward, a fringe of green marks the course of the Tagus; all else is a tawny, reddish waste of low hills, stretch- ing away to the distant Sierra, scarcely visible on the horizon. Of the three days which I spent at Toledo, many hours of each were passed in the cathedral. There only the walls were thick enough to exclude the heat, and there the painted windows tempered the glare of noon to a soft dream-light. Within is matter of observation for a year, and of meditation for ever. This cathedral is longer and narrower than that of Burgos; it is also of earlier and purer Gothic. Every window is filled with painted glass of the richest colours, and the double clerestories give an air of singular lightness and elegance. An altar in the nave marks the spot where the Virgin alighted when she paid her much celebrated visit to St. Ildefonso. The precise slab touched by her feet is carefully pre- served under an iron grating; a small piece of it, however, is let into a pillar behind the high altar without any such defence, and it is now nearly worn away by the osculations of the faithful. I watched an old man a long time as he was kneeling before it and muttering prayers, between each of which he rubbed the stone hard, and then licked his thumb. When he had concluded I accosted him, and he told THE CATHEDRAL. 93 me the whole story: how 'her Majesty' the Queen of Heaven had come down to honour Toledo above all the cities of the earth. He repeated all the circumstances with great earnestness of manner, and a volubility of utterance which made it difficult for me to catch his meaning. He kept perpetually repeating the words ' Su Majestad,' and bowing humbly as he said them. As usual in this country, a number of chapels have gathered, like parasites, round the sides of the great church; and the details of these, being more minute, demand even closer observation. As at Burgos, there is a * Chapel of the Constable.' The constable was the unfortunate Alvaro de Luna, a king's favourite, and, by natural consequence, a people's detestation. He and his wife are represented reclining each on a separate tomb, the doughty knight and the devout dame, he clasping his sword, she her rosary. Four knights kneel at the corners of the husband's tomb ; two monks and two nuns at the corners of the other. An inscription round each records that the Constable was killed in 1453, and his wife supported her dis- consolate widowhood till 1488. Of course I went to see the dresses, crowns, &c., with which the Virgin is adorned on great festivals the pride of Toledo, and the marvel of all Spain, If the pearls and precious stones be all real, as I was assured they were, there is not a queen in the world who possesses so costly a wardrobe as ' Su Majestad' of Toledo. In the sacristy over the altar is a 94 THE CATHEDRAL. magnificent picture by El Greco ' Christ clothed with the scarlet robe.' At his right is a man in armour, said to be a portrait of the painter. At his feet is laid the cross, on which they are nailing the inscription. In the foreground is the Virgin and behind, a crowd of heads. The face of the Virgin appeared to be wanting in expression ; but there never was a more worthy representation of the Saviour, as he looks upward with glistening eyes, triumphant in suffering. In front of this picture stands a small figure of St. Francis, by Alonzo Cano. The face, shaded by the cowl, is marked with all the ecstasy of ascetic devotion ; but, accustomed as we are to the colossal and colourless in statuary, it is hard to go into raptures at a doll (for the figure is only two feet high, and painted). The verger, how- ever, told me that, when M. Thiers visited Toledo, he insisted upon kissing this image, being moved, as he explained, not by religious, but artistic enthusiasm. Being a little man, he was accordingly lifted up in the arms of the attendants to perform the ceremony. M. Thiers is so small, that no single step can lift him from the ridiculous to the sublime. In the vestry I was shown a small Holy Family, attributed to Raphael. One of the canons assured me that it had been brought from Italy by an arch- bishop of Toledo, before the end of the sixteenth century. It resembles a Perugino in everything except a certain hardness of outline. If it be Raphael's at all, it must be one of his very earliest TARASCA. 95 works. My faith in it was rather shaken, by hearing the name of Michael Angelo given to two heads on copper of the Virgin, and a boy Christ. I began to suspect my informant of a reckless use of great names. In a room over the cloisters I saw a collection of gigantic grotesque figures, used in processions and mummeries. I was told that the country people, when they entered the room, generally dropped down reverently on their knees, supposing these to be saints, and the greatest, because the biggest, they had seen. The most remarkable of all is a monster un- known to Buffon, but more like an exaggerated turtle than anything else in nature, the body of which is big enough to contain a man, whose duty it is to open and shut its jaws, for the edification of the popu- lace on Corpus Christi day. This ' snapping turtle' is called Tarasca. On its back rides, or rode, a woman clad in scarlet, yclept 'of Babylon,' and otherwise christened * Anna Boleyna,' after the un- fortunate lady who was the cause of the insult offered by Henry VIII. to Spain and the Roman church in the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, and who was also the mother of her who foiled the Armada and upheld Protestantism ' the she-wolf (as Gongora terms her), Elizabeth of England. The Archbishop's Library contains some very curious manuscripts, which the good old curator seemed never tired of producing for my inspection. Among the rest was a code of laws in Castilian, 96 STREETS OF TOLEDO. given to the city of Valladolid by Alphonso VII. in the eleventh century. This is one of the earliest specimens of f romance,' but the sense can be made out with great ease. I remember one law, for- bidding any Moor or Jew to take sacred property in pledge for a loan. There was also a curious Hebrew roll, and a book of papyrus written in Syriac, both of which were ' Greek' to me. The calle ancha, or Broad Street of Toledo, is about fifteen feet across, so it may be conceived \vhat the other streets are. Indeed, when I essayed to tra- verse the town alone, I was perpetually losing myself in their tortuous labyrinths, and turning up in some unanticipated quarter. I was, therefore, compelled to put myself under the protection of a laquais-de- place, for, to my surprise, even this lonely city can boast a few specimens of the genus. It is probable, however, that this is a recent development, as my man was not by any means a master of his craft. The church of S. Juan de los Reyes stands at the north-western corner of the city, towering among ruins. The Franciscan monastery, of which it formed a part, was nearly destroyed by the French. As the name imports, it was one of the truly royal thank- offerings of the Catholic sovereigns. The outside, which is somewhat devoid of architectural ornament, is garnished by festoons of chains, more or less rusty and broken. These are the chains which were used to bind Christian captives in the dungeons of Ronda, THE CHURCH OF S. JUAN. 97 and (after the old pagan fashion) were hung round the newly-erected church as a trophy of the faith's triumph. There is a strong resemblance, in their main features, between the buildings of Isabella and those of her kinsman and contemporary, Henry VII. of England. In these, however, as in more recent erections in Spain, we may observe a tendency to neglect the outside, and to lavish all the resources of art upon the inside ; hence, the church of S. Juan, externally, seems bald when compared with the chapel at Westminster, while, internally, no other church, either in England or elsewhere, can rival it for prodigality of ornament. The architec- ture is the same in its germ, but beneath the warmer clime it has expanded, and developed into more luxuriant forms. The walls are covered with fabu- lous animals rampant, couchant, and passant amid bowers of impossible foliage, while no occasion is lost to introduce the device of the royal pair, a yoke and sheaf of arrows, tied in a true-love knot. The church of S. Juan de los Reyes used to be familiar to the readers of Gil Bias, but recent editions have misprinted it * Royes,' and a commentator, mis- taking it for Royos, gravely explains it to mean * the church of the red friars,' an order, I apprehend, till now unheard of in ecclesiastical history. One would have thought that the unfortunate place had suffered enough at the hands of Gallic mutilators already. The church of S. Tome is celebrated for the pic- OAZ. F 98 EL GRECO'S PICTURE. ture by El Greco, * The Burial of the Conde Orgaz,' which, in spite of what Sir E. Head and Mrs. Jame- son assert, has not been removed to Madrid. This is generally considered the masterpiece of the painter ; but much as I respect the high authorities which have pronounced it to be so, I must hold that it is inferior to the great picture by the same artist in the sala capitular. The upper part, containing the heavenly host, is, to my mind, very poor in concep- tion, and worse in colouring. A dull leaden hue per- vades the whole. But the lower part is indisputably grand and solemn. Saints Stephen and Augustine, in rich episcopal robes, are depositing the body of the good count in his tomb; the relatives of the de- ceased look on, grave and dignified, not expressing the slightest surprise at being relieved of their duty by such unwonted intervention. The picture is all the more effective by being free from the expression of ordinary human passions. The atmosphere which surrounds it is not that of every-day life ; the truth represented is a higher and deeper truth than the truth of fact ; and the spectator feels that he has no business to call in question the probability of the actual occurrence. I should, doubtless, have worked myself into the proper frame of mind, and felt all this, but for an impertinent suggestion, that the grave relations, with their trim beards, were like Rip Van Winkle's mysterious Dutchmen. I spent a long hour in this church, partly examining the picture, and partly listening to a sermon, which DESERTION OF CHURCHES. 99 the slow, distinct enunciation of the preacher enabled me to follow with ease. I could understand it all the better as it was entirely declamatory and ww-logical, not a syllogism from beginning to end. Whenever the name of Christ or the Virgin was mentioned, the congregation turned towards the high altar, crossed themselves, and muttered a short prayer about the length of a ' grace' in England. This must be a very convenient custom for orators who are liable to stick fast. The ladies, who composed nine-tenths of the audience, were squatting in the Turkish fashion on the floor, each in the same posture, with the head bent down, and the face nearly concealed by the mantilla of black silk, while the incessant agitation of fans was like the fluttering of birds* wings in an aviary. Two of the old churches of Toledo have been synagogues, and several mosques. Some of them are now shut up for lack of priests and worshippers. Espartero ejected the former, and a stealthier, surer revolutionist has filched away the latter. Into Sta. Maria I endeavoured to effect an entrance, but in vain; none of the neighbours knew who kept the key. At Sta. Ursula's I was more fortunate. A good woman opposite begged me to sit down in her house, supplied me with a bowl of the coldest and purest water, and then set off herself in quest of the key. The church communicates with a nunnery, and be- hind the 'grilla' I could see a nun kneeling, with neck and throat closely bandaged, like Fleur de Marie. In the vestry is a fine wooden roof, with pendent F 2 100 THE ZOCODOVER. ornaments, evidently Moorish. I fancied that my kind sextoness cooled somewhat in her manner towards me, when she found that I had not come into the church to say my prayers like a Christian. All day long a solemn stillness broods over Toledo. Rarely does the sound of wheels or the crack df whip wake its old echoes ; there are no ' cries' inviting one to buy fresh fish or sell old clothes ; the shopkeepers doze over their wares, seldom disturbed by a pur- chaser, except, indeed, the fat, comely dame who pre- sides over the estanco, or tobacco-shop, for she drives a thriving trade, thriving herself marvellously. In the doorways of the humbler dwellings sit old men and women, platting long coarse grass into ' socas,' or mats, to hang before the windows and keep the heat out ; and through the iron gates of the better sort you may see a family of daughters at work with the needle, a sea of white linen spread before them. But at sunset all is over with work, and sleep, and silence ; all the life left to Toledo is astir, crowding to the Zoco- dover and the avenues leading thereto. This Zoco- dover, or chief square of Toledo, though deserted by the traffickers who once thronged it by day, is busy as it well can be by night. Planted with many trees, set with many seats, lit by few lamps, the very genius of flirtation has presided over its ordering. Of a summer's night, it hums and buzzes like any hive. On every side, a broken outline of high roofs shuts out sky and stars ; in a niche above the Moorish gateway stands an image of the Virgin, lighted by a POPULAR EXHIBITION. 10l wakeful lamp; and looking through* tne'old arch you may see the distant country, grey and pale in the moonlight. One night I went, in default of a theatre, to an exhibition of gymnastics in the court-yard of a deserted palace. The affair was a decided failure ; but the spectators, who paid 2d. for their admission, bore it all with as much patience and decorum as any < dress circle ' could have done ; only when the three fiddlers composing the promised ( magnificent band ' played unusually ill, they called good-humouredly for los perros 'the dogs' a metaphor from their favourite bull-ring. 102 CHAPTER XL A KIND of omnibus runs between Toledo and Aranjuez every alternate night To this I committed my person and effects at 10 o'clock, p. M., on Monday, July 23rd. The vehicle was crammed full, and it was my misfortune to be seated next an elderly gentleman of corpulent bulk, whom the rest of the company, perhaps on account of his dimensions, treated with profound respect Don Diego (that was his name) speedily lapsed into a state of somnolence, and at every jolt (that is, about three times a minute) he came rolling upon me, and as often recovered his equilibrium, with something between a snort and a groan. This peine forte et dure lasted till half-past four in the morning, and terminated by my disembar- cation at Aranjuez, in a state of semi-dislocation and entire weariness. I walked through the wide, silent streets just as the morning was giving its first grey and grim prelude to a blazing day. A series of vigorous kicks ad- ministered to the door of the Four Nations' Hotel roused a waiter, who conducted me to a comfortable bed, where I forgot the ruthless ruts, and that most real of night-mares, Don Diego. Indeed, I forgot more than that. I had engaged a place in the Gra- OCANA. 103 nada diligence, passing through Aranjuez at 11 A.M., and had intended to devote an hour or two, before starting, to the palace and gardens; but such was my fatigue that I did not awake till 10, and ( Castile has something still to show.' The omission was a thorn in my side ever after, for Aranjuez is the pride of every Spaniard's heart, and whenever I confessed in society that I had not seen the gardens or the Casa del Labrador, I was saluted with an universal ' hombre !' (' man alive !') in tones of contempt and pity. Well ! Don Diego will have to answer for it. Punctual to its time, the diligence arrived. I found that I had to share the berlina, or coupee, with two persons the one, a young fellow with light com- plexion and flaxen hair, whom I took for an English- man, and the other a dark man, whose nation I could not guess. The former proved to be a son of Malaga, returning from the College of Military Engineers at Alcala, and the other was a native of Guatemala^ he told me. I might have guessed long. The body of the vehicle was almost full of young engineers, whose merriment neither heat nor dust could stifle. At Ocana, where we stopped to ' disjune, 1 the Coupee fraternized with the Interieur, by the inter- change of cigars (for a cigar is now, what salt used to be, the pledge and symbol of amicable relations). In the courtyard of the inn a little Murillesque boy was sitting cross-legged ; he had got a marten, which he was putting to a graduated death, by first plucking a few feathers, and then breaking a wing, &c., as if he 104 PUERTO LAPTCHE MANZANARE9. had been training for an Inquisitor. I remonstrated with him on the cruelty of the proceeding, but the little urchin went on with his work, merely replying, in a cold tone, ' Hay muchos ' (There are plenty of 'em). The same plea would have justified me in administering the lex talionis to the lad himself, for Ocaiia was swarming with brats. The country over which we were now passing consists of bare and brown plains, seamed at rare intervals by low chalk hills. On one of these (or rather in it) is the village of La Guardia, where the people live chiefly like rabbits, burrowing instead of building. Here the children, as usual, ran along by the diligence, throwing sum- mersets, and begging clamorously for a cuartito. One of them got among the mules and was trodden upon, but he screamed so lustily as he was being carried off, that we felt sure he was not much hurt. * Hay muchos.' At 9 o'clock we halted for the night at Puerto Lapiche, a place famous only as having been men- tioned in Don Quixote, where, after a hasty supper, \ve all went to bed, anxious to make the most of the few precious hours allowed for sleep. At one in the morning we were again en route. About day-break we were rattling over the pavement of Manzanares. No sooner had we come to a stand-still, than the face of a blind woman was thrust in at the window. My companions immediately recognised ' the blind woman of Manzanares,' famous, they said, throughout all Spain for her powers of improvization. Some one A. SPANISH MINSTREL. 105 told her that there was an Englishman in the carriage, so, apropos of my humble self, she began to recite a string of quatrains, each of which was received with loud laughter and applause by the crowd gathered round to listen. As she made a pause after each stanza, to collect her thoughts and let the noise sub- side, I managed to note down the first and two last, which, done into corresponding English, run thus : The noble English nation Is famous near and far For faithfulness in time of peace And bravery in war. Tis true about Sir Bulwer There's lately been a fuss ; But which was right and which was wrong We cannot now discuss. But let us hope that cause of strife May never happen again, And that a pair of such old friends Will always friends remain. The gifted minstrel was quite content with a guerdon of a real, or twopence-halfpenny sterling. This is probably the same person whom Borrow saw here, and whom he calls the Manchegan Prophetess. Since that time she has turned her talents to sub- stantial account, for her ( rags' have been replaced by decent clothing, and her ( Mulatto complexion' seems to have yielded to repeated applications of soap-and- water. La Mancha is a great corn-growing district. The vast yellow plain is broken at intervals by the huge bulk of a village church, big enough, if it were a barn, F3 106 DISAPPOINTED EXPECTATIONS. to house all the corn of the parish, wide and fertile as it is. It was harvest-time, and we saw frequent teams of oxen labouring on with a huge load of sheaves, piled on the waggon in the shape of a truncated pyramid, and surmounted by a contented peasantry, lolling, singing, and smoking. We were to halt at Valde Penas, and we had been pleasing our- selves with anticipating * a bottle of the very best wine ;' but our hopes were cruelly frustrated, for more execrable stuff was never tasted than that presented to us at the inn. We sent for some more, and, if any worse could have been, that would. The people, too, were ferocious and uncivil ; and so we shook off the dust not of our feet only, but also of our coats and hats, which was no trifle against the town of Valde Perias. At Santa Cruz, a good woman thrust a pair of garters (the staple manufacture of the place) upon me ; I bought them, thinking they might be useful in case I should weary of life before the end of the journey. However, there was no occasion for them just then, for we were approaching the Sierra Morena, and the monotonous plain was giving way to broken and wooded ground. I was on the look out, too, for the Venta de Cardenas, which is the scene and title of a very boisterous and very popular farce. Not but that many a tragedy in real life has been acted in these robber-haunted mountains. Thanks, however, to the institution of the Guardia Civil (the rural police of Spain), a traveller at the present day may A MODERN PILGRIM. 107 enjoy the magnificent scenery of Desperia Perros, without being disturbed by fears for his own safety. This defile, through which the road winds, is rough and rugged as its name. The rocks, splintered verti- cally, stand out like fragments of some ruined castle of the giants. Plenty of oaks and chesnuts have found root in the fissures and clefts, and, far below, the bright pink flowers of the oleander mark the course of the torrent Every turn of the road exhibits a fresh combination of rock and wood ; and as soon as the highest point is attained, the background of the prospect is filled with a wide expanse of plain and far sweep of mountain the Vegas and the Sierras of Andalucia. We trotted merrily down the hills to a little village (Sta. Elena, I think), which we found all astir, by reason of a rustic bull-fight just going to begin. Among the spectators attracted thither was an old pilgrim (the first and only specimen of the class I ever saw off the stage). He wore a large coarse brown cloak, garnished with the scallop-shell of S. Jago, and a broad-brimmed hat looped up, with a sprig of rosemary in front, which I suppose he wore to advertise his calling, for Romero, in Spanish, means both rosemary and pilgrim. He also carried a long stick, and altogether quite looked the character. The road between La Carolina and Bailen is the worst part of the whole line ; and the shaking made us anticipate with the more impatience our promised 108 JAEX. rest of seven hours at the latter place. We arrived at six o'clock in the evening, and after a good supper strolled out en masse, to convince ourselves that there were no sights at Bailen ; then we went to bed. This day, the 24th of July, 1849, will be memorable to me, as the date of my first seeing a pilgrim and a palm- tree in their natural state. We started agaip, as before, at one in the morning, guarded by a couple of men with blunderbusses, who hung on somewhere outside. I soon relapsed into slumber, and did not wake till near six. e What a thousand pities it is,' said the Guatemalan, ' that you did not see Jaen ! Caramba ! que lastima! Mag- nificent beautiful towers on the side of a hill- antiquities tiempo de los Moros.' ' Why didn't you wake me ?' I said, ' Caramba que lastima !' So I missed seeing Jaen, and grumbled about it till break- fast time. We stopped at a mountain-inn, and found a better meal prepared than the appearance of the place warranted one in expecting. A Manchegan, one of the passengers, got into a furious rage in endeavouring to convince the Andalucians that La Mancha was the finest province in Spain. The rest received his declamation with scornful laughter, and, having the best of the argument, kept their temper. A tunnel cut through an opposing rock let us into the kingdom of Granada; soon after, as the road wound among the hills, I caught a glimpse of the THE SIERRA NEVADA. 109 snow-flecked sides of a ridge of mountains, towering above all the rest. I needed no one to tell me that this was the Sierra Nevada. As little did I need to be informed that the white town which (on emerging from a grove of olives,) we saw in the distance, lying on the hill-side, crowned with red towers and belted with green woods, was Granada. no CHAPTER XII. AS we were all waiting in the diligence-bureau, till the custom-house officer had gone through the ceremony of unlocking and locking the trunks, 1 was accosted by a dapper young fellow in Andalucian costume: 'Seiior! your worship is a stranger? an Englishman? Ah, I knew it! Milor, (these laquais- de-place think that every Englishman likes to be so addressed, and they are right,) I am at your feet I am Mateo Ximenez, son of old Mateo honest Mateo, the Mateo of Vasindon Eerveen, the son of the Alhambra, who will show you every stone in Granada,' On the other side, an elderly person introduced himself as Seiior Vigarai, landlord of the adjacent hotel, where he entreated me to stay, vaunt- ing its superior cheapness, &c. But as I prefer being fed for two dollars per diem to being poisoned for one, I shook off the touting landlord, (a character very rare in Spain,) and trudged off to the Fonda de Minerva, closely followed by the officious Mateo. I was shown to a spacious apartment on the first floor, where I proceeded to instal myself, Mateo aiding unbidden. We had not been there five minutes before a dark, keen-eyed man, with a fierce mous- tache, appeared at the open door, cap in hand, and BATTLE OF THE GUIDES. Ill addressed me in English ' Good bye, Sare ! how you do? I am Immanuel Bensaken, of Gibraltar, British-born ; much commended in dat red book you wear in your hand, page 129, Give me leave, Sare ?' He proceeded to find the place, but Mateo, high in wrath, broke in with a torrent of vituperation, speaking Spanish, the substance of which seemed to be that I belonged to the Ximenez family by right of prior discovery. Bensaken, on the other hand, claimed me by right of conquest, because the English were masters of Gibraltar. ' Milor,' said Mateo to me, in a tone of solemn warning, ' this man is a Jew, a thief, a runaway, a renegade Jew.' Bensaken, upon this, assured me that old Mateo had helped one of his sons to murder a man, holding him down while the son despatched him with a knife. The dispute lasted some time, and I was at last obliged to request the two to fight it out in the corral below, promising myself as the prize of the survivor. At five o'clock next morning I was awakened from a sound sleep by the entrance of a small, demure, elderly man, wearing on his face the stereotyped grin of servility, who introduced himself as the original Mateo Ximenez the Mateo of Vasindon Eerveen ; 1 and I come,' said he, ' in obedience to your wor- ship's commands to conduct you to the Alhambra.' He had got up early, and stolen a march upon the Jew. Under the guidance, therefore, of Mateo, I paid my first visit to the Alhambra a visit of three hours' 112 MATEO XIMENEZ, THE GUIDE. duration, my guide, meanwhile, keeping up a run- ning commentary of the very smallest talk, recklessly confounding dates and facts, nations and personages; and for any special absurdity, audaciously appealing to the authority of ' Vasindon Eerveen.' What a lucky moment it was when the twaddling old fool first met the illustrious man whose name and mean- ing he constantly perverts. The glowing fancy of Washington Irving has blazoned * honest Mateo' to the English half of the world as a little hero of romance, handing him down to posterity, besides enabling him to make a pretty penny out of his contemporaries. He showed me a book of encomiums on himself by American travellers, full of exaggerated phrase, written, indeed, in that 'tall' style which distin- guishes U. S. from us. The old fox took me to his own den, where he has on sale (sub rosa) many squares of stucco ornament, and other relics pur- loined from the Alhambra. Knowing that I had been informed of * the murder' in which he had been compromised, he volunteered a version of it, which I think is characteristic, not only of the man, but the people. I give it in his own words. Like the lower orders in Andalucia, when addressing their superiors, he spoke of himself in the third person (as Mateo'). ( There was,' he said, c a Serjeant who used to be on duty up here in the Alhambra. One day Mateo and he were drinking together, and they fell to disputing ASSASSINATIONS. 113 about politics. Now the serjeant was a 'Royalist,' and Mateo and his family have always been Progres- istas, like your worships the English. At last the serjeant knocked Mateo down, and left him. Now, as he was going out of the door, it was the will of the devil that he should meet my son. ' What have you done to my father ?' said mi chico (my little one), and he answered, ' I have served him like a !' Then mi chico, being beside himself with anger, drew his knife and stabbed him in the belly. It did not go deeper than that? (showing two joints of his fore- finger,) ' and the man lived four hours ! And it was for that, just killing a man in a quarrel when his blood was up, that they put mi chico in prison, where he is to this day, pobrecito.' I listened with some interest to the details of his story ; and Mateo must have thought me curious in murders, for as we were leaving the Alhambra we met a dark-eyed, buxom dame, and Mateo introduced us in form : c Senora, this is an English gentleman travelling for amusement, and, Serior, this is a lady whose husband was assassinated two years ago ;' whereupon the widow, nothing loth, told me all about it. As soon as her back was turned, Mateo gave me an entirely different version, much less to the credit of the unfortunate deceased. My first visit to the Alhambra gave me very little pleasure. All thought was scared by the continuous chatter of my guide, and I felt all the while that I was * doing' the Alhambra, not seeing it. There was 114 THE ALHAMBRA. hardly even the charm of novelty, for I had seen Owen Jones's pictures. They are more than like, they are the very place itself, projected on a plane. As Mercator's chart is to a globe, so are those pictures to the Alhambra, which, indeed, is more like a painting, or a stage scene, than a real building. I speak of the interior only, for, from without, it looks as grim and solid as the rocky hill on which it stands. If I forbear giving an elaborate description of the whole place palace, fortress, convent, village, groves, and gardens, it is because I wish to spare my readers the repetition of a thrice-told tale. (Why do over again what has been done already so often and so well ?) Not but that I could fill half a volume about it, for there was hardly a corner which I did not explore during the month when I had my head- quarters at Granada. It is true one's senses are occasionally more offended than gratified in the course of such researches, and a day-dream about, the Past is often rudely interrupted by some incongruity belonging to the unromantic Present ; but, according to the happy constitution of nature, all unpleasant associations fade away from the mind, and leave the pleasures of memory pure and unmixed. The Alhambra should be seen from all points of view, and in all lights. It is a place for all hours. There, the morning breeze is freshest; there is the thickest shade ; there are the coolest waters to temper THE ALHAMBRA. 115 the fierce noon ; and there, at evening, the finest view over that famous landscape, lovely always, but loveliest then. And often would we linger, long after sunset, watching till that flood of purple and gold had ebbed quite away from plain and hill and sky ; and just below us the lamps of the town came out, one by one, like the stars of another heaven ; and further away, the burning stubble flashed in long lines of fire, as bright, and almost as rapid, as summer- lightning. Eastward, one might see the clear, sharp outline of the Sierra, dwarfed in the gloom, and looming darker by contrast with the light of the moon rising behind it ; so we stayed to watch the flow of the new tide as we had watched the ebb of the old, to see how the gracious beams fell, first, upon the rocky pinnacles of the Sierra of Alhama, and then upon many a white tower and hamlet in the plain below ; last of all, upon the town and woods just at our feet, half revealing the various tints of day, for the colours of moonlight are to the colours of sunlight as dreams are to life, rather a reminiscence than a reality. And then we would descend, my companions and I, half ashamed of having quoted poetry, or otherwise indulged the sentimental vein, and finish the even- ing by a game of billiards in the English way, the natives looking on with much contempt. Up in the Alhambra is a little inn, called the Carmen de los Siete Suelos, besides a rival establish- 116 THE ALHAMBRA. ment (whose name I forget) just opposite. Each of these has a kind of tea-garden attached, where you may be supplied, al fresco, with those creature comforts indispensable even to persons of the most romantic turn, such as fresh milk, eggs, chocolate, or wine. Thus, with a book or pencil, one may spend a long day in the Alhambra with much ease and comfort, and not without profit. Strange contrasts meet one's observation. Above, in the branches, are the uncaged birds singing with all their might (a singing-bird is a rarity in Spain) ; below, a gang of convicts (no rarity) are at work, clanking in their chains. Take the path to the left, and you find a Spanish soldier, of the th line regiment, keeping guard under the Moorish arch, and an image of the Virgin Mary, under a sentence from the Koran. Pass on, and you stand before the heavy, unfinished palace of Charles V., with its stupid unideal plan, (a circle inscribed in a square, like a figure out of Euclid,) and its recurrence of unvarying ornament. A little side door admits you to the Court of Myrtles and a new world. You have trod on the magic carpet of Hassan, and have been transported eastward through space, and backward through time, to the city and the reign of Haroun Alraschid! You pass on through the Court of Lions, the Hall of the Abencerrages, &c., names familiar to you from childhood : the whole place, the realization of many a dream, appears itself scarcely less unsubstantial so delicate and fragile, THE GENERALIFE. 117 that it seems fitted only for the charmed atmosphere of fairy-land; the fierce storms of this earth will surely crush it to atoms ; the fierce heat crumble it into dust. Indeed, the Court of Lions has suffered from an earthquake, and is rudely enough supported by beams, and held together by cramps. May man and time deal tenderly with the remnant ! You leave the place, and, sitting down on a stone seat under the trees, are thinking of the wealth and glories of the Caliphs, and the lavish splendours of Oriental royalty, when an old man in rags accosts you. He is a veteran who has fought in the war of Independence one of two hundred pensioners quartered here in the Alhambra, and he is forced to beg of the stranger, because he cannot live on the daily pittance which his grateful country owes him. You are recalled to the present time : Isabel II. sits on the throne of Abderrahman the Magnificent. A narrow, dank cleft, green with ferns and creeping plants, and spanned by the single arch of an aque- duct, divides the Alhambra from the Generalife. At the entrance to the latter, stands a cottage with trellised vines, and a plot of cool shade beside it. There, each day as I passed, were a knot of women spinning and chattering incessantly, mixing the useful with the sweet just looking up to give the kindly salute Vaya Usted con Dios. The Generalife, once the Moor's garden of delights, still shows signs of being cared for, and still produces hazel-nuts and 118 THE GENERALIFE. plums. The grapes were sour and the figs hard at that time. You may help yourself without let oy hindrance as you walk up to the house. Sitting before the door, a black -eyed, sharp-looking little boy was making dirt-pies. He jumped up at my summons, and took me in. There was the court, with its pond and flowers, and at the end an arcade, leading into cool and airy rooms for summer dwelling all just as their Moorish master had left them, only looking a little forlorn and neglected, for all the sunshine. If people would always be content with neglecting! That turbid stream which rushes through the court contains, potentially, all the fer- tility of the Alhambra and Generalife. Separated, some miles higher up, from its parent Darro, it is brought along the hill-side in an artificial channel, and then distributed into a thousand runlets to feed the fountains and the flowers. At times it is turned into an enormous tank, hollowed out in the rock, and containing I forget how many hundred thousand gallons (the work of the Moors, cela s'entend). The dirt filters to the bottom, and leaves the coldest and purest of water, which, by means of a well, supplies all the dwellers in the Alhambra. My little guide took me next to a kind of summer-house at the top of the garden, which, like all elevated spots hereabouts, commands a grand view over hill and plain. He then let me out at a door which opens on the hill, and at parting was made happy with a THE GENERALIFE. 119 pesata. Ever afterwards he showed all his white teeth when he saw me, and, diving among the trees, reappeared with his dirty hands full of ripe plums. A single step divides the garden from the desert abundance from sterility. It reminds one of the rude social contrasts of London Belgravia and Bethnal Green. In Andalucia, the w r aters are scanty and the land is wide. What remedy, G ye philo- icrs? 120 CHAPTER XIII. THE town of Granada stands at the confluence of two streams famous in history and romance the Darro and the Xenil. There is also a third stream, called the Duero, whose existence rests on the mute testimony of a bridge, which you cross be- fore entering the town. During the summer months the bridge has a sinecure, and the river is converted into that useful article 'a spare bed.' The Darro, emerging from a narrow woody glen, turns abruptly to the south, and, dividing the city in two, joins the Xenil at the south-west corner of the hill. This hill, abrupt and rocky towards the north, slopes to west and south. On its two sides lies the city, dazzlingly white, but sprinkled here and there with the dark green of trellised vines and domestic fig-trees ; and above all rise the heavy red walls and towers of the Alhambra. One might fancy that the city, emulous of safety, in close ranks, wherever a foot could be set, had climbed the hill, and in gratitude had crowned it with a crown a mural crown ' ob cives servatos.' Westward lies the level plain, streaked here and there with dark woods, and on the other side rises the sierra, ridge above ridge, to the snowy peak of Veleta. The banks of the Xenil near the THE ALBAEZIN. 121 town are fringed with trees, chiefly poplar, and brushwood, among which wind many tangled by- paths, as lonely as lovers or cut-throats could desire. Not far off is the Alameda a pleasant place, with its thick shade and abounding fountains, and about sunset crowded with both the sexes and all the ranks. As the twilight gives place to night, the throng gradually adjourns to the open promenade, which occupies the centre of the wide street close by. The lamps are lit ; the vendors of water, sugar-cakes, and cigars, place their stands on each side, and thereupon is repeated the never-failing scene of fans, flutter, and flirtation. Opposite the Alhambra, on the other side of the Darro, lies the Albaezin, which is less altered than any other quarter of the city, and will well repay the trouble of threading its steep and perplexed streets. Most of the churches are mosques transmuted, and frequently retain their original ceiling. Many a house, now the abode of poverty and squalor, shows signs of better days, and in many a corner one sees some fragment of a palace set incongruously in a hovel. Near the church of San Miguel el Bajo is a Moorish well, full of clear water and drooping ferns, which pleads earnestly to be sketched. Not far off is the church of San Nicolas, before which is a kind of platform with a few trees. Here, I think, is the best point of view for the Alhambra and Generalife, with the Sierra for background. A more glorious, soul-stirring scene could not be conceived than this, OAZ. G 122 THE CARTUJA. as it was when I saw it trees, towers, and far mountain tops, all sparkling in the clear morning sun, and canopied by a cloudless sky. I entered the little dimly-lit church; there was one miserable-looking man on his knees, creeping round to each altar in succession, muttering unin- telligible prayers, and between each rubbing the floor with his forehead. * O curvse in terras animae !' To do the Spaniards justice, I never saw any young man performing these ceremonies of mortifi- cation ; penance is all that is left to those who are too old and hardened for repentance. Another early morning may be devoted to visiting the Cartuja. This once superb convent has shared the fate of all similar institutions: one thin and melancholy, because ill-paid, priest is left to minister at the altar, the church has been stripped of its splendid pictures, and the buildings adjacent are secularized into granaries. The place, however, ( curst' as it is, has something still to show. Behind the high altar is a sort of sanctum-sanctorum, lined with rich marbles, all of Spain. Nothing can be more gorgeous than the Baldacchino which stands in the centre. Round the walls of the sacristy are the presses for vestments, lined with cedar and faced with ebony, ivory, silver, and tortoiseshell a marvel of skill and industry. The Carthusians seem to have had as strong a pre- dilection for upholstery as the Benedictines for literature. Go where you will, the Cartuja (or Certosa, as the case may be,) surpasses all beside it GRANADA CATHEDRAL. 123 in elaborate and costly finery. The cathedral of Granada is a ponderous building, in a pseudo- classical style, which is happily unknown out of the peninsula. If you run your eye up one of the pillars, you see that it has plinth, column, capital, and pediment, all right; but above all is an angular nameless mass, half the length of the column, from which springs the arch. This gives the interior an oppressive, top-heavy look. Moreover, the side aisles are cut prematurely short at the transepts, and the great blank wall which fronts you on enter- ing makes you say involuntarily * Is this all ?' Nevertheless I often visited it, for it contains many pictures by Cano, and is a pleasant, cool place, with few worshippers to be disturbed by heretical foot- steps. Indeed, I hardly ever entered it without finding as many dogs as men in it. Either the men of Granada must be much worse, or the dogs much better, than their respective species elsewhere. It is seldom, indeed, that the latter enjoy such toleration, such opportunities of frequenting a place of worship, and even sitting under a popular minister. Men too frequently play the part of dogs in the manger neither going themselves, nor permitting the others. In the cathedral and its precincts are pretty nearly all the works of art which fate and the French have left to Granada. The most remarkable pictures are a Conception and an Assumption ; and in the oratory G2 124 GRANADA CATHEDRAL. a Suffering Christ and Mourning Mother, all by Alonso Cano. The 'Virgins' of this artist are always exquisite, displaying sweetness and gentleness refined almost to divinity. In looking on the Assump- tion, I could not help recalling Bowring's beautiful lines (paraphrased from a Spanish poet) Lady thou mountest slowly O'er the bright cloud, while music sweetly plays, Blest, who thy mantle holy With outstretched hand may seize, And rise with thee to the infinite of days. His ' Christs,' on the contrary, are often threatening, strong, and terrible. He thinks more of the charac- teristic distinctions of sex than of Christian doctrine. The ' Virgin Mother,' with him, is an Intercessor and Saviour. The ' Crucified Son ' is a Destroyer and Avenger. There are also several small figures, carved and painted by the same artist in particular, a Virgin crowned, with the Infant Jesus in her arms, which a properly disciplined mind would admire rapturously. I could not help thinking it fitter for a toy-shop than for a shrine or a gallery. The artist was a minor canon of this cathedral, and spent his time in painting and graving Madonnas, &c., so that, if he was not devout himself, he has at least been the cause of devotion in others. His best works are, as I have said, characterized by the utmost delicacy and tefMer- ness, and it is hard to believe that the man who could conceive them actually paved the way to ecclesiastical preferment by the murder of his wife. GRANADA CATHEDRAL. 125 Attached to the cathedral is the Royal Chapel. It is divided across by a high iron railing, within which are two richly ornamented tombs of white marble. Upon the one lie the effigies of Ferdinand and Isabel, upon the other those of Juana and her handsome, faithless husband. Underneath is a little vault, well lighted, and as cheerful as such a place can be, con- taining the leaden coffins of the illustrious dead. A simple initial distinguishes one from the other. Among the rest is a little coffin containing the remains of a Prince Miguel, who was killed by a fall from his pony when a mere child. The spot is still marked by a stone cross in the square called, from the accident, ' del Principe.' On the retablo above the altar are some quaint wood-carvings in bas-relief. One of these represents Boabdil in front of the Tower of Justice, offering the keys of the Alhambra to the catholic sovereigns, and the grand cardinal who rides by their side. The vergers have several curious memorials of the ' Reyes Catolicos' to show, preserved as reverently as if they were relics of saints. There are the standards of embroidered silk used in the war, now much frayed by time and tourists, who can never keep their hands from picking ; a curious and minia- ture-like Flemish painting, with a silver frame, which once belonged to king Ferdinand's travelling oratory, an