3 1822 01291 9924
 
 SANDItGO
 
 & 468 S63 
 
 
 9924
 
 Turrets, Towers, and Temples
 
 BOOKS BT MISS SINGLETON 
 
 FAMOUS PICTURES, SCENES, AND BUILDINGS 
 DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS 
 
 TURRETS, TOWERS, AND TEMPLES 
 GREAT PICTURES 
 WONDERS OF NATURE 
 ROMANTIC PALACES AND CASTLES 
 FAMOUS PAINTINGS 
 
 PARIS LONDON A GUIDE TO THE OPERA 
 LOVE IN LITERATURE AND ART
 
 Turrets, 
 Towers, and Temples 
 
 The Great Buildings of the World, as 
 Seen and Described by Famous Writers 
 
 EDITED AND TRANSLATED 
 
 BY ESTHER ^INGLETON 
 
 TRANSLATOR OF "THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER** 
 
 With Numerous Illustrations 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1902
 
 Copyright, 1898, 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 
 
 EIntorrsitu 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 Preface 
 
 IN making the selections for this book, which is 
 thought to be the realization of a new idea, it 
 has been my endeavour to bring together descrip- 
 tions of several famous buildings written by authors 
 who have appreciated the romantic spirit, as well as 
 the architectural beauty and grandeur, of the work 
 they describe. 
 
 It would be impossible to collect within the small 
 boundaries of a single volume sketches and pic- 
 tures of all the masterpieces of architecture, and a 
 vast amount of interesting literature has had to be 
 ignored. I have tried, however, to gather choice 
 examples of as many different styles of architecture 
 as possible and to give a description, wherever 
 practicable, of each building's special object of 
 veneration, such as the Christ of Burgos and the 
 Cid's coffer in the same Cathedral ; the Emerald 
 Buddha at Wat Phra Kao, Bangkok ; the statue 
 of Our Lady at Toledo ; the shrine of St. Thomas 
 a Becket at Canterbury ; etc., as well as the special
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 feature for which any particular building is famous, 
 such as the Court of Lions in the Alhambra ; the 
 Chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey ; 
 the Convent of the Escurial ; the spiral stairway at 
 Chambord ; etc., and also a typical scene, like the 
 dance de los seises in the Cathedral of Seville ; and 
 the celebration of Easter at St. Peter's. 
 
 Ruskin says : " It is well to have not only what 
 men have thought and felt, but what their hands 
 have handled and their strength wrought all the 
 days of their life." It is also well to have what 
 sympathetic authors have written about these mas- 
 sive and wonderful creations of stone which have 
 looked down upon and outlived so many genera- 
 tions of mankind. 
 
 With the exception of the Mosque of Santa Sofia, 
 all the translations have been made expressly for. 
 this book. 
 
 E. S. 
 
 NEW YORK, May, 1898.
 
 Contents 
 
 ST. MARK'S, VENICE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 THE TOWER OF LONDON n 
 
 . WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP 18 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 -THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA 23 
 
 ANDRE CHEVRILLON. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME, PARIS 28 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE KREMLIN, Moscow 38 
 
 THOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK 49 
 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR, JERUSALEM 56 
 
 PIERRE LOTI. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS . . : 65 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 -THE PYRAMIDS, GIZEH 71 
 
 GEORG EBERS. 
 
 ST. PETER'S, ROME 76 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS.
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG ........ 84 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN RANGOON ........ 92 
 
 GWENDOLIN TRENCH GASCOIGNE. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA .......... 98 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN ........ , 102 
 
 GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE ......... 105 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 WINDSOR CASTLE ............. no 
 
 WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE ......... 117 
 
 ERNEST BRETON. 
 
 -THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES ......... 126 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN ......... 132 
 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK .......... 137 
 
 AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 
 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE, FLORENCE ...... 143 
 
 CHARLES YRIARTE. 
 
 -GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE, FLORENCE ........ 147 
 
 i. MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 n. JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CCEUR, BOURGES ..... 152 
 AD. BERTY. 
 
 WAT PHRA KAO, BANGKOK .......... 158 
 
 CARL BOCK.
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO 163 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD 170 
 
 JULES LOISELEUR. 
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO 177 
 
 PIERRE LOTI. 
 
 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD, EDINBURGH 187 
 
 DAVID MASSON. 
 
 > SAINT- GUDULE, BRUSSELS 193 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE ESCURIAL, MADRID 195 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA 204 
 
 JAMES FERGUSSON. 
 
 -THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN 209 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 . -THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN, CAIRO 215 
 
 AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES 221 
 
 ED.WARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 
 
 'THE VATICAN, ROME 225 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 234 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA, CONSTANTINOPLE . . . 242 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON 248 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 
 
 THE PARTHENON. ATHENS 257 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN 263 
 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 ^THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG 269 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE 278 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA 286 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM 293 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA 298 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY 301 
 
 W. H. FREMANTLE. 
 
 THE ALHAMBRA, GRANADA 308 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
 
 Illustrations 
 
 - ST. MARK'S Italy- . . . Frontis. 
 
 . THE TOWER OF LONDON England . . Face 14 
 
 -THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP . . . Belgium . . "20 
 
 THE TAJ MAHAL India ... "23 
 
 .THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME . . France ... "30 
 
 THE 'KREMLIN Russia ... "40 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK .... England . . "49 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR Palestine . . " 58 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS . . . Spain ... "65 
 
 THE PYRAMIDS Egypt ... "72 
 
 ST. PETER'S Italy.. ... "78 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG . . . Germany . . "86 
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN Burmah . . "94 
 
 ./THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA .... Italy.. ... "98 
 
 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN . . . Belgium . . "103 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE .... Spain . . . " 106 
 
 ^WINDSOR CASTLE England . . "no 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE . . . Germany . . "121 
 
 ^ THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES .... France . . . "126 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN . . . England . . "132 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK .... Egypt . . . "139 
 
 ^ SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE Italy. ..." 144 
 
 ^ GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE Italy .... " 147 
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COSUR . . . France . . . "155 
 
 WAT PHRA KAO Siam . . . "159 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO . . . Spain ..." 164 
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD . . . France . . . ."172,
 
 xii ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO Japan . . Face 178 
 
 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD .... Scotland . . "187 
 
 SAINT-GUDULE Belgium . . "193 
 
 THE ESCURIAL Spain . . . "195 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA .... India ..." 204 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN .... Italy. ..." 213 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN Egypt ..." 216 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TROVES. . . . Germany . . "221 
 
 THE VATICAN Italy.. ..." 225 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS . . . France . . . "234 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA-SOFIA . . . Turkey ..." 242 
 
 ^WESTMINSTER ABBEY England . . " 248 
 
 THE PARTHENON Greece ..." 257 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN .... France ..." 265 
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG . . . Germany . . " 269 
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE Italy ..." 280 
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA .... Spain ..." 288 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM . . Norway . . " 293 
 
 THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA . . . Italy. ..." 298 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY . England . . " 301 
 
 THE ALHAMBRA Spain . . . "310
 
 Turrets, Towers, and Temples. 
 I 
 
 ST. MARK'S. 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 A YARD or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the 
 Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through 
 the square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the outer 
 wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on 
 an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side ; 
 and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San 
 Moise, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, 
 called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square), the 
 Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the fright- 
 ful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another 
 time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the 
 shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling with the 
 lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English 
 and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the 
 shadow of the pillars at the end of the " Bocca di Piazza," 
 and then we forget them all ; for between those pillars 
 there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we 
 advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift 
 itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones ;
 
 2 ST. MARK'S. 
 
 and, on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves 
 into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular 
 houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley 
 had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely 
 order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had 
 been transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture 
 and fluted shafts of delicate stone. 
 
 And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops 
 of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and 
 all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind 
 of awe, that we may see it far away ; a multitude of 
 pillars and white domes, clustered into a long, low pyra- 
 mid of coloured light ; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly 
 of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed 
 beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair 
 mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as 
 amber and delicate as ivory, sculpture fantastic and 
 involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pome- 
 granates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the 
 branches, all twined together into an endless network of 
 buds and plumes ; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms 
 of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to 
 each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among 
 the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves 
 beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light 
 as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first 
 its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the 
 walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated 
 stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine 
 spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse
 
 ST. MARK'S. 3 
 
 and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, " their bluest 
 veins to kiss " the shadow, as it steals back from them, 
 revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding 
 tide leaves the waved sand j their capitals rich with inter- 
 woven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves 
 of acan,thus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and 
 ending in the Cross ; and above them, in the broad archi- 
 volts, a continuous chain of language and of life angels, 
 and the signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in 
 its appointed season upon the earth ; and above these, 
 another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white 
 arches edged with scarlet flowers, a confusion of delight, 
 amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen 
 blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. 
 Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, 
 until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break 
 into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue 
 sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the 
 breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before 
 they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral 
 and amethyst. 
 
 Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what 
 an interval ! There is a type of it in the very birds that 
 haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse- 
 voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, 
 the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle 
 among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence 
 of their living plumes, changing at every motion with the 
 tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for 
 seven hundred years.
 
 4 ST. MARK'S. 
 
 And what effect has this splendour on those who pass 
 beneath it ? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and 
 fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see 
 an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. 
 Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass 
 by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the 
 porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their 
 counters ; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves 
 the seats not " of them that sell doves " for sacrifice, 
 but of vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole 
 square in front of the church there is almost a continuous 
 line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes 
 lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian 
 bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music 
 jarring with the organ notes, the march drowning the 
 miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening around them, 
 a crowd which, if it had its will, would stiletto every 
 soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, 
 all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unem- 
 ployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards ; and 
 unregarded children, every heavy glance of their young 
 eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their 
 throats hoarse with cursing, gamble, and fight, and snarl, 
 and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi 
 upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the 
 images of Christ and His angels look down upon it con- 
 tinually. . . . Let us enter the church itself. It is lost 
 in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accus- 
 tomed for some moments before the form of the building 
 can be traced ; and then there opens before us a vast cave
 
 ST. MARK'S. 5 
 
 hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into 
 shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of 
 its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures 
 like large stars ; and here and there a ray or two from 
 some far-away casement wanders into the darkness, and 
 casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of 
 marble that heave and fall in a thousand colours along the 
 floor. What else there is of light is from torches or silver 
 lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels ; 
 the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered 
 with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some 
 feeble gleaming to the flames ; and the glories round the 
 heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass 
 them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and 
 over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one 
 picture passing into another, as in a dream ; forms beauti- 
 ful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and 
 ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the 
 midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from 
 vases of crystal ; the passions and the pleasures of human 
 life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption ; 
 for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures 
 lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every 
 place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent 
 of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath 
 its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet ; but 
 conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the 
 church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against 
 the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of 
 the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs
 
 6 ST. MARK'S. 
 
 heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint 
 lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes 
 raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, " Mother 
 of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the 
 Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre 
 of the temple ; and every dome and hollow of its roof has 
 the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in 
 power, or returning in judgment. 
 
 Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the 
 people. At every hour of the day there are groups col- 
 lected before the various shrines, and solitary worshippers 
 scattered through the darker places of the church, evidently 
 in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, 
 profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number 
 of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen mur- 
 muring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and 
 unengaged gestures ; but the step of the stranger does no! 
 disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's j 
 and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sun- 
 set, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure entel 
 beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement 
 on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with 
 more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp 
 of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the 
 lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church 
 as if comforted. . . . 
 
 It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish moun- 
 tain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at their 
 fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with its floor of 
 anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's. . . .
 
 ST. MARK'S. 7 
 
 The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the 
 interstices between their interwoven bands of marble are 
 filled with colours like the illuminations of a manuscript ; 
 violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green alternately : but no 
 green is ever used without an intermixture of blue pieces 
 in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale 
 green ; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of 
 an inch square, so subtle was the feeling for colour which 
 was thus to be satisfied. The intermediate circles have 
 golden stars set on an azure ground, varied in the same 
 manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are 
 alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles 
 of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, 
 each only about half an inch across (this work, remember, 
 being on the outside of the building, and twenty feet above 
 the eye), while the blue crosses have each a pale green 
 centre. . . . 
 
 The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the 
 witness of the Old Testament to Christ ; showing him 
 enthroned in its centre and surrounded by the patriarchs 
 and prophets. But this dome was little seen by the 
 people ; their contemplation was intended to be chiefly 
 drawn to that of the centre of the church, and thus the 
 mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on the main 
 groundwork and hope of Christianity " Christ is risen," 
 and " Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the 
 minor lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them 
 the whole series of New Testament history, the events 
 of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in their 
 order, and finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation ;
 
 g ST. MARK'S. 
 
 but if he only entered, as often the common people do to 
 this hour, snatching a few moments before beginning the 
 labour of the day to offer up an ejaculatory prayer, and 
 advanced but from the main entrance as far as the altar 
 screen, all the splendour of the glittering nave and varie- 
 gated dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might 
 often, in strange contrast with his reed cabin among the 
 shallows of the lagoon, smote upon it only that they might 
 proclaim the two great messages " Christ is risen," and 
 " Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose 
 like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy 
 campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into 
 the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph 
 " Christ is risen ; " and daily, as they looked down upon 
 the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the 
 wide square that opened from their feet to the sea, they 
 uttered above them the sentence of warning, "Christ 
 shall come." 
 
 And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look 
 with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building 
 and wild blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now 
 perceives that it was in the hearts of the old Venetian 
 people far more than a place of worship. It was at once 
 a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for 
 the written word of God. It was to be to them, both an 
 image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of 
 wrought gold ; and the actual Table of the Law and the 
 Testimony, written within and without. And whether 
 honoured as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting 
 that neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared
 
 ST. MARK'S. 9 
 
 in the adornment of it ; that, as the symbol of the Bride, 
 the building of the wall thereof should be of jasper, and 
 the foundations of it garnished with all manner of precious 
 stones; and that, as the channel of the World, that trium- 
 phant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of it "I 
 have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in 
 all riches " ? And shall we not look with changed temper 
 down the long perspective of St. Mark's Place towards 
 the sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple, 
 when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of 
 it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square ? 
 Men met there from all countries of the earth, for traffic 
 or for pleasure ; but, above the crowd swaying forever to 
 and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, 
 was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to 
 them, whether they would hear or whether they would 
 forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchant- 
 men might buy without a price, and one delight better 
 than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. Not 
 in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the 
 desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles 
 hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed 
 in the colours of the iris. There is a message written in 
 the dyes of them, that once was written in blood ; and a 
 sound in the echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill 
 the vault of heaven, " He shall return, to do judgment 
 and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so 
 long as she remembered this : her destruction found her 
 when she had forgotten this ; and it found her irrevocably, 
 because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a
 
 IO ST. MARK'S. 
 
 more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the North, a 
 rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with con- 
 fused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her the skill 
 and the treasures of tk5 East had gilded every letter, and 
 illumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from 
 afar off like the star of the Magi. 
 
 Stones of Venice (London, 1851-' 3).
 
 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 
 
 WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. 
 
 HALF a mile below London Bridge, on ground which 
 was once a bluff, commanding the Thames from 
 St. Saviour's Creek to St. Olave's Wharf, stands the 
 Tower ; a mass of ramparts, walls, and gates, the most 
 ancient and most poetic pile in Europe. 
 
 Seen from the hill outside, the Tower appears to be 
 white with age and wrinkled by remorse. The home of 
 our stoutest kings, the grave of our noblest knights, the 
 scene of our gayest revels, the field of our darkest crimes, 
 that edifice speaks at once to the eye and to the soul. 
 Grey keep, green tree, black gate, and frowning battlement, 
 stand out, apart from all objects far and near them, menac- 
 ing, picturesque, enchaining; working on the senses like a 
 spell ; and calling us away from our daily mood into a 
 world of romance, like that which we find painted in light 
 and shadow on Shakespeare's page. 
 
 Looking at the Tower as either a prison, a palace, or a 
 court, picture, poetry, and drama crowd upon the mind; 
 and if the fancy dwells most frequently on the state prison, 
 this is because the soul is more readily kindled by a human 
 interest than fired by an archaic and official fact. For one 
 man who would care to see the room in which a council
 
 12 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 
 
 met or a court was held, a hundred men would like to see 
 the chamber in which Lady Jane Grey was lodged, the cell 
 in which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, the tower from which 
 Sir John Oldcastle escaped. Who would not like to stand 
 for a moment by those steps on which Ann Boleyn knelt ; 
 pause by that slit in the wall through which Arthur De la 
 Pole gazed ; and linger, if he could, in that room in which 
 Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, searched the New Testa- 
 ment together? 
 
 The Tower has an attraction for us akin to that of the 
 house in which we were born, the school in which we were 
 trained. Go where we may, that grim old edifice on the 
 Pool goes with us ; a part of all we know, and of all we 
 are. Put seas between us and the Thames, this Tower 
 will cling to us like a thing of life. It colours Shakespeare's 
 page. It casts a momentary gloom over Bacon's story. 
 Many of our books were written in its vaults ; the Duke of 
 Orleans' " Poesies," Raleigh's " Historic of the World," 
 Eliot's " Monarchy of Man," and Penn's " No Cross, No 
 Crown." 
 
 Even as to the length of days, the Tower has no rival 
 among palaces and prisons; its origin, like that of the Iliad, 
 that of the Sphinx, that of the Newton Stone, being lost in 
 the nebulous ages, long before our definite history took 
 shape. Old writers date it from the days of Caesar j a 
 legend taken up by Shakespeare and the poets, in favour of 
 which the name of Caesar's Tower remains in popular use 
 to this very day. A Roman wall can even yet be traced 
 near some parts of the ditch. The Tower is mentioned in 
 the Saxon Chronicle, in a way not incompatible with the
 
 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 13 
 
 fact of a Saxon stronghold having stood upon this spot. 
 The buildings as we have them now in block and plan 
 were commenced by William the Conqueror; and the 
 series of apartments in Caesar's tower, hall, gallery, 
 council-chamber, chapel, were built in the early Nor- 
 man reigns, and used as a royal residence by all our Nor- 
 man kings. What can Europe show to compare against 
 such a tale ? 
 
 Set against the Tower of London with its eight hun- 
 dred years of historic life, its nineteen hundred years of 
 traditional fame all other palaces and prisons appear like 
 things of an hour. The oldest bit of palace in Europe, 
 that of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of the time 
 of Henry the Third. The Kremlin in Moscow, the 
 Doge's Palazzo in Venice, are of the Fourteenth Century. 
 The Seraglio in Stamboul was built by Mohammed the 
 Second. The oldest part of the Vatican was commenced 
 by Borgia, whose name it bears. The old Louvre was 
 commenced in the reign of Henry the Eighth ; the Tuileries 
 in that of Elizabeth. In the time of our Civil War Ver- 
 sailles was yet a swamp. Sans Souci and the Escurial 
 belong to the Eighteenth Century. The Serail of Jeru- 
 salem is a Turkish edifice. The palaces of Athens, of 
 Cairo, or Tehran, are all of modern date. 
 
 Neither can the prisons which remain in fact as well as 
 in history and drama with the one exception of St. 
 Angelo in Rome compare against the Tower. The 
 Bastile is gone ; the Bargello has become a museum ; the 
 Piombi are removed from the Doge's roof. Vincennes, 
 Spandau, Spilberg, Magdeburg, are all modern in compari-
 
 14 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 
 
 son with a jail from which Ralph Flambard escaped so 
 long ago as the year noo, the date of the First Crusade. 
 
 Standing on Tower Hill, looking down on the dark lines 
 of wall picking out keep and turret, bastion and ballium, 
 chapel and belfry the jewel-house, the armoury, the 
 mounts, the casemates, the open leads the Bye- ward 
 gate, the Belfry, the Bloody tower the whole edifice 
 seems alive with story ; the story of a nation's highest 
 splendour, its deepest misery, and its darkest shame. The 
 soil beneath your feet is richer in blood than many a great 
 battlefield ; for out upon this sod has been poured, from 
 generation to generation, a stream of the noblest life in our 
 land. Should you have come to this spot alone, in the 
 early day, when the Tower is noisy with martial doings, 
 you may haply catch, in the hum which rises from the ditch 
 and issues from the wall below you broken by roll of 
 drum, by blast of bugle, by tramp of soldiers some 
 echoes, as it were, of a far-off time ; some hints of a May- 
 day revel ; of a state execution ; of a royal entry. You 
 may catch some sound which recalls the thrum of a queen's 
 virginal, the cry of a victim on the rack, the laughter of a 
 bridal feast. For all these sights and sounds the dance 
 of love and the dance of death are part of that gay and 
 tragic memory which clings around the Tower. 
 
 From the reign of Stephen down to that of Henry of 
 Richmond, Caesar's tower (the great Norman keep, now 
 called the White tower) was a main part of the royal 
 palace ; and for that large interval of time, the story of the 
 White tower is in some sort that of our English society as 
 well as of our English kings. Here were kept the royal
 
 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 15 
 
 wardrobe and the royal jewels ; and hither came with their 
 goodly wares, the tiremen, the goldsmiths, the chasers and 
 embroiderers, from Flanders, Italy, and Almaigne. Close 
 by were the Mint, the lions' dens, the old archery-grounds, 
 the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, 
 the Queen's gardens, the royal banqueting-hall ; so that art 
 and trade > science and manners, literature and law, sport 
 and politics, find themselves equally at home. 
 
 Two great architects designed the main parts of the 
 Tower ; Gundul the Weeper and Henry the Builder ; one 
 a poor Norman monk, the other a great English king. . . . 
 
 Henry the Third, a prince of epical fancies, as Corffe, 
 Conway, Beaumaris, and many other fine, poems in stone 
 attest, not only spent much of his time in the Tower, but 
 much of his money in adding to its beauty and strength. 
 Adam de Lamburn was his master ir.ason ; but Henry was 
 his own chief clerk of the works. The Water gate, the 
 embanked wharf, the Cradle tower, the Lantern, which he 
 made his bedroom and private closet, the Galleyman tower, 
 and the first wall, appear to have been his gifts. But the 
 prince who did so much for Westminster Abbey, not con- 
 tent with giving stone and piles to the home in which he 
 dwelt, enriched the chambers with frescoes and sculpture, 
 the chapels with carving and glass ; making St. John's 
 chapel in the White tower splendid with saints, St. Peter's 
 church on the Tower Green musical with bells. In the 
 Hall tower, from which a passage led through the Great 
 hall into the King's bedroom in the Lantern, he built a tiny 
 chapel for his private use - a chapel which served for the 
 devotion of his successors until Henry the Sixth was stabbed
 
 X 6 THE TOWER OF LONDON. 
 
 to death before the cross. Sparing neither skill nor gold to 
 make the great fortress worthy of his art, he sent to Pur- 
 beck for marble, and to Caen for stone. The dabs of lime, 
 the spawls of flint, the layers of brick, which deface the 
 walls and towers in too many places, are of either earlier or 
 later times. The marble shafts, the noble groins, the deli- 
 cate traceries, are Henry's work. Traitor's gate, one of 
 the noblest arches in the world, was built by him ; in short, 
 nearly all that is purest in art is traceable to his reign. . . . 
 
 The most eminent and interesting prisoner ever lodged 
 in the Tower is Raleigh ; eminent by his personal genius, 
 interesting from his political fortune. Raleigh has in 
 higher degree than any other captive who fills the Tower 
 with story, the distinction that he was not the prisoner of 
 his country, but the prisoner of Spain. 
 
 Many years ago I noted in the State Papers evidence, 
 then unknown, that a very great part of the second and 
 long imprisonment of the founder of Virginia was spent 
 in the Bloody tower and the adjoining Garden house ; 
 writing at this grated window ; working in the little garden 
 on which it opened ; pacing the terrace on this wall, which 
 was afterwards famous as Raleigh's Walk. Hither came 
 to him the wits and poets, the scholars and inventors of 
 his time; Johnson and Burrell, Hariot and Pett; to crack 
 light jokes ; to discuss rabbinical lore ; to sound the depths 
 of philosophy; to map out Virginia; to study the ship- 
 builder's art. In the Garden house he distilled essences 
 and spirits ; compounded his great cordial ; discovered a 
 method (afterwards lost) of turning salt water into sweet ; 
 received the visits of Prince Henry ; wrote his political
 
 THE TOWER OF LONDON. I/ 
 
 tracts ; invented the modern warship ; wrote his History of 
 the World. . . . 
 
 The day of Raleigh's death was the day of a new Eng- 
 lish birth. Eliot was not the only youth of ardent soul 
 who stood by the scaffold in Palace Yard, to note the 
 matchless spirit in which the martyr met his fate, and 
 walked away from that solemnity a new man. Thou- 
 sands of men in every part of England who had led a care- 
 less life became from that very hour the sleepless enemies 
 of Spain. The purposes of Raleigh were accomplished, 
 in the very way which his genius had contrived. Spain 
 held the dominion of the sea, and England took it from 
 her. Spain excluded England from the New World, and 
 the genius of that New World is English. 
 
 The large contest in the new political system of the 
 world, then young, but clearly enough defined, had come 
 to turn upon this question Shall America be mainly 
 Spanish and theocratic, or English and free ? Raleigh 
 said it should be English and free. He gave his blood, 
 his fortune, and his genius, to the great thought in his 
 heart ; and, in spite of that scene in Palace Yard, which 
 struck men as the victory of Spain, America is at this 
 moment English and free. 
 
 Her Majesty's Tower (London, 1869).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP. 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 I WAS awakened this morning with the chime which 
 the Antwerp Cathedral clock plays at half hours. 
 The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will. 
 You dress, eat, drink, walk, and talk to yourself to their 
 tune; their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day; you 
 read the sentences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried 
 uncouthly to imitate the tune to the ladies of the family 
 at breakfast, and they say it is " the shadow dance of 
 Dinorah" It may be so. I dimly remember that my body 
 was once present during the performance of that opera, 
 while my eyes were closed, ^nd my intellectual faculties 
 dormant at the back of the box ; howbeit, I have learned 
 that shadow dance from hearing it pealing up ever so high 
 in the air at night, morn, noon. 
 
 How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery peal, 
 while the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy 
 at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the scudding 
 rain which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the 
 great shining river; or sparkling in snow, which dresses 
 up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, and towers ; or 
 wrapped round with thunder cloud canopies, before which 
 the white gables shine whiter; day and night the kind
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP. 19 
 
 little carillon plays its fantastic melodies overhead. The 
 bells go on ringing. )uot vivos vacant , mortuos plangunt^ 
 fulgura frangunt ; so on to the past and future tenses, and 
 for how many nights, days, and years ! While the French 
 were pitching their fulgura into Chasse's citadel, the bells 
 went on ringing quite cheerfully. While the scaffolds 
 were up and guarded by Alva's soldiery, and regiments of 
 penitents, blue, black, and grey, poured out of churches 
 and convents, droning their dirges, and marching to the 
 place of the Hotel de Ville, where heretics and rebels were 
 to meet their doom, the bells up yonder were chanting at 
 their appointed half hours and quarters, and rang the mdu- 
 vais quart <?keure for many a poor soul. This bell can 
 see as far away as the towers and dikes of Rotterdam. 
 That one can call a greeting to St. Ursula's at Brussels, 
 aid toss a recognition to that one at the town hall of 
 Oudenarde, and remember how, after a great struggle 
 there a hundred and fifty years ago, the whole plain was 
 covered with flying French chivalry Burgundy, and 
 Berri, and the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. 
 11 What is your clamour about Oudenarde ? " says another 
 bell (Bob Major this one must be). " Be still thou queru- 
 lous old clapper ! / can see over to Hougoumont and 
 St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all 
 through one Sunday in June, when there was such a 
 battle going on in the cornfields there as none of you 
 others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service 
 until after vespers, the French and English were all at 
 it, ding-dong ! " And then calls of business intervening, 
 the bells have to give up their private jangle, resume their
 
 20 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP. 
 
 professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus out of 
 Dinar ah. 
 
 What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard ! 
 I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have 
 been hearing it constantly ever since. And this house 
 whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and ten 
 miles from Antwerp. And it is a week off; and there is 
 the bell still jangling its shadow dance out of Dinorah. 
 An audible shadow, you understand, and an invisible sound, 
 but quite distinct ; and a plague take the tune ! 
 
 Who has not seen the church under the bell ? Those 
 lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that cumbersome pulpit 
 with its huge carvings, that wide grey pavement flecked 
 with various light from the jewelled windows, those famous 
 pictures between the voluminous columns over the altars 
 which twinkle with their ornaments, their votive little silver 
 hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of 
 sham roses, and what not ? I saw two regiments of little 
 scholars creeping in and forming square, each in its ap- 
 pointed place, under the vast roof, and teachers presently 
 coming to them. A stream of light from the jewelled 
 windows beams slanting down upon each little squad of 
 children, and the tall background of the church retires 
 into a greyer gloom. Pattering little feet of laggards 
 arriving echo through the great nave. They trot in and 
 join their regiments, gathered under the slanting sun- 
 beams. What are they learning ? Is it truth ? Those 
 two grey ladies with their books in their hands in the 
 midst of these little people have no doubt of the truth of 
 every word they have printed under their eyes. Look,
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP. 21 
 
 through the windows jewelled all over with saints, the 
 light comes streaming down from the sky, and heaven's 
 own illuminations paint the book ! A sweet, touching 
 picture indeed it is, that of the little children assembled in 
 this immense temple, which has endured for ages, and 
 grave teachers bending over them. Yes, the picture is 
 very pretty of the children and their teachers, and their 
 book but the text ? Is it the truth, the only truth, 
 nothing but the truth ? If I thought so, I would go and 
 sit down on the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious 
 lesson with all my heart. 
 
 But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is the intrusion 
 and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric 
 the officer who answers to the beadle of the British islands 
 and is pacing about the church with an eye on the 
 congregation. Now the boast of Catholics is that their 
 churches are open to all; but in certain places and 
 churches there are exceptions. At Rome I have been 
 into St. Peter's at all hours : the doors are always open, 
 the lamps are always burning, the faithful are forever 
 kneeling at one shrine or the other. But at Antwerp it 
 is not so. In the afternoon you can go to the church and 
 be civilly treated, but you must pay a franc at the side 
 gate. In the forenoon the doors are open, to be sure, 
 and there is no one to levy an entrance fee. I was stand- 
 ing ever so still, looking through the great gates of the 
 choir at the twinkling lights, and listening to the distant 
 chants of the priests performing the service, when a sweet 
 chorus from the organ-loft broke out behind me overhead, 
 and I turned round. My friend the drum-major ecclesi-
 
 22 THE CATHEDRAL OF ANTWERP. 
 
 astic was down upon me in a moment. " Do not turn 
 your back to the altar during divine service," says he, in 
 very intelligible English. I take the rebuke, and turn a 
 soft right-about face, and listen a while as the service con- 
 tinues. See it I cannot, nor the altar and its ministrants. 
 We are separated from these by a great screen and closed 
 gates of iron, through which the lamps glitter and the 
 chant comes by gusts only. Seeing a score of children 
 trotting down a side aisle, I think I may follow them. I 
 am tired of looking at that hideous old pulpit, with its 
 grotesque monsters and decorations. I slip off to the side 
 aisle ; but my friend the drum-major is instantly after me 
 almost I thought he was going to lay hands on me. 
 " You must n't go there," says he ; " you must n't dis- 
 turb the service." I was moving as quietly as might be, 
 and ten paces off there were twenty children kicking and 
 chattering at their ease. I point them out to the Swiss. 
 "They come to pray," says he. " You don't come to 
 pray; you " "When I come to pay," says I, " I am 
 welcome," and with this withering sarcasm I walk out of 
 church in a huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle 
 after receiving point blank such a stroke of wit. 
 
 Roundabout Papers (London, 1863).
 
 THE TAJ MAHAL. 
 
 ANDRE CHEVRILLON. 
 
 IT is well known that the Taj is a mausoleum built by 
 the Mogul Shah-Jehan to the Begum Mumtaz-i- 
 Mahal. It is a regular octagon surmounted by a Persian 
 dome, which is surrounded by four minarets. The build- 
 ing, erected upon a terrace which dominates the enclosing 
 gardens, is constructed of blocks of the purest whit? 
 marble, and rises to a height of two hundred and forty- 
 three feet. We step from the carriage before a noble 
 portico of red sandstone, pierced by a bold arch and 
 covered with white arabesques. After passing through 
 this arch, we see the Taj looming up before us eight 
 hundred metres distant. Probably no masterpiece of archi- 
 tecture calls forth a similar emotion. 
 
 At the back of a marvellous garden and with all of its 
 whiteness reflected in a canal of dark water, sleeping inertly 
 among thick masses of black cypress and great clumps of 
 red flowers, this perfect tomb rises like a calm apparition. 
 It is a floating dream, an aerial form without weight, so 
 perfect is the balance of the lines, and so pale, so delicate 
 the shadows that float across the virginal and translucent 
 stone. These black cypresses which frame it, this verdure 
 through the openings of which peeps the blue sky, and
 
 24 THE TAJ MAHAL. 
 
 this sward bathed in brilliant sunlight and on which the 
 sharply-cut silhouettes of the trees are lying, all these 
 real objects render more unreal the delicate vision, which 
 seems to melt away into the light of the sky. I walk 
 towards it along the marble bank of the dark canal, and 
 the mausoleum assumes sharper form. On approaching 
 you take more delight in the surface of the octagonal 
 edifice. This consists of rectangular expanses of polished 
 marble where the light rests with a soft, milky splendour. 
 One would never imagine that so simple a thing as surface 
 could be so beautiful when it is large and pure. The eye 
 follows the ingenious and graceful scrolls of great flowers, 
 flowers of onyx and turquoise, incrusted with perfect 
 smoothness, the harmony of the delicate carving, the 
 marble lace-work, the balustrades of a thousand perfora- 
 tions, the infinite display of simplicity and decoration. 
 
 The garden completes the monument, and both unite 
 to form this masterpiece of art. The avenues leading to 
 the Taj are bordered with funereal yews and cypresses, 
 which make the whiteness of the far-away marble appear 
 even whiter. Behind their slender cones thick and massive 
 bushes add richness and depth to this solemn vegetation. 
 The stiff" and sombre trees, standing out in relief from this 
 waving foliage, rise up solemnly with their trunks half- 
 buried in masses of roses, or are surrounded by clusters 
 of a thousand unknown and sweet-scented flowers which 
 are blossoming in great masses in this solitary garden. He 
 must have been an extraordinary artist who conceived this 
 place. Sweeps of lawn, purple-chaliced flowers, golden 
 petals, swarms of humming bees, and diapered butterflies
 
 THE TAJ MAHAL. 2$ 
 
 give light and joy to the gloom of the burial-ground. This 
 place is both luminous and solemn ; it contains the 
 amorous and religious delights of the Mussulman paradise, 
 and the poem in trees and flowers unites with the poem 
 in marble to sing of splendour and peace. 
 
 The interior of the mausoleum is at first as dark as 
 night, but through this darkness a grille of antique marble 
 is faintly gleaming, a mysterious marble-lace, which drapes 
 the tombs, and which seems to wind and unwind forever, 
 shedding on the splendour of the vault a yellow light, 
 which seems to be ancient, and to have rested there for 
 ages. And the pale web of marble wreathes and wreathes 
 until it loses itself in the darkness. 
 
 In the centre are the tombs of the lovers ; two small 
 sarcophagi upon which a mysterious light falls, but whence 
 it comes no one knows. There is nothing more. They 
 sleep here in the silence, surrounded by perfect beauty 
 which celebrates their love that has lasted even through 
 death, and which is still isolated from everything by the 
 mysterious marble-lace which enfolds them and which 
 floats above them like a dream. 
 
 Very high overhead, as if through a thick vapour, we 
 see the dome loom through the shadows, although its entire 
 outlines are not perceptible ; its walls seem made of mist, 
 and its marble blocks appear to have no solidity. Every- 
 thing is aerial here, nothing is substantial or real : this is 
 a world of shadowy visions. Even sounds are unearthly. 
 A note sung under this vault is echoed above our heads in an 
 invisible region. First, it is as clear as the voice of Ariel, 
 then it grows fainter and fainter until it dies away and then
 
 26 THE TAJ MAHAL. 
 
 is re-echoed very far above, but glorified, spiritualized, and 
 multiplied indefinitely as if repeated by a distant company, 
 a choir of unseen angels who soar with it aloft until all is 
 lost save a faint murmur which never ceases to vibrate 
 over the tomb of the beloved, as if it were the very soul 
 of a musician. 
 
 I have seen the Taj again ; this time at noon. Under 
 the vertical sun the melancholy phantom has vanished, the 
 sweet sadness of the mausoleum has gone. The great 
 marble table on which it stands is blinding. The light, 
 reflected back and forth from the immense surfaces of 
 white marble, is increased a hundred-fold in intensity, and 
 some of the sides are like burning plaques. The incrusta- 
 tions seem to be sparks of magic fire ; their hundreds of 
 red flowers gleam like burning coals. The religious texts 
 and the hieroglyphs, inlaid with black marble, stand out as 
 if traced by the lightning-finger of a savage god. All the 
 mystical rows of lotus and lilies unfolding in relief, which 
 just now had the softness of yellowed ivory, spring forth 
 like flames. I retrace my steps, passing out of the entrance, 
 and for an instant I have a dazzling view of the lines and 
 incandescent surfaces of the building with its unchanging 
 virgin whiteness. Indeed, this severe simplicity and in- 
 tensity of light give it something of a Semitic character : 
 we think of the flaming and chastening sword of the 
 Bible. The minarets lift themselves into the blue like 
 pillars of fire. 
 
 I wander outside in the fresh air under the shadows of 
 the leafy arches until twilight. This garden is the con- 
 ception of one of the faithful who wished to glorify Allah.
 
 THE TAJ MAHAL. 27 
 
 It is the home of religious delight : " No one shall enter 
 the garden of God unless he is pure of heart," is the 
 Arabian text graven over the entrance-gate. Here are 
 flower-beds, which are masses of velvet, unknown 
 blooms resembling heaps of purple moss. The trunks of 
 the trees are entwined with blue convolvulus, and flowers 
 like great red stars gleam through the dark foliage. Over 
 these flowers a hundred thousand delicate butterflies hover 
 in a perpetual cloud. Many pretty creatures, little striped 
 squirrels and numerous birds, green parrots and parrots of 
 more brilliant plumage, disport themselves here, making a 
 little world, happy and secure, for guards, dressed in white 
 muslin, menace with long pea-shooters the crows and 
 vultures and protect them from everything that would bring 
 mischief or cruelty into this peaceful place. 
 
 On the surface of the still waters lilies and lotus are 
 sleeping, their stiff leaves pinked out and resting heavily 
 upon the dark mirror. 
 
 Through the blackness of the boughs English meadows 
 are revealed, bathed in brilliant sunlight, and spaces of 
 blue sky, across which a triangle of white storks is some- 
 times seen flying, and, at certain moments, the far-away 
 vision of the phantom tomb seems like the melancholy 
 spectre of a virgin. How calm, how superb this solitude, 
 charged with voluptuousness at once solemn and enervating ! 
 Here dwell the beauty, the tenderness, and the light of 
 Asia, dreamed of by Shelley. 
 
 Dans VInde (Paris, 1891).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 MOST certainly, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is 
 still a sublime and majestic edifice. But, despite 
 the beauty which it preserves in its old age, it would be 
 impossible not to be indignant at the injuries and mutila- 
 tions which Time and man have jointly inflicted upon the 
 venerable structure without respect for Charlemagne, who 
 laid its first stone, and Philip Augustus, who laid its last. 
 
 There is always a scar beside a wrinkle on the face of 
 this aged queen of our cathedrals. Tempus edax homo 
 edac'wr, which I should translate thus : Time is blind, man 
 is stupid. 
 
 If we had leisure to examine one by one, with the 
 reader, the various traces of destruction imprinted on the 
 old church, Time's work would prove to be less destructive 
 than men's, especially des hommes de Fart, because there 
 have been some individuals in the last two centuries who 
 considered themselves architects. 
 
 P'irst, to cite several striking examples, assuredly there 
 are few more beautiful pages in architecture than that 
 facade, exhibiting the three deeply-dug porches with their 
 pointed arches ; the plinth, embroidered and indented with 
 twenty-eight royal niches; the immense central rose-
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF. NOTRE-DAME. 29 
 
 window, flanked by its two lateral windows, like the priest 
 by his deacon and sub-deacon ; the high and frail gallery 
 of open-worked arches, supporting on its delicate columns 
 a heavy platform ; and, lastly, the two dark and massive 
 towers, with their slated pent-houses. These harmonious 
 parts of a magnificent whole, superimposed in five gigantic 
 stages, and presenting, with their innumerable details of 
 statuary, sculpture, and carving, an overwhelming yet 
 not perplexing mass, combine in producing a calm 
 grandeur. It is a vast symphony in stone, so to speak ; 
 the colossal work of man and of a nation, as united and as 
 complex as the Iliad and the romanceros of which it is the 
 sister; a prodigious production to which all the forces of 
 an epoch contributed, and from every stone of which springs 
 forth in a hundred ways the workman's fancy directed by 
 the artist's genius ; in one word, a kind of human creation, 
 as strong and fecund as the divine creation from which it 
 seems to have stolen the two-fold character: variety and 
 eternity. 
 
 And what I say here of the facade, must be said of the 
 entire Cathedral ; and what I say of the Cathedral of Paris, 
 must be said of all the Mediaeval Christian churches. 
 Everything in this art, which proceeds from itself, is so 
 logical and well-proportioned that to measure the toe of 
 the foot is to measure the giant. 
 
 Let us return to the facade of Notre-Dame, as it exists 
 to-day when we go reverently to admire the solemn and 
 mighty Cathedral, which, according to the old chroniclers, 
 was terrifying : qucz mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus. 
 
 That facade now lacks three important things : first, the
 
 30 THE CATHEDR/L OF NOTRE-DAME. 
 
 flight of eleven steps, which raised it above the level of the 
 ground ; then, the lower row of statues which occupied 
 the niches of the three porches ; and the upper row * of the 
 twenty-eight ancient kings of France which ornamented 
 the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert and 
 ending with Philip Augustus, holding in his hand " la pomme 
 itrip/riale." 
 
 Time in its slow and unchecked progress, raising the 
 level of the city's soil, buried the steps ; but whilst the 
 pavement of Paris like a rising tide has engulfed one by 
 one the eleven steps which formerly added to the majestic 
 height of the edifice, Time has given to the church more, 
 perhaps, than it has stolen, for it is Time that has spread 
 that sombre hue of centuries on the facade which makes 
 the old age of buildings their period of beauty. 
 
 But who has thrown down those two rows of statues ? 
 Who has left the niches empty ? Who has cut that new 
 and bastard arch in the beautiful middle of the central 
 porch ? Who has dared to frame that tasteless and heavy 
 wooden door carved a la Louis XV. near Biscornette's 
 arabesques ? The men, the architects, the artists of our 
 day. 
 
 And when we enter the edifice, who has overthrown 
 that colossal Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues 
 as the grand? salle du Palais among halls, or the fleche of 
 Strasburg among steeples ? And those myriads of statues 
 that peopled all the spaces between the columns of the 
 nave and choir, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, 
 
 1 The outside of Notre-Dame has been restored since Victor Hugo 
 wrote his famous romance. E. S.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF XOTKE-DAME.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 31 
 
 women, children, kings, bishops, warriors, in stone, wood, 
 marble, gold, silver, copper, and even wax, who has 
 brutally swept them away ? It was not Time ! 
 
 And who has substituted for the old Gothic altar, splen- 
 didly overladen with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy 
 marble sarcophagus with its angels' heads and clouds, 
 which seems to be a sample from the Val-de-Grace or the 
 Invalides ? Who has so stupidly imbedded that heavy 
 stone anachronism in Hercanduc's Carlovingian pavement ? 
 Is it not Louis XIV. fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII. ? 
 
 And who has put cold white glass in the place of those 
 richly-coloured panes, which made the astonished gaze of 
 our ancestors pause between the rose of the great porch 
 and the pointed arches of the apsis ? What would an 
 under-chorister of the Sixteenth Century say if he could 
 see the beautiful yellow plaster with which our vandal 
 archbishops have daubed their Cathedral ? He would 
 remember that this was the colour with which the execu- 
 tioner brushed the houses of traitors ; he would remember 
 the Hotel du Petit-Bourbon, all besmeared thus with 
 yellow, on account of the treason of the Constable, 
 " yellow of such good quality," says Sauval, " and so well 
 laid on that more than a century has scarcely caused its 
 colour to fade;" and, imagining that the holy place had 
 become infamous, he would flee from it. 
 
 And if we ascend the Cathedral without stopping to 
 notice the thousand barbarities of all kinds, what has been 
 done with that charming little bell-tower, which stood 
 over the point of intersection of the transept, and which, 
 neither less frail nor less bold than its neighbour, the
 
 32 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 
 
 steeple of the Sainte-Chapelle (also destroyed), shot up 
 into the sky, sharp, harmonious, and open-worked, higher 
 than the other towers ? It was amputated by an architect 
 of good taste (1787), who thought it sufficient to cover the 
 wound with that large plaster of lead, which looks like 
 the lid of a pot. 
 
 This is the way the wonderful art of the Middle Ages 
 has been treated in all countries, particularly in France. 
 In this ruin we may distinguish three separate agencies, 
 which have affected it in different degrees ; first, Time 
 which has insensibly chipped it, here and there, and dis- 
 coloured its entire surface; next, revolutions, both politi- 
 cal and religious, which, being blind and furious by nature, 
 rushed wildly upon it, stripped it of its rich garb of sculp- 
 tures and carvings, shattered its tracery, broke its garlands 
 of arabesques and its figurines, and threw down its statues, 
 sometimes on account of their mitres, sometimes on ac- 
 count of their crowns ; and, finally, the fashions, which, 
 ever since the anarchistic and splendid innovations of the 
 Renaissance, have been constantly growing more grotesque 
 and foolish, and have succeeded in bringing about the 
 decadence of architecture. The fashions have indeed 
 done more harm than the revolutions. They have cut it 
 to the quick ; they have attacked the framework of art ; 
 they have cut, hacked, and mutilated the form of the build- 
 ing as well as its symbol ; its logic as well as its beauty. 
 And then they have restored, a presumption of which time 
 and revolutions were, at least, guiltless. In the name of 
 good taste they have insolently covered the wounds of 
 Gothic architecture with their paltry gew-gaws of a day,
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 33 
 
 their marble ribbons, their metal pompons, a veritable 
 leprosy of oval ornaments, volutes, spirals, draperies, gar- 
 lands, fringes, flames of stone, clouds of bronze, over-fat 
 Cupids, and bloated cherubim, which begin to eat into the 
 face of art in Catherine de' Medici's oratory, and kill it, 
 writhing and grinning in the boudoir of the Dubarry, two 
 centuries later. 
 
 Therefore, in summing up the points to which I have 
 called attention, three kinds of ravages disfigure Gothic 
 architecture to-day : wrinkles and warts on the epidermis, 
 these are the work of Time ; wounds, bruises and 
 fractures, these are the work of revolutions from Luther 
 to JVlirabeau ; mutilations, amputations, dislocations of 
 members, restorations, these are the Greek and Roman 
 work of professors, according to Vitruvius and Vignole. 
 That magnificent art which the Vandals produced, acad- 
 emies have murdered. To the ravages of centuries and 
 revolutions, which devastated at least with impartiality 
 and grandeur, were added those of a host of school archi- 
 tects, patented and sworn, who debased everything with 
 the choice and discernment of bad taste ; and who sub- 
 stituted the cbicorees of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace- 
 work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. It is the 
 ass's kick to the dying lion. It is the old oak crown- 
 ing itself with leaves for the reward of being bitten, 
 gnawed, and devoured by caterpillars. 
 
 How far this is from the period when Robert Cenalis, 
 comparing Notre-Dame de Paris with the famous Temple 
 of Diana at Ephesus, so highly extolled by the ancient 
 heathen, which has immortalized Erostratus, found the 
 
 3
 
 34 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 
 
 Gaulois cathedral "plus excellente en longueur, largeur, 
 hauteur, et structure" 
 
 Notre-Dame de Paris is not, however, what may be 
 called a finished, defined, classified monument. It is not 
 a Roman church, neither is it a Gothic church. This 
 edifice is not a type. Notre-Dame has not, like the Abbey 
 of Tournus, the solemn and massive squareness, the round 
 and large vault, the glacial nudity, and the majestic sim- 
 plicity of those buildings which have the circular arch for 
 their generative principle. It is not, like the Cathedral of 
 Bourges, the magnificent product of light, multiform, tufted, 
 bristling, efflorescent Gothic. It is out of the question to 
 class it in that ancient family of gloomy, mysterious, low 
 churches, which seem crushed by the circular arch ; almost 
 Egyptian in their ceiling ; quite hieroglyphic, sacerdotal, 
 and symbolic, charged in their ornaments with more 
 lozenges and zigzags than flowers, more flowers than 
 animals, more animals than human figures ; the work of 
 the bishop more than the architect, the first transformation 
 of the art, fully impressed with theocratic and military 
 discipline, which takes its root in the Bas-Empire, and 
 ends with William the Conqueror. It is also out of the 
 question to place our Cathedral in that other family of 
 churches, tall, aerial, rich in windows and sculpture, sharp 
 in form, bold of mien ; communales and bourgeois, like politi- 
 cal symbols ; free, capricious, unbridled, like works of art ; 
 the second transformation of architecture, no longer hiero- 
 glyphic, immutable, and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, 
 and popular, which begins with the return from the Cru- 
 sades and ends with Louis XI. Notre-Dame de Paris is
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 35 
 
 not pure Roman, like the former, nor is it pure Arabian, 
 like the latter. 
 
 It is an edifice of the transition. The Saxon architect 
 had set up the first pillars of the nave when the Crusaders 
 introduced the pointed arch, which enthroned itself like a 
 conqueror upon those broad Roman capitals designed to 
 support circular arches. On the pointed arch, thenceforth 
 mistress of all styles, the rest of the church was built. 
 Inexperienced and timid at the beginning, it soon broadens 
 and expands, but does not yet dare to shoot up into steeples 
 and pinnacles, as it has since done in so many marvellous 
 cathedrals. You might say that it feels the influence of its 
 neighbours, the heavy Roman pillars. 
 
 Moreover, these edifices of the transition from the 
 Roman to the Gothic are not less valuable for study than 
 pure types. They express a nuance of the art which would 
 be lost but for them. This is the engrafting of the pointed 
 upon the circular arch. 
 
 Notre-Dame de Paris is a particularly curious specimen 
 of this variety. Every face and every stone of the vener- 
 able structure is a page not only of the history of the coun- 
 try, but also of art and science. Therefore to glance here 
 only at the principal details, while the little Porte Rouge 
 attains almost to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the 
 Fifteenth Century, the pillars of the nave, on account of 
 their bulk and heaviness, carry you back to the date of the 
 Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres, you would 
 believe that there were six centuries between that doorway 
 and those pillars. It is not only the hermetics who find in 
 the symbols of the large porch a satisfactory compendium
 
 36 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 
 
 of their science, of which the church of Saint-Jacques de la 
 Boucherie was so complete an hieroglyphic. Thus the 
 Roman Abbey, the philosophical church, the Gothic art, 
 the Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which reminds 
 you of Gregory VII., the hermetic symbols by which 
 Nicholas Flamel heralded Luther, papal unity and schism, 
 1 Saint-Germain des Pres and Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie ; 
 all are melted, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. 
 This central and generatrix church is a sort of chimaera 
 among the old churches of Paris ; it has the head of one, 
 the limbs of another, the body of another, something 
 from each of them. 
 
 I repeat, these hybrid structures are not the least interest- 
 ing ones to the artist, the antiquary, and the historian. They 
 show how far architecture is a primitive art, inasmuch as 
 they demonstrate (what is also demonstrated by the Cyclo- 
 pean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, and the gigantic 
 Hindu pagodas), that the grandest productions of architec- 
 ture are social more than individual works ; the offspring, 
 rather, of nations in travail than the inspiration of men of 
 genius; the deposit left by a people; the accumulation of 
 ages ; the residuum of the successive evaporations of human 
 society ; in short, a species of formation. Every wave of 
 time superimposes its alluvion, every generation deposits 
 its stratum upon the building, every individual lays his 
 stone. Thus build the beavers ; thus, the bees ; and thus, 
 men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a bee- 
 hive. 
 
 Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of 
 centuries. Often the fashions in art change while they are
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME. 37 
 
 being constructed, pendent opera interrupta ; they are con- 
 tinued quietly according to the new art. This new art 
 takes the edifice where it finds it, assimilates with it, 
 develops it according to its own fancy, and completes it, if 
 it is possible. The result is accomplished without disturb* 
 ance, without effort, without reaction, following a natural 
 and quiet law. It is a graft which occurs unexpectedly, 
 a sap which circulates, a vegetation which returns. 
 Certes, there is material for very large books and often a 
 universal history of mankind, in those successive solder- 
 ings of various styles at various heights upon the structure. 
 The man, the artist, and the individual efface themselves in 
 these vast anonymous masses ; human intelligence is con- 
 centrated and summed up in them. Time is the architect ; 
 the nation is the mason. 
 
 Notre Dame de Paris (Paris, 1831).
 
 THE KREMLIN. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 THE Kremlin, always regarded as the Acropolis, the 
 Holy Place, the Palladium, and the very heart of 
 Russia, was formerly surrounded by a palisade of strong 
 oaken stakes similar to the defence which the Athenian 
 citadel had at the time of the first invasion of the Persians. 
 Dmitri-Donskoi substituted for this palisade crenellated 
 walls, which, having become old and dilapidated, were 
 rebuilt by Ivan III. Ivan's wall remains to-day, but in 
 many places there are restorations and repairs. Thick 
 layers of plaster endeavour to hide the scars of time and 
 the black traces of the great fire of 1812 which was only 
 able to lick this wall with its tongues of flame. The 
 Kremlin somewhat resembles the Alhambra. Like the 
 Moorish fortress, it stands on the top of a hill which it 
 encloses with its wall flanked by towers : it contains royal 
 dwellings, churches, and squares, and among the ancient 
 buildings a modern Palace whose intrusion we regret as 
 we do the Palace of Charles V. amid the delicate Sara- 
 cenic architecture which it seems to crush with its weight. 
 The tower of Ivan Veliki is not without resemblance to 
 the tower of the Vela ; and from the Kremlin, as from the
 
 THE KREMLIN. 39 
 
 Alhambra, a beautiful view is to be enjoyed, a panorama of 
 enchantment which the fascinated eye will ever retain. 
 
 It is strange that when seen from a distance the Kremlin 
 is perhaps even more Oriental than the Alhambra itself 
 whose massive reddish towers give no hint of the splendour 
 within. Above the sloping and crenellated walls of the 
 Kremlin and among the towers with their ornamented roofs, 
 myriads of cupolas and globular bell-towers gleaming with 
 metallic light seem to be rising and falling like bubbles of 
 glittering gold in the strong blaze of light. The white 
 wall seems to be a silver basket holding a bouquet of 
 golden flowers, and we fancy that we are gazing upon one 
 of those magical cities which the imagination of the Ara- 
 bian story-tellers alone can build an architectural crys- 
 tallization of the Thousand and One Nights! And when 
 Winter has sprinkled these strange dream-buildings with 
 its powdered diamonds, we fancy ourselves transported into 
 another planet, for nothing like this has ever met our gaze. 
 
 We entered the Kremlin by the Spasskoi Gate which 
 opens upon the Krasnaiia. No entrance could be more 
 romantic. It is cut through an enormous square tower, 
 placed before a kind of porch. The tower has three di- 
 minishing stories and is crowned with a spire resting upon 
 open arches. The double-headed eagle, holding the globe 
 in its claws, stands upon the sharp point of the spire, which, 
 like the story it surmounts, is octagonal, ribbed, and gilded. 
 Each face of the second story bears an enormous dial, so 
 that the hour may be seen from every point of the compass. 
 Add for effect some patches of snow laid on the jutting 
 masonry like bold dashes of pigment, and you will have a
 
 4O THE KREMLIN. 
 
 faint idea of the aspect presented by this queenly tower, as 
 it springs upward in three jets above the denticulated wall 
 which it breaks. . . . 
 
 Issuing from the gate, we find ourselves in the large 
 court of the Kremlin, in the midst of the most bewildering 
 conglomeration of palaces, churches, and monasteries of 
 which the imagination can dream. It conforms to no 
 known style of architecture. It is not Greek, it is not 
 Byzantine, it is not Gothic, it is not Saracen, it is not 
 Chinese : it is Russian ; it is Muscovite. Never did archi- 
 tecture more free, more original, more indifferent to rules, 
 in a word, more romantic, materialize with such fantastic 
 caprice. Sometimes it seems to resemble the freaks of 
 frostwork. However, its leading characteristics are the 
 cupolas and the golden-bulbed bell-towers, which seem to 
 follow no law and are conspicuous at the first glance. 
 
 Below the large square where the principal buildings of 
 the Kremlin are grouped and which forms the plateau of 
 the hill, a circular road winds about the irregularities of the 
 ground and is bordered by ramparts flanked with towers of 
 infinite variety : some are round, some square, some slender 
 as minarets, some massive as bastions, and some with 
 machicolated turrets, while others have retreating stories, 
 vaulted roofs, sharply-cut sides, open-worked galleries, tiny 
 cupolas, spires, scales, tracery, and all conceivable endings. 
 The battlements, cut deeply through the wall and notched 
 at the top like an arrow, are alternately plain and pierced 
 with little barbicans. We will ignore the strategic value 
 of this defence, but from a poetic standpoint it satisfies the 
 imagination and gives the idea of a formidable citadel.
 
 THE KREMLIN. 41 
 
 Between the rampart and the platform bordered by a 
 balustrade gardens extend, now powdered with snow, and a 
 picturesque little church lifts its globular bell-towers. Be- 
 yond, as far as the eye can reach, lies the immense and 
 wonderful panorama of Moscow to which the crest of the 
 saw-toothed wall forms an admirable foreground and 
 frame for the distant perspective which no art could 
 improve. . . . 
 
 The Kremlin contains within its walls many churches, 
 or cathedrals, as the Russians call them. Exactly like the 
 Acropolis, it gathers around it on its narrow plateau a large 
 number of temples. We will visit them one by one, but 
 we will first pause at the tower of Ivan Veliki, an enor- 
 mous octagon belfry with three retreating stories, upon the 
 last of which there rises from a zone of ornamentation a 
 round turret finished with a swelling dome, fire-gilt with 
 ducat-gold, and surmounted by a Greek cross resting upon 
 the conquered Crescent. Upon each side of each story 
 little arches are cut so that the brazen body of a bell may 
 be seen. 
 
 In this place there are thirty-three bells, among which is 
 said to be the famous alarm-bell of Novgorod, whose rever- 
 berations once called the people to the tumultuous delibera- 
 tions in the public square.- One of these bells weighs not less 
 than a hundred and ninety-three tons, and is such a mon- 
 ster of metal that beside it the great bell of Notre-Dame 
 of which Quasimodo was so proud, would be nothing more 
 than the tiny hand-bell used at Mass. . . . 
 
 Let us enter one of the most ancient and characteristic 
 cathedrals of the Kremlin, the first one built of stone, the
 
 42 THE KREMLIN. 
 
 Cathedral of the Assumption (Ouspenskosabor). It is not the 
 original edifice founded by Ivan Kalita. That crumbled 
 away after a century and a half of existence and was re- 
 built by Ivan III. Notwithstanding its Byzantine style 
 and archaic appearance, the present Cathedral dates only 
 from the Fifteenth Century. One is astonished to learn that 
 it is the work of Fioraventi, an architect of Bologna, whom 
 the Russians called Aristotle because of his astounding 
 knowledge. One would imagine it the work of some 
 Greek archite.ct from Constantinople whose head was filled 
 with memories of Santa Sofia and models of Greco- 
 Oriental architecture. The Assumption is almost square 
 and its great walls soar with a surprising pride and strength. 
 Four enormous pillars, large as towers and massive as the 
 columns of the Palace of Karnak, support the central 
 cupola, which rests on a flat roof in the Asiatic style, 
 flanked by four similar cupolas. This simple arrangement 
 produces a magnificent effect and these massive pillars con- 
 tribute, without any heaviness, a fine balance and extraor- 
 dinary stability to the Cathedral. 
 
 The interior of the church is covered with Byzantine 
 paintings on a gold background. The pillars themselves 
 are embellished with figures arranged in zones as in the 
 Egyptian temples and palaces. Nothing could be more 
 strange than this decoration where thousands of figures 
 surround you like a mute assemblage, ascending and de- 
 scending the entire length of the walls, walking in files in 
 Christian panathenaea, standing alone in poses of hieratic 
 rigidity, bending over to the pendentives, and draping the 
 temple with a human tapestry swarming with motionless
 
 THE KREMLIN. 43 
 
 beings. A strange light, carefully disposed, contributes 
 greatly to the disquieting and mysterious effect. In these 
 ruddy and fawn-coloured shadows the tall savage saints 
 of the Greek calendar assume a formidable semblance of 
 life ; they look at you with fixed eyes and seem to threaten 
 you with their hands outstretched for benediction. . . . The 
 interior of St. Mark's at Venice, with its suggestion of a 
 gilded cavern, gives the idea of the Assumption ; only the 
 interior of the Muscovite church rises with one sweep 
 towards the sky, while the vault of St. Mark's is strangely 
 weighed down like a crypt. The iconostase^ a lofty wall of 
 silver-gilt with five rows of figures, is like the facade of a 
 golden palace, dazzling the eye with fabled magnificence. 
 In the filigree framework of gold appear in tones of bistre 
 the dark heads and hands of the Madonnas and saints. 
 The rays of their aureoles are set with precious stones, 
 which, as the light falls upon them, scintillate and blaze 
 with celestial glory ; the images, objects of peculiar vene- 
 ration, are adorned with breastplates of precious stones, 
 necklaces, and bracelets, starred with diamonds, sapphires, 
 rubies, emeralds, amethysts, pearls, and turquoises ; the 
 madness of religious extravagance can go no further. 
 
 It is in the Cathedral of the Assumption that the coro- 
 nation of the Czar takes place. The platform for this 
 occasion is erected between the four pillars which support 
 the cupola and faces the iconostase. 
 
 The tombs of the Metropolitans of Moscow are placed 
 in rows along the sides of the walls. They are oblong : as 
 they loom up in the shadows, they make us think of trunks 
 packed for the great voyage of eternity. . . .
 
 44 THE KREMLIN. 
 
 At the side of the new palace and very near these 
 churches a strange building is seen, of no known style of 
 architecture, neither Asiatic nor Tartar, and which for a 
 secular building is much what Vassili-Blagennoi is for 
 a religious edifice, the perfectly realized chimaera of a 
 sumptuous, barbaric, and fantastic imagination. It was 
 built under Ivan III. by the architect Aleviso. Above its 
 roof several towers, capped with gold and containing within 
 them chapels and oratories, spring up with a graceful and 
 picturesque irregularity. An outside staircase, from the top 
 of which the Czar shows himself to the people after his 
 coronation, gives access to the building and produces by its 
 ornamented projection a unique architectural effect. It is to 
 Moscow what the Giants' Stairway is to Venice. It is one 
 of the curiosities of the Kremlin. In Russia it is known 
 as the Red Stairway (Krasnoi-Kriltosi}. The interior of the 
 Palace, the residence of the ancient Czars, defies descrip- 
 tion ; one would say that its chambers and passages have 
 been excavated according to no determined plan in some 
 curious block of stone, for they are so strangely entangled, 
 so winding and complicated, and so constantly changing 
 their level and direction that they seem to have been 
 ordered at the caprice of an extravagant fancy. We walk 
 through them as in a dream, sometimes stopped by a grille 
 which opens mysteriously, sometimes forced to follow a 
 narrow dark passage in which our shoulders almost touch 
 both walls, sometimes having no other path than the 
 toothed ledge of a cornice from which the copper plates of 
 the roofs and the globular belfries are visible, constantly 
 ascending, descending without knowing where we are, see-
 
 THE KREMLIN. 45 
 
 ing beyond us through the golden trellises the gleam of a 
 lamp flashing back from the golden filigree-work of the 
 shrines, and emerging after this intramural journey into a 
 hall with a rich and riotous wildness of ornamentation, at 
 the end of which we are surprised at not seeing the Grand 
 Kniaz of Tartary seated cross-legged upon his carpet of 
 black felt. 
 
 Such for example is the hall called the Golden Chamber, 
 which occupies the entire Granovitaia Palata (the Facet 
 Palace), so called doubtless on account of its exterior being 
 cut in diamond facets. The Granovitaia Palata adjoins the 
 old palace of the Czars. The golden vaults of this hall 
 rest upon a central pillar by means of surbased arches from 
 which thick bars of elliptical gilded iron go across from one 
 arc to another to prevent their spreading. Several paintings 
 here and there make sombre spots upon the burnished gold 
 splendour of the background. 
 
 Upon the string-courses of the arches legends are written 
 in old Sclavonic letters magnificent characters which lend 
 themselves with as much effect for ornamentation as the 
 Cufic letters on Arabian buildings. Richer, more myste- 
 rious, and yet more brilliant decorations than these of the 
 Golden Chamber cannot be imagined. A romantic person 
 would like to see a Shakespearian play acted here. 
 
 Certain vaulted halls of the old Palace are so low that a 
 man who is a little above the average height cannot stand 
 upright in them. It is here, in an atmosphere overcharged 
 with heat, that the women, lounging on cushions in Orien- 
 tal style, spend the hours of the long Russian winter in gaz- 
 ing through the little windows at the snow sparkling on the
 
 46 THE KREMLIN. 
 
 golden cupolas and the ravens whirling in great circles 
 around the bell-towers. 
 
 These apartments with their motley wall-decorations of 
 palms, foliage, and flowers, recalling the patterns of Cash- 
 mere, make us imagine these to be Asiatic harems trans- 
 ported to the polar frosts. The true Muscovite taste, 
 perverted later by a badly-understood imitation of Western 
 art, appears here in all its primitive originality and intensely 
 barbaric flavour. 
 
 I have frequently observed that the progress of civilization 
 seems to deprive nations of the true sense of architecture 
 and decoration. The ancient edifices of the Kremlin prove 
 once again how true is this assertion, which appears para- 
 doxical at first. An inexhaustible fantasy presides over the 
 decoration of these mysterious rooms where the gold, the 
 green, the blue, and the red mingle with a rare happiness 
 and produce the most charming effects. This architecture, 
 without the least regard for symmetry, rises like a honey- 
 comb of soap-bubbles blown upon a plate. Each little cell 
 takes its place adjoining its neighbour, arranging its own 
 angles and facets until the whole glitters with colours dia- 
 pered with iris. This childish and bizarre comparison will 
 give you a better idea than anything else of the aggregation 
 of these palaces, so fantastic, yet so real. 
 
 It is in this style that we wish they had built the new 
 Palace, an immense building in good modern taste and 
 which would have a beauty elsewhere, but none whatever in 
 the centre of the old Kremlin. The classic architecture 
 with its long cold lines seems more wearisome and solemn 
 here among these palaces with their strange forms, their
 
 THE KREMLIN. 47 
 
 gaudy colours, and this throng of churches of Oriental style 
 darting towards the sky a golden forest of cupolas, domes, 
 pyramidal spires, and bulbous bell-towers. 
 
 When looking at this Muscovite architecture you could 
 easily believe yourself in some chimerical city of Asia, 
 fancying the cathedrals mosques, and the bell-towers 
 minarets, if it were not for . the sober facade of the new 
 Palace which leads you back to the unpoetic Occident and 
 its -unpoetic civilization: a sad thing fora romantic bar- 
 barian of the present day. We enter the new Palace by 
 a stairway of monumental size closed at the top by a 
 magnificent grille of polished iron which is opened to 
 allow the visitor to pass. We find ourselves under the large 
 vault of a domed hall where sentinels are perpetually on 
 guard : four efHgies clothed from head to foot in antique 
 and curious Sclavonic armour These knights have a 
 noHe air; they 'are surprisingly life-like; we could easily 
 believe that hearts are beating beneath their coats of mail. 
 Mediaeval armour disposed in this way always gives me an 
 involuntary shiver. It so faithfully suggests the external 
 form of a man who has vanished forever. 
 
 From this rotunda lead two galleries which contain 
 priceless riches : the treasure of the Caliph Haroun-al- 
 Raschid, the wells of Aboul-Kasem, and the Green Vaults 
 of Dresden united could not show such an accumulation 
 of marvels, and here historic association is added to the 
 material value. Here, sparkling, gleaming, and sportively 
 flashing their prismatic light, are diamonds, sapphires, 
 rubies, and emeralds all the precious stones which 
 Nature has hidden in the depths of her mines in as
 
 48 THE KREMLIN. 
 
 much profusion as if they were mere glass. They glitter 
 like constellations in crowns, they flash in points of light 
 from the ends of sceptres, they fall like sparkling rain- 
 drops upon the Imperial insignias and form arabesques 
 and cyphers until they nearly hide the gold in which they 
 are set. The eye is dazzled and the mind can hardly 
 calculate the sums that represent such magnificence. 
 
 Voyage en Russie (Paris, 1866).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 
 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 LET us go immediately to the Cathedral the deepen- 
 ing tones of whose tenor bell seem to hurry us on 
 to the spot. Gentle reader, on no account visit this stu- 
 pendous edifice this mountain of stone for the first 
 time from the Stonegate (Street) which brings you in front 
 of the south transept. Shun it as the shock might be 
 distressing; but, for want of a better approach, wend your 
 steps round by Little Blake Street, and, at its termina- 
 tion, swerve gently to the left, and place yourself full in 
 view of the West Front. Its freshness, its grandeur, its 
 boldness and the numerous yet existing proofs of its ancient 
 richness and variety, will peradventure make you breath- 
 less for some three seconds. If it should strike you that 
 there is a want of the subdued and mellow tone of antiquity, 
 such as we left behind at Lincoln, you must remember 
 that nearly all this front has undergone a recent scraping 
 and repairing in the very best possible taste under the 
 auspices of the late Dean Markham, who may be said to 
 have loved this Cathedral with a holy love. What has 
 been done, under his auspices, is admirable; and a pattern 
 for all future similar doings. 
 
 4
 
 50 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 
 
 Look at those towers to the right and left of you. 
 How airy, how elegant, what gossamer-like lightness, and 
 yet of what stability ! It is the decorative style of architec- 
 ture, in the Fourteenth Century, at which you are now 
 gazing with such untiring admiration. Be pleased to pass 
 on (still outside) to the left, and take the whole range of 
 its northern side, including the Chapter-House. Look 
 well that your position be far enough out between the 
 house of the residing prebendary and the deanery and 
 then, giving rein to your fancy, gaze, rejoice, and revel 
 in every expression of admiration and delight ! for it has 
 no equal : at least, not in Germany and France, including 
 Normandy. What light and shade ! as I have seen it, 
 both beneath the sun and moon, on my first visit to the 
 house of the prebendal residentiary and how lofty, mas- 
 sive, and magnificent the Nave ! You catch the Chapter- 
 House and the extreme termination of the choir, connecting 
 one end of the Cathedral with the other, at the same 
 moment comprising an extent of some 550 feet! You 
 are lost in astonishment, almost as much at the conception, 
 as at the completion of such a building. 
 
 Still you are disappointed with the central Tower, or 
 Lantern ; the work, in great part, of Walter Skirlaw, the 
 celebrated Bishop of Durham, a name that reflects honour 
 upon everything connected with it. Perhaps the upper 
 part only of this tower was of his planning towards the 
 end of the Fourteenth Century. It is sadly disproportionate 
 with such a building, and should be lifted up one hundred 
 feet at the least. . . . 
 
 After several experiments, I am of the opinion that you
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 51 
 
 should enter the interior at the spot where it is usually 
 entered ; and which, from the thousand pilgrim-feet that 
 annually visit the spot, may account for the comparatively 
 worn state of the pavement ; I mean the South Transept. 
 Let us enter alone, or with the many. Straight before 
 you, at the extremity of the opposite or northern transept, 
 your eyes sparkle with delight on a view of the stained- 
 glass lancet windows. How delicate how rich how 
 chaste how unrivalled ! All the colours seem to be 
 intertwined, in delicate fibres, like Mechlin lace. There 
 is no gkre : but the tone of the whole is perfectly bewitch- 
 ing. You move on. A light streams from above. It is 
 from the Lantern, or interior summit of the Great Tower, 
 upon which you are gazing. Your soul is lifted up with 
 your eyes : and if the diapason harmonies of the organ are 
 let loose, and the sweet and soft voices of the choristers 
 unite in the Twelfth Mass of Mozart you instinctively 
 clasp your hands together and exclaim, " This must be 
 Heaven ! " 
 
 Descend again to earth. Look at those clustered and 
 colossal bases, upon which the stupendous tower is raised. 
 They seem as an Atlas that for some five minutes would 
 sustain the world. Gentle visitor, I see you breathless, 
 and starting back. It is the Nave with its " storied win- 
 dows richly dight," that transports you ; so lofty, so wide, 
 so simple, so truly grand ! The secret of this extraor- 
 dinary effect appears to be this. The pointed arches that 
 separate the nave from the side aisles, are at once spacious 
 and destitute of all obtruding ornaments ; so that you 
 catch very much of the side aisles with the nave j and on
 
 52 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 
 
 the left, or south aisle, you see some of the largest win- 
 dows in the kingdom, with their original stained glass^ a 
 rare and fortunate result from the fanatical destruction 
 of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries ; and for which 
 you must laud the memory of General Lord Fairfax, 
 Cromwell's son-in-law : who showed an especial tender- 
 ness towards this Cathedral. 
 
 " Breathe a prayer for his soul and pass on " 
 
 to the great window at the extremity of the nave. To my 
 eye the whole of this window wants simplicity and gran- 
 deur of effect. Even its outside is too unsubstantial and 
 playful in the tracery, for my notion of congruity with so 
 immense a Cathedral. The stained glass is decidedly 
 second-rate. The colour of the whole interior is admir- 
 able and worthy of imitation. 
 
 But where is The Cboir^ that wonder of the world ? 
 " Yet more wondrous grown " from its phoenix-like 
 revival from an almost all devouring flame ? 1 You must 
 retrace your steps approach the grand screen throw- 
 ing your eye across the continued roof of the nave ; and, 
 gently drawing a red curtain aside, immediately under the 
 organ, you cannot fail to be ravished with the most mar- 
 vellous sight before you. Its vastness, its unspeakable and 
 
 1 I scarcely know how to trust myself with the mention of that 
 most appalling, unprecedented, act of a one-third madman and two- 
 thirds rogue Jonathan Martin by name who set fire to the choir 
 of York Minster : a fire which was almost miraculously stopt in its 
 progress towards the destruction of the entire Cathedral. This had 
 been a result which Martin would have rejoiced to have seen effected. 
 This horrid deed, at the very thought of which the heart sickens, took 
 place on the ad of February, 1829.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 53 
 
 indescribable breadth, grandeur, minuteness, and variety of 
 detail and finish the clustering stalls, the stupendous 
 organ, the altar, backed by a stone Gothic screen, with 
 the interstices filled with plate-glass the huge outspread- 
 ing eastern window behind, with its bespangled stained- 
 glass, describing two hundred scriptural subjects all that 
 you gaze upon, and all that you feel is so much out of 
 everyday experience, that you scarcely credit the scene to 
 be of this world. To add to the effect, I once saw the 
 vast area of this choir filled and warmed by the devotion 
 of a sabbath afternoon. Sitting under the precentor's 
 stall, I looked up its almost interminable pavement where 
 knees were bending, responses articulated, and the organ's 
 tremendous peal echoing from its utmost extremity. 
 Above the sunbeams were streaming through the che- 
 quered stained-glass and it was altogether a scene of 
 which the recollection is almost naturally borne with one 
 to the grave. . . . 
 
 This Cathedral boasts of two transepts, but the second 
 is of very diminutive dimensions : indeed, scarcely amount- 
 ing to the designation of the term. But these windows 
 are most splendidly adorned with ancient stained-glass. 
 They quickly arrest the attention of the antiquary ; whose 
 bosom swells, and whose eyes sparkle with delight, as he 
 surveys their enormous height and richness. That on the 
 southern side has a sort of mosaic work or dove-tailed 
 character, which defies adequate description and is an 
 admirable avant-propos to the CHAPTER HOUSE : the 
 Chapter House ! that glory of the Cathedral that 
 wonder of the world ! . . .
 
 54 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 
 
 Doubtless this Chapter House is a very repertory of all 
 that is curious and grotesque, and yet tasteful, and of most 
 marvellous achievement. . You may carouse within it for 
 a month but it must be in the hottest month of the 
 year ; and when you are tired of the " cool tankard," you 
 may feast upon the pages of Britton and Halfpenny. . . . 
 But the "world of wonders" exhibited in the shape of 
 grotesque and capricious ornaments within this " House," 
 is responded to by ornaments to the full as fanciful and 
 extravagant within the Nave and Choir. What an imagi- 
 nation seems to have been let loose in the designer en- 
 gaged ! Look at what is before you ! Those frisky old 
 gentlemen are sculptured at the terminating point, as cor- 
 bels, of the arches on the roof of the nave : and it is curious 
 that, in the bottom corbel, the figure to the left is a sort of 
 lampoon, or libellous representation of the clergy: the 
 bands and curled hair are decisive upon this point. . . . 
 When I pace and repace the pavement of this stupendous 
 edifice when I meditate within this almost unearthly 
 HOUSE OF GOD when I think of much of its departed 
 wealth and splendour, 1 as well as of its present durability and 
 
 1 I gather the following from the abridged English version (1693) 
 of Dugdalf s Monasticon as quoted by Drake. Where is even the 
 Protestant bosom that does not heave heavily as it reads it ? ' To 
 this Cathedral did belong abundance of jewels, vessels of gold and 
 silver, and other ornaments; rich vestments and books, amongst 
 which were ten mitres of great value, and one small mitre set with 
 stones for the * Boy Bishop.'' One silver and gilt pastoral staff, many 
 pastoral rings, amongst which one for the bishop of the boys. Chal- 
 ices, viols, pots, basons, candlesticks, thuribles, holy-water pots, 
 crosses of silver one of which weighed eight pounds, six ounces.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF YORK. 55 
 
 grandeur a spirit within me seems to say, that such an 
 achievement of human skill and human glory should perish 
 only with the crumbling fragments of a perishing world. 
 Altogether it looks as if it were built for the day of 
 doom. 
 
 " A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour of the 
 Northern Counties of England and in Scotland" (London, 1838). 
 
 Images of gold and silver ; relicts in cases extremely rich 5 great 
 bowls of silver ; an unicorn's horn ; a table of silver and gilt, with the 
 image of the Virgin enamelled thereon, weighing nine pounds, eight 
 ounces, and a half. Several Gospellaries and Epistolaries, richly 
 adorned with silver, gold, and precious stones. Jewels, affixed to 
 shrines and tombs, of an almost inestimable value. Altar cloths and 
 hangings, very rich ; copes of tissue, damask, and velvet, white, red, 
 blue, green, black, and purple. Besides this, there was a great treas- 
 ure, deposited in the common chest in gold chains, collars of the Order 
 of the Garter, with large sums of old gold and silver."
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 
 
 PIERRE LOTI. 
 
 I AM enchanted to-day by the spell of Islam, by the 
 newly-risen sun, by the Spring which warms the air. 
 
 Moreover, we will direct our steps this morning towards 
 the holy spot of the Arabs, towards the Mosque of Omar, 
 accounted marvellous and honoured throughout the world. 
 Jerusalem, city sacred to Christians and Jews, is also, 
 after Mecca, the most sacred Mohammedan city. The 
 
 French consul-general and Father S , a Dominican, 
 
 celebrated for his Biblical erudition, gladly accompanied 
 us, and a janizary of the consulate preceded us, without 
 whom even the approaches of the Mosque would have 
 been forbidden. 
 
 We walked along the narrow streets, gloomy notwith- 
 standing the sunlight, and between the old windowless 
 walls, made of the debris of all epochs of history and into 
 which Hebraic stones and Roman marbles are fitted here 
 and there. As we advanced towards the sacred quarter 
 everything became more ruined, more devastated, more 
 dead, infinite desolation, which even surrounded the 
 Mosque, the entrances to which are guarded by Turkish 
 sentinels who prohibit passage to Christians.
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 5/ 
 
 Thanks to the janizary, we clear this zone of fanatics, 
 and then, by a series of little dilapidated doors, we pass 
 into a gigantic court, a kind of melancholy desert where 
 the grass pushes up between the stones as it does in a 
 meadow where no human foot ever treads : this is 
 Haram es Sherif (The Sacred Enclosure). In the centre, 
 and very far from us, there rises a solitary and surprising 
 edifice, all blue, but of a blue so exquisite and rare that 
 it seems to be some old enchanted palace made of tur- 
 quoise; this is the Mosque of Omar, the marvel of all 
 Islam. 
 
 How wild and magnificent is the solitude that the 
 Arabs have succeeded in preserving around their Mosque 
 of blue ! 
 
 On each of its sides, which are at least five hundred 
 metres long, this square is hemmed in with sombre build- 
 ings, shapeless by reason of decay, incomprehensible by 
 reason of restorations and changes made at various epochs 
 of ancient history : at the base are Cyclopean rocks, rem- 
 nants of the walls of Solomon ; above, the debris of Herod's 
 citadel, the debris of the pratorium where Pontius Pilate 
 was enthroned and whence Christ departed for Calvary ; 
 then the Saracens, and, after them, the Crusaders, left 
 everything in a confused heap, and, finally, the Saracens, 
 again having become the masters of this spot, burned or 
 walled-up the windows, raised their minarets at hap-hazard, 
 and placed at the top of the buildings the points of their 
 sharp battlements. 
 
 Time, the leveller, has thrown over everything a uni- 
 form colour of old reddish terra-cotta, and given to all the
 
 58 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 
 
 buildings the same vegetation, the same decay, the same 
 dust. This bewildering chaos of bits and fragments, for- 
 midable in its hoary age, speaks the nothingness of man, 
 the decay of civilizations and races, and bestows infinite 
 sadness upon this little desert beyond which rises in its 
 solitude the beautiful blue palace surmounted by its cupola 
 and crescent, the marvellous and incomparable Mosque 
 of Omar. 
 
 As we advance through this desert broken by large 
 white stones and grass, giving it the feeling of a cemetery, 
 the casing of the blue Mosque becomes more defined : we 
 seem to see on its walls jewels of many colours and bril- 
 liantly cut, equally divided into pale turquoise and a deep 
 lapis-lazuli) with a little yellow, a little white, a little green, 
 and a little black, soberly combined in very delicate 
 arabesques. 
 
 Among some cypresses, nearly sapless, several very an- 
 cient and dying olives, a series of secondary edicules more 
 numerous towards the centre of the great court, lead to 
 the Mosque, the great wonder of the square. Dotted 
 about are some little marble mikrabs, some light arches, 
 some little triumphal arches, and a kiosk with columns, 
 which also seems covered with blue jewels. Yet here in 
 this immense square, which centuries have rendered so 
 desert-like, so melancholy, and so forsaken, Spring has 
 placed amid the stones her garlands of daisies, buttercups, 
 and wild peonies. 
 
 Coming nearer, we perceive that these elegant and frail 
 little Saracen buildings are composed of the debris of Chris- 
 tian churches and antique temples ; the columns and the
 
 THE MOSQUt, OF OMAR. 59 
 
 marble friezes have all vanished, torn away from a chapel 
 of the Crusaders, from a basilica of the Greek Emperors, 
 from a temple of Venus, or from a synagogue. If the 
 general arrangement is Arab, calm and stamped with the 
 grace of Aladdin's palace, the detail is full of instruction 
 regarding the frailty of religions and empires ; this detail 
 perpetuates the memory of great exterminating wars, of 
 horrible sacks, of days when blood ran here like water and 
 when the wholesale slaughtering " did not end until the 
 soldiers were weary with killing." 
 
 In all this conglomeration only that blue kiosk, neigh- 
 bour of the blue Mosque, can tell its companion of 
 Jerusalem's terrible past. Its double row of marble 
 columns is like a museum of debris from all countries ; we 
 see Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Hebraic capitals, others 
 of an undetermined age, of a wild style almost unknown. 
 
 Now the tranquillity of death has settled over all ; the 
 remnants of so many various sanctuaries at enmity have 
 been grouped, in honour of the God of Islam, in an un- 
 expected harmony, and this will perhaps continue until 
 they crumble into dust. When one recalls the troublous 
 past it is strange to find this silence, this desolation, and 
 this supreme peace in the centre of a court whose white 
 stones are invaded by the daisies and weeds of the field. 
 
 Let us enter this mysterious mosque surrounded by 
 death and the desert. At first it seems dark as night : we 
 have a bewildering sense of fairy-like splendour. A very 
 faint light penetrates the panes, which are famed through- 
 out the Orient and which fill the row of little windows 
 above ; we fancy that the light is passing through flowers
 
 6O THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 
 
 and arabesques of precious stones regularly arranged, and 
 this is the illusion intended by the inimitable glass-workers 
 of old. Gradually, as our eyes grow accustomed to the 
 dim light, the walls, arches, and vaults seem to be covered 
 with some rich embroidered fabric of raised mother-of- 
 pearl and gold on a foundation of green. Perhaps it is 
 an old brocade of flowers and leaves, perhaps precious 
 leather from Cordova, or perhaps something even more 
 beautiful and rare than either, which we shall recognize 
 
 * O 
 
 presently when our eyes have recovered from the blinding 
 effect of the sun on the flags outside and have adjusted 
 themselves to the dusk of this most holy sanctuary. The 
 mosque, octagonal in form, is supported within by two 
 concentric rows of pillars, the first octagonal, and the 
 second circular, sustaining the magnificent dome. 
 
 Each column with its gilded capital is composed of a 
 different and priceless material : one of violet marble veined 
 with white ; another of red porphyry ; another of that 
 marble, for centuries lost, known as antique verde. The 
 entire base of the walls, as high as the line where the 
 green and gold embroideries begin, is cased with marble. 
 Great slabs cut lengthwise are arranged in symmetrical 
 designs like those produced in cabinet-work by inlaid 
 woods. 
 
 The little windows placed close to the dome, from which 
 altitude falls the reflected light as though from jewels, are 
 all of different colours and designs ; one is shaped like 
 a daisy and composed of ruby glass; another of delicate 
 arabesques of sapphire mingled with the yellow of the 
 topaz; and a third of emerald sprinkled with rose.
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 6l 
 
 What makes the beauty of these, as of all Arabian 
 windows, is that the various colours are not separated, like 
 ours, by lines of lead, but the framework of the window 
 is a plate of thick stucco pierced with an infinite number 
 of little holes, ever changing with the light ; the effect is 
 always some new and beautiful design ; the pieces of 
 transparent blue, yellow, rose, or green, are inserted deep 
 in the thickness of the setting so that they seem to be 
 surrounded by a kind of nimbus caused by the reflected 
 light along the sides of the thick apertures, and the result 
 is a deep and soft glow over all, and through this light 
 gleam and sparkle the pearl, and precious stones. 
 
 Now we begin to distinguish what we supposed was 
 tapestry over the masonry : it consists of marvellous 
 mosaics covering everything and simulating brocades and 
 embroideries, but far more beautiful and durable than any 
 woven tissue, for its lustre and diaper-work have been 
 preserved through long centuries because it is formed of 
 almost imperishable matter, myriads of fragments of 
 marble, with mother-of-pearl and gold. Throughout the 
 whole, green and gold predominate. The designs are 
 numbers of strange vases holding stiff and symmetrical 
 bouquets : conventional foliage of a bygone period, dream- 
 flowers fashioned in ancient days. Above these are antique 
 vine-branches composed of an infinite variety of green 
 marbles, stems of archaic rigidity bearing grapes of gold 
 and clusters of pearl. Here and there, to break the 
 monotony of the green, twin-petals of great, red flowers, 
 shaded with minute fragments of pink marble and por- 
 phyry, are thrown upon a background of gold.
 
 62 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 
 
 In the glow of colour streaming through the windows 
 all the splendours of Oriental tales seem to be revealed, 
 vibrating through the twilight and silence of this sanctuary 
 which is always open and surrounded by the spacious court- 
 yard in which we stroll alone. Little birds, quite at home 
 in the mosque, fly in and out of the open, bronze doors, 
 and alight on the porphyry cornices and on the pearl and 
 gold, and are benevolently regarded by the two or three 
 venerable and white-bearded officials who are praying in 
 the shadowy recesses. On the marble pavement are spread 
 several antique Persian and Turkish rugs of the most 
 delicate, faded hues. 
 
 On entering this circular mosque its vast centre is in- 
 visible, as it is surrounded by a double screen. The first is 
 of wood, finely carved in the style of the Mozarabians ; 
 the second, of Gothic iron-work, placed there by the 
 Crusaders when they used it temporarily as a Christian 
 fane. Mounting some marble steps, our eyes at last rest 
 upon this jealously-guarded interior. 
 
 Considering all the surrounding splendour, we now ex- 
 pect even more marvellous riches to be revealed, but we 
 are awed by an apparition of quite a different nature, a 
 vague and gloomy shape seems to have its abode amid the 
 shadows of this gorgeous precinct ; a mass, as yet unde- 
 fined, seems to surge through the semi-darkness like a 
 great, black, solidified wave. 
 
 This is the summit of Mount Moriah, sacred alike to 
 the Israelites, Mussulmans, and Christians ; this is the 
 threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite, where King David, 
 saw the Destroying Angel holding in his hand the destroy-
 
 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 63 
 
 ing sword stretched out over Jerusalem (2 Samuel xxiv. 
 16; i Chronicles xxi. 15). 
 
 Here David built an altar of burnt-offering and here 
 his son Solomon raised the Temple, levelling the surround- 
 ings at great cost, but preserving the irregularities of this 
 peak because the foot of the angel had touched it. " Then 
 Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem 
 in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David 
 his father, in the place that David had prepared in the 
 threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite " (2 Chronicles iii. i). 
 
 We know through what scenes of inconceivable magnifi- 
 cence and desolating fury this mountain of Moriah passed 
 during the ages. The Temple that crowned it, razed by 
 Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt on the return from the captivity 
 in Babylon, and again destroyed under Antonius IV., was 
 again rebuilt by Herod : it saw Jesus pass by ; His voice 
 was heard upon its summit. 
 
 Therefore, each of those mighty edifices which cost the 
 ransom of an empire, and whose almost superhuman foun- 
 dations are still found buried in the earth, confound the 
 imagination of us moderns. After the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem by Titus, a Temple of Jupiter was erected under 
 Hadrian's reign, ' replacing the Temple of the Saviour. 
 Later, the early Christians, to spite the Jews, kept this 
 sacred peak covered with debris and dirt, and it was the 
 Caliph Omar who piously caused it to be cleared as soon as 
 he had conquered Palestine j and finally, his successor, the 
 Caliph Abd-el-Melek, about the year 690, enclosed it with 
 the lovely Mosque that is still standing. 
 
 With the exception of the dome, restored during the
 
 64 THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. 
 
 Twelfth and Fourteenth Centuries, the Crusaders found it 
 in its present condition, already ancient and bearing the 
 same relation to them that the Gothic cathedrals do to us, 
 for it was clothed with the same fadeless embroideries of 
 gold and marble and with its glistening brocades which are 
 almost imperishable. Converting it into a church, they 
 placed their marble altar in the centre on David's rock. 
 On the fall of the Franks, Saladin, after long purifications 
 by sprinklings of rose-water, restored it to the Faith of 
 Allah. 
 
 Inscriptions of gold in old Cufic characters above the 
 friezes speak of Christ after the Koran, and their deep wis- 
 dom is such as to sow disquietude in Christian souls : " O 
 ye who have received the scriptures, exceed not the just 
 bounds of your religion. Verily Christ Jesus is the son of 
 Mary, the apostle of God, and his Word which he con- 
 veyed unto Mary. Believe then in God and in his Apostle, 
 but say not there is a Trinity, forbear this, it will be better 
 for you. God is but one. It is not meet that God should 
 have a son. When He decreeth a thing He only saith unto 
 it: 'Be'; and it is." (Sura iv. 19.) 
 
 A dread Past, crushing to our modern puerility, is evoked 
 by this black rock, this dead and mummified mountain 
 peak, on which the dew of Heaven never falls, which never 
 produces a plant, nor a spray of moss, but which lies like 
 the Pharaohs in their sarcophagi, and which, after two 
 thousand years of troubles, has now been sheltered for 
 thirteen centuries beneath the brooding of this golden dome 
 and these marvellous walls raised for it alone. 
 
 Jerusalem (Paris, 1895).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 l^TOTWITHSTANDING that Burgos was for so 
 JL Al long a time the first city of Castile, it is not very 
 Gothic in appearance ; with the exception of a street where 
 there are several windows and doors of the Renaissance, or- 
 namented with coats of arms and their supporters, the houses 
 do not date further back than the beginning of the Seven- 
 teenth Century, and are exceedingly commonplace ; they are 
 old, but not antique. But Burgos has her Cathedral, which 
 is one of the most beautiful in the world ; unfortunately, 
 like all the Gothic cathedrals, it is shut in by a number of 
 ignoble buildings which prevent you from appreciating the 
 structure as a whole and grasping the mass at a glance. 
 The principal porch looks upon a square, in the centre of 
 which is a beautiful fountain surmounted by a delightful 
 statue of Christ, the target for all the ruffians of the town 
 who have no better pastime than throwing stones at its 
 sculptures. The magnificent porch, like an intricate and 
 flowered embroidery of lace, has been scraped and rubbed 
 as far as the first frieze by I don't know what Italian prel- 
 ates, some important amateurs in architecture, who were 
 great admirers of plain walls and ornamentation in good taste, 
 and who, having pity for those poor barbarian architects 
 
 5
 
 66 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS. 
 
 who would not follow the Corinthian order and had no 
 appreciation of Attic grace and the triangular fronton, 
 wished to arrange the Cathedral in the Roman style. 
 Many people are still of this opinion in Spain, where the 
 so-called Messidor style flourishes in all its purity, and, ex- 
 actly as was the case in France before the Romantic School 
 brought the Middle Ages into favour again and caused the 
 beauty and meaning of the cathedrals to be understood, pre- 
 fer all kinds of abominable edifices, pierced with innumer- 
 able windows and ornamented with Paestumian columns, to 
 the most florid and richly-carved Gothic cathedrals. Two 
 sharp spires cut in saw-teeth and open-worked, as if pierced 
 with a punch, festooned, embroidered x and carved down to 
 the last details like the bezel of a ring, spring towards God 
 with all the ardour of faith and transport of a firm convic- 
 tion. Our unbelieving campaniles would not dare to ven- 
 ture into the air with only stone-lace and ribs as delicate as 
 gossamer to support them. Another tower, sculptured with 
 an unheard-of wealth, but not so high, marks the spot 
 where the transept intersects the nave, and completes the 
 magnificence of the outline. A multitude of statues of 
 saints, archangels, kings, and monks animates the whole 
 mass of architecture, and this stone population is so numer- 
 ous, so crowded, and so swarming, that surely it must 
 exceed the population of flesh and blood inhabiting the 
 town. . . . 
 
 The choir, which contains the stalls, called silleria, is en- 
 closed by iron grilles of the most wonderful repousse work ; 
 the pavement, according to the Spanish custom, is covered 
 with immense mats of spartium, and each stall has, more-
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS. 6? 
 
 over, its own little mat of dry grass, or rushes. On rais- 
 ing your head you see a kind of dome, formed by the 
 interior of the tower of which we have already spoken ; 
 it is a gulf of sculptures, arabesques, statues, little columns, 
 ribs, lancets, and pendentives enough to give you a ver- 
 tigo. If you looked at it for two years, you would not 
 see it all. It is as crowded together as the leaves of a 
 cabbage, and fenestrated like a fish-slice ; it is as gigantic 
 as a pyramid and as delicate as a woman's ear-ring, and 
 you cannot understand how such a piece of filigree-work 
 has remained suspended in the air for so many centuries. 
 What kind of men were those who made these marvellous 
 buildings, whose splendours not even fairy palaces can sur- 
 pass ? Is the race extinct ? And we, who are always 
 boasting of our civilization, are we not decrepit barbarians 
 in comparison ? A deep sadness always oppresses my 
 heart when I visit one of these stupendous edifices of the 
 Past ; I am seized with utter discouragement and my one 
 desire is to steal into some corner, to place a stone beneath 
 my head, and, in the immobility of contemplation, to await 
 death, which is immobility itself. What is the use of 
 working ? Why should we tire ourselves ? The most 
 tremendous human effort will never produce anything 
 equal to this. Ah well ! even the names of these divine 
 artists are forgotten, and to find any trace of them you 
 must ransack the dusty archives in the convent ! . . . 
 
 The sacristy is surrounded by a panelled wainscot, form- 
 ing closets with flowered and festooned columns in rich 
 
 O 
 
 taste; above the wainscot is a row of Venetian mirrors 
 whose use I do not understand; certainly they must only
 
 68 THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS. 
 
 be for ornament as they are too high for any one to see 
 himself in them. Above the mirrors are arranged in 
 chronological order, the oldest nearest the ceiling, the 
 portraits of all the bishops of Burgos, from the first to 
 the one now occupying the episcopal chair. These por- 
 traits, although they are oil, look more like pastels, or dis- 
 temper, which is due to the fact that in Spain pictures are 
 never varnished, and, for this lack of precaution, the damp- 
 ness has destroyed many masterpieces. Although these 
 portraits are, for the most part, imposing, they are hung 
 too high for one to judge of the merit of the execution. 
 There is an enormous buffet in the centre of the room 
 and enormous baskets of spartium, in which the church 
 ornaments and sacred vessels are kept. Under two glass 
 cases are preserved -as curiosities two coral trees, whose 
 branches are much less complicated than the least arabesque 
 in the Cathedral. The door is embellished with the arms 
 of Burgos in relief, sprinkled with little crosses, gules. 
 
 Juan Cuchiller's room, which we next visited, is not 
 at all remarkable in the way of architecture, and we were 
 hastening to leave it when we were asked to raise our eyes 
 and look at a very curious object. This was a great chest 
 fastened to the wall by iron clamps. It would be hard to 
 imagine a box more patched, more worm-eaten, or more 
 dilapidated. It is surely the oldest chest in the world; 
 an inscription in black-letter Cofre del Cid gives, at 
 once, as you will readily believe, an enormous importance 
 to these four boards of rotting wood. If we may believe 
 the old chronicle, this chest is precisely that of the famous 
 Ruy Diaz de Bivar, better known under the name of the
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OP BURGOS. 69 
 
 Cid Campeador, who, once lacking money, exactly like 
 a simple author, notwithstanding he was a hero, had this 
 filled with sand and stones and carried to the house of an 
 honest Jewish usurer who lent money on this security, the 
 Cid Campeador forbidding him to open the mysterious 
 coffer until he had reimbursed the borrowed sum. . . . 
 
 The need of the real, no matter how revolting, is a 
 characteristic of Spanish Art : idealism and convention- 
 ality are not in the genius of these people completely defi- 
 cient in aesthetic feeling. Sculpture does not suffice for 
 them ; they must have their statues coloured, and their 
 madonnas painted and dressed in real clothes. Never, 
 according to their taste, can material illusion be carried 
 too far, and this terrible love of realism makes them often 
 overstep the boundaries which separate sculpture from 
 wax-works. 
 
 The celebrated Christ, so revered at Burgos that no 
 one is allowed to see it unless the candles are lighted, is 
 a striking example of this strange taste : it is neither of 
 stone, nor painted wood, it is made of human skin (so the 
 monks say), stuffed with much art and care. The hair is 
 real hair, the eyes have eye- lashes, the thorns of the crown 
 are real thorns, and no detail has been forgotten. Nothing 
 can be more lugubrious and disquieting than this attenu- 
 ated, crucified phantom with its human appearance and 
 deathlike stillness ; the faded and brownish-yellow skin is 
 streaked with long streams of blood, so well imitated that 
 they seem to trickle. It requires no great effort of imagina- 
 tion to give credence to the legend that it bleeds every 
 Friday. In the place of folded, or flying drapery, the Christ
 
 7<D THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS. 
 
 of Burgos wears a white skirt embroidered in gold, which 
 falls from the waist to the knees ; this costume produces 
 a peculiar effect, especially to us who are not accustomed 
 to see our Lord attired thus. At the foot of the Cross 
 three ostrich eggs are placed, a symbolical ornament of 
 whose meaning I am ignorant, unless they allude to the 
 Trinity, the principle and germ of everything. 
 
 We went out of the Cathedral dazzled, overwhelmed, 
 and satiated with chefs cTceuvre, powerless to admire any 
 longer, and only with great difficulty we threw a glance 
 upon the arch of Fernan Gonzalez, an attempt in classical 
 architecture made by Philip of Burgundy at the beginning 
 of the Renaissance. 
 
 Voyage en Espagne (Paris, new cd., 1865).
 
 THE PYRAMIDS. 
 GEORG EBERS. 
 
 EARLY in the morning our carriage, drawn by fast 
 horses, rattles across the Nile on the iron bridge 
 which joins Cairo to the beautiful island of Gezirah. The 
 latter, with its castle and the western tributary of the river 
 which ripples by it, are soon left behind. Beneath the 
 shade of acacias and sycamore-trees runs the well-kept 
 and level highway. On our left lie the castle and the 
 high-walled, vice-regal gardens of Gizeh ; the dewy green 
 fields, intersected by canals, rejoice the eye, and a tender 
 blue mist veils the west. The air has that clearness and 
 aromatic freshness which is only offered by an Egyptian 
 winter's morning. For a moment the enveloping curtain 
 of cloud lifts from the horizon, and we see the prodigious 
 Pyramids standing before us with their sharp triangles, 
 and the misty curtain falls ; to the right and left we 
 sometimes see buffaloes grazing, sometimes flocks of 
 silvery herons, sometimes a solitary pelican within gun- 
 shot of our carriage; then half-naked peasants at their 
 daily labour and pleasing villages some distance from the 
 road. Two large, whitish eagles now soar into the air. 
 The eye follows their flight, and, in glancing upwards, 
 perceives how the mist has gradually disappeared, how
 
 72 THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 brightly dazzling is the blue of the sky, and how the sun 
 is at last giving out the full splendour of his rays. . . . 
 We stand before the largest of these works of man, 
 which, as we know, the ancients glorified as "wonders 
 of the world." It is unnecessary to describe their form 
 for everybody knows the stereometrical figure to which 
 their name has been given, and this is not the place to 
 print a numerical estimate of their mass. Only by a 
 comparison with other structures present in our memory 
 can any idea of their immensity be realized j and, con- 
 sequently, it may be said here that while St. Peter's in 
 Rome is 131 metres high (430 feet), the Great Pyramid 
 (of Cheops), with its restored apex would be 147 metres 
 (482 feet), and is thus 16 metres (52 feet) taller j therefore, 
 if the Pyramid of Cheops were hollow, the great Cathedral 
 of Rome could be placed within it like a clock under 
 a protecting glass-shade. Neither St. Stephen's Cathedral 
 in Vienna, nor the Munster of Strasburg reaches the height 
 of the highest Pyramid ; but the new towers of the 
 Cathedral of Cologne exceed it. In one respect no other 
 building in the world can be compared with the Pyramids, 
 and that is in regard to the mass and weight of the materials 
 used in their construction. If the tomb of Cheops were 
 razed, a wall could be built with its stones all around the 
 frontiers of France. If you fire a good pistol from the 
 top of the great Pyramid into the air, the ball falls half- 
 way down its side. By such comparisons they who have 
 not visited Egypt may form an idea of the dimensions of 
 these amazing structures ; he who stands on the sandy 
 ground and raises his eyes to the summit, needs no such 
 aids.
 
 THE PYRAMIDS. 73 
 
 We get out of the carriage on the north side of the 
 Pyramid of Cheops. In the sharply-defined triangular 
 shadows women are squatted, offering oranges and various 
 eatables for sale ; donkey-boys are waiting with their grey 
 animals ; and travellers are resting after having accom- 
 plished the ascent. This work now lies before us, and 
 if we were willing to shirk it, there would be many attacks 
 on our indolence, for from the moment we stepped from 
 our carriage, we have been closely followed by a ragged, 
 brown, and sinewy crowd, vehemently offering their ser- 
 vices. They call themselves Bedouin with great pride, but 
 they have nothing in common with the true sons of the 
 desert except their faults. Nevertheless, it is not only 
 prudent but necessary to accept their assistance, although 
 the way up can scarcely be mistaken. 
 
 We begin the ascent at a place where the outside stone 
 casing of the Pyramid has fallen away, leaving the terrace- 
 like blocks of the interior exposed ; but the steps are un- 
 equal and sometimes of considerable height ; some of them 
 are half as high as a man. Two or three lads accompany 
 me; one jumps up first with his bare feet, holds my hands, 
 and drags me after him ; another follows the climber, 
 props his back, and thrusts and pushes him forwards; while 
 a third grabs his side beneath his arm, and lifts him. Thus, 
 one half-scrambles up himself and is half-dragged up, while 
 the nimble lads give the climber no rest, if he wants to 
 stop for breath or to wipe the drops of moisture from his 
 brow. These importunate beggars never cease shouting 
 and clamouring for baksheesh, and are so persistently annoy- 
 ing that they seem to want us to forget the gratitude we 
 owe them for their aid.
 
 74 THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 At length we reach our destination. The point of the 
 Pyramid has long since crumbled away, and we stand on 
 a tolerably spacious platform. When oui gasping breath 
 and throbbing pulses have partially recovered and we have 
 paid and got rid of the Bedouin, who torment us to exchange 
 our money for sham antiquities, we look down upon the 
 vast landscape, and the longer we gaze and absorb this dis- 
 tant view, the more significant and the more incomparable 
 it appears. Fertility and sterility, life and death, lie no- 
 where in such close mingling as here. There in the east 
 flows the broad Nile covered with lateen sails, and like 
 emerald tapestry are the fields and meadows, gardens and 
 groves of palm-trees, spread along its shores. The villages, 
 hidden under the trees, look like birds' nests among green 
 boughs, and at the foot of the Mokattam mountain, which 
 is now shining with golden light and which at sunset will 
 reflect the rosy and violet afterglow, rise the thousand 
 mosques of the city of the Caliphs, overtopped by the 
 citadel and by those slenderest of all minarets which grace 
 the Mausoleum of Mohammed Ali, an unmistakable feat- 
 ture of Cairo, visible from the farthest distance. Gardens 
 and trees encircle the city like a garland around some 
 lovely head. Nowhere is there to be found a more beau- 
 tiful picture of prosperity, fertility, and life. The silver 
 threads of the canals crossing the entire luxuriant valley 
 appear to be some shining fluid. Unclouded is the sky, and 
 yet light shadows fall across the fields. These are flocks 
 of birds which find plenty of food and drink here. How 
 vast is the bounty of God ! How beautiful and rich is the 
 earth ! 
 
 The Bedouin have left us. We stand alone on the sum-
 
 THE PYRAMIDS. 75 
 
 mit. All is still. Not a sound reaches us from far or 
 near. Turning now to the west, the eye can see nothing 
 but pyramids and tombs, rocks and sand in countless num- 
 ber. Not a blade, not a bush can find nutriment in this 
 sterile ground. Yellow, grey, and dull brown cover every- 
 thing, far and wide, in unbroken monotony. 
 
 Only here and there a white object is shining amidst the 
 dust. It is the dried skeleton of some dead animal. Silent 
 and void, the enemy to everything that has life the 
 desert stretches before us. Where is its end ? In days, 
 weeks, months the traveller would never reach it, even if 
 he escaped alive from the choking sand. Here, if any- 
 where, Death is king ; here, where the Egyptians saw the 
 sun vanish every day behind the wall of the Libyan moun- 
 tains, begins a world which bears the same comparison to 
 the fruitful lands of the East as a corpse does to a living 
 man happy in the battle and joy of life. A more silent 
 burial-place than this desert exists nowhere on this earth ; 
 and so tomb after tomb was erected here, and, as if to pre- 
 serve the secret of the dead, the desert has enveloped tombs 
 and bodies with its veil of sand. Here the terrors of 
 infinity are displayed. Here at the gate of the future life, 
 where eternity begins, man's work seems to have eluded 
 the common destiny of earthly things and to have partaken 
 of immortality. 
 
 " Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock Time " 
 is an Arabian proverb which has been repeated thousands 
 of times. 
 
 Cicerone durch das alte und neue JEgypten (Stuttgart und Leipzig, 
 1886).
 
 SAINT PETER'S. 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WHEN we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect 
 fever, to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, 
 after another mile or two, the Eternal City appeared, at 
 length, in the distance, it looked like I am half afraid to 
 write the word like LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, under 
 a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples, and 
 roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and, high above them 
 all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming 
 absurdity of the comparison, it was so like London, at that 
 distance, that if you could have shown it me in a glass, I 
 should have taken it for nothing else. 
 
 We entered the Eternal City at about four o'clock in 
 the afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta 
 del Popolo, and came immediately it was a dark, muddy 
 day, and there had been heavy rain on the skirts of the 
 Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were only 
 looking at the fag-end of the masks, who were driving 
 slowly round and round the Piazza, until they could find a 
 promising opportunity for falling into the stream of car- 
 riages, and getting, in good time, into the thick of the 
 festivity j and coming among them so abruptly, all travel-
 
 SAINT PETER'S. 77 
 
 stained and weary, was not coming very well prepared to 
 enjoy the scene. . . . 
 
 Immediately on going out next day we hurried off to St. 
 Peter's. It looked immense in the distance but distinctly 
 and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near approach. 
 The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands, with its clus- 
 ters of exquisite columns and its gushing fountains so 
 fresh, so broad, and free and beautiful nothing can exag- 
 gerate. The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive 
 majesty and glory : and most of all, the looking up into the 
 Dome: is a sensation never to be forgotten. But, there 
 were preparations for a Festa; the pillars of stately marble 
 were swathed in some impertinent frippery of red and 
 yellow ; the altar, and entrance to the subterranean chapel : 
 which is before it, in the centre of the church : were like a 
 goldsmith's shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very 
 lavish pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of 
 the beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to enter- 
 tain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been infinitely 
 more affected in many English cathedrals when the organ 
 has been playing, and in many English country churches 
 when the congregation have been singing. I had a much 
 greater sense of mystery and wonder in the Cathedral of 
 San Mark, at Venice. . . . 
 
 On Sunday the Pope assisted in the performance of 
 High Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral on 
 my mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it was 
 at first, and what it remains after many visits. It is not 
 religiously impressive or affecting. It is an immense 
 edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest upon ; and
 
 78 SAINT PETER'S. 
 
 it tires itself with wandering round and round. The very 
 purpose of the place is not expressed in anything you see 
 there, unless you examine its details and all examination 
 of details is incompatible with the place itself. It might 
 be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural 
 trophy, having no other object than an architectural tri- 
 umph. There is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, 
 under a red canopy ; which is larger than life, and which 
 is constantly having its great toe kissed by good Catholics. 
 You cannot help seeing that : it is so very prominent and 
 popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the temple 
 as a work of art ; and it is not expressive to me, at 
 least of its high purpose. 
 
 A large space behind the altar was fitted up with boxes, 
 shaped like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in 
 their decoration much more gaudy. In the centre of the 
 kind of theatre thus railed off was a canopied dais with 
 the Pope's chair upon it. The pavement was covered 
 with a carpet of the brightest green; and what with this 
 green, and the intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold 
 borders of the hangings, the whole concern looked like 
 a stupendous Bonbon. On either side of the altar was 
 a large box for lady strangers. These were filled with 
 ladies in black dresses and black veils. The gentlemen 
 of the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather breeches, and 
 jack-boots, guarded all this reserved space, with drawn 
 swords that were very flashy in every sense ; and, from 
 the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was kept clear 
 by the Pope's Swiss Guard, who wear a quaint striped 
 surcoat, and striped tight legs, and carry halberds like
 
 SAINT PETER'S. 79 
 
 those which are usually shouldered by those theatrical 
 supernumeraries, who never can get off the stage fast 
 enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in 
 the enemy's camp after the open country, held by the 
 opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convul- 
 sion of Nature. 
 
 I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company 
 with a great many other gentlemen attired in black (no 
 other passport is necessary), and stood there, at my ease, 
 during the performance of mass. The singers were in 
 a crib of wire-work (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) 
 in one corner; and sung most atrociously. All about the 
 green carpet there was a slowly-moving crowd of people : 
 talking to each other: staring at the Pope through eye- 
 glasses : defrauding one another, in moments of partial 
 curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of pillars : 
 and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and 
 there were little knots of friars (Francescani, or Cappuc- 
 cini, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods), 
 making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of 
 higher degree, and having their humility gratified to the 
 utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and 
 left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and 
 umbrellas, arid stained garments : having trudged in from 
 the country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse 
 and heavy as their dress ; their dogged, stupid, monotonous 
 stare at all the glory and splendour having something in it 
 half miserable, and half ridiculous. 
 
 Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the 
 altar, was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red,
 
 80 SAINT PETER'S. 
 
 gold, purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers 
 from these went to and fro among the crowd, conversing 
 two and two, or giving and receiving introductions, and 
 exchanging salutations ; other functionaries in black gowns, 
 and other functionaries in court dresses, were similarly 
 engaged. In the midst of all these, and stealthy Jesuits 
 creeping in and out, and the extreme restlessness of the 
 Youth of England, who were perpetually wandering about, 
 some few steady persons in black cassocks, who had knelt 
 down with their faces to the wall, and were poring over 
 their missals, became, unintentionally, a sort of human 
 man-traps, and with their own devout legs tripped up 
 other people's by the dozen. 
 
 There was a great pile of candles lying down on the 
 floor near me, which a very old man in a rusty black gown 
 with an open-work tippet, like a summer ornament for 
 a fire-place in tissue paper, made himself very busy in 
 dispensing to all the ecclesiastics : one apiece. They 
 loitered about with these for some time, under their arms 
 like walking-sticks, or in their hands like truncheons. At 
 a certain period of the ceremony, however, each carried 
 his candle up to the Pope, laid it across his two knees to 
 be blessed, took it back again, and filed off. This was 
 done in a very attenuated procession, as you may suppose, 
 and occupied a long time. Not because it takes long to 
 bless a candle through and through, but because there 
 were so many candles to be blessed. At last they were 
 all blessed, and then they were all lighted ; and then the 
 Pope was taken up, chair and all, and carried round the 
 church.
 
 SAINT PETER'S. 8 I 
 
 On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thurs- 
 day, the Pope bestows his benediction on the people from 
 the balcony in front of St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday 
 was a day so bright and blue : so cloudless, balmy, won- 
 derfully bright : that all the previous bad weather van- 
 ished from the recollection in a moment. I had seen the 
 Thursday's benediction dropping damply on some hundreds 
 of umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then in all the 
 hundred fountains of Rome such fountains as they are ! 
 and, on this Sunday morning, they were running dia- 
 monds. The miles of miserable streets through which we 
 drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's dra- 
 goons : the Roman police on such occasions) were so full 
 of colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing 
 a faded aspect. The common people came out in their 
 gayest dresses ; the richer people in their smartest vehicles ; 
 Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor Fisherman 
 in their state carriages ; shabby magnificence flaunted its 
 threadbare liveries and tarnished cocked-hats in the sun ; 
 and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the 
 Great Piazza of St. Peter's. 
 
 One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at 
 least ! Yet there was ample room. How many carriages 
 were there I don't know ; yet there was room for them 
 too, and to spare. The great steps of the church were 
 densely crowded. There were many of the Contadini, 
 from Albano (who delight in red), in that part of the 
 square, and the mingling of bright colours in the crowd 
 was beautiful. Below the steps the troops were ranged. 
 In the magnificent proportions of the place, they looked
 
 82 SAINT PETER'S. 
 
 like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively peasants 
 from the neighbouring country, groups of pilgrims from 
 distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all nations, 
 made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects ; 
 and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and mak- 
 ing rainbow colours in the light, the two delicious foun- 
 tains welled and tumbled bountifully. 
 
 A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the 
 balcony ; and the sides of the great window were be- 
 decked with crimson drapery. An awning was stretched, 
 too, over the top, to screen the old man from the hot rays 
 of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up 
 to this window. In due time the chair was seen approach- 
 ing to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers 
 close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very 
 high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while 
 all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, 
 but not by any means the greater part, kneeled down 
 The guns upon the ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo 
 proclaimed, next moment, that the benediction was given { 
 drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms clashed; and the 
 great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, 
 and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like 
 party-coloured sand. . . . 
 
 But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the 
 full moon, what a sight it was to see the Great Square full 
 once more, and the whole church, from the cross to the 
 ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns, tracing out the 
 architecture, and winking and shining all round the colon- 
 nade of the Piazza. And what a sense of exultation, joy,
 
 SAINT PETER'S. 83 
 
 delight, it was, when the great bell struck half past seven 
 on the instant to behold one bright red mass of fire 
 soar gallantly from the top of the cupola to the extremest 
 summit of the cross, and, the moment it leaped into its 
 place, become the signal of a bursting out of countless 
 lights, as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from every 
 part of the gigantic church ; so that every cornice, capital, 
 and smallest ornament of stone expressed itself in fire : and 
 the black, solid groundwork of the enormous dome seemed 
 to grow transparent as an egg-shell ! 
 
 A train of gunpowder, an electric chain nothing could 
 be fired more suddenly and swiftly than this second illu- 
 mination : and when we had got away, and gone upon 
 a distant height, and looked toward it two hours after- 
 ward, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the calm 
 night like a jewel ! Not a line of its proportions wanting; 
 not an angle blunted ; not an atom of its radiance lost. 
 
 Pictures from Italy (London, 1845).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 I ARRIVED in Nancy Sunday evening at seven 
 o'clock; at eight the diligence started again. Was 
 I more fatigued ? Was the road better ? The fact is I 
 propped myself on the braces of the conveyance and slept. 
 Thus I arrived in Phalsbourg. 
 
 I woke up about four o'clock in the morning. A cool 
 breeze blew upon my face and the carriage was going down 
 the incline at a gallop, for we were descending the famous 
 Saverne. 
 
 It was one of the most beautiful impressions of my life. 
 The rain had ceased, the mists had been blown to the four 
 winds, and the crescent moon slipped rapidly through the 
 clouds and sailed freely through the azure space like a 
 barque on a little lake. A breeze which came from the 
 Rhine made the trees, which bordered the road, tremble. 
 From time to time they waved aside and permitted me to 
 see an indistinct and frightful abyss : in the foreground, a 
 forest beneath which the mountain disappeared ; below, 
 immense plains, meandering streams glittering like streaks 
 of lightning ; and in the background a dark, indistinct, 
 and heavy line the Black Forest a magical panorama
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 85 
 
 beheld by moonlight. Such incomplete visions have, per- 
 haps, more distinction than any others. They are dreams 
 which one can look upon and feel. I knew that my eyes 
 rested upon France, Germany, and Switzerland, Strasburg 
 with its spire, the Black Forest with its mountains, and the 
 Rhine with its windings ; I searched for everything and I 
 saw nothing. I have never experienced a more extraor- 
 dinary sensation. Add to that the hour, the journey, the 
 horses dashing down the precipice, the violent noise of the 
 wheels, the rattling of the windows, the frequent passage 
 through dark woods, the breath of the morning upon the 
 mountains, a gentle murmur heard through the valleys, and 
 the beauty of the sky, and you will understand what I felt. 
 Day is amazing in this valley ; night is fascinating. 
 
 The descent took a quarter of an hour. Half an hour 
 later came the twilight of morning; at my left the dawn 
 quickened the lower sky, a group of white houses with 
 black roofs became visible on the summit of a hill, the blue 
 of day began to overflow the horizon, several peasants 
 passed by going to their vines, a clear, cold, and violet light 
 struggled with the ashy glimmer of the moon, the constella- 
 tions paled, two of the Pleiades were lost to sight, the three 
 horses in our chariot descended rapidly towards their stable 
 with its blue doors, it was cold and I was frozen, for it had 
 become necessary to open the windows. A moment after- 
 wards the sun rose, and the first thing it showed to me was 
 the village notary shaving at a broken mirror under a red 
 calico curtain. 
 
 A league further on the peasants became more pictur- 
 esque and the waggons magnificent ; I counted in one thir-
 
 86 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 
 
 teen mules harnessed far apart by long chains. You felt 
 you were approaching Strasburg, the old German city. 
 
 Galloping furiously, we traversed Wasselonne, a long 
 narrow trench of houses strangled in the last gorge of the 
 Vosges by the side of Strasburg. There I caught a 
 glimpse of one facade of the Cathedral, surmounted by 
 three round and pointed towers in juxtaposition, which 
 the movement of the diligence brought before my vision 
 brusquely and then took it away, jolting it about as if it 
 were a scene in the theatre. 
 
 Suddenly, at a turn in the road the mist lifted and I saw 
 the Munster. It was six o'clock in the morning. The 
 enormous Cathedral, which is the highest building that the 
 hand of man has made since the great Pyramid, was clearly 
 defined against a background of dark mountains whose 
 forms were magnificent and whose valleys were flooded 
 with sunshine. The work of God made for man and the 
 work of man made for God, the mountain and the Cathe- 
 dral contesting for grandeur. I have never seen anything 
 more imposing. 
 
 Yesterday I visited the Cathedral. The Munster is 
 truly a marvel. The doors of the church are beautiful, par- 
 ticularly the Roman porch, the facade contains some superb 
 figures on horseback, the rose-window is beautifully -rat, 
 and the entire face of the Cathedral is a poem, wisely ci/m- 
 posed. But the real triumph of the Cathedral is the spire. 
 It is a true tiara of stone with its crown and its cross. It 
 is a prodigy of grandeur and delicacy. I have seen 
 Chartres, and I have seen Antwerp, but Strasburg pleases 
 me best.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 8/ 
 
 The church has never been finished. The apse, 
 miserably mutilated, has been restored according to that 
 imbecile, the Cardinal de Rohan, of the necklace fame. 
 It is hideous. The window they have selected is like 
 a modern carpet. It is ignoble. The other windows, 
 with the exception of some added panes, are beautiful, 
 notably the great rose-window. All the church is shame- 
 fully whitewashed ; some of the sculptures have been 
 restored with some little taste. This Cathedral has been 
 affected by all styles. The pulpit is a little construction of 
 the Fifteenth Century, of florid Gothic of a design and style 
 that are ravishing. Unfortunately they have gilded it in 
 the most stupid manner. The baptismal font is of the 
 same period and is restored in a superior manner. It is a 
 vase surrounded by foliage in sculpture, the most marvellous 
 in the world. In a dark chapel at the side there are two 
 tombs. One, of a bishop of the time of Louis V., is of 
 that formidable character which Gothic architecture always 
 expresses. The sepulchre is in two floors. The bishop, 
 in pontifical robes and with his mitre on his head, is lying 
 in his bed under a canopy ; he is sleeping. Above and on 
 the foot of the bed in the shadow, you perceive an enormous 
 stone in which two enormous iron rings are imbedded ; that 
 is the lid of the tomb. You see nothing more. The 
 architects of the Sixteenth Century showed you the corpse 
 (you remember the tombs of Brou?); those of the Four- 
 teenth concealed it : that is even more terrifying. Nothing 
 could be more sinister than these two rings. . . . 
 
 The tomb of which I have spoken is in the left arm 
 of the cross. In the right arm there is a chapel, which
 
 88 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 
 
 scaffolding prevented me from seeing. At the side of this 
 chapel runs a balustrade of the Fifteenth Century, leaning 
 against a wall. A sculptured and painted figure leans 
 against this balustrade and seems to be admiring a pillar 
 surrounded by statues placed one over the other, which is 
 directly opposite and which has a marvellous effect. Tra- 
 dition says that this figure represents the first architect of 
 the Miinster Erwyn von Steinbach. . . . 
 
 I did not see the famous astronomical clock, which is in 
 the nave and which is a charming little building of the 
 Sixteenth Century. They were restoring it and it was 
 covered with a scaffolding of boards. 
 
 After having seen the church, I made the ascent of the 
 steeple. You know my taste for perpendicular trips. I 
 was very careful not to miss the highest spire in the world. 
 The Miinster of Strasburg is nearly five hundred feet high. 
 It belongs to the family of spires which are open-worked 
 stairways. 
 
 It is delightful to wind about in that monstrous mass of 
 stone, filled with air and light hollowed out like zjoujou de 
 Dieppe, a lantern as well as a pyramid, which vibrates and 
 palpitates with every breath of the wind. I mounted as 
 far as the vertical stairs. As I went up I met a visitor 
 who was descending, pale and trembling, and half-carried 
 by the guide. There is, however, no danger. The danger 
 begins where I stopped, where the spire, properly so-called, 
 begins. Four open-worked spiral stairways, corresponding 
 to the four vertical towers, unroll in an entanglement of 
 delicate, slender, and beautifully-worked stone, supported 
 by the spire, every angle of which it follows, winding until
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 89 
 
 it reaches the crown at about thirty feet from the lantern 
 surmounted by a cross which forms the summit of the 
 bell-tower. The steps of these stairways are very steep 
 and very narrow, and become narrower and narrower as 
 you ascend, until there is barely ledge enough on which 
 to place your foot. 
 
 In this way you have to climb a hundred feet which 
 brings you four hundred feet above the street. There are 
 no hand-rails, or such slight ones that they are not worth 
 speaking about. The entrance to this stairway is closed 
 by an iron grille. They will not open this grille without 
 a special permission from the Mayor of Strasburg, and 
 nobody is allowed to ascend it unless accompanied by two 
 workmen of the roof, who tie a rope around your body, 
 the end of which they fasten, in proportion as you ascend, 
 to the various iron bars which bind the mullions. Only a 
 week ago three German women, a mother and her two 
 daughters, made this ascent. Nobody but the workmen 
 of the roof, who repair the bell-tower, are allowed to go 
 beyond the lantern. Here there is not even a stairway, 
 but only a simple iron ladder. 
 
 From where I stopped the view was wonderful. Stras- 
 burg lies at your feet, the old town with its dentellated 
 gables, and its large roofs encumbered with chimneys, and 
 its towers and churches as picturesque as any town of 
 Flanders. The III and the Rhine, two lovely rivers, 
 enliven this dark mass with their plashing waters, so clear 
 and green. Beyond the walls, as far as the eye can reach, 
 stretches an immense country richly wooded and dotted 
 with villages. The Rhine, which flows within a league
 
 90 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 
 
 of the town, winds through the landscape. In walking 
 around this bell-tower you see three chains of mountains 
 the ridges of the Black Forest on the north, the Vosges on 
 the west, and the Alps in the centre. . . . 
 
 The sun willingly makes a festival for those who are 
 upon great heights. At the moment I reached the top of 
 the Munster, it suddenly scattered the clouds, with which 
 the sky had been covered all day, and turned the smoke of 
 the city and all the mists of the valley to rosy flames, while 
 it showered a golden rain on Saverne, whose magnificent 
 slope I saw twelve leagues towards the horizon, through 
 the most resplendent haze. Behind me a large cloud 
 dropped rain upon the Rhine ; the gentle hum of the town 
 was brought to me by some puffs of wind; the bells 
 echoed from a hundred villages ; some little red and white 
 fleas, which were really a herd of cattle, grazed in 
 the meadow to the right ; other little blue and red fleas, 
 which were really gunners, performed field-exercise in the 
 polygon to the left; a black beetle, which was the dili- 
 gence, crawled along the road to Metz; and to the north 
 on the brow of the hill the castle of the Grand Duke of 
 Baden sparkled in a flash of light like a precious stone. I 
 went from one tower to another, looking by turns upon 
 France, Switzerland, and Germany, all illuminated by the 
 same ray of sunlight. 
 
 Each tower looks upon a different country. 
 
 Descending, I stopped for a few moments at one of the 
 high doors of the tower-stairway. On either side of this 
 door are the stone effigies of the two architects of the 
 Munster. These two great poets are represented as kneel-
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG. 91 
 
 ing and looking behind them upward as if they were lost 
 in astonishment at the height of their work. I put myself 
 in the same posture and remained thus for several minutes. 
 At the platform they made me write my name in a book j 
 after which I went away. 
 
 Le RAin (Paris, 1842).
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 
 
 GWENDOLIN TRENCH GASCOIGNE. 
 
 THE " Shway Dagohn " at Rangoon, or Golden 
 Pagoda, is one of the most ancient and venerated 
 shrines which exists, and it certainly should hold a high 
 place among the beautiful and artistic monuments of the 
 world, for it is exquisite in design and form. Its proportions 
 and height are simply magnificent; wide at the base, it 
 shoots up 370 feet, tapering gradually away until crowned 
 by its airy golden Htee, or umbrella-shaped roof. This 
 delicate little structure is studded profusely with precious 
 stones and hung round with scores of tiny gold and jewelled 
 bells, which, when swung lightly by the soft breeze, give 
 out the tenderest and most mystic of melodies. The Htee 
 was the gift of King Mindohn-Min, and it is said to have 
 cost the enormous sum of fifty thousand pounds. 
 
 The great pagoda is believed by the faithful to have been 
 erected in 588 B. C. ; but for many centuries previous to 
 that date the spot where the pagoda now stands was held 
 sacred, as the relics of three preceding Buddhas were dis- 
 covered there when the two Talaing brothers (the founders 
 of the Great Pagoda) brought the eight holy hairs of Buddha 
 to the Thehngoothara Hill, the spot where the pagoda now 
 stands. Shway Yoe (Mr. Scott) says that it also possesses
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 93 
 
 in the Tapanahteik, or relic chamber, of the pagoda the 
 drinking cup of Kaukkathan, the "thengan," or robe, of 
 Gawnagohng, and the "toungway," or staff, of Kathapah. 
 It is therefore so holy that pilgrims visit this shrine from far 
 countries, such as Siam, and even the Corea. The height 
 of the pagoda was originally only twenty-seven feet, but it 
 has attained its present proportions by being constantly 
 encased in bricks. It is a marvellously striking structure, 
 raising up its delicate, glittering head from among a wondrous 
 company of profusely carved shrines and small temples, 
 whose colour and cunning workmanship make fit attendants 
 to this stupendous monument. 
 
 It is always a delight to one's eyes to gaze upon its 
 glittering spire, always a fairy study of artistic enchantment ; 
 but perhaps if it has a moment when it seems clothed with 
 peculiar and almost ethereal, mystic attraction, it is in the 
 early morning light, when the air has been bathed by dew- 
 drops and is of crystal clearness, and when that scorching 
 Eastern ' sun has only just begun to send forth his burn- 
 ing rays. I would say go and gaze on the pagoda at the 
 awakening hour, standing there on the last spur of the Pegu 
 Hills, and framed by a luxuriant tropical bower of foliage. 
 The light scintillates and glistens like a myriad of diamonds 
 upon its golden surface, and the dreamy beauty of its 
 glorious personality seems to strike one dumb with deep, 
 unspoken reverence and admiration. 
 
 Nestling on one side of it are a number of Pohn-gyee 
 Kyoung (monasteries) and rest-houses for pilgrims. All 
 these are quaint, carved, and gilded edifices from which 
 you see endless yellow-robed monks issuing. The monas-
 
 94 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 
 
 teries situated at the foot of the great pagoda seem peculiarly 
 harmonious, as if they would seek protection and shekel 
 beneath the wing of their great mother church. 
 
 The pagoda itself is approached on four sides by long 
 flights of steps, but the southern is the principal entrance 
 and that most frequented. At the base of this stand two 
 gigantic lions made of brick and plastered over, and also 
 decorated with coloured paint ; their office is to guard the 
 sacred place from nats (evil spirits) and demons, the fear of 
 which seems ever to haunt the Burman's mind and be a 
 perpetual and endless torment to him. From this entrance 
 . the steps of the pagoda rise up and are enclosed by a series 
 of beautifully carved teak roofs, supported by wood and 
 masonry pillars. There are several quaint frescoes of 
 Buddha and saints depicted upon the ceiling of these roofs, 
 but the steps which they cover are very rugged and irregular. 
 It is, indeed, a pilgrimage to ascend them, although the 
 foreigner is allowed to retain his shoes. The faithful, of 
 course, leave theirs at the foot of the steps. 
 
 The entrance to the pagoda inspires one with a maze of 
 conflicting emotions as one stands before it ; joy, sorrow, 
 pity, wonder, admiration follow so quickly upon each other 
 that they mingle into an indescribable sense of bewilderment. 
 The first sight of the entrance is gorgeous, full of Eastern 
 colour and charm ; and then sorrow and horror fill one's 
 heart, as one's eyes fall suddenly upon the rows of lepers 
 who line the way to the holy place. Each is a terrible, 
 gruesome sight, a mass of ghastly corruption and disease, 
 and each holds out with maimed, distorted hands a little tin 
 vessel for your alms.
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 95 
 
 Why should Providence allow so awful an affliction as 
 leprosy to fall upon His creatures ? Could any crime, 
 however heinous, be foul enough for such a punishment ? 
 These are the thoughts that flit through your brain; and 
 then, as you pass on, wonder takes their place at the quaint 
 beauty of the edifice, and lastly intense and wild admiration 
 takes entire possession of you, and all is forgotten in the 
 glorious nearness of the great Golden Pagoda. 
 
 On either side of the rugged steps there are rows of most 
 picturesque little stalls, at which are sold endless offerings 
 to be made to Buddha flowers of every shade and hue, 
 fruit, glowing bunches of yellow plantains and pepia, candles, 
 wondrous little paper devices and flags, and, lastly, the gold 
 leaf, which the faithful delight to place upon the beloved 
 pagoda. It is looked upon as a great act of merit to expend 
 money in thus decorating the much loved and venerated 
 shrine. . . . 
 
 As you mount slowly up the steep uneven steps of the 
 pagoda, turn for a moment and glance back at the scene. 
 It is a pagoda feast, and the place is crowded with the 
 faithful from all parts, who have come from far and near to 
 present offerings and perform their religious observances. 
 It is an entrancing picture, a marvel of colour and pictur- 
 esqueness see, the stalls are laid out with their brightest 
 wares, and the crowd is becoming greater every moment. 
 Look at that group of laughing girls, they have donned their 
 most brilliant tamehns, and dainty shawls, and the flowers 
 in their hair are arranged with infinite coquettishness ; 
 behind them are coming a dazzling company of young men 
 in pasohs of every indescribable shade ; perchance they are
 
 96 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 
 
 the lovers of the girls whom they are following so eagerly, 
 and they are bearing fruit and flowers to present to Buddha. 
 Beyond them again are some yellow-robed Pohn-gyees ; 
 they are supposed to shade their eyes from looking upon 
 women with their large lotus-shaped fans, but to-day they are 
 gazing about them more than is permitted, and are casting 
 covert glances of admiration on some of those dainty little 
 maidens. Behind them again are a white-robed company, 
 they are nuns, and their shroud-like garments flow around 
 them in long graceful folds. Their hair is cut short, and 
 they have not so joyous an expression upon their faces as 
 the rest of the community, and they toil up the steep steps 
 a trifle wearily. Behind them again are a little toddling 
 group of children, with their little hands full of bright 
 glowing flowers and fruits. 
 
 Shall we follow in the crowd and see where the steps 
 lead ? It is a wondrous study, the effects of light and 
 shade ; look at that sunbeam glinting in through the roof 
 and laying golden fingers on the Pohn-gyees' yellow robes, 
 and turning the soft-hued fluttering silks into brilliant 
 luminous spots of light. 
 
 At last we have arrived at the summit! Let us pause 
 and take breath morally and physically before walking 
 round the great open-paved space in the centre of which 
 rises the great and glorious pagoda. There it stands tow- 
 ering up and up, as though it would fain touch the blue 
 heaven; it is surrounded by a galaxy of smaller pagodas, 
 which seem to be clustering lovingly near their great high 
 priest ; around these again are large carved kneeling 
 elephants, and deep urn-shaped vessels, which are placed
 
 THE SHWAY DAGOHN. 97 
 
 there to receive the offerings of food brought to Buddha. 
 The crows and the pariah dogs which haunt the place will 
 soon demolish these devout offerings, and grow fat upon 
 them as their appearance testifies ; but this, curiously, does 
 not seem in the least to annoy the giver. He has no objec- 
 tion to seeing a fat crow or a mangy dog gorging itself 
 upon his offering, as the feeding of any animal is an act of 
 merit, which is the one thing of importance to a Burman. 
 The more acts of merit that he can accomplish in this life, 
 the more, rapid his incarnations will be in the next. 
 
 There are draped about the small golden pagodas and 
 round the base of the large one endless quaint pieces of 
 woven silk , these are offerings from women, and must be 
 completed in one night without a break. 
 
 On the outer circle of this large paved space are a multi- 
 tude of shrines, enclosing hundreds of images of Buddha. 
 You behold Buddha standing, you behold him sitting, you 
 behold him reclining ; you see him large, you see him 
 small, you see him medium size ; you see him in brass, in 
 wood, in stone, and in marble. Many of these statues are 
 simply replicas of each other, but some differ slightly, though 
 the cast of features is always the same, a placid, amiable, 
 benign countenance, with very long lobes to the ears, which 
 in Burmah are supposed to indicate the great truthfulness 
 of the person who possesses them. Most of the images 
 have suspended over them the royal white umbrella, which 
 was one of the emblems of Burma, and only used in 
 Thebaw's time to cover Buddha, the king, and the lord 
 white elephant. 
 
 Among Pagodas and Fair Ladies (London, 1896).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA. 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 QUITTING the Palazzo, and threading narrow 
 streets, paved with brick and overshadowed with 
 huge empty palaces, we reach the highest of the 
 three hills on which Siena stands, and see before us the 
 Duomo. This church is the most purely Gothic of all 
 Italian cathedrals designed by national architects. Together 
 with that of Orvieto, it stands to show what the unassisted 
 genius of the Italians could produce, when under the 
 empire of mediaeval Christianity and before the advent of 
 the neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of marble, and 
 overlaid, inside and out, with florid ornaments of exquisite 
 beauty. There are no flying buttresses, no pinnacles, no 
 deep and fretted doorways, such as form the charm of 
 French and English architecture ; but instead of this, the 
 lines of party-coloured marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of 
 foliage, the mosaics and the frescoes which meet the eye in 
 every direction, satisfy our sense of variety, producing most 
 agreeable combinations of blending hues and harmoniously 
 connected forms. The chief fault which offends against 
 our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal lines, 
 both in the construction of the facade, and also in the 
 internal decoration. This single fact sufficiently proves
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA. 99 
 
 that the Italians had never seized the true idea of Gothic 
 or aspiring architecture. But, allowing for this original 
 defect, we feel that the Cathedral of Siena combines solem- 
 nity and splendour to a degree almost unrivalled. Its dome 
 is another point in which the instinct of Italian architects 
 has led them to adhere to the genius of their ancestral art 
 rather than to follow the principles of Gothic design. The 
 dome is Etruscan and Roman, native to the soil, and only 
 by a kind of violence adapted to the character of pointed 
 architecture. Yet the builders of Siena have shown what a 
 glorious element of beauty might have been added to our 
 Northern cathedrals, had the idea of infinity which our 
 ancestors expressed by long continuous lines, by complex- 
 ities of interwoven aisles, and by multitudinous aspiring 
 pinnacles, been carried out into vast spaces of aerial cupolas, 
 completing and embracing and covering the whole like 
 heaven. The Duomo, as it now stands, forms only part 
 of a vast original design. On entering we are amazed to 
 hear that this church, which looks so large, from the beauty 
 of its proportions, the intricacy of its ornaments, and the 
 interlacing of its columns, is but the transept of the old 
 building lengthened a little, and surmounted by a cupola 
 and campanile. Yet such is the fact. Soon after its com- 
 mencement a plague swept over Italy, nearly depopulated 
 Siena, and reduced the town to penury for want of men. 
 The Cathedral, which, had it been accomplished, would 
 have surpassed all Gothic churches south of the Alps, 
 remained a ruin. A fragment of the nave still stands, 
 enabling us to judge of its extent. The eastern wall joins 
 what was to have been the transept, measuring the mighty
 
 IOO THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA. 
 
 space which would have been enclosed by marble vaults 
 and columns delicately wrought. The sculpture on the 
 eastern door shows with what magnificence the Sienese 
 designed to ornament this portion of their temple ; while 
 the southern fa$ade rears itself aloft above the town, like 
 those high arches which testify to the past splendour of 
 Glastonbury Abbey ; but the sun streams through the 
 broken windows, and the walls are encumbered with hovels 
 and stables and the refuse of surrounding streets. One 
 most remarkable feature of the internal decoration is a line 
 of heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the 
 lower arches. Larger than life, white solemn faces, they 
 Jean, each from his separate niche, crowned with the triple 
 tiara, and labelled with the name he bore. Their accumu- 
 lated majesty brings the whole past history of the Church 
 into the presence of its living members. A bishop walking 
 up the nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the 
 waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or in war. 
 Of course these portraits are imaginary for the most part; 
 but the artists have contrived to vary their features and 
 expression with great skill. 
 
 Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the Cathe- 
 dral. It is inlaid with a kind of tarsia work in stone, not 
 unlike that which Baron Triqueti used in his " Marmor 
 Homericum " less elaborately decorative, but even more 
 artistic and subordinate to" architectural effect than the 
 baron's mosaic. Some of these compositions are as old as 
 the cathedral ; others are the work of Beccafumi and his 
 scholars. They represent, in the liberal spirit of mediaeval 
 Christianity, the history of the Church before the Incarna-
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA. IOI 
 
 tion. Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls meet us at the 
 doorway : in the body of the church we find the mighty 
 deeds of the old Jewish heroes of Moses and Samson 
 and Joshua and Judith. Independently of the artistic 
 beauty of the designs, of the skill with which men and 
 horses are drawn in the most difficult attitudes, of the 
 dignity of some single figures, and of the vigour and sim- 
 plicity of the larger compositions, a special interest attaches 
 to this pavement in connection with the twelfth canto of 
 the " Purgatorio." Did Dante ever tread these stones and 
 meditate upon their sculptured histories ? That is what we 
 cannot say; but we read how he journeyed through the 
 plain of Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied floor, 
 how " morti i morti, e i vivi parean vivi," how he saw 
 " Nimrod at the foot of his great work, confounded, gazing 
 at the people who were proud with him." The strong and 
 simple outlines of the pavement correspond to the few 
 words of the poet. Bending over these pictures and trying 
 to learn their lesson, with the thought of Dante in our 
 mind, the tones of an organ, singularly sweet and mellow, 
 fall upon our ears, and we remember how he heard the Te 
 Deum sung within the gateway of repentance. 
 
 Sketches in Italy and Greece (London, 1874).
 
 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN. 
 GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 LOUVAIN is in a certain sense the mother city of 
 Brussels. Standing on its own little navigable river, 
 the Dyle, it was, till the end of the Fourteenth Century, 
 the capital of the Counts and of the Duchy of Brabant. 
 It had a large population of weavers, engaged in the cloth 
 trade. Here, as elsewhere, the weavers formed the chief 
 bulwark of freedom in the population. In 1378, however, 
 after a popular rising, Duke Wenseslaus besieged and 
 conquered the city ; and the tyrannical sway of the nobles, 
 whom he re-introduced, aided by the rise of Ghent, or 
 later, of Antwerp, drove away trade from the city. Many 
 of the weavers emigrated to Holland and England, where 
 they helped to establish the woollen industry. . . . 
 
 As you emerge from the station, you come upon a small 
 Place, adorned with a statue (by Geefs) of Sylvain van de 
 Weyer, a revolutionary of 1830, and long Belgian minister 
 to England. Take the long straight street up which the 
 statue looks. This leads direct to the Grand' Place, the 
 centre of the town, whence the chief streets radiate in 
 every direction, the ground-plan recalling that of a Roman 
 city.
 
 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN.
 
 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN. IO3 
 
 The principal building in the Grand' Place is the Hotel 
 de Ville, standing out with three sides visible from the 
 Place, and probably the finest civic building in Belgium. 
 It is of very florid late-Gothic architecture, between 1448 
 and 1463. Begin first with the left facade, exhibiting 
 three main storeys, with handsome Gothic windows. Above 
 come a gallery, and then a gable-end, flanked by octagonal 
 turrets, and bearing a similar turret on its summit. In 
 this centre of the gable is a little projecting balcony of the 
 kind so common on Belgic civic buildings. The archi- 
 tecture of the niches and turrets is of very fine florid 
 Gothic, in better taste than that at Ghent of nearly the 
 same period. The statues which fill the niches are modern. 
 Those of the first storey represent personages of impor- 
 tance in the local history of the city ; those of the second, 
 the various mediaeval guilds or trades ; those of the third, 
 the Counts of Louvain and Dukes of Brabant of all ages. 
 The bosses or corbels which support the statues, are 
 carved with scriptural scenes in high relief. I give the 
 subjects of a few (beginning Left) : the reader must 
 decipher the remainder for himself. The Court of 
 Heaven : The Fall of the Angels into the visible Jaws 
 of Hell : Adam and Eve in the Garden : The Expul- 
 sion from Paradise : The Death of Abel, with quaint 
 rabbits escaping : The Drunkenness of Noah : Abraham 
 and Lot : etc. 
 
 The main facade has an entrance staircase, and two 
 portals in the centre, above which are figures of St. Peter 
 (Left) and Our Lady and Child (Right), the former in 
 compliment to the patron of the church opposite. This
 
 IO4 THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN. 
 
 facade has three storeys, decorated with Gothic windows, 
 and capped by a gallery parapet, above which rises the 
 high-pitched roof, broken by several quaint small windows. 
 At either end are the turrets of the gable, with steps to 
 ascend them. The rows of statues represent as before (in 
 four tiers), persons of local distinction, mediaeval guilds 
 and the Princes who have ruled Brabant and Louvain. 
 Here again the sculptures beneath the bosses should be 
 closely inspected. Among the most conspicuous are the 
 Golden Calf, the Institution of Sacrifices in the Taber- 
 nacle, Balaam's Ass, Susannah and the Elders, etc. 
 
 The gable-end to the Right, ill seen from the narrow 
 street, resembles in its features the one opposite it, but 
 this facade is even finer than the others. 
 
 The best general view is obtained from the door of 
 St. Pierre, or near either corner of the Place directly 
 opposite. 
 
 Cities of Belgium (London, 1897).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE. 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 THE Cathedral of Seville is isolated in the centre of 
 a large square, yet its grandeur may be measured 
 by a single glance. I immediately thought of the famous 
 phrase in the decree uttered by the Chapter of the primitive 
 church on July 8, 1401, regarding the building of the new 
 Cathedral : " Let us build a monument which shall cause 
 posterity to think we must have been mad." These 
 reverend canons did not fail in their intention. But to 
 fully appreciate this we must enter. The exterior of the 
 Cathedral is imposing and magnificent ; but less so than 
 the interior. There is no facade : a high wall encloses the 
 building like a fortress. It is useless to turn and gaze 
 upon it, for you will never succeed in impressing a single 
 outline upon your mind, which, like the introduction to 
 a book, will give you a clear idea of the work ; you admire 
 and you exclaim more than once : " It is immense ! " but 
 you are not satisfied ; and you hasten to enter the church, 
 hoping that you may receive there a more complete senti- 
 ment of admiration. 
 
 On entering you are stunned, you feel as if you are lost 
 in an abyss ; and for several moments you can only let 
 your glance wander over these immense curves in this im- 
 mense space to assure yourself that your eyes and your
 
 106 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE. 
 
 imagination are not deceiving you. Then you approach 
 a column, measure it, and contemplate the others from 
 a distance : they are as large as towers and yet they seem 
 so slender that you tremble to think they support the 
 edifice. With a rapid glance you look at them from pave- 
 ment to ceiling and it seems as if you could almost count 
 the moments that it takes the eye to rise with them. 
 There are five naves, each one of which might constitute 
 a church. In the central one another cathedral could 
 easily lift its high head surmounted by a cupola and bell- 
 tower. Altogether there are sixty-eight vaults, so bold 
 that it seems to you they expand and rise very slowly 
 while you are looking at them. Everything in this Cathe- 
 dral is enormous. The principal altar, placed in the centre 
 of the great nave, is so high that it almost touches the 
 vaulted ceiling, and seems to be an altar constructed for 
 giant priests to whose knees only would ordinary altars 
 reach ; the paschal candle seems like the mast of a ship j 
 and the bronze candlestick which holds it, is a museum of 
 sculpture and carving which would in itself repay a day's 
 visit. The chapels are worthy of the church, for in them 
 are lavished the chefs cTceuvre of sixty-seven sculptors and 
 thirty-eight painters. Montanes, Zurbaran, Murillo, Valdes, 
 Herrera, Boldan, Roelas, and Campafia have left there 
 a thousand immortal traces of their hands. St. Ferdi- 
 nand's Chapel, containing the sepulchres of this king and 
 of his wife Beatrice, of Alphonso the Wise, the celebrated 
 minister Florida Blanca, and other illustrious personages, 
 is one of the richest and most beautiful. The body of 
 King Ferdinand, who delivered Seville from the dominion
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE. 
 
 of the Arabs, clothed in his military dress, with the crown 
 and the royal mantle, reposes in a crystal casket covered 
 with a veil. On one side is the sword which he carried 
 on the day of his entrance into Seville ; and on the other 
 his staff, the symbol of command. In this same chapel 
 a little ivory wand which the king carried to the wars, 
 and other relics of great value are preserved. In the 
 other chapels there are large marble altars, Gothic tombs 
 and statues in stone, in wood and silver, enclosed in large 
 caskets of silver with their bodies and hands covered with 
 diamonds and rubies ; and some marvellous pictures, which, 
 unfortunately, the feeble light, falling from the high win- 
 dows, does not illuminate sufficiently to let the admirer see 
 their entire beauty. 
 
 But after a detailed examination of these chapels, paint- 
 ings, and sculptures, you always return to admire the 
 Cathedral's grand, and, if I may be allowed to say it, 
 formidable aspect. After having glanced towards those 
 giddy heights, the eye and mind are fatigued by the effort. 
 And the abundant images correspond to the grandeur of 
 the basilica ; immense angels and monstrous heads of 
 cherubim with wings as large as the sails of a ship and 
 enormous floating mantles of blue. The impression that 
 this Cathedral produces is entirely religious, but it is not 
 sad ; it creates a feeling which carries the mind into the 
 infinite space and silence where Leopardi's thoughts were 
 plunged ; it creates a sentiment full of desire and boldness ; 
 it produces that shiver which is experienced at the brink 
 of a precipice, that distress and confusion of great 
 thoughts, that divine terror of the infinite. . . .
 
 108 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE. 
 
 It is needless to speak of the Feasts of Holy Week : they 
 are famous throughout the world, and people from all parts 
 of Europe still flock to them. 
 
 But the most curious privilege of the Cathedral of 
 Seville is the dance de los seises, which is performed every 
 evening at twilight for eight consecutive days after the 
 Feast of Corpus Domini. 
 
 As I found myself in Seville at this time I went to see 
 it. From what I had heard I expected a scandalous 
 pasquinade, and I entered the church quite ready to be 
 indignant at the profanation of a holy place. The church 
 was dark ; only the large altar was illuminated, and a crowd 
 of women kneeled before it. Several priests were sitting 
 to the right and left of the altar. At a signal given by one 
 of the priests, sweet music from violins broke the profound 
 silence of the church, and two rows of children moved 
 forward in the steps of a contre-danse, and began to separate, 
 interlace, break away, and again unite with a thousand 
 graceful turnings ; then everybody joined in a melodious 
 and charming hymn which resounded in the vast Cathedral 
 like a choir of angels' voices ; and in the next moment 
 they began to accompany their dance and song with 
 castanets. No religious ceremony ever touched me like 
 this. It is out of the question to describe the effect pro- 
 duced by these little voices under the immense vaults, 
 these little creatures at the foot of this enormous altar, 
 this modest and almost humble dance, this antique cos- 
 tume, this kneeling multitude, and the surrounding dark- 
 ness. I went out of the church with as serene a soul as 
 if I had been praying. . . .
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE. 109 
 
 The famous Giralda of the Cathedral of Seville is an 
 ancient Arabian tower, constructed, according to tradition, 
 in the year one thousand, on the plan of the architect 
 Huevar, the inventor of algebra; it was modified in its 
 upper part after the expulsion of the Moors and converted 
 into a Christian bell-tower, yet it has always preserved 
 its Arabian air and has always been prouder of the vanished 
 standard of the conquered race than the Cross which the 
 victors have placed upon it. This monument produces 
 a novel sensation : it makes you smile : it is as enormous 
 and imposing as an Egyptian pyramid and at the same 
 time as gay and graceful as a garden kiosk. It is a square 
 brick tower of a beautiful rose-colour, bare up to a certain 
 height, and then ornamented all the way up by little 
 Moorish twin-windows displayed here and there at hap- 
 hazard and provided with little balconies which produce 
 a very pretty effect. Upon the story, where formerly a 
 roof of various colours rested, surmounted by an iron shaft 
 which supported four enormous golden balls, the Christian 
 bell-tower rises in three stories; the first containing the 
 bells, the second enclosed by a balustrade, and the third 
 forming a kind of cupola on which turns, like a weather- 
 vane, a statue of gilt bronze representing Faith, holding 
 a palm in one hand and in the other a standard visible at 
 a long distance from Seville, and which, when touched by 
 the sun, glitters like an enormous ruby imbedded in the 
 crown of a Titan king who rules the entire valley of 
 Andalusia with his glance. 
 
 La Spagna (Florence, 1873).
 
 WINDSOR CASTLE. 
 
 WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. 
 
 A STEEP chalk bluff", starting from a river margin with 
 the heave and dominance of a tidal wave is Castle 
 Hill, now crowned and mantled by the Norman keep, the 
 royal house, the chapel of St. George, and the depending 
 gardens, terraces, and slopes. 
 
 Trees beard the slope and tuft the ridge. Live waters 
 curl and murmur at the base. In front, low-lying meadows 
 curtsey to the royal hill. Outward, on the flanks, to east 
 and west, run screens of elm and oak, of beech and poplar ; 
 here, sinking into clough and dell : there mounting up to 
 smiling sward and wooded knoll. Far in the rear lie 
 forest glades, with walks and chases, losing themselves in 
 distant heath and holt. By the edges of dripping wells, 
 which bear the names of queen and saint, stand aged oaks, 
 hoary with time and rich in legend : patriarchs of the 
 forest, wedded to the readers of all nations by immortal 
 verse. 
 
 A gentle eminence, the Castle Hill springs from the 
 bosom of a typical English scene. 
 
 Crowning a verdant ridge, the Norman keep looks 
 northward on a wide and wooded level, stretching over
 
 i -
 
 WINDSOR CASTLE. Ill 
 
 many shires, tawny with corn and rye, bright with abundant 
 pasture, and the red and white of kine and sheep, while 
 here again the landscape is embrowned with groves and 
 parks. The stream curves softly past your feet, uncon- 
 scious of the capital, unruffled by the tide. Beyond the 
 river bank lie open meadows, out of which start up the 
 pinnacles of Eton College, the Plantagenet school and 
 cloister, whence for twenty-one reigns the youth of England 
 have been trained for court and camp, the staff, the mitre, 
 and the marble chair. Free from these pinnacles, the eye 
 is caught by darksome clump, and antique tower, and 
 distant height ; each darksome clump a haunted wood, 
 each antique tower an elegy in stone, each distant height 
 a stoned and romantic hill. That darksome clump is 
 Burnham wood ; this antique tower is Stoke ; yon distant 
 heights are Hampstead Heath and Richmond Park. Nearer 
 to the eye stand Farnham Royal, Upton park, and Langley 
 Marsh ; the homes of famous men, the sceneries of great 
 events. 
 
 Swing round to east or south, and still the eye falls 
 lovingly on household spots. There, beyond Datchet ferry, 
 stood the lodge of Edward the Confessor, and around 
 his dwelling spread the hunting-grounds of Alfred and 
 other Saxon kings. Yon islet in the Thames is Magna 
 Charta Island ; while the open field, below the reach, is 
 Runnymede. 
 
 The heights all round the Norman keep are capped 
 with fame one hallowed by a saint, another crowned 
 with song. Here is St. Leonard's hill ; and yonder, rising 
 over Runnymede, is Cooper's hill. Saints, poets, kings
 
 112 WINDSOR CASTLE. 
 
 and queens, divide the royalties in almost equal shares. 
 St. George is hardly more a presence in the place than 
 Chaucer and Shakespeare. Sanctity and poetry are every- 
 where about us; in the royal chapel, by the river-side, 
 among the forest oaks, and even in the tavern yards. 
 Chaucer and Shakespeare have a part In Windsor hardly 
 less pronounced than that of Edward and Victoria, that of 
 St. Leonard and St. George. 
 
 Windsor was river born and river named. The stream 
 is winding, serpentine; the bank by which it rolls was 
 called the " winding shore." The fact, common to all 
 countries, gives a name which is common to all languages. 
 Snakes, dragons, serpentines, are names of winding rivers 
 in every latitude. There is a Snake river in Utah, another 
 Snake river in Oregon ; there is a Drach river in France, 
 another Drach river in Switzerland. The straits between 
 Paria and Trinidad is the Dragon's Mouth ; the outfall of 
 Lake Chiriqui is also the Dragon's Mouth. In the Morea, 
 in Majorca, in Ionia, there are Dragons. There is a 
 Serpent islet off the Danube, and a Serpentaria in Sardinia. 
 We have a modern Serpentine in Hyde Park ! 
 
 Windsor, born of that winding shore-line, found in after 
 days her natural patron in St. George. 
 
 With one exception, all the Castle builders were men 
 and women of English birth and English taste ; Henry 
 Beauclerc, Henry of Winchester, Edward of Windsor, 
 Edward of York, Henry the Seventh, Queen Elizabeth, 
 George the Fourth, and Queen Victoria ; and these Eng- 
 lish builders stamped an English spirit on every portion 
 of the pile excepting on the Norman keep.
 
 WINDSOR CASTLE. 113 
 
 Ages before the Normans came to Windsor, a Saxon 
 hunting-lodge had been erected in the forest ; not on the 
 bleak and isolated crest of hill, but by the river margin, 
 on " the winding shore." This Saxon lodge lay hidden in 
 the depths of ancient woods, away from any public road 
 and bridge. The King's highway ran north, the Devil's 
 Causeway to the south. The nearest ford was three 
 miles up the stream, the nearest bridge was five miles 
 down the stream. A bridle-path, such as may still be 
 found in Spain or Sicily, led to that Saxon lodge; but 
 here this path was lost among the ferns and underwoods. 
 No track led on to other places. Free to the chase, yet 
 severed from the world, that hunting-lodge was like a nest. 
 Old oaks and elms grew round about as screens. Deep 
 glades, with here and there a bubbling spring, extended 
 league on league, as far as Chertsey bridge and Guild ford 
 down. This forest knew no tenants save the hart and boar, 
 the chough and crow. An air of privacy, and poetry, and 
 romance, hung about this ancient forest lodge. 
 
 Seeds of much legendary lore had been already sown. 
 A builder of that Saxon lodge had been imagined in a 
 mythical king Arthur of the Round Table, Arthur of 
 the blameless life a legend which endures at Windsor 
 to the present day. There, Godwin, sitting at the king's 
 board, had met his death, choked with the lie in his 
 wicked throat. There, Edward the Confessor had lisped 
 his prayers, and cured the halt and blind. There, too, the 
 Saxon princes, Tosti and Harold, were supposed to have 
 fought in the king's presence, lugging out each other's 
 locks, and hurling each other to the ground. Of later
 
 114 WINDSOR CASTLE. 
 
 growth were other legends ; ranging from the romance 
 of the Fitz-Warines, through the Romaunt of the Rose, 
 down to the rhyme of King Edward and the Shepherd, 
 the mystery of Herne the Hunter, and the humours of the 
 Merry Wives. 
 
 William the Conqueror preserved his Saxon hunting- 
 lodge by the river-side, but built his Norman keep on the 
 Castle Hill perhaps on the ruins of a Celtic camp, 
 certainly round the edges of a deep and copious well. 
 
 Henry Beauclerc removed his dwelling from the river 
 margin to the crest of hill, building the First King's 
 House. This pile extended from the Devil's tower to 
 the Watch tower, now renamed Victoria tower. A part 
 of Beauclerc's edifice remains in massive walls of the 
 Devil's tower, and a cutting through the chalk, sustained 
 by Norman masonry, leading from a shaft under the 
 Queen's apartment to the southern ditch. 
 
 Henry of Winchester, a man of higher genius as an 
 architect, built the Second King's House, sweeping into 
 his lines the lower ground, which he covered by walls and 
 towers, including Winchester tower, and the whole curtain 
 by Curfew tower and Salisbury tower, round to the Lieu- 
 tenant's lodgings, now called Henry the Third's tower. 
 The Second King's House, long since ruined and removed, 
 stood on the site of the present cloisters. Much of Henry 
 of Winchester's work remains ; in fact, the circuit of the 
 lower ward is mainly his, both walls and towers, from the 
 Devil's tower, touching the upper ward, round to Curfew 
 tower in the north-west angle of the lower ward. 
 
 Edward of Windsor built the Third King's House,
 
 WINDSOR CASTLE. 11$ 
 
 fronting towards the north, and gave the upper ward its 
 final shape. On introducing a new patron saint to Wind- 
 sor, Edward removed his own lodging, and renounced the 
 lower ward entirely to the service of St. George. First 
 came the chapel of St. George ; next came the College of 
 St. George ; then came the Canons of St. George ; lastly, 
 came the Poor Knights of St. George. The central ground 
 was given up to the chapel, and the adjoining quarter 
 to the college. From Curfew tower to the Lieutenant's 
 lodgings, all the ground was consecrated to the saint. 
 The first tower, reckoning from the south, became Garter 
 House, the second Chancellor's tower, the third Garter 
 tower, while the land within the walls was covered by 
 residences for the military knights. An area equal to the 
 upper baily was surrendered to his patron saint. 
 
 Edward of York rebuilt St. George's Chapel on a larger 
 scale ; for Edward of York had heavy sins to weigh him 
 down, and pressing need for saintly help. 
 
 Henry of Richmond roofed that chapel, built a " new 
 tower " in the King's House, and made a fair causeway 
 from Windsor to London the first road ever made 
 between the castle and the capital. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth built the gallery which bears her name, 
 and raised the great terraces above the Thames. Before 
 her time the scarp was rough and steep : she built this 
 solid wall, and laid this level road. 
 
 George the Fourth raised the Norman keep in height, 
 flanked the park entrance with another tower, opened 
 St. George's gate, buttressed the North-east tower, and 
 called his new edifice Brunswick "tower.
 
 116 WINDSOR CASTLE. 
 
 Like Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria has devoted her 
 attention rather to the slopes and gardens than the struc- 
 ture ; but the few additions of her reign have been effected 
 with a proper reverence for the ancient pile. Her Majesty 
 has cleared off slum and tenement from the slopes, and 
 opened the southern terrace, just as Elizabeth opened the 
 northern terrace. Work has been done in cloister and 
 chapel. As Henry of Richmond made a road from 
 Windsor to London, Queen Victoria has brought two 
 railways to her castle gates. 
 
 Since the days of Edward of Windsor the Castle hill 
 has kept the triple character upper ward, middle ward, 
 and lower ward baily of the King, baily of the keep, 
 and baily of St. George the residence of our sovereign, 
 the symbol of our power, the altar of our saint. 
 
 Royal Windsor (London, 1879).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 
 
 ERNEST BRETON. 
 
 WE are now in the middle of the Tenth Century and 
 in the city of Cologne ; for several hours a man 
 has been sitting upon the banks of a river, flowing majestically 
 at the base of those ramparts which sixty years ago were 
 erected by Philip von Heinsberg, and for several hours his 
 thoughtful brow has not been lifted. This man was the 
 first master-workman of his time ; three centuries later he 
 was called the prince of architects. The Archbishop of 
 Cologne had said to him : " Master, we must build a 
 cathedral here which will surpass all the buildings of the 
 world in grandeur and magnificence." The artist replied : 
 " I will do it ; " and now he was pondering over ways of 
 accomplishing his promise about which he was frightened. 
 At this moment he was trying to think out a marvellous 
 plan which would give lustre to his country and immortalize 
 his name ; but nothing came into his mind worthy of the 
 prodigy he was trying to conceive and could not create. 
 
 An unknown old man now approached and sat beside 
 him, regarding him with a mocking air, as if he rejoiced in 
 his perplexity and despair; every now and then he gave a 
 little, dry cough, and when he had attracted the attention 
 of the artist, he rapidly traced on the sand with a ring some
 
 Il8 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 
 
 lines which he immediately effaced. These lines formed 
 exactly that plan which always escaped the artist and whose 
 fugitive image he could not seize. 
 
 " You would like to have this plan ? " asked the old man. 
 
 " I would give all I possess for it." 
 
 " I exact nothing. The building that you construct will 
 be the envy and the eternal despair of all your successors, 
 the admiration of centuries to come, and your brilliant and 
 celebrated name will be known to the most remote genera- 
 tions. Your life will be long ; you will pass it in glory, 
 wealth, and pleasure. For all that I only ask for your soul 
 when your life draws to its close." 
 
 " Vade retro Satanas ! " cried the agitated artist. " Bet- 
 ter the nothingness of oblivion than eternal damnation." 
 
 " Patience," said Satan, " reflect : we shall see," and he 
 vanished. The master-workman returned to his humble 
 dwelling, sadder and more dreamful than when he left it ; 
 he could not close his eyes all night. Glory, wealth, and 
 pleasure for many long years, and all that for one word! 
 In vain he tried to shake himself free from the fatal temp- 
 tation ; at every moment, at every step he again saw the 
 tempter showing him his transitory plan ; he succumbed. 
 
 "To-morrow, at midnight," said Satan, "go to that spot 
 and I will bring you the plan and the pact that you must 
 sign." 
 
 The artist returned to the city, divided between remorse 
 and dreams of pride and ambition. Remorse conquered, 
 and before the appointed hour he had told everything to his 
 confessor. " It will be a master-stroke," said the latter, 
 " to deceive Satan himself and snatch the famous plan from
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 1 19 
 
 him without paying the price of your soul," and he sketched 
 out the line of conduct that he should follow. 
 
 At the appointed hour the two parties stood face to face. 
 " Here," said Satan, " are the plan and pact ; take it and sign 
 it." Quick as lightning the master-workman snatched the 
 plan with one hand and with the other he brandished a 
 piece of the True Cross, which the wily confessor had 
 given to him. " I am vanquished," cried Satan, " but you 
 will reap little benefit through your treachery. Your name 
 will be unknown and your work will never be completed." 
 
 Such is the legend of the Cathedral of Cologne. I have 
 told it here so that the admiration of the Middle Ages for 
 this plan, which could not be considered the work of any 
 human genius, may be measured, and for six centuries the 
 sinister prediction of Satan has held good. l 
 
 At the north-east end of the elevation occupied by the 
 ancient Colonia Agrlppina, in the spot where the choir of the 
 Cathedral raises its magnificent pinnacles, there existed in 
 very remote ages a Roman Castellum. At a later period 
 this was replaced by a palace of the French kings, 
 which Charlemagne gave to his chancellor and confessor 
 Hildebold. . . . 
 
 The Cathedral of Cologne was one of the most ancient 
 seats of Christianity in Germany ; it contained in its juris- 
 diction the capital of Charlemagne's Empire, the city where 
 the Emperors were crowned. In the Twelfth Century, 
 Frederick Barbarossa enriched it with one of those sacred 
 
 1 The spires of the Cathedral were finished in 1880, and the com- 
 pletion of the edifice was celebrated before the Emperor William I. on 
 October ifth of that year. E. S.
 
 J2O THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 
 
 treasures which in a time of faith attracted entire populations 
 and gave birth to the gigantic enterprises which seem so 
 incredible in our positive and sceptical age. All eyes were 
 turned to the Holy Land, and the pilgrims of Germany, as 
 well as of other countries, before undertaking this perilous 
 voyage came by the thousands to the tomb of the Magi, to 
 pray to God that the same star which guided the Three 
 Wise Men to Christ's cradle might lead them to his tomb. 
 The celebrity and wealth of the Cologne Cathedral was 
 greatly due to the custom of the Emperors visiting it after 
 their coronation. Thus, from the moment it was in pos- 
 session of the sacred relics, everything combined to augment 
 its splendour; princes, emperors, and people of all classes 
 were eager to add to its treasures. Therefore, it was only 
 a natural consequence to erect on the site of the old 
 Cathedral of St. Peter a building more vast and magnificent, 
 and which would accord better with its important destiny. 
 The Archbishop Angebert, Count of Altena and Berg, upon 
 whom Frederick II. conferred the dignity of vicar of the 
 empire, conceived the first idea ; but at about the age of 
 forty he was assassinated by his cousin, the Count of 
 Ysembourg, in 1225, and the enterprise was abandoned. 
 Finally, a great fire devoured the Cathedral in 1248 and 
 its immediate reconstruction was indispensable. . . . 
 
 Everyone knows that almost all churches of the 
 pointed arch which occupied several centuries in building 
 show the special mark of the periods in which their various 
 additions were constructed ; this is not the case with the 
 Cathedral of Cologne, which is peculiar in the fact that 
 its foundations and its additions were all constructed on
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 121 
 
 one and the same plan, which preserves the original design, 
 and therefore it presents a rare and admirable unity. 
 
 On the side of the Rhine, or rather on the Margreten, 
 between the Trankgass and the Domhof, the choir of the 
 basilica offers the most imposing effect. It is only from 
 this side that the edifice seems to have an end. The end 
 of the roof, edged in all its length by an open-worked 
 ridge, is surmounted by an enormous cross, nine metres 
 high, finished with a fleur-de-lis at each extremity. This 
 cross, weighing 694 kil., was only placed there on August 3, 
 1825, but it was long in existence, having been, it is said, 
 presented to the church by Marie de' Medici. In the 
 centre of the transept there rose a bell-tower, 65 metres 
 high, which was demolished in 1812. The plan carries 
 a superb jleche of stone, open-worked like the spires of the 
 facade, and about 100 metres high. 
 
 Fifteen flying-buttresses on each side proceed from the 
 central window and sustain the choir, leaning against the 
 buttresses and surmounted by elegant pyramids. Each of 
 these pyramids carries twelve niches destined to hold 
 angels two metres high, many of which have been 
 restored lately by Wilhelm ImhofF. The upper part of 
 the flying-buttresses, at the point where they meet the 
 balustrade of the roof, is crowned by another and more 
 simple pyramid. Finally, between these flying-buttresses 
 in the upper part of the wall of the choir, magnificent 
 mullioned windows are disclosed. The entire edifice is 
 covered with gargoyles, each more bizarre than the 
 other. . . . 
 
 Entering the cathedral by the door at the foot of the
 
 122 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 
 
 northern tower, you find yourself in the double-lower 
 northern nave. The first bays do not contain altars, but 
 their windows reveal magnificent panes, of the beginning 
 of the Sixteenth Century. The Archbishop Herman von 
 Hesse, the Chapter, the City, and 'many noble families 
 united to have them painted by the most distinguished 
 artists of the period, which was the apogee of Art in 
 Germany ; and therefore here are many of the most 
 admirable chefs d'ceuvre of glass-painting. . . . 
 
 The Chapel of the Kings is almost entirely occupied 
 by the building erected in 1688 and ornamented by Ionic 
 pilasters of marble, and which, shut in by grilles and many 
 locks, contains the marvellous reliquary in which are 
 preserved the relics of the Three Magi. According to 
 Buttler, these relics were found by Saint Helena, mother 
 of Constantine, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; 
 she carried them carefully to Constantinople. Soon after- 
 wards the Archbishop Eustorge, to whom the Emperor had 
 presented them, brought them to Milan, where they were 
 deposited in the church subsequently consecrated to the 
 same Eustorge, who was canonized. When Frederick 
 Barbarossa invaded the town in 1163, Reinald von Dassile, 
 Archbishop of Cologne, received them as a reward for 
 the services which he had rendered to the Emperor during 
 the siege. At the same time Reinald obtained several 
 relics of the Maccabees, of the Saints Apollinaris, Felix, 
 Nabor, Gregory di Spoletto, etc. He, himself, accom- 
 panied this treasure, which crossed Switzerland in triumph, 
 descended the Rhine to Remagen, where he gave it to 
 Philip of Heinsberg, then provost of the Chapter.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 123 
 
 On July 23, 1164, the relics were deposited in the 
 ancient cathedral, from which they were transferred to 
 the new one ; they were guarded there simply by an iron 
 grille until the Archbishop Maximilian Heinrich con- 
 structed the building which encloses them to-day, upon 
 whose pediment you see sculptured in marble, by Michael 
 Van der Voorst of Antwerp, the Adoration of the Magi, 
 Saint Felix, Saint Nabor, and two female figures guarding 
 the arms of the Metropolitan Chapter, in the midst of 
 which figure those of the Archbishop Maximilian Heinrich. 
 On the frieze you read the inscription : " Tribus ab oriente 
 regibus devicto in agnitione verl numinis capitulum metropol. 
 erexit" Above the grilled window, which is opened dur- 
 ing grand ceremonies to permit the people to see the 
 reliquary, is written : 
 
 " Corpora sanctorum recubant hie terna magorum j 
 Ax his sublatum nihil est alibi<ve locatum." 
 
 Finally, above the reliquary placed to the right and left 
 between the columns one reads : " Et apertis thesauri* suis 
 obtulerunt munera." 
 
 In 1794 the relics were carried to the treasury of 
 Arnsberg, then to Prague, where the three crowns of 
 diamonds were sold, and finally to Frankfort-on-the-Main. 
 When they were brought back in 1804, the reliquary was 
 repaired and put in its old place. This reliquary, a chef 
 cTceuvre of Twelfth Century orf'evrerie, is of gilded copper 
 with the exception of the front, which is of pure gold ; its 
 form is that of a tomb ; its length I m. 85, its breadth 
 I m. at the base, its height I m. 50; on the side turned
 
 124 THE CATHEDRAL OF COLOGNE. 
 
 to the west you see represented the Adoration of the 
 Magi and the baptism of Jesus Christ. Above the sculp- 
 ture is a kind of lid which may be raised, permitting you to 
 see the skulls of the Three Kings ornamented with golden 
 crowns garnished with Bohemian stones, a kind of 
 garnet j in the pediment is the image of the Divine Judge 
 sitting between two angels who hold the attributes of the 
 Passion ; the two busts above represent Gabriel and 
 Raphael ; and, finally, an enormous topaz occupies the 
 summit of the pediment. The right side of the reliquary 
 is ornamented with images of the prophets, Moses, Jonah, 
 David, Daniel, Amos, and Obadiah. The apostles Paul, 
 Philip, Simon, Thomas, and Judas Thaddeus are placed 
 in six niches above. In the left side you see the prophets 
 Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Nahum, Solomon, Joel, and Aaron, and 
 the apostles Bartholomew, Matthew, John the Lesser, An- 
 drew, Peter, and John the Great. The back of the monu- 
 ment presents the flagellation of Jesus Christ, the Virgin 
 Mary, Saint John, the Saviour on the Cross, Saint Felix, 
 Saint Nabor, the Archbishop Reinald and eight busts of 
 angels. The monument is surmounted by an open-work 
 ridge of copper lace. This magnificent reliquary is cov- 
 ered with more than 1,500 precious stones and antique 
 cameos representing subjects which are not exactly Christian 
 such as the apotheosis of an Emperor, two heads of 
 Medusa, a head of Hercules, one of Alexander, etc. 
 Behind the reliquary is a bas-relief in marble I m. 33 in 
 height and I m. 40 in length, representing the solemn 
 removal of the relics. The bas-reliefs of richly-gilt 
 bronze, placed below the windows which occupy the back
 
 THE CATHEDRAL, OF COLOGNE. 12$ 
 
 of the chapel, represent the Adoration of the Magi : 
 these were the gift of Jacques de Croy, Duke of Cambrai 
 in 1516. This window is ornamented with beautiful 
 panes of the Thirteenth Century, representing various 
 subjects of sacred history. 
 
 Jules Gaillhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes (Paris, 1865).
 
 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 THE first palace of Versailles was a hunting-lodge 
 built by Louis XIII. at the angle of the present 
 Rue de la Pompe and Avenue de Saint-Cloud. This he 
 afterwards found too small, and built, in 1627, a m oated 
 castle, on the site of a windmill in which he had once 
 taken shelter for the night. The buildings of this chateau 
 still exist, respected, as the home of his father, in all the 
 alterations of Louis XIV., and they form the centre of the 
 present place. In 1632 Louis XIII. became seigneur of 
 Versailles by purchase from Francois de Gondi, Archbishop 
 of Paris. 
 
 The immense works which Louis XIV. undertook here, 
 and which were carried out by the architect Mansart, were 
 begun in 1661, and in 1682 the residence of the Court 
 was definitely fixed at Versailles, connected by new roads 
 with the capital. Colbert made a last effort to keep the 
 king at Paris, and to divert the immense sums which were 
 being swallowed up in Versailles to the completion of the 
 Louvre. The very dulness of the site of Versailles, leav- 
 ing everything to be created, was an extra attraction in the 
 eyes of Louis XIV. The great difficulty to be contended 
 with in the creation of Versailles was the want of water,
 
 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. I2/ 
 
 and this, after various other attempts had failed, it was 
 hoped to overcome by a canal which was to bring the 
 waters of the Eure to the royal residence. In 1681 
 22,000 soldiers and 6,000 horses were employed in this 
 work, with such results of sickness that the troops en- 
 camped at Maintenon, where the chief part of the work 
 was, became unfit for any service. On October 12, 1678, 
 Mme. de Sevigne writes to Bussy-Rabutin : 
 
 " The king wishes to go to Versailles ; but it seems that God 
 does not, to judge from the difficulty of getting the buildings ready 
 for occupation and the dreadful mortality of the workmen who are 
 carried away every night in waggons filled with the dead. This 
 terrible occurrence is kept secret so as not to create alarm and not 
 to decry the air of this favori sans merite. You know this ban mot 
 of Versailles." 
 
 Nine millions were expended in the Aqueduct or' 
 Maintenon, of which the ruins are still to be seen, then it 
 was interrupted by the war of 1688, and the works were 
 never continued. Instead, all the water of the pools and 
 the snow falling on the plain between Rambouillet and 
 Versailles was brought to the latter by a series of subter- 
 ranean watercourses. 
 
 No difficulties, .however not even pestilence, or the 
 ruin of the country by the enormous cost were allowed to 
 interfere with " les plaisirs du rol" The palace rose, and 
 its gigantic gardens were peopled with statues, its woods 
 with villages. 
 
 Under Louis XV. Versailles was chiefly remarkable as 
 being the scene of the extravagance of Mme. de Pompa-
 
 128 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 
 
 dour and the turpitude of Mme. du Barry. Mme. Campan 
 has described for us the life, the very dull life, there of 
 " Mesdames," daughters of the king. Yet, till the great 
 Revolution, since which it has been only a shadow of its 
 former self, the town of Versailles drew all its life from the 
 chateau. 
 
 Approaching from the town on entering the grille of the 
 palace from the Place a" ' Armes we find ourselves in the vast 
 Cour des Statues " solennelle et morne" In the centre is 
 an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. by Petitot and Cartellier. 
 Many of the surrounding statues were brought from the 
 Pont de la Concorde at Paris. Two projecting wings shut 
 in the Cour Royale, and separate it from the Cour des Princes 
 on the left, and the Cour de la Chapelle on the right. Beyond 
 the Cour Royale^ deeply recessed amongst later buildings is 
 the court called, from its pavement, the Cour de Marbre, 
 surrounded by the little old red chateau of Louis XIII. 
 
 The Cour de Marbre was sometimes used as a theatre 
 under Louis XIV., and the opera of Alcestls was given 
 there. It has a peculiar interest, for no stranger can look 
 up at the balcony of the first floor without recalling Marie 
 Antoinette presenting herself there, alone, to the fury of the 
 people, October 6, 1789. 
 
 The palace of Versailles has never been inhabited by 
 royalty since the chain of carriages drove into this court 
 on October 6, to convey Louis XVI. and his family to 
 Paris. 
 
 From the Grande Cour the gardens may be reached by 
 passages either from the Cour des Princes on the left, or 
 from the Cour de la Chapelle on the right. This palace ha<
 
 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 
 
 had three chapels in turn. The first, built by Louis XIII., 
 was close to the marble staircase. The second, built 
 by Louis XIV., occupied the site of the existing Salon 
 d'Hercule. The present chapel, built 1699-1710,15 the 
 last work of Mansart. 
 
 Here we may think of Bossuet, thundering before Louis 
 XIV., " les royaumes meurent, sire, comme les rots" and of 
 the words of Massillon, " Si Jesus-Christ paraissait dans ce 
 temple, au milieu de cette assemblee, la plus auguste de Funivers^ 
 pour vous juger, pour fair e le terrible discernement" etc. Here 
 we may imagine Louis XIV. daily assisting at the Mass, and 
 his courtiers, especially the ladies, attending also to flatter 
 him, but gladly escaping, if they thought he would not be 
 there. . . . 
 
 All the furniture of Versailles was sold during the Revo- 
 lution (in 1793), and, though a few pieces have been recov- 
 ered, the palace is for the most part unfurnished, and little 
 more than a vast picture-gallery. From the ante-chamber 
 of the chapel open two galleries on the ground floor of 
 the north wing. One is the Galerie des Sculptures; the 
 other, divided by different rooms looking on the garden, 
 is the Galerie de I' Histoire de France. The first six rooms 
 of the latter formed the apartments of the Due de Maine, 
 the much indulged son of Louis XIV. and Mme. de 
 Maintenon. 
 
 At the end .of the gallery (but only to be entered now 
 from the Rue des Reservoirs) is the Salle de f Opera. In 
 spite of the passion of Louis XIV. for dramatic representa- 
 tions, no theatre was built in the palace during his reign. 
 Some of the plays of Moliere and Racine were acted in 
 
 9
 
 130 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 
 
 improvised theatres in the park ; others, in the halls of the 
 palace, without scenery or costumes ; the Athalle of Racine, 
 before the King and Mme. de Maintenon, by the young 
 ladies of Saint-Cyr. The present Opera House was begun 
 by Jacques Ange-Gabriel under Louis XV. for Mme. de 
 Pompadour and finished for Mme. du Barry. 
 
 The Opera House was inaugurated on the marriage of 
 the Dauphin with Marie Antoinette, and nineteen years 
 after was the scene of that banquet, the incidents of which 
 were represented in a manner so fatal to the monarchy, 
 given by the body-guard of the king to the officers of a 
 regiment which had arrived from Flanders. . . . 
 
 The garden front of the palace has not yet experienced 
 the soothing power of age : it looks almost new ; two 
 hundred years hence it will be magnificent. The long 
 lines of the building, with its two vast wings, are only 
 broken by the top of the chapel rising above the wing on 
 the left. 
 
 The rich masses of green formed by the clipped yews at 
 the sides of the gardens have the happiest effect, and con- 
 trast vividly with the dark background of chestnuts, of 
 which the lower part is trimmed, but the upper falls in 
 masses of heavy shade, above the brilliant gardens with their 
 population of statues. These grounds are the masterpiece 
 of Lenotre, and of geometrical gardening, decorated with 
 vases, fountains, and orange-trees. Lovers of the natural 
 may find great fault with these artificial gardens, but there is 
 much that is grandiose and noble in them ; and, as Voltaire 
 says : u // est plus facile de crltiquer Versailles que de le 
 refaire."
 
 THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 131 
 
 The gardens need the enlivenment of the figures, for 
 which they were intended as a background, in the gay 
 Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. as represented in the 
 pictures of Watteau ; but the Memoirs of the time enable 
 us to repeople them with a thousand forms which have long 
 been dust, centring around the great king, il Se promenant 
 dans ses jar dins de Versailles, dans son fauteuil a roues" 
 
 The sight of the magnificent terraces in front of the 
 palace will recall the nocturnal promenades of the Court, 
 so much misrepresented by the enemies of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Very stately is the view down the main avenue great 
 fountains of many figures in the foreground ; then the 
 brilliant Tapis Vert^ between masses of rich wood ; then 
 the Bassin d* Apollon, and the great canal extending to 
 distant meadows and lines of natural poplars. 
 
 Day 3 near Paris (London, 1887).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN. 
 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 WELCOME to Lincoln ! Upwards of twenty sum- 
 mer suns have rolled their bright and genial 
 courses since my first visit to this ancient city, or rather, 
 to this venerable Cathedral : for the former seems to be 
 merged in the latter. There is no proportion between 
 them. A population of only twelve thousand inhabitants 
 and scarcely more than an ordinary sprinkling of low 
 commonplace brick-houses, are but inharmonious acces- 
 sories to an ecclesiastical edifice, built upon the summit 
 of a steep and lofty hill pointing upwards with its three 
 beautiful and massive towers towards heaven, and stretch- 
 ing longways with its lofty nave, choir, ladye-chapel, side 
 chapels, and double transepts. For site^ there is no Cathe- 
 dral to my knowledge which approaches it. ... 
 
 Upon a comparative estimation with the Cathedral of 
 York, Lincoln may be called a volume of more extensive 
 instruction ; and the antiquary clings to its pages with a 
 more varied delight. The surface or exterior of Lincoln 
 Cathedral presents at least four perfect specimens of the 
 succeeding styles of the first four orders of Gothic archi- 
 tecture. The greater part of the front may be as old as
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN. 133 
 
 the time of its founder, Bishop Remigius, * at the end 
 of the Eleventh Century : but even here may be traced 
 invasions and intermixtures, up to the Fifteenth Century. 
 The large indented windows are of this latter period, and 
 exhibit a frightful heresy. The western towers carry you 
 to the end of the Twelfth Century : then succeeds a won- 
 derful extent of Early English, or the pointed arch. The 
 transepts begin with the Thirteenth, and come down to 
 the middle of the Fourteenth Century ; and the interior, 
 especially the choir and the side aisles, abounds with the 
 most exquisitely varied specimens of that period. Fruits, 
 flowers, vegetables, insects, capriccios of every description, 
 encircle the arches or shafts, and sparkle upon the capitals 
 of pillars. Even down to the reign of Henry VIII. there 
 are two private chapels, to the left of the smaller south 
 porch, on entrance, which are perfect gems of art. 
 
 Where a building is so diversified, as well as vast, it is 
 difficult to be methodical ; but the reader ought to know, 
 as soon as possible, that there are here not only two sets 
 of transepts, as at York, but that the larger transept is the 
 longest in England, being not less than two hundred and 
 fifty feet in length. The window of the south transept is 
 circular, and so large as to be twenty-two feet in diameter ; 
 bestudded with ancient stained glass, now become some- 
 what darkened by time, and standing in immediate need 
 of cleaning and repairing. I remember, on my first visit 
 
 1 Remigius was a monk of Fescamp in Normandy, and brought 
 over here by William the Conqueror. He was worthy of all promo- 
 tion. Brompton tells us that he began to build the Cathedral in 1088, 
 and finished it in 1092, when it was consecrated} but the founder 
 died two days before its consecration.
 
 134 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN. 
 
 to this Cathedral, threading the whole of the clerestory on 
 the south side, and coming immediately under this mag- 
 nificent window, which astonished me from its size and 
 decorations. Still, for simplicity as well as beauty of effect, 
 the delicately ornamented lancet windows of the north 
 transept of York Cathedral have clearly a decided prefer- 
 ence. One wonders how these windows, both at York 
 and at this place, escaped destruction from Cromwell's 
 soldiers. . . . The Galilee, to the left of the larger south 
 transept, is a most genuine and delicious specimen of Early 
 English architecture. In this feature, York, upon com- 
 parison, is both petty and repulsive. 
 
 Wherever the eye strays or the imagination catches a 
 point upon which it may revel in building up an ingenious 
 hypothesis, the exterior of Lincoln Cathedral (some five 
 hundred feet in length) is a never failing source of 
 gratification. . . . 
 
 Let us turn to the grand western front ; and whatever 
 be the adulterations of the component parts, let us admire 
 its width and simplicity ; the rude carvings, or rather 
 sculpture, commemorative of the life of the founder, St. 
 Remigius : and although horrified by the indented win- 
 dows, of the perpendicular style, let us pause again and 
 again before we enter at the side-aisle door. All the 
 three doors are too low ; but see what a height and what 
 a space this front occupies! It was standing on this spot, 
 that Corio, my dear departed friend some twenty years 
 ago assured me he remained almost from sunset to 
 dawn of day, as the whole of the front was steeped in the 
 soft silvery light of an autumnal full moon. He had seen
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN. 135 
 
 nothing before so grand. He had felt nothing before so 
 stirring. The planets and stars, as they rolled in their 
 silent and glittering orbits, and in a subdued lustre, over 
 the roof of the nave, gave peculiar zest to the grandeur 
 of the whole scene : add to which, the awfully deepening 
 sounds of Great Tom 1 made his very soul to vibrate ! 
 Here, as that bell struck the hour of two, seemed to sit 
 the shrouded figures of Remigius, Bloet, and Geoffrey 
 Plantagenet, 2 who, saluting each other in formal prostra- 
 tions, quickly vanished at the sound " into thin air." The 
 cock crew ; the sun rose ; and with it all enchantment 
 was at an end. Life has few purer, yet more delirious 
 enjoyments, than this. . . . 
 
 The reader may here, perhaps, expect something like the 
 institution of a comparison between these two great rival 
 Cathedrals of Lincoln and York ; although he will have 
 observed many points in common between them to have 
 
 1 This must have been " Great Tom," the First, cast in 1610 ; 
 preceded probably by one or more Great Toms, to the time of Geoffrey 
 Plantagenet. " Great Tom," the Second, was cast by Mr. Mears of 
 Whitechapel in 1834, and was hung in the central tower in 1835. 
 Its weight is 5 tons, 8 cwt. ; being one ton heavier than the great bell 
 of St. Paul's Cathedral. ..." Great Tom," the First, was hung in 
 the north-west tower. 
 
 2 Robert Bloet was a worthy successor of Remigius, the founder. 
 Bloet was thirty years a bishop of this see largely endowing it with 
 prebendal stalls, and with rich gifts of palls, hoods, and silver crosses. 
 He completed the western front and, perhaps, finished the Nor- 
 man portion of the nave, now replaced by the Early English. . . . 
 Geoffrey Plantagenet was a natural son of Henry II., and was elected 
 in 1173. . . . The latter years of his life seem to be involved in 
 mystery, for he fled the kingdom five years before his death, which 
 happened at Grosmont, near Rouen, in
 
 136 THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN. 
 
 been previously settled. The preference to Lincoln is 
 given chiefly from its minute and varied detail ; while its 
 position impresses you at first sight, with such mingled awe 
 and admiration, that you cannot divest yourself of this 
 impression, on a more dispassionately critical survey of its 
 component parts. The versed antiquary adheres to Lin- 
 coln, and would build his nest within one of the crocketted 
 pinnacles of the western towers that he might hence 
 command a view of the great central tower ; and, abroad 
 of the straight Roman road running to Barton, and the 
 glittering waters of the broad and distant Humber. But 
 for one human being of this stamp, you would have one 
 hundred collecting within and without the great rival at 
 York. Its vastness, its space, its effulgence of light and 
 breadth of effect : its imposing simplicity, by the compara- 
 tive paucity of minute ornament its lofty lantern, shining, 
 as it were, at heaven's gate, on the summit of the central 
 tower : and, above all, the soul-awakening devotion kindled 
 by a survey of its vast and matchless choir leave not a 
 shadow of doubt behind, respecting the decided superiority 
 of this latter edifice. 
 
 A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the 
 Northern Counties of England and in Scotland (London, 1838).
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 
 AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 
 WE now left the village behind, and rode out across 
 a wide plain, barren and hillocky in some parts ; 
 overgrown in others with coarse halfeh grass ; and dotted 
 here and there with clumps of palms. The Nile lay low 
 and out of sight, so that the valley seemed to stretch away 
 uninterruptedly to the mountains on both sides. Now leav- 
 ing to the left a Sheykh's tomb, topped by a little cupola 
 and shaded by a group of tamarisks; now following the bed 
 of a dry watercourse ; now skirting shapeless mounds that 
 indicated the site of ruins unexplored, the road, uneven but 
 direct, led straight to Karnak. At every rise in the ground 
 we saw the huge propylons towering higher above the 
 palms. Once, but for only a few moments, there came 
 into sight a confused and wide-spread mass of ruins, as 
 extensive, apparently, as the ruins of a large town. Then 
 our way dipped into a sandy groove bordered by mud-walls 
 and plantations of dwarf-palms. All at once this groove 
 widened, became a stately avenue guarded by a double file 
 of shattered sphinxes, and led towards a lofty pylon stand- 
 ing up alone against the sky. 
 
 Close beside this grand gateway, as if growing there on 
 purpose, rose a thicket of sycamores and palms; while
 
 138 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 
 
 beyond it were seen the twin pylons of a Temple. The 
 sphinxes were colossal, and measured about ten feet in 
 length. One or two were ram-headed. Of the rest 
 some forty or fifty in number all were headless, some 
 split asunder, some overturned, others so mutilated that 
 they looked like torrent-worn boulders. This avenue once 
 reached from Luxor to Karnak. Taking into account the 
 distance (which is just two miles from Temple to Temple) 
 and the short intervals at which the sphinxes are placed, 
 there cannot originally have been fewer than five hundred 
 of them ; that is to say, two hundred and fifty on each side 
 of the road. 
 
 Dismounting for a few minutes, we went into the 
 Temple ; glanced round the open courtyard with its colon- 
 nade of pillars ; peeped hurriedly into some ruinous side- 
 chambers ; and then rode on. Our books told us that we 
 had seen the small Temple of Rameses the Third. It 
 would have been called large anywhere but at Karnak. 
 
 I seem to remember the rest as if it had all happened in 
 a dream. Leaving the small Temple, we turned towards 
 the river, skirted the mud-walls of the native village, and 
 approached the Great Temple by way of its main entrance. 
 Here we entered upon what had once been another great 
 avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep 
 cut with hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some 
 grand landing-place beside the Nile. 
 
 And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed 
 by in the morning rose straight before us, magnificent in 
 ruin, glittering to the sun, and relieved in 'creamy light 
 against blue depths of sky. One was nearly perfect j the
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 139 
 
 other, shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was 
 still so lofty that an Arab clambering from block to block 
 midway of its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel. 
 
 On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dis- 
 mounted. Shapeless crude-brick mounds, marking the 
 limits of the ancient wall of circuit, reached far away on 
 either side. An immense perspective of pillars and pylons 
 leading up to a very great obelisk opened out before us. 
 We went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above 
 our heads, and entered the First Court. Here, in the 
 midst of a large quadrangle open to the sky stands a 
 solitary column, the last of a central avenue of twelve, 
 some of which, disjointed by the shock, lie just as they fell, 
 like skeletons of vertebrate monsters left stranded by the 
 Flood. 
 
 Crossing this Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to 
 a mighty doorway between two more propylons the 
 doorway splendid with coloured bas-reliefs ; the propylons 
 mere cataracts of fallen blocks piled up to right and left in 
 grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone. 
 Only a jutting fragment of the lintel stone remains. That 
 stone, when perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches 
 across. The doorway must have been full a hundred feet 
 in height. 
 
 We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus 
 engraven on arm and breast with the cartouche of Rameses 
 II., we crossed the shade upon the threshold, and passed 
 into the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti the First. 
 
 It is a place that has been much written about and often 
 painted ; but of which no writing and no art can convey
 
 I4O THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 
 
 more than a dwarfed and pallid impression. To describe 
 it, in the sense of building up a recognisable image by 
 means of words, is impossible. The scale is too vast ; the 
 effect too tremendous ; the sense of one's own dumbness, 
 and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing. 
 It is a place that strikes you into silence ; that empties you, 
 as it were, not only of words but of ideas. Nor is this a 
 first effect only. Later in the year, when we came back 
 down the river and moored close by, and spent long days 
 among the ruins, I found I never had a word to say in the 
 Great Hall. Others might measure the girth of those 
 tremendous columns ; others might climb hither and 
 thither, and find out points of view, and test the accuracy 
 of Wilkinson and Mariette ; but I could only look, and be 
 silent. 
 
 Yet to look is something, if one can but succeed in 
 remembering; and the Great Hall of Karnak is photo- 
 graphed in some dark corner of my brain for as long as I 
 have memory. I shut my eyes, and see it as if I were 
 there not all at once, as in a picture ; but bit by bit, as 
 the eye takes note of large objects and travels over an 
 extended field of vision. I stand once more among those 
 mighty columns, which radiate into avenues from what- 
 ever point one takes them. I see them swathed in coiled 
 shadows and broad bands of light. I see them sculptured 
 and painted with shapes of Gods and Kings, with blazon- 
 ings of royal names, with sacrificial altars, and forms of 
 sacred beasts, and emblems of wisdom and truth. The 
 shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand at the foot 
 of one or of what seems to be the foot j for the original
 
 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 141 
 
 pavement lies buried seven feet below. Six men standing 
 with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, could barely 
 span it round. It casts a shadow twelve feet in breadth 
 such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. The capital 
 that juts out so high above my head looks as if it might 
 have been placed there to support the heavens. It is carved 
 in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and glows with un- 
 dying colours colours that are still fresh, though laid on 
 by hands that have been dust these three thousand years and 
 more. It would take not six men, but a dozen to measure 
 round the curved lip of that stupendous lily. 
 
 Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one 
 hundred and twenty-two in number) are gigantic too ; but 
 smaller. Of the roof they once supported, only the beams 
 remain. Those beams are stone huge monoliths carved 
 and painted, bridging the space from pillar to pillar, and 
 patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow. 
 
 Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the 
 one end a flame-like obelisk ; at the other, a solitary palm 
 against a background of glowing mountain. To right, to 
 left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we 
 catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless 
 walls in every direction. The King, as usual, figures in 
 every group, and performs the customary acts of worship. 
 The Gods receive and approve him. Half in light, half in 
 shadow, these slender, fantastic forms stand out sharp, and 
 clear, and colourless ; each figure some eighteen or twenty 
 feet in height. They could scarcely have looked more 
 weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual 
 twilight reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on,
 
 142 THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK. 
 
 and the sky shut out. It all looks right as it is ; and one 
 feels, somehow, that such columns should have nothing 
 between them and the infinite blue depths of heaven. . . . 
 It may be that the traveller who finds himself for the first 
 time in the midst of a grove of Wellingtonla gigantea feels 
 something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and 
 wonder ; but the great trees, though they have taken three 
 thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery 
 that comes of human labour. They do not strike their 
 roots through six thousand years of history. They have not 
 been watered with the blood and tears of millions. 1 Their 
 leaves know no sounds less musical than the singing of the 
 birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over 
 the highlands of Calaveros. But every breath that wanders 
 down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the 
 sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and 
 under the chariot-wheels of the conqueror. 
 
 A Thousand Miles up the Nile (London, zd ed., 1889). 
 
 1 It has been estimated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic 
 temples cost, at least, one human life.
 
 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE. 
 
 CHARLES YRIARTE. 
 
 THE document by which the council of the munici- 
 pality of Florence decided the erection of her 
 Cathedral, in 1294, is an historic monument in which is 
 reflected the generous spirit of the Florentines. 
 
 " Considering that all the acts and works of a people who boast 
 of an illustrious origin should bear the character of grandeur and 
 wisdom, we order Arnolfo, director of the works of our commune, to 
 make the model, or a design of the building, which shall replace the 
 church of Santa Reparata. It shall display such magnificence that 
 no industry nor human power shall surpass it. ... A government 
 should undertake nothing unless in response to the desire of a heart 
 more than generous, which expresses in its beatings the heart of all 
 its citizens united in one common wish : it is from this point of 
 view that the architect charged with the building of our cathedral 
 must be regarded." 
 
 It must be admitted that it would be difficult to express 
 a more noble idea and a more elevated sentiment than 
 this. 
 
 The name of the Cathedral is evidently an allusion to 
 the lily, the heraldic emblem of Florence. The ceremony 
 of laying the first stone took place on September 8th, 1298 ;
 
 144 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE. 
 
 Pope Boniface VIII. was represented by his legate, Cardinal 
 Pietro Valeriano. Arnolfo's plan was a Latin cross with 
 three naves, each nave divided into four arcades with sharp 
 pointed arches. In the centre of the cross, under the 
 vault of the dome, was reserved a space enclosed by a 
 ringhierO) having open sides, with an altar in its axis, and 
 in each of its little arms five rectangular chapels were 
 placed. The walls were naked, and the architecture alone 
 served for decoration ; the effect, however, was altogether 
 imposing. 
 
 Arnolfo did not finish his work; he died about 1230, 
 leaving the church completed only as far as the capitals 
 destined to support the arches. In 1332 Giotto was 
 nominated to succeed him, and for about two hundred 
 years the work was continued without interruption, under 
 the direction of the most worthy men. 
 
 It is to Giotto that we owe that extraordinary annex 
 to the Duomo, so celebrated throughout the world under 
 the name of Campanile; its foundation was laid in 1334, 
 after the little church of San Zanobio was razed. It is 
 85 metres high ; Giotto, however, had calculated 94 metres 
 in his plan and intended to finish the square column with 
 a pyramid, like the Campanile of Saint Mark's in Venice; 
 but he was unable to complete his work, and his successor, 
 Taddeo Gaddi, suppressed this appendix. The Campanile 
 has six divisions ; the first and the second, which are 
 easily examined, are ornamented with sculpture executed 
 by Andrea Pisano, after Giotto's designs. . . . 
 
 Even at the risk of banality, the saying attributed to 
 Charles V. when he entered Florence after the siege should
 
 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.
 
 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE. 145 
 
 be mentioned here ; he paused before the Campanile, con- 
 templated it for a long while, and then exclaimed : " They 
 should make a case for the Campanile and exhibit it as 
 a jewel." 
 
 Mounting to the top of the tower, we can count, one 
 by one, the domes, the towers, and the monuments, and 
 gaze upon the beautiful landscape which surrounds the 
 city of flowers. There are in this tower seven bells, the 
 largest of which, cast in 1705 to replace the one that had 
 been broken, does not weigh less than 15,860 pounds. 
 
 Among the architects who succeeded Giotto, we must 
 count the master of masters, who was, perhaps, the most 
 incontestably illustrious of the Fifteenth Century archi- 
 tects Filippo Brunelleschi. It was in 1421 that he 
 began the superb dome which crowns the Cathedral. This 
 was his masterpiece, surpassing in audacity and harmony 
 all the monuments of modern art. Everyone knows that 
 this dome is double: the interior casing is spherical, and 
 between it and the exterior dome are placed the stairways, 
 chains, counter-weights, and all the accessories of con- 
 struction which render it enduring. It was only fifteen 
 years after the death of the great Philippo that this dome 
 was finished (1461). It inspired Michael Angelo for 
 Saint Peter's in Rome, and Leon Battista Alberti took it 
 for his model in building the famous temple of Rimini 
 which he left unfinished. Andrea del Verocchio, the beau- 
 tiful sculptor of the Enfant au dauphin and the Tomb of 
 the Medicis in the old sacristy, designed and executed the 
 ball, and Giovanni di Bartolo completed the node on 
 which the Cross stands. 
 
 10
 
 146 SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE. 
 
 The church contains several tombs, among others 
 those of Giotto, commissioned to Benedetto da Maiano 
 by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that of the famous 
 organist, Antonio Squarcialupi, a favourite of Lorenzo 
 to whom " The Magnificent " wrote an epitaph. It is 
 thought that the Poggio rests in Santa Maria del Fiore. 
 The sarcophagus of Aldobrandino Ottobuoni is near the 
 door of the Servi. 
 
 I have said that the walls are naked, that is to say that 
 architecture does not play a great part on them, but the 
 building contains a number of works of the highest order 
 by Donatello, Michelozzo, Ghiberti, della Robbia, San- 
 sovino, Bandinelli, and Andrea del Castagno. It was by 
 the door of the Servi that Dominico di Michelino on 
 January 30, 1465, painted Dante, a tribute paid tardily to the 
 memory of the prince of poets by the society of Florentines, 
 who were none other than the workmen employed in the 
 construction of the Cathedral. Under these arches where 
 Boccaccio made his passionate words resound to the memory 
 of the author of the Divina Comedia, Michelino painted 
 Dante clothed in a red toga and crowned with laurel, hold- 
 ing in one hand a poem and with the other pointing 
 to the symbolical circles. The inscription states that 
 the execution of this fresco is due to one of Dante's 
 commentators, Maestro Antonio, of the order of the 
 Franciscans. 
 
 Florence : f h'ntolre Let Medicis Les humanistes Les lettres 
 Let arts (Paris, 1881).
 
 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE.
 
 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 OF all the beautiful things with which Giotto adorned 
 his city, not one speaks so powerfully to the 
 foreign visitor the forestiere whom he and his fellows 
 never took into account, though we occupy so large a 
 space among the admirers of his ' genius nowadays as 
 the lovely Campanile which stands by the great Cathedral 
 like the white royal lily beside the Mary of the Annuncia- 
 tion, slender and strong and everlasting in its delicate 
 grace. It is not often that a man takes up a new trade 
 when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new 
 path out of his familiar routine. But Giotto seems to have 
 turned without a moment's hesitation from his paints and 
 panels to the less easily-wrought materials of the builder 
 and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enter- 
 prise or doubting his own power to do it. His frescoes 
 and altar-pieces and crucifixes, the work he had been so 
 long accustomed to, and which he could execute pleasantly 
 in his own workshop, or on the cool new walls of church 
 or convent, with his trained school of younger artists round 
 to aid him, were as different as possible from the elaborate 
 calculations and measurements by which alone the lofty 
 tower, straight and lightsome as a lily, could have sprung 
 so high and stood so lightly against that Italian sky. No 
 longer mere pencil or brush, but compasses and quaint
 
 148 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. 
 
 mathematical tools, figures not of art by arithmetic, elabo- 
 rate weighing of proportions and calculations of quantity 
 and balance, must have changed the character of those 
 preliminary studies in which every artist must engage 
 before he begins a great work. Like the poet or the 
 romancist when he turns from the flowery ways of fiction 
 and invention, where he is unincumbered by any restric- 
 tions save those of artistic keeping and personal will, to 
 the grave and beaten path of history the painter must 
 have felt when he too turned from the freedom and poetry 
 of art to this first scientific undertaking. The Cathedral 
 was so far finished by this time, its front not scarred and 
 bare as at present, but adorned with statues according to 
 old Arnolfo's plan, who was dead more than thirty years 
 before; but there was no belfry, no companion peal of 
 peace and sweetness to balance the hoarse old vacca with 
 its voice of iron. Giotto seems to have thrown himself 
 into the work not only without reluctance but with enthu- 
 siasm. The foundation-stone of the building was laid in 
 July of that year, with all the greatness of Florence look- 
 ing on ; and the painter entered upon his work at once, 
 working out the most poetic effort of his life in marble 
 and stone, among masons' chippings and the dust and 
 blaze of the public street. At the same time he designed, 
 though it does not seem sure whether he lived long enough 
 to execute, a new facade for the Cathedral, replacing 
 Arnolfo's old statues by something better, and raising over 
 the doorway the delicate tabernacle work which we see 
 in Pocetti's picture of St. Antonino's consecration as bishop 
 of St. Mark's. It would be pleasant to believe that while 
 the foundations of the Campanile were being laid and the
 
 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. 149 
 
 ruder mason-work progressing, the painter began immedi- 
 ately upon the more congenial labour, and made the face 
 of the Duomo fair with carvings, with soft shades of those 
 toned marbles which fit so tenderly into each other, and 
 elaborate canopies as delicate as foam ; but of this there 
 seems no certainty. Of the Campanile itself it is difficult 
 to speak in ordinary words. The enrichments of the 
 surface, which is covered by beautiful groups set in a 
 graceful framework of marble, with scarcely a flat or 
 unadorned spot from top to bottom, has been ever since 
 the admiration of artists and of the world. But we con- 
 fess, for our own part, that it is the structure itself that 
 affords us that soft ecstasy of contemplation, sense of a 
 perfection before which the mind stops short, silenced and 
 filled with the completeness of beauty unbroken, which 
 Art so seldom gives, though Nature often attains it by 
 the simplest means, through the exquisite perfection of a 
 flower or a stretch of summer sky. Just as we have 
 looked at a sunset, we look at Giotto's tower, poised far 
 above in the blue air, in all the wonderful dawns and 
 moonlights of Italy, swift darkness shadowing its white 
 glory at the tinkle of the Ave Mary, and a golden glow 
 of sunbeams accompanying the midday Angelus. Between 
 the solemn antiquity of the old Baptistery and the historical 
 gloom of the great Cathedral, it stands like the lily if 
 not, rather, like the great Angel himself hailing her who 
 was blessed among women, and keeping up that lovely 
 salutation, musical and sweet as its own beauty, for century 
 after century, day after day. 
 
 'The Makers of Florence (London, 1876).
 
 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 IN its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is some- 
 thing unpleasing ; a mingling, as it seems to him, of 
 over seventy with over minuteness. But let him give it 
 time, as he should to all other consummate art. I re- 
 member well how, when a boy, I used to despise that 
 Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. 
 But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked 
 out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, 
 and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy 
 appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, 
 when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the 
 front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it 
 could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey 
 walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren 
 rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, 
 rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or 
 other ornament than the martins' nests in the height of 
 them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing 
 jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so 
 faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly 
 traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that 
 serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morn-
 
 GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. 151 
 
 ing cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, 
 as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, 
 is there not something to be learned by looking back to 
 the early life of him who raised it ? I said that the Power 
 of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness ; much 
 more must the love and the conception of that beauty, 
 whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, 
 a faded image of God's daily work, and an arrested ray 
 of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places 
 which He has gladdened by planting there the fir-tree and 
 the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among 
 the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who 
 was to raise that head-stone of Beauty above the towers 
 of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count 
 the sacred thoughts with which he filled Italy ; ask those 
 who followed him what they learned at his feet ; and 
 when you have numbered his labours, and received their 
 testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured 
 out upon this His servant no common nor restrained 
 portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king 
 among the children of men, remember also that the legend 
 upon his crown was that of David's : "I took thee from 
 the sheepcote, and from following the sheep." 
 
 The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849).
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CCEUR 
 IN BOURGES. 
 
 AD. BERTY. 
 
 CERTAINLY Jacques Coeur, that citizen of humble 
 birth, who, by his merit reached the highest dignity 
 of state at an epoch when aristocracy reigned supreme, 
 this man of genius, who, while creating a maritime commerce 
 for France, amassed so great a fortune for himself that he 
 was able to help towards the deliverance of his own country 
 in supporting at his own expense four armies at the same 
 time, was not one of the least important figures of the 
 Fifteenth Century. Posterity has not always been just to 
 this illustrious upstart : he should be ranked immediately after 
 Jeanne d'Arc, for the sword of the Maid of Domremy 
 would, perhaps, have been powerless to chase the enemy 
 from the soil (which a cowardly king did not think of re- 
 pulsing), without the wise economy and the generous sacri 
 fices of him, who, at a later period, was abandoned by the 
 king to the rapacity of his courtiers with that same ignoble 
 ingratitude which he had shown to the sainte libertrlce of 
 the great nation over which he was so unworthy to rule. 
 
 Jacques Coeur was the son of a furrier, or according to 
 some authorities, a goldsmith of Bourges. He was probably 
 following his father's business when his intelligence and
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CO2UR IN BOURGES. 153 
 
 talents brought him into the notice of Charles VII., who 
 had been forced to take refuge in the capital of Berry on 
 account of the English conquests. The king appointed 
 him to the mint, then made him master of this branch of 
 administration, and, finally, ar gentler, a title equivalent to 
 superintendent of finance. Cceur, in his new and brilliant 
 position, did not abandon commerce to which he owed his 
 fortune ; his ships continued to furrow the seas, and three 
 hundred clerks aided him in bartering European products for 
 the silks and spices of the East and in realizing a fortune. 
 Always fortunate in his enterprises, ennobled l by the king 
 in 1440, and charged by him with many important political 
 missions, he probably did not know how to resist the vertigo 
 which always seizes those of mean origin who attain great 
 eminence. He exhibited an extraordinary luxury, whose 
 splendours humiliated the pride of the noble courtiers, 
 excited their hatred and envy, and contributed to his ruin. 
 With little regard for the great services which he had 
 rendered to the country, such as, for example, the gift of 
 200,000 crowns in gold at the time of the expedition of 
 Normandy, the nobles only saw in the magnificent argentler 
 an unworthy gambler, who should be deprived of his immense 
 wealth 2 for their profit. For this purpose they organized a 
 cabal. Coeur was charged with a multitude of crimes : he 
 was accused of having poisoned Agnes Sorel, who had made 
 
 1 The arms of Coeur were what are called par/antes : azure, fess or, 
 charged with three shells or (recalling those of St. James his patron), 
 accompanied by three hearts, gules, in allusion to his name. 
 
 1 The fortune of Jacques Cceur became proverbial : they said i 
 " Riche comme Jacques Coeur."
 
 154 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES COZUR IN BOURGES. 
 
 him her testamentary executor, of having altered money, 
 and of various other peculations ; he was also reproached for 
 having extorted money for various purposes in the name of 
 the king. . . . 
 
 The sentence of Jacques Coeur was not entirely executed ; 
 he was not banished, but, on the contrary, was imprisoned 
 in the Convent des Cordeliers de Beaucaire. Aided by one 
 of his clerks, Jean de Village, who had married his niece, he 
 made his escape and went to Rome, where Pope Calixtus 
 III., at that moment preparing an expedition against the 
 Turks, gave him command of a flotilla. Coeur then de- 
 parted, but, falling ill on the way, he disembarked at Chio, 
 where he died in 1461. His body was buried in the church 
 of the Cordeliers in that island. 
 
 Of the different houses which Jacques Coeur possessed, 
 the one considered among the most beautiful in all France, 
 exists almost intact, and is still known under the name of 
 the Maison de Jacques Cceur, although it now serves for a 
 hall of justice and mayoralty. This house, or rather this 
 hotel, was built between the years 1443 and 1453, and cost 
 a sum equal to 215,000 francs of our money. For its con- 
 struction, Coeur, having bought one of the towers of the 
 ramparts of Bourges, commonly called Tour de la chauss'ee, 
 from the fief of this name, built on a level with it another 
 and more beautiful tower, and these two towers served as a 
 beginning for the manoir, which was called, in consequence, 
 the Hotel de la chaussee. In building it they used stones 
 taken from the old Roman walls of the town, which were 
 on the site of the new hotel, and which had already been 
 pulled down by virtue of a charter given by Louis VIII.
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CCEUR.
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CCEUR IN BOURGES. 155 
 
 in 1224, by which, permission had been granted for build- 
 ing upon the ramparts and fortifications. At the time of 
 the revision of the law-suit of Jacques Cosur under Louis 
 XL the hotel was given back to his heirs, who in 1552 sold 
 it to Claude de 1'Aubespine, secretary of state. By a 
 descendant of the latter it was ceded to Colbert in 1679; 
 Colbert sold it again to the town of Bourges on January 
 30, 1682, for the sum of 33,000 livres. Jacques Creur's 
 house was therefore destined to become a hotel-de-ville, and, 
 as we have said, still exists to-day. 
 
 The plan of the building is an irregular pentagon, com- 
 posed of different bodies of buildings joined without any 
 symmetry, according to the general disposition of almost 
 all mediaeval civil and military buildings. The large towers 
 are Jacques Coeur's original ones. One was entirely recon- 
 structed by him with the exception of the first story, which 
 is of Roman work, as the layers of brick and masonry 
 indicate; the other, on the contrary, received only its crown 
 and a new interior construction, and, like the first, was 
 flanked by a tower destined to serve as a cage for the stair- 
 way. The court of honour is vast, and arranged so that it 
 was easy to communicate with the different parts of the 
 hotel. 
 
 The 'facade is composed of a pavilion flanked by two 
 wings. Following an arrangement borrowed from military 
 architecture, two doors were contrived, the little one for 
 the foot-passengers and the large one, which was the door 
 of honour, through which the Cavaliers entered. Both 
 had pointed arches and were ornamented with an archivolt 
 with crockets. One of them still possessed, until about
 
 156 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CteUR IN BOURGES. 
 
 a dozen years ago, its ancient sculptured panels and orna- 
 mental iron-work. Above these doors is a large niche 
 with very rich ornamentation, which originally sheltered 
 the equestrian statue of Charles VII. On its right and 
 left is a false window, in which you see the statue of 
 a man-servant in the one and that of a maid-servant in the 
 other, both in the costume of the period. Above this 
 niche the wall is pierced by a large window with four panes, 
 whose tracery reproduces hearts, armes par/antes of the 
 proprietor, and a fleur-de-lis, a sign of his recognition by 
 King Charles. A cornice of foliage forms the top of the 
 wall of the pavilion, which is crowned by a very high 
 roof with four sloping and concave sides. Upon the front 
 and back faces -of this roof is a large skylight-window and 
 on its lateral faces, a stock of chimneys. On the summit 
 of the roof is an imposing ridge which ends with two long 
 spikes. 
 
 The back of the pavilion is exactly like the front, with 
 the exception of a statue of Coeur corresponding to that 
 of the king. Xo the right of the pavilion there rises 
 an octagonal campanile of great elegance ; at its base is 
 a balustrade in whose open-work runs a phylactery, carry- 
 ing the motto, which is frequently repeated in the building 
 and which characterizes perfectly him who adopted it : 
 
 A <vaillans cceurs 1 rien <T impossible. 
 
 Notwithstanding the mutilations to which the house of 
 Jacques Coeur has been condemned by its fate, it is certainly 
 one of the most interesting and best preserved of all the civil 
 
 1 The word cceurs is indicated by hearts.
 
 THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CCEUR IN BOURGES. 157 
 
 buildings of the Middle Ages. A vast amount of informa- 
 tion regarding the intimate life of the people, which has so 
 great an attraction for the archaeologist, is to be found here. 
 If the fact that the study of buildings should be the 
 inseparable companion to that of history was less evident, 
 the house of Jacques Coeur would afford us an opportunity 
 to demonstrate the truth ; in reality, when we have studied 
 this building we certainly gain a much clearer idea of the 
 manners of Charles VII.'s reign than could be obtained 
 from a host of lecturers upon history. 
 
 . Jules Gailhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes (Paris, 1865).
 
 WAT PHRA KAO. 
 CARL, BOCK. 
 
 THE first glimpse of Siam which the traveller obtains 
 at Paknam is a fair sample of what is to be seen 
 pretty well throughout the country. As Constantinople 
 is called the City of Mosques, so Bangkok may, with even 
 more reason, be termed the City of Temples. And not 
 in Bangkok only and its immediate neighbourhood, but in 
 the remotest parts of the country, wherever a few people 
 live now, or ever have lived, a Wat with its image, or 
 collection of images, of Buddha, is to be found, surrounded 
 by numberless phrachedees, those curious structures which 
 every devout Buddhist and all Buddhists are in one 
 sense or another devout erects at every turn as a means 
 of gaining favour with the deity, or of making atonement 
 for his sins. On the rich plains, in the recesses of the 
 forests, on the tops of high mountains, in all directions, 
 these monuments of universal allegiance to a faith which, 
 more perhaps than any other, claims a devotee in almost 
 every individual inhabitant of the lands over which it has 
 once obtained sway, are to be found. The labour, the 
 time, and the wealth lavished upon these structures are 
 beyond calculation. . . .
 
 WAT PHRA KAO.
 
 WAT PHRA KAO. 159 
 
 The work which, in popular estimation at least, will 
 make his Majesty's reign most memorable in Siam, is the 
 completion and dedication of the great royal temple, Phra 
 Sri Ratana Satsadaram, or, as it is usually called, Wat Phra 
 Kao. The erection of this magnificent pile of buildings 
 was commenced by Phra Puttha Yot Fa Chulalok, " as a 
 temple for the Emerald Buddha, the palladium of the 
 capital, for the glory of the king, and as an especial work 
 of royal piety." This temple was inaugurated with a 
 grand religious festival in the year Maseng, yth of the 
 cycle, 1147 (A. D. 1785), but, having been very hastily 
 got ready for the celebration of the third anniversary of the 
 foundation of the capital, it was incomplete, only the 
 church and library being finished. Various additions were 
 made from time to time, but the Wat remained in an 
 unfinished state until the present king came to the throne. 
 The vow to complete the works was made on Tuesday, 
 the 23rd of December, 1879. The works were com- 
 menced during the next month and completed on Monday, 
 the 1 7th of April, 1882, a period of two years, three 
 months, and twenty days. Thus it was reserved for King 
 Chulalonkorn, at an enormous outlay, entirely defrayed 
 out of his private purse, and by dint of great exertions on 
 the part of those to whom the work was immediately 
 entrusted, to complete this structure, and, on the hundredth 
 anniversary of the capital of Siam, to give the city its 
 crowning glory. 
 
 The work was placed under the direct superintendence 
 of the king's brothers, each of whom had a particular part 
 of the work allotted to him. One, for instance, relaid the
 
 WAT PHRA KAO. 
 
 marble pavement, and decorated the Obosot with pictures 
 of the sacred elephant ; while a second renewed the stone 
 inscriptions inside the Obosot ; a third laid down a brass 
 pavement in the Obosot ; a fourth undertook to restore 
 all the inlaid pearl work ; another undertook the work 
 of repairing the ceiling, paving, and wall-decoration, and 
 made three stands for the seals of the kingdom ; another 
 changed the decayed roof-beams ; another covered the 
 great phrachedee with gold tiles the effect of which in 
 the brilliant sunlight is marvellously beautiful and -re- 
 paired and gilded all the small phrachedees; another 
 renewed and repaired and redecorated all the stone orna- 
 ments and flower-pots in the temple-grounds, and made 
 the copper-plated and gilt figures of demons, and purchased 
 many marble statues ; two princes divided between them 
 the repairs of the cloisters, renewing the roof where re- 
 quired, painting, gilding, paving with stone, and complet- 
 ing the capitals of columns, and so on. Thus, by division 
 of labour, under the stimulus of devotion to the religion 
 of the country, and of brotherly loyalty to the king, the 
 great work was at length completed, after having been 
 exactly one hundred years in course of construction. On 
 the 2 ist of April, 1882, the ceremony of final dedication 
 was performed, with the greatest pomp, and amid general 
 rejoicings. 
 
 Under the name " Wat Phra Kao " are included various 
 buildings covering a large area of ground, which is sur- 
 rounded by walls decorated with elaborate frescoes. In 
 the centre is a temple, called the Phra Marodop, built 
 in the form of a cross, where on festive occasions the
 
 WAT PHRA KAO. l6l 
 
 king goes to hear a sermon from the prince-high-priest. 
 The walls of this building are richly decorated with 
 inlaid work, and the ceiling painted with a chaste design 
 in blue and gold. The most striking feature, however, 
 is the beautiful work in the ebony doors, which are elab- 
 orately inlaid with mother-of-pearl figures representing 
 Thewedas, bordered by a rich scroll. Behind this chapel- 
 royal is the great phrachedee, called the Sri Ratana 
 Phrachedee, entirely covered with gilt tiles, which are 
 specially made for the purpose in Germany to the order 
 of H. R. H. Krom Mun Aditson Udom Det. 
 
 There are several other large buildings in the temple- 
 grounds, but the structure in which the interest of the 
 place centres is the Obosot, which shelters the famous 
 " Emerald Buddha," a green jade figure of matchless 
 beauty, which was found at Kiang Hai in A. D. 1436, 
 and, after various vicissitudes of fortune, was at last placed 
 in safety in the royal temple at Bangkok. This image is, 
 according to the season of the year, differently attired in 
 gold ornaments and robes. The Emerald Buddha is 
 raised so high up, at the very summit of a high altar, that 
 it is somewhat difficult to see it, especially as light is not 
 over plentiful, the windows being generally kept closely 
 shuttered. For the convenience of visitors, however, the 
 attendants will for a small fee open one or two of the 
 heavy shutters, which are decorated on the outside with 
 gilt figures of Thewedas in contorted attitudes. When 
 at last the sun's rays are admitted through the " dim 
 religious light," and the beam of brightness shines on the 
 resplendent figure enthroned above a gorgeous array 
 
 ii
 
 162 WAT PHRA KAO. 
 
 of coloured vases, with real flowers and their waxen imita- 
 tions, of gold, silver, and bronze representations of Buddha, 
 of Bohemian glassware, lamps, and candlesticks, with here 
 and there a flickering taper still burning, and surrounded 
 with a profusion of many-storied umbrellas, emblems of 
 the esteem in which the gem is held the scene is re- 
 markably beautiful, and well calculated to have a lasting 
 effect on the minds of those who are brought up to see in 
 the calm, solemn, and dignified form of Buddha the repre- 
 sentation of all that is good here, and the symbol of all 
 happiness hereafter. The floor of the Obosot is of tes- 
 sellated brass, and the walls are decorated with the usual 
 perspectiveless frescoes, representing scenes in Siamese or 
 Buddhist history. 
 
 It is in this Obosot that the semi-annual ceremony of 
 Tunam, or drinking the water of allegiance, takes place, 
 when the subjects of Siam, through their representatives, 
 and the princes and high officers of state, renew or 
 confirm their oath of allegiance. The ceremony consists 
 of drinking water sanctified by the priests, and occurs 
 twice a year on the third day of the waxing of the 
 Siamese fifth month (i. e., the ist of April), and on the 
 thirteenth day of the waning of the Siamese tenth month 
 (i. e., the 2ist of September). 
 
 The foregoing description gives but a faint idea of this 
 sacred and historic edifice, which will henceforth be 
 regarded as a symbol of the rule of the present Siamese 
 dynasty, and the completion of which will mark an epoch 
 in Siamese history. 
 
 Temples and Elephants (London, 1884).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 THE exterior of the Cathedral of Toledo is far less 
 ornate than that of the Cathedral of Burgos : it 
 has no efflorescence of ornaments, no arabesques, and no 
 collarette of statues enlivening the porches ; it has solid 
 buttresses, bold and sharp angles, a thick facing of stone, 
 a stolid tower, with no delicacies of the Gothic jewel-work, 
 and it is covered entirely with a reddish tint, like that of a 
 piece of toast, or the sunburnt skin of a pilgrim from Pales- 
 tine ; as if to make up the loss, the interior is hollowed and 
 sculptured like a grotto of stalactites. 
 
 The door by which we entered is of bronze, and bears 
 the following inscription : Antonio 'Lurreno del arte de oro y 
 plata, faclebat esta media puerta. The first impression is 
 most vivid and imposing ; five naves divide the church : the 
 middle one is of an immeasurable height, and the others 
 beside it seem to bow their heads and kneel in token of 
 admiration and respect ; eighty-eight pillars, each as large as a 
 tower and each composed of sixteen spindle-shaped columns 
 bound together, sustain the enormous mass of the building ; 
 a transept cuts the large nave between the choir and the 
 high altar, and forms the arms of the cross. The archi- 
 tecture of the entire building is homogeneous and perfect,
 
 164 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 
 
 a very rare virtue in Gothic cathedrals, which have gener- 
 ally been built at different periods ; the original plan has 
 been adhered to from one end to the other, with the excep- 
 tion of a few arrangements of the chapels, which, however, 
 do not interfere with the harmony of the general effect. 
 The windows, glittering with hues of emerald, sapphire, 
 and ruby set in the ribs of stone, worked like rings, sift in 
 a soft and mysterious light which inspires religious ecstasy ; 
 and, when the sun is too strong, blinds of spartium are let 
 down over the windows, and through the building is then 
 diffused that cool half-twilight which makes the churches 
 of Spain so favourable for meditation and prayer. 
 
 The high altar, or retablo, alone might pass for a church ; 
 it is an enormous accumulation of small columns, niches, 
 statues, foliage, and arabesques, of which the most minute 
 description would give but a faint idea; all this sculpture, 
 which extends up to the vaulted roof and all around the 
 sanctuary, is painted and gilded with unimaginable wealth. 
 The warm and tawny tones of the antique gold, illumined 
 by the rays and patches of light interrupted in their passage 
 by the tracery and projections of the ornaments, stand out 
 superbly and produce the most admirable effects of grandeur 
 and richness. The paintings, with their backgrounds of 
 gold which adorn the panels of this altar, equal in richness 
 of colour the most brilliant Venetian canvases ; this union 
 of colour with the severe and almost hieratic forms of 
 mediaeval art is rarely found; some of these paintings might 
 be taken for Giorgione's first manner. 
 
 Opposite to the high altar is placed the choir, or silleria, 
 according to the Spanish custom ; it is composed of three
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 165 
 
 rows of stalls in sculptured wood, hollowed and carved in 
 a marvellous manner with historical, allegorical, and sacred 
 bas-reliefs. Gothic Art, on the borderland of the Renais- 
 sance, has never produced anything more pure, more per- 
 fect, or better drawn. This work, the details of which 
 are appalling, has been attributed to the patient chisels of 
 Philippe de Bourgogne and Berruguete. The archbishop's 
 stall, which is higher than the rest, is shaped like a throne 
 and marks the centre of the choir ; this prodigious carpentry 
 is crowned by gleaming columns of brown jasper, and on 
 the entablature stand alabaster figures, also by Philippe de 
 Bourgogne and Berruguete, but in a freer and more supple 
 style, elegant and admirable in effect. Enormous bronze 
 reading-desks supporting gigantic missals, large spartium 
 mats, and two colossal organs placed opposite to each 
 other, one to the right and one to the left, complete the 
 decorations. . . . 
 
 The Mozarabic Chapel, which is still in existence, is 
 adorned with Gothic frescoes of the highest interest : the 
 subjects are the combats between the Toledans and the 
 Moors ; they are in a state of perfect preservation, their 
 colours are as bright as if they had been laid on yesterday, 
 and by means of them an archaeologist would gain a vast 
 amount of information regarding arms, costumes, accoutre- 
 ments, and architecture, for the principal fresco represents a 
 view of old Toledo, which is, doubtless, very accurate. In 
 the lateral frescoes the ships which brought the Arabs to 
 Spain are painted in detail ; a seaman might gather much 
 useful information from them regarding the obscure history 
 of the mediaeval navy. The arms of Toledo five stars,
 
 l66 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 
 
 sable on a field, argent are repeated in several places in 
 this low-vaulted chapel, which, according to the Spanish 
 fashion, is enclosed by a grille of beautiful workmanship. 
 
 The Chapel of the Virgin, which is entirely faced with 
 beautifully polished porphyry, jasper, and yellow and violet 
 breccia, is of a richness surpassing the splendours of the 
 Thousand and One Nights ; many relics are preserved here, 
 among them a reliquary presented by Saint Louis, which 
 contains a piece of the True Cross. 
 
 To recover our breath, let us make, if you please, the 
 tour of the cloisters, whose severe yet elegant arcades 
 surround beautiful masses of verdure, kept green, notwith- 
 standing the devouring heat of this season, by the shadow 
 of the Cathedral ; the walls of this cloister are covered 
 with frescoes in the style of Vanloo, by a painter named 
 Bayeu. These compositions are simple and pleasing in 
 colour, but they do not harmonize with the style of the 
 building, and probably supplant ancient works damaged by 
 centuries, or found too Gothic for the people of good taste 
 in that time. It is very fitting to place a cloister near a 
 church ; it affords a happy transition from the tranquillity 
 of the sanctuary to the turmoil of the city. You can go 
 to it to walk about, to dream, or to reflect, without being 
 forced to join in the prayers and ceremonies of a cult ; 
 Catholics go to the temple, Christians remain more fre- 
 quently in the cloisters. This attitude of mind has been 
 perfectly understood by that marvellous psychologist the 
 Catholic Church. In religious countries the Cathedral is 
 always the most ornamented, richest, most gilded, and 
 most florid of all buildings in the town; it is there that
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 167 
 
 one finds the coolest shade and the deepest peace ; the 
 music there is better than in the theatre ; and it has no 
 rival in pomp of display. It is the central point, the 
 magnetic spot, like the Opera in Paris. We Catholics of 
 the North, with our Vottairean temples, have no idea of the 
 luxury, elegance, and comfort of the Spanish cathedrals; 
 these churches are furnished and animated, and have 
 nothing of that glacial, desert-like appearance of ours; the 
 faithful can live in them on familiar terms with their 
 God. 
 
 The sacristies and rooms of the Chapter in the Cathe- 
 dral of Toledo have a more than royal magnificence; 
 nothing could be more noble and picturesque than these 
 vast halls decorated with that solid and severe luxury of 
 which the Church alone has the secret. Here are rare 
 carpentry-work in carved walnut or black oak, portieres of 
 tapestry or Indian damask, curtains of brocatelle, with 
 sumptuous folds, figured brocades, Persian carpets, and 
 paintings of fresco. We will not try to describe them 
 in detail ; we will only speak of one room ornamented 
 with admirable frescoes depicting religious subjects in the 
 German style of which the Spaniards have made such 
 successful imitations, and which have been attributed to 
 Berruguete's nephew, if not to Berruguete himself, for 
 these prodigious geniuses followed simultaneously three 
 branches of art. We will also mention an enormous 
 ceiling by Luca Giordano, where is collected a whole 
 world of angels and allegorical figures in the most rapidly 
 executed foreshortening which produce a singular optical 
 illusion. From the middle of the roof springs a ray of light
 
 168 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 
 
 so wonderfully painted on the flat surface that it seems to 
 fall perpendicularly on your head, no matter from which 
 side you view it. 
 
 It is here that they keep the treasure, that is to say 
 the beautiful copes of brocade, cloth of gold and silver 
 damask, the marvellous laces, the silver-gilt reliquaries, 
 the monstrances of diamonds, the gigantic silver candle- 
 sticks, the embroidered banners, all the material and 
 accessories for the representation of that sublime Catholic 
 drama which we called the Mass. 
 
 In the cupboards in one of the rooms is preserved the 
 wardrobe of the Holy Virgin, for cold, naked statues of 
 marble or alabaster do not suffice for the passionate piety 
 of the Southern race ; in their devout transport they load 
 the object of their worship with ornaments of extravagant 
 richness; nothing is good. enough, brilliant enough, or costly 
 enough for them ; under this shower of precious stones, the 
 form and material of the figure disappear : nobody cares 
 about that. The main thing is that it should be an impos- 
 sibility to hang another pearl in the ears of the marble 
 idol, to insert another diamond in its golden crown, or to 
 trace another leaf of gems in the brocade of its dress. 
 
 Never did an ancient queen, not even Cleopatra who 
 drank pearls, never did an empress of the Lower Empire, 
 never did a Venetian courtesan in the time of Titian, 
 possess more brilliant jewels nor a richer wardrobe than 
 Our Lady of Toledo. They showed us some of her 
 robes : one of them left you no idea as to the material of 
 which it was made, so entirely was it covered with flowers 
 and arabesques of seed-pearls, among which there were
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO. 169 
 
 others of a size beyond all price and several rows of black 
 pearls, which are of almost unheard-of rarity ; suns and 
 stars of jewels also constellate this precious gown, which is 
 so brilliant that the eye can scarcely bear its splendour, and 
 which is worth many millions of francs. 
 
 We ended our visit by ascending the bell-tower, the 
 summit of which is reached by a succession of ladders, 
 sufficiently steep and not very reassuring. About half way 
 up, in a kind of store-room, through which you pass, we 
 saw a row of gigantic marionettes, coloured and dressed in 
 the fashion of the last century, and used in I don't know 
 what kind of a procession similar to that of Tarascon. 
 
 The magnificent view which is seen from the tall 
 spire amply repays you for all the fatigue of the ascent. 
 The whole town is presented before you with all the 
 sharpness and precision of M. Pelet's cork-models, so 
 much admired at the last Exposition de T Industrie. This 
 comparison is doubtless very prosaic and unpicturesque ; 
 but really I cannot find a better, nor a more accurate one. 
 The dwarfed and misshapen rocks of blue granite, which 
 encase the Tagus and encircle the horizon of Toledo on 
 
 O 
 
 one side, add still more to the singularity of the landscape, 
 inundated and dominated by crude, pitiless, blinding light, 
 which no reflections temper and which is increased by the 
 cloudless and vapourless sky quivering with white heat like 
 iron in a furnace. 
 
 Voyage en Espagne (Paris, new ed. 1865).
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 
 
 JULES LOISELEUR. 
 
 CHAMBORD is the Versailles of the feudal mon- 
 archy ; it was to the Chateau de Blois, that central 
 residence of the Valois, what Versailles was to the Tuileries*, 
 it was the country-seat of Royalty. Tapestries from Arras, 
 Venetian mirrors, curiously sculptured chests, crystal chan- 
 deliers, massive silver furniture, and miracles of all the arts, 
 amassed in this palace during eight reigns and dispersed in a 
 single day by the breath of the Revolution, can never be col- 
 lected again save under one condition : that there should be 
 a sovereign sufficiently powerful and sufficiently artistic, 
 sufficiently concerned about the glory and the memories of 
 the ancient monarchy to make of Chambord what has been 
 made out of the Louvre and Versailles a museum con- 
 secrated to all the intimate marvels, to all the curiosities of 
 the Arts of the Renaissance, at least to all those with which 
 the sovereigns were surrounded, something like the way the 
 Hotel de Cluny exhibits royal life. 
 
 It has often been asked why Francois I., to whom the 
 banks of the Loire presented many marvellous sites, selected 
 a wild and forsaken spot in the midst of arid plains for the 
 erection of the strange building which he planned. This 
 peculiar choice has been attributed to that prince's passion
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. I/I 
 
 for the chase and in memory of his amours with the beauti- 
 ful Comtesse de Thoury, chatelaine in that neighbourhood, 
 before he ascended the throne. 
 
 Independently of these motives, which doubtless counted 
 greatly in his selection, perhaps the very wildness of this 
 place, this distance from the Loire, which reminded him too 
 much of the cares of Royalty, was a determining reason. 
 Kings, like private individuals, and even more than they, 
 experience the need at times of burying themselves, and 
 therefore make a hidden and far-away nest where they may 
 be their own masters and live to please themselves. More- 
 over, Chambord, with its countless rooms, its secret stair- 
 ways, and its subterranean passages, seems to have been 
 built for a love which seeks shadow and mystery. At the 
 same time that he hid Chambord in the heart of the uncul- 
 tivated plains of the Sologne, Francois I. built in the midst 
 of the Bois de Boulogne a chateau^ where, from time to 
 time, he shut himself up with learned men and artists, and 
 to which the courtiers, who were positively forbidden there, 
 gave the name of Madrid, in memory of the prison in 
 which their master had suffered. Chambord, like Madrid, 
 was not a prison : it was a retreat. 
 
 That sentiment of peculiar charm which is attached to 
 the situation of Chambord will be felt by every artist who 
 visits this strange realization of an Oriental dream. At the 
 end of a long avenue of poplars breaking through thin 
 underbrush which bears an illustrious name, like all the 
 roads to this residence, you see, little by little, peeping and 
 mounting upward from the earth, a fairy building, which, 
 rising in the midst of arid sand and heath, produces the most
 
 172 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 
 
 striking and unexpected effect. A genie of the Orient, 
 a poet has said, must have stolen it from the country 
 of sunshine to hide it in the country of fog for the amours 
 of a handsome prince. At the summit of an imposing 
 mass of battlements, of which the first glance discerns 
 neither the style nor the order, above terraces with orna- 
 mental balustrades, springs up, as if from a fertile and inex- 
 haustible soil, an incredible vegetation of sculptured stone, 
 worked in a thousand different ways. It is a forest of 
 campaniles, chimneys, sky-lights, domes, and towers, in 
 lace-work and open-work, twisted according to a caprice 
 which excludes neither harmony nor unity, and which orna- 
 ments with the Gothic F the salamanders and also the 
 mosaics of slate imitating marble, a singular poverty in 
 the midst of so much wealth. The beautiful open-worked 
 tower of the large staircase dominates the entire mass of 
 pinnacles and steeples, and bathes in the blue sky its co- 
 lossal fleur-de-lis, the last point of the highest pinnacle 
 among pinnacles, the highest crown among all crowns. . . . 
 
 We must take Chambord for what it is, an ancient 
 Gothic chateau dressed out in great measure according to 
 the fashion of the Renaissance. 
 
 In no other place is the transition from one style to 
 another revealed in a way so impressive and naive ; nowhere 
 else does the brilliant butterfly of the Renaissance show 
 itself more deeply imprisoned in the heavy Gothic chrysalis. 
 If Chambord, by its plan which is essentially French and 
 feudal, by its enclosure flanked with towers, and by the 
 breadth of its heavy mass, slavishly recalls the mediaeval 
 mano'tn^ by its lavish profusion of ornamentation it suggests
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 173 
 
 the creations of the Sixteenth Century as far as the begin- 
 ning of the roofs ; it is Gothic as far as the platform ; and 
 it belongs to the Renaissance when it comes to the roof 
 
 O 
 
 itself. It may be compared to a rude French knight of 
 the Fourteenth Century, who is wearing on his cuirass 
 some fine Italian embroideries, and on his head the plumed 
 felt of Francois I., assuredly an incongruous costume, 
 but not without character. . . . 
 
 The chateau should be entered by one of the four doors 
 which open in the centre of the donjon. Nothing is more 
 fantastic, and, at the same time, magnificent than the 
 spectacle which greets the eye. It seems more like one 
 of those fairy palaces which we see at the Opera, than a 
 real building. Neglect and nakedness give it an additional 
 value and double its immensity. On entering this vast 
 solitude of stone, we are seized with that respectful silence 
 which involuntarily strikes us under high and solitary 
 vaults. In the centre of the vast Salle des Gardes, which 
 occupies the entire ground-floor, and to which the four 
 towers of the donjon give the form of the Greek cross, 
 rises a monumental stairway which divides this hall into 
 four equal parts, each being fifty feet long and thirty feet 
 broad. This bold conception justifies its celebrity : the 
 stairway at Chambord is in itself a monument. The 
 staircase, completely isolated and open-worked, is com- 
 posed of posts which follow the winding. Two flights of 
 stairs, one above the other, unfold in helices and pass 
 alternately one over the other without meeting. This will 
 explain how two persons could ascend at the same time 
 without meeting, yet perceiving each other at intervals.
 
 174 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 
 
 Even while looking at this, it is difficult to conceive this 
 arrangement. These two helices, which are placed above 
 each other and which turn over and over each other with- 
 out ever uniting, have exactly the curve of a double 
 corkscrew. I believe that no other comparison can give 
 a more exact idea of this celebrated work which has 
 exhausted the admiration and the eulogy of all the connois- 
 seurs. " What merits the greatest praise," writes Blondel 
 in his Lemons a" architecture, " is the ingenious disposition 
 of that staircase of double flights, crossing each other and 
 both common to the same newel. One cannot admire 
 too greatly the lightness of its arrangement, the boldness 
 of its execution, and the delicacy of its ornaments, per- 
 fection which astonishes and makes it difficult to conceive 
 how any one could imagine a design so picturesque and 
 how it could be put into execution." The author of 
 Cinq Mars taking up this same idea says : u It is difficult 
 to conceive how the plan was drawn and how the orders 
 were given to the workmen : it seems a fugitive thought, 
 a brilliant idea which must have taken material form 
 suddenly a realized dream." . . . 
 
 In going through the high halls and long corridors 
 which lead from one chapel to the other, one likes to 
 restore in imagination the rich furniture, the tapestries, 
 the glazed tiles of faience, and the ceilings incrusted with 
 tin fleur-de-lis, which formed its decoration. Each gallery 
 was filled with frescoes by Jean Cousin and the principal 
 works of Leonardo da Vinci. . . . The breath of the 
 Revolution has scattered and destroyed all these rarities. 
 For fifteen days the frippers ran from all points of the
 
 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 175 
 
 province to divide the paintings, the precious enamels, 
 the chests of oak and ebony, the sculptured pulpits, and the 
 high-posted beds covered with armorial hangings. They 
 sold at auction all the souvenirs of the glory of the mon' 
 archy. What they could not sell, they burned. . . . 
 
 When we descend the noble staircase which Francois I. 
 ordered, which an unknown artist executed, and which 
 deserves to be credited to Primaticcio, it is impossible not 
 to look back upon the Past. What illustrious feet have 
 trod, what eyes have beheld these marvels ! What hands, 
 now cold, charming hands of queens, or courtesans more 
 powerful than those queens, and rude hands of warriors, 
 or statesmen, have traced on these white stones names 
 celebrated in that day, but now effaced from the walls, 
 as they are each day more and more effaced from the 
 memory of men ! The wheel of Time, which broke in 
 its revolution, has only left enough in this chateau for us 
 to observe and reconstruct in imagination personages great 
 enough to harmonize with such grandeur, and to excite 
 in us that pious respect which must always be attached 
 to everything about to end. Another turn of the wheel 
 and ruin will begin. " Ce chateau" a poet has said, " est 
 frapp'e de malediction" * . . . 
 
 To-day, and during two Revolutions, the chief of the 
 eldest branch of the Bourbons has remained the master 
 of Chambord. Between this exiled master and this deserted 
 castle there is an intimate and sad relation which will 
 touch the most unsympathetic heart. Each stone that 
 falls in the grass-grown court without a human ear to take 
 1 Chateaubriand, La Vie de Rand.
 
 176 THE CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD. 
 
 note of the noise, is it not the parallel of an obliterated 
 memory, a hope that is ever weakening ? In the absence 
 of this master, who, doubtless, will never return, the old 
 chateau falls into the shadow and silence which belong to 
 fallen majesty. It awaits in this grave and slightly morose 
 sorrow those great vicissitudes, which are imposed on 
 stones, as on men, that the Future has in store. 
 
 Les Residences royales de la Loire (Paris, 1863).
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 PIERRE LOTI. 
 
 He who has not beheld Nikko, has no right to make use of the 
 word splendour. Japanese Proverb. 
 
 IN the heart of the large island of Niphon and in a 
 mountainous and wooded region, fifty leagues from 
 Yokohama, is hidden that marvel of marvels the necrop- 
 olis of the Japanese Emperors. 
 
 There, on the declivity of the Holy Mountain of Nikko, 
 under cover of a dense forest and in the midst of cascades 
 whose roar among the shadows of the cedars never ceases, 
 is a series of enchanting temples, made of bronze and lacquer 
 with roofs of gold, which look as if a magic ring must have 
 called them into existence among the ferns and mosses and 
 the green dampness, over-arched by dark branches and 
 surrounded by the wildness and grandeur of Nature. 
 
 Within these temples there is an inconceivable magnifi- 
 cence, a fairy-like splendour. Nobody is about, except a 
 few guardian bonzes who chant hymns, and several white- 
 robed priestesses who perform the sacred dances whilst 
 waving their fans. Every now and then the slow vibra- 
 tions of an enormous bronze gong, or the dull, heavy blows 
 on a monstrous prayer-drum are heard in the deep and 
 
 12
 
 178 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 echoing forest. At other times there are certain sounds 
 which really seem to be a part of the silence and solitude, 
 the chirp of the grasshoppers, the cry of the falcons in the 
 air, the chatter of the monkeys in the branches, and the 
 monotonous fall of the cascades. 
 
 All this dazzling gold in the mystery of the forest makes 
 these sepulchres unique. This is the Mecca of Japan ; 
 this is the heart, as yet inviolate, of this country which is 
 now gradually sinking in the great Occidental current, but 
 which has had a magnificent Past. Those were strange 
 mystics and very rare artists who, three or four hundred 
 years ago, realized all this magnificence in the depths of 
 the woods and for their dead. . . . 
 
 We stop before the first temple. It stands a little off to 
 itself in a kind of glade. You approach it by a garden 
 with raised terraces ; a garden with grottos, fountains, 
 and dwarf-trees with violet, yellow, or reddish foliage. 
 
 The vast temple is entirely red, and blood-red ; an 
 enormous black and gold roof, turned up at the corners, 
 seems to crush it with its weight. From it comes a kind 
 of religious music, soft and slow, interrupted from time to 
 time by a heavy and horrible blow. 
 
 It is wide open, open so that its entire facade with columns 
 is visible; but the interior is hidden by an immense white 
 velum. The velum is of silk, only ornamented in its entire 
 white length by three or four large, black, heraldic roses, 
 which are very simple, but I cannot describe their exquisite 
 distinction, and behind this first and half-lifted hanging, the 
 light bamboo blinds are let down to the ground. 
 
 We walk up several granite steps, and, to permit my
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 1/9 
 
 entrance, my guide pushes aside a corner of the Veil : the 
 sanctuary appears. 
 
 Within everything is in black lacquer and gold lacquer, 
 with the gold predominating. Above the complicated cor- 
 nice and golden frieze there springs a ceiling in compart- 
 ments, in worked lacquer of black and gold. Behind the 
 colonnade at the back, the remote part, where, doubtless, the 
 gods are kept, is hidden by long curtains of black and gold 
 brocade, hanging in stifF folds from the ceiling to the floor. 
 Upon white mats on the floor large golden vases are 
 standing, filled with great bunches of golden lotuses as tall 
 as trees. And finally from the ceiling, like the bodies of 
 large dead serpents or monstrous boas, hang a quantity of 
 astonishing caterpillars of silk, as large as a human arm, 
 blue, yellow, orange, brownish-red, and black, or strangely 
 variegated like the throats of certain birds of those islands. 
 
 Some bonzes are singing in one corner, seated in a circle 
 around a prayer-drum, large enough to hold them all. . . . 
 
 We go out by the back door, which leads into the 
 most curious garden in the world: it is a square filled with 
 shadows shut in by the forest cedars and high walls, which 
 are red like the sanctuary ; in the centre rises a very large 
 bronze obelisk flanked with four little ones, and crowned 
 with a pyramid of golden leaves and golden bells ; you 
 would say that in this country bronze and gold cost nothing ; 
 they are used in such profusion, everywhere, just as we use 
 the mean materials of stone and plaster. All along this 
 blood-red wall which forms the back of the temple, in order 
 to animate this melancholy garden, at about the height of a 
 man there is a level row of little wooden gods, of all forms
 
 l8o THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 and colours, which are gazing at the obelisk ; some blue, 
 others yellow, others green ; some have the shape of a man, 
 others of an elephant : a company of dwarfs, extraordinarily 
 comical, but which express no merriment. 
 
 In order to reach the other temples, we again walk 
 through the damp and shadowy woods along the avenues 
 of cedars, which ascend and descend and intersect in various 
 ways, and really constitute the streets of this city of the 
 dead. 
 
 We walk on pathways of fine sand, strewn with these 
 little brown needles which drop from the cedars. Always 
 in terraces, they are bordered with balustrades and pillars of 
 granite covered with the most delicious moss ; you would 
 say all the hand-rails have been garnished with a beautiful 
 green velvet, and at each side of the sanded pathway invari- 
 ably flow little fresh and limpid brooks, which join their 
 crystal notes to those of the distant torrents and cascades. 
 
 At a height of one hundred, or two hundred metres, we 
 arrive at the entrance of something which seems to indicate 
 magnificence : above us on the mountain in the medley of 
 branches, walls taper upward, while roofs of lacquer and 
 bronze, with their population of monsters, are perched 
 everywhere, shining with gold. 
 
 Before this entrance there is a kind of open square, a 
 narrow glade, where a little sunlight falls. And here in its 
 luminous rays two bonzes in ceremonial costume pass 
 across the dark background : one, in a long robe of violet 
 silk with a surplice of orange silk ; the other, in a robe of 
 pearl-grey with a sky-blue surplice ; each wears a high and 
 rigid head-dress of black lacquer, which is seldom worn now.
 
 THE TEMPLES OP NIKKO. l8l 
 
 (These were the only human beings whom we met on the 
 way, during our pilgrimage.) They are probably going to 
 perform some religious office, and, passing before the sump- 
 tuous entrance, they make profound bows. 
 
 This temple before which we are now standing is that 
 of the deified soul of the Emperor Yeyaz (Sixteenth Cen- 
 tury), and, perhaps, the most marvellous of all the buildings 
 of Nikko. 
 
 You ascend by a series of doors and enclosures, which 
 become more and more beautiful as you get higher and 
 nearer the sanctuary, where the soul of this dead Emperor 
 dwells. . . . 
 
 At the door of the Palace of the Splendour of the Orient 
 we stop to take off our shoes according to custom. Gold 
 is everywhere, resplendent gold. 
 
 An indescribable ornamentation has been chosen for this 
 threshold ; on the enormous posts are a kind of wavy 
 clouds, or ocean-billows, in the centre of which here and 
 there appear the tentacles of medusae, the ends of paws, the 
 claws of crabs, the ends of long caterpillars, flat and scaly, 
 all kinds of horrible fragments, imitated in colossal size 
 with a striking fidelity, and making you think that the beasts 
 to which they belong must be hidden there within the walls 
 ready to enfold you and tear your flesh. This splendour 
 has mysteriously hostile undercurrents; we feel that it has 
 many a surprise and menace. Above our heads the lintels 
 are, however, ornamented with large, exquisite flowers in 
 bronze, or gold : roses, peonies, wistaria, and spring branches 
 of full-blown cherry-blossoms ; but, still higher, horrible 
 faces with fixed death's-head grimaces lean toward usj
 
 182 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 terrible things of all shapes hang by their golden wings from 
 the golden beams of the roof; we perceive in the air rows 
 of mouths split open with atrocious laughter, and rows of 
 eyes half-closed in an unquiet sleep. 
 
 An old priest, aroused by the noise of our footsteps on 
 the gravel in the silence of the court, appears before us on 
 the bronze threshold. In order to examine the permit 
 which I present to him, he puts a pair of round spectacles 
 on his nose, which make him look like an owl. 
 
 My papers are in order. A bow, and he steps aside to 
 let me enter. 
 
 It is gloomy inside this palace, with that mysterious 
 semi-twilight which the Spirits delight in. The impressions 
 felt on entering are grandeur and repose. 
 
 The walls are of gold and the ceiling is of gold, supported 
 on columns of gold. A vague, trembling light, illuminating 
 as if from beneath, enters through the very much grated and 
 very low windows ; the dark, undetermined depths are full 
 of the gleamings of precious things. 
 
 Yellow gold, red gold, green gold ; gold that is vital, or 
 tarnished ; gold that is brilliant, or lustreless ; here and there 
 on the friezes and on the exquisite capitals of the columns, 
 a little vermilion, and a little emerald green ; very little, 
 nothing but a thin thread of colour, just enough to relieve 
 the wing of a bird and the petal of a lotus, a peony, or a 
 rose. Despite so much richness nothing is overcharged ; 
 such taste has been displayed in the arrangement of the 
 thousands of diverse forms and such harmony in the ex- 
 tremely complicated designs, that the effect of the whole is 
 simple and reposeful.
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 183 
 
 Neither human figures nor idols have a part in this sanc- 
 tuary of Shintoism. Nothing stands upon the altars but 
 large vases of gold filled with natural flowers in sheaves, or 
 gigantic flowers of gold. 
 
 No idols, but a multitude of beasts, flying or crawling, 
 familiar or chimerical, pursue each other upon the walls, 
 and fly away from the friezes and ceiling in all attitudes 
 of fury and struggle, of terror and flight. Here, a flock 
 of swans hurry away in swift flight the whole length of 
 the golden cornice ; in other places are butterflies with 
 tortoises ; large and hideous insects among the flowers, or 
 many death-combats between fantastic beasts of the sea, 
 medusae with big eyes, and imaginary fishes. On the ceil- 
 ing innumerable dragons bristle and coil. The windows, 
 cut out in multiple trefoils, in a form never before seen and 
 which give little light, seem only a pretext for displaying all 
 kinds of marvellous piercings : trellises of gold entwined 
 with golden leaves, among which golden birds are sporting ; 
 all of this seems accumulated at pleasure and permits the 
 least possible light to enter into the deep golden shadows 
 of the temple. The only really simple objects are the 
 columns of a fine golden lacquer ending with capitals of a 
 very sober design, forming a slight calix of the lotus, like 
 those of certain ancient Egyptian palaces. 
 
 We could spend days in admiring separately each panel, 
 each pillar, each minute detail ; the least little piece of the 
 ceiling, or the walls would be a treasure for a museum. And 
 so many rare and extravagant objects have succeeded in 
 making the whole a composition of large quiet lines ; many 
 living forms, many distorted bodies, many rufHed wings,
 
 184 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 stiff claws, open mouths, and squinting eyes have succeeded 
 in producing a calm, an absolute calm, by force of an inex- 
 plicable harmony, twilight, and silence. 
 
 I believe, moreover, that here is the quintessence of 
 Japanese Art, of which the specimens brought to our col- 
 lections of Europe cannot give the true impression. And 
 we are struck by feeling that this Art, so foreign to us, pro- 
 ceeds from an origin so different ; nothing here is derived, 
 ever so remotely, from what we call antiquities Greek, 
 Latin, or Arabian which always influence, even if we 
 are not aware of it, our native ideas regarding ornamental 
 form. Here the least design, the smallest line, every- 
 thing is as profoundly strange as if it had come from a 
 neighbouring planet which had never held communication 
 with our side of the world. 
 
 The entire back of the temple, where it is almost night, 
 is occupied by great doors of black lacquer and gold lacquer, 
 with bolts of carved gold, shutting in a very sacred place 
 which they refuse to show me. They tell me, moreover, 
 that there is nothing in these closets ; but that they are the 
 places where the deified souls of the heroes love to dwell ; 
 the priests only open them on certain occasions to place in 
 them poems in their honour, or prayers wisely written on 
 rice-paper. 
 
 The two lateral wings on each side of the large golden 
 sanctuary are entirely of marqueterie, in prodigious mosaics 
 composed of the most precious woods left in their natural 
 colour. The representations are animals and plants : on the 
 walls are light leaves in relief, bamboo, grasses of extreme 
 delicacy, gold convolvulus falling in clusters of flowers, birds
 
 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 185 
 
 of resplendent plumage, peacocks and pheasants with spread 
 tails. There is no painting here, no gold-work ; the whole 
 effect is sombre, the general tone that of dead wood ; but 
 each leaf of each branch is composed of a different piece ; 
 and also each feather of each bird is shaded in such a way 
 as to almost produce the effect of changing colours on the 
 throats and wings. 
 
 And at last, at last, behind all this magnificence, the 
 most sacred place which they show me last, the most 
 strange of all strange places, is the little mortuary court 
 which surrounds the tomb. It is hollowed out of a moun- 
 tain between whose rocky walls water is dripping : the 
 lichens and moss have made a damp carpet here and the 
 tall, surrounding cedars throw their dark shadows over it. 
 There is an enclosure of bronze, shut by a bronze door 
 which is inscribed across its centre with an inscription in 
 gold, not in the Japanese language, but in Sanscrit to 
 give more mystery ; a massive, lugubrious, inexorable door, 
 extraordinary beyond all expression, and which is the ideal 
 door for a sepulchre. In the centre of this enclosure is a 
 kind of round turret also in bronze having the form of a 
 pagoda-bell, of a kneeling beast, of I don't know what 
 unknown and disturbing thing, and surmounted by a great 
 astonishing heraldic flower : here, under this singular 
 object, rests the body of the little yellow bonhomme^ once 
 the Emperor Yeyaz, for whom all this pomp has been 
 displayed. . . . 
 
 A little breeze agitates the branches of the cedars this 
 morning and there falls a shower of these little dry, brown 
 needles, a little brown rain on the greyish lichens, on the
 
 186 THE TEMPLES OF NIKKO. 
 
 green velvet moss, and upon the sinister bronze objects. 
 The voice of the cascades is heard in the distance like per- 
 petual sacred music. An impression of nothingness and 
 supreme peace reigns in this final court, to which so much 
 splendour leads. 
 
 In another quarter of the forest the temple of the deified 
 soul of Yemidzou is of an almost equal magnificence. It 
 is approached by a similar series of steps, little carved 
 and gilded light-towers, doors of bronze and enclosures of 
 lacquer ; but the plan of the whole is a little less regular, 
 because the mountain is more broken. . . . 
 
 A solemn hour on the Holy Mountain is at night-fall, 
 when they close the temples. It is even more lugubrious 
 at this autumnal season, when the twilight brings sad 
 thoughts. With heavy, rumbling sounds .which linger long 
 in the sonorous forest, the great panels of lacquer and 
 bronze are rolled on their grooves to shut in the mag- 
 nificent buildings which have been open all day, although 
 visited by nobody. A cold and damp shiver passes through 
 the black forest. For fear of fire, which might consume 
 these marvels, not a single light is allowed in this village 
 of Spirits, where certainly darkness falls sooner and remains 
 longer than anywhere else ; no lamp has ever shone upon 
 these treasures, which have thus slept in darkness in the 
 very heart of Japan for many centuries ; and the cascades 
 increase their music while the silence of night enshrouds 
 the forest so rich in enchantment. 
 
 Japoneries eTautomne (ifth ed., Paris, 1889).
 
 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 
 
 DAVID MASSON. 
 
 JUST after the middle of August, 1561,33 we learn from 
 contemporary records, there was a haar of unusual 
 intensity and continuance over Edinburgh and all the 
 vicinity. It began on Sunday the ijth, and it lasted with 
 slight intermissions, till Thursday the 2ist. " Besides the 
 surfett weat and corruptioun of the air," writes Knox, then 
 living in Edinburgh, " the myst was so thick and dark that 
 skairse mycht any man espy ane other the length of two 
 pair of butts." It was the more unfortunate because it was 
 precisely in those days of miserable fog and drizzle that 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her 
 thirteen years of residence and education in France, had to 
 form her first real acquaintance with her native shores and 
 the capital of her realm. 
 
 She had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thurs- 
 day the I4th of August, with a retinue of about one hun- 
 dred and twenty persons, French and Scottish, embarked 
 in two French state galleys, attended by several transports. 
 They were a goodly company, with rich and splendid bag- 
 gage. The Queen's two most important uncles, indeed, 
 the great Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his 
 brother, Charles de Lorraine, the Cardinal, were not on 
 board. They, with the Duchess of Guise and other senior
 
 188 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 
 
 lords and ladies of the French Court, had bidden Mary fare- 
 well at Calais, after having accompanied her thither from 
 Paris, and after the Cardinal had in vain tried to persuade 
 her not to take her costly collection of pearls and other 
 jewels with her, but to leave them in his keeping till it 
 should be seen how she might fare among her Scottish sub- 
 jects. But on board the Queen's own galley were three 
 others of her Guise or Lorraine uncles, the Due d'Au- 
 male, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis d'Elbeuf, with 
 M. Damville, son of the Constable of France, and a num- 
 ber of French gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one 
 notes especially young Pierre de Bourdeilles, better known 
 afterwards in literary history as Sieur de Brantome, and a 
 sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphine, named Chaste- 
 lard, one of the attendants of M. Damville. With these 
 were mixed the Scottish contingent of the Queen's train, her 
 four famous " Marys " included, Mary Fleming, Mary Liv- 
 ingstone, Mary Seton,and Mary Beaton. They had been her 
 playfellows and little maids of honour long ago in her Scottish 
 childhood ; they had accompanied her when she went abroad, 
 and had lived with her ever since in France ; and they were 
 now returning with her, Scoto-Frenchwomen like herself, 
 and all of about her own age, to share her new fortunes. 
 
 It is to Brantome that we owe what account we have of 
 the voyage from Calais. He tells us how the Queen could 
 hardly tear herself away from her beloved France, but kept 
 gazing at the French coast hour after hour so long as it 
 was in sight, shedding tears with every look, and exclaiming 
 again and again, " Adieu, ma chere France ! Je ne vous 
 verray jamais plus ! " . . .
 
 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 189 
 
 It was in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 2Oth of 
 August, that there was a procession on horseback of the 
 Queen, her French retinue, and the gathered Scottish lords 
 and councillors, through the two miles of road which led 
 from Leith to Holyrood. On the way the Queen was 
 met by a deputation of the Edinburgh craftsmen and their 
 apprentices, craving her royal pardon for the ringleaders in 
 a recent riot, in which the Tolbooth had been broken open 
 and the Magistrates insulted and defied. This act of grace 
 accorded as a matter of course, the Queen was that evening 
 in her hall of Holyrood, the most popular of sovereigns for 
 the moment, her uncles and other chiefs of her escort with 
 her, and the rest dispersed throughout the apartments, while 
 outside, in spite of the fog, there were bonfires of joy in the 
 streets and up the slopes of Arthur's Seat, and a crowd of 
 cheering loiterers moved about in the space between the 
 palace-gate and the foot of the Canongate. Imparting 
 some regulation to the proceedings of this crowd, for a 
 while at least, was a special company of the most " honest " 
 of the townsmen, " with instruments of musick and with 
 musicians," admitted within the gate, and tendering the 
 Queen their salutations, instrumental and vocal, under her 
 chamber window. "The melody, as she alledged, lyked 
 her weill, and she willed the same to be continewed some 
 nightis after." This is Knox's account ; but Brantome 
 tells a different story. After noting the wretchedness of 
 the hackneys provided for the procession from Leith to 
 Holyrood, and the poorness of their harnessings and trap- 
 pings, the sight of which, he says, made the Queen weep, 
 he goes on to mention the evening serenade under the
 
 190 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 
 
 windows of Holyrood, as the very completion of the day's 
 disagreeables. The Abbey itself, he admits, was a fine 
 enough building ; but, just as the Queen had supped and 
 wanted to go to sleep, " there came under her window five 
 or six hundred rascals of the town to serenade her with vile 
 fiddles and rebecks, such as they do not lack in that country, 
 setting themselves to sing psalms, and singing so ill and in 
 such bad accord that there could be nothing worse. Ah ! 
 what music, and what a lullaby for the night ! " Whether 
 Knox's account of the Queen's impressions of the serenade 
 or Brantome's is to be accepted, there can be no doubt that 
 the matter and intention of the performance were religious. 
 Our authentic picture, therefore, of Queen Mary's first 
 night in Holyrood after her return from France is that of 
 the Palace lit up from within, the dreary fog still persistent 
 outside, the bonfires on Arthur's Seat and other vantage- 
 grounds flickering through the fog, and the portion of the 
 wet crowd nearest the Palace singing Protestant psalms for 
 the Queen's delectation to an accompaniment of violins. 
 
 Next day, Thursday the 2ist, this memorable Edinburgh 
 kaar of August 1561 came to an end. ArthurYSeat and the 
 other heights and ranges of the park round Holyrood wore, 
 we may suppose, their freshest verdure; and Edinburgh, 
 dripping no longer, shone forth, we may hope, in her sun- 
 niest beauty. The Queen could then become more par- 
 ticularly acquainted with the Palace in which she had come 
 to reside, and with the nearer aspects of the town to which 
 the Palace was attached, and into which she had yet to 
 make her formal entry. 
 
 Then, as now, the buildings that went by the general
 
 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 191 
 
 name of Holy rood were distinguishable into two portions. 
 There was the Abbey, now represented only by the beauti- 
 ful and spacious fragment of ruin, called the Royal Chapel, 
 but then, despite the spoliations to which it had been sub- 
 jected by recent English invasions, still tolerably preserved 
 in its integrity as the famous edifice, in Early Norman style, 
 which had been founded in the Twelfth Century by David I., 
 and had been enlarged in the Fifteenth by additions in the 
 later and more florid Gothic. Close by this was Holyrood 
 House, or the Palace proper, built in the earlier part of the 
 Sixteenth Century, and chiefly by James IV., to form a 
 distinct royal dwelling, and so supersede that occasional 
 accommodation in the Abbey itself which had sufficed for 
 Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh was their habitual or 
 capital residence. One block of this original Holyrood 
 House still remains in the two-turreted projection of the 
 present Holyrood which adjoins the ruined relic of the 
 Abbey, and which contains the rooms now specially shown 
 as " Queen Mary's Apartments." But the present Holy- 
 rood, as a whole, is a construction of the reign of Charles II., 
 and gives little idea of the Palace in which Mary took up 
 her abode in 1561. The two-turreted projection on the 
 left was not balanced then, as now, by a similar two-tur- 
 reted projection on the right, with a facade of less height 
 between, but was flanked on the right by a continued 
 chateau-like frontage, of about the same height as the 
 turreted projection, and at a uniform depth of recess from 
 it, but independently garnished with towers and pinnacles. 
 The main entrance into the Palace from the great outer 
 courtyard was through this chateau-like flank, just about the
 
 192 THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD. 
 
 spot where there is the entrance through the present middle 
 facade ; and this entrance led, like the present, into an 
 inner court or quadrangle, built round on all the four sides. 
 That quadrangle of chateau, touching the Abbey to the 
 back from its north-eastern corner, and with the two-tur- 
 reted projection to its front from its north-western corner, 
 constituted, indeed, the main bulk of the Palace. There 
 were, however, extensive appurtenances of other buildings 
 at the back or at the side farthest from the Abbey, forming 
 minor inner courts, while part of that side of the great 
 outer courtyard which faced the entrance was occupied by 
 offices belonging to the Palace, and separating the court- 
 yard from the adjacent purlieus of the town.' For the 
 grounds of both Palace and Abbey were encompassed by a 
 wall, having gates at various points of its circuit, the prin- 
 cipal and most strongly guarded of which was the Gothic 
 porch admitting from the foot of the Canongate into the 
 front courtyard. The grounds so enclosed were ample 
 enough to contain gardens and spaces of plantation, besides 
 the buildings and their courts. Altogether, what with the 
 buildings themselves, what with the courts and gardens, 
 and what with the natural grandeur of the site, a level 
 of deep and wooded park, between the Calton heights and 
 crags on the one hand and the towering shoulders of Arthur 
 Seat and precipitous escarpment of Salisbury Crags on the 
 other, Holyrood in 1561 must have seemed, even to an 
 eye the most satiated with palatial splendours abroad, a 
 sufficiently impressive dwelling-place to be the metropolitan 
 home of Scottish royalty. 
 
 Edinburgh Sketches and Memories (London and Edinburgh, 1892).
 
 ' ' ;; i ' ^s 
 
 .. .N A ' * 
 
 SAINT-GUDULE.
 
 SAINT-GUDULE. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THE windows of Saint-Gudule are of a kind almost 
 unknown in France, real paintings, real pictures 
 on glass of a marvellous style, with figures like Titian and 
 architecture like Paul Veronese. 
 
 The pulpit of this church is carved in wood by Henry 
 Verbruggen and bears the date of 1699. The whole of 
 creation, the whole of philosophy, the whole of poetry 
 are expressed here by an enormous tree which supports 
 the pulpit in its boughs and shelters a world of birds and 
 animals among its leaves, while at its base Adam and Eve 
 are pursued by a sorrowful angel, followed by Death who 
 seems triumphant, and separated by the tail of the serpent. 
 At its summit, the cross Truth and the infant Jesus, 
 whose foot rests upon the head of the bruised serpent. 
 This poem is sculptured and carved out of oak alone, in 
 the strongest, the most tender, and the most spirituelle 
 manner. The effect is prodigiously rococo and prodigiously 
 beautiful. No matter what the fanatics of the severe 
 school would say, it is true. This pulpit is one of those 
 rare instances in art where the beautiful and the rococo 
 meet. Watteau and Coypel have also occasionally dis- 
 covered such points of intersection. . . . 
 
 It was three o'clock when I entered Saint-Gudule. 
 They were celebrating the Office of the Virgin. A 
 
 13
 
 IQ4 SAINT-GUDULE. 
 
 Madonna, covered with jewels and clothed in a robe of 
 English lace, glittered on a dais of gold in the centre of 
 the nave through a luminous cloud of incense which was 
 dispersed around her. Many people were praying in the 
 shadow motionless, and a strong ray of sunlight from above 
 dispelled the gloom and shone full upon the large statues 
 of proud mien arranged against the columns. The wor- 
 shippers seemed of stone, the statues seemed alive. 
 
 And then a beautiful chant of mingled deep and ringing 
 voices fell mysteriously with the tones of the organ from the 
 highest rails hidden by the mists of incense. I, during this 
 time, had my eye fixed dreamily upon Verbruggen's pulpit, 
 teeming with life, that magic pulpit which is always sug- 
 gestive. Frame this with windows, ogives, and Renaissance 
 tombs of white marble and black, and you will understand 
 why a sublime sensation was produced by this scene. . . . 
 
 I climbed the towers of Saint-Gudule. It was beautiful. 
 The entire city lay beneath me, the toothed and voluted 
 roofs of Brussels half-hidden by the smoke, the sky (a 
 stormy sky), full of clouds, golden and curled above, solid 
 as marble below ; in the distance a large cloud from which 
 rain was falling like fine sand from a bag which has burst ; 
 the sun shone above everything; the magnificent open- 
 work, lantern-like belfry stood out sombre against the 
 white mists; then the confused noise of the town reached 
 me, then the verdure of the lovely hills on the horizon : 
 it was truly beautiful. I admired everything like a provin- 
 cial from Paris, which I am, everything, even the mason 
 who was hammering on a stone and whistling near me. 
 
 En Voyage: France et Belgique (Paris, 1891).
 
 THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 BEFORE my departure for Andalusia, I went to see 
 the famous Convent of the Escurial, the leviathan 
 of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world, the largest 
 mass of granite upon the earth, and, if you desire other 
 imposing epithets, then you must imagine them, for you 
 will not find one that has not been used to describe it. I 
 left Madrid in the early morning. The village of the 
 Escurial, from which the Convent received its name, is 
 eight leagues from the city, not far from the Guadarrama ; 
 you pass through an arid and uninhabited country whose 
 horizon is bounded by snow-covered mountains. A light, 
 fine, and cold rain was falling when I reached the station 
 of the Escurial. From it to the village there is a rise of 
 half a mile. I clambered into an omnibus, and at the end 
 of a few minutes, I was deposited in a solitary street 
 bordered on the left by the Convent and on the right by 
 the houses of the village, and shut in by the mountains. 
 At the first glance you understand nothing ; you expect 
 to see a building and you find a city ; you do not know 
 if you are already in the Convent, or if you are outside j 
 you are hemmed in by walls. You advance, and find 
 yourself in a square; you look about you and see streets j
 
 196 THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 you have not yet entered, and already the Convent sur- 
 rounds you : you are at your wit's end, and no longer 
 know which way to turn. The first feeling is one of 
 depression : the entire edifice is of mud-coloured stone, 
 and all the layers are marked by a white stripe ; the roofs 
 are covered with lead. You might call it a building made 
 of earth. The very high walls are naked and pierced by 
 a great number of windows which resemble barbicans. 
 You might call it a prison rather than a convent. You 
 find this gloomy colour everywhere : there is not a living 
 soul here, and the silence is that of a deserted fortress ; and 
 beyond the black roofs, the black mountain, which seems 
 to be suspended over the building, gives it mysterious 
 solitude. It seems as if the founder must have chosen the 
 spot, the plan, and the colours, everything, in fact, with 
 the intention of producing a sad and solemn spectacle. 
 You lose your gaiety before entering ; you can smile no 
 longer, you are thinking. You pause at the door of the 
 Escurial with a kind of quaking, as if at the entrance of a 
 dead city ; it seems to you that if the terrible Inquisition 
 is reigning in any corner of the world, it must be between 
 these walls ; for it is here that you can see its last traces 
 and hear its last echo. 
 
 Everybody knows that the Basilica and the Convent of 
 the Escurial were founded by Philip II. after the battle of 
 San Quintino to fulfil his vow made during the war to Saint 
 Laurence when he was forced to cannonade a church con- 
 secrated to this saint. Don Juan Batista of Toledo com- 
 menced the building and Herrera finished it, and the work 
 upon it lasted for twenty-one years. Philip II. wished the
 
 THE ESCURIAL. 197 
 
 building to have the form of a gridiron in memory of Saint 
 Laurence's martyrdom; and, in reality, this is its form. 
 The plan is a rectangular parallelogram. Four large square 
 towers with pointed roofs rise at the four corners, and 
 represent the four feet of a gridiron ; the church and the 
 royal palace, which extend on one side, represent the handle; 
 and the interior buildings, which are placed across the two 
 long sides, represent the parallel bars. Other smaller 
 buildings rise outside of the parallelogram, not far from the 
 Convent, along one of the long sides and one of the courts, 
 forming two large squares ; the other two sides are occupied 
 by gardens. Facades, doors, and entrance-halls, are all in 
 harmony with the grandeur and character of the edifice : it 
 is useless to multiply descriptions. The royal Palace is 
 magnificent, and in order to keep a clear impression of each 
 individual building, it is better to see it before you enter the 
 Convent and Church. This palace is in the north-east corner 
 of the building. Several halls are filled with pictures, others 
 are hung from the ceiling to the floor with tapestries, 
 representing bull-fights, dances, games, fetes, and Spanish 
 costumes, after Goya ; others are decorated and furnished in 
 princely style; the floor, the doors, and the windows are 
 covered with marvellous mosaics and dazzling gold-work. 
 But among all the rooms, that of Philip II. is especially 
 remarkable. It is a dark and bare cell, whose alcove com- 
 municates with the royal oratory of the church in such a 
 way that, when the doors were open, from his bed he could 
 see the priest celebrating Mass. Philip II. slept in this room, 
 had his last illness there, and died there. You can still see 
 some of the chairs he used, two little benches on which
 
 198 THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 he rested his gouty leg, and a writing-desk. The walls are 
 white, the ceiling is unornamented, and the floor is of 
 stone. 
 
 When you have seen the royal Palace, you go out of the 
 building, cross the square, and re-enter the great door. A 
 guide joins you and you pass through the large entrance to 
 find yourself in the Kings' court-yard. Here you gain an 
 idea of the enormous structure of the building. This court 
 is entirely shut in by walls ; opposite the door is the facade 
 of the Church. Above a wide stairway stand six enormous 
 Doric columns ; each of these supports a large pedestal, and 
 each pedestal upholds a statue. These six colossal statues 
 are by Batista Monegro, representing Jehoshaphat, Ezekiel, 
 David, Solomon, Joshua, and Manasseh. The court-yard 
 is paved and bunches of damp grass grow here and there ; 
 the walls look like rocks cut in points; everything is rigid, 
 massive, and heavy, and presents the indescribable aspect 
 of a fantastic edifice hewn by Titans from a mountain and 
 capable of defying earthquakes and lightnings. At this 
 point you really begin to understand the Escurial. . . . 
 
 After seeing the Church and the Sacristy, you visit the 
 Picture-Gallery, which contains a large number of paintings 
 by artists of all countries, not the best examples, however, 
 for these have been taken to the Madrid gallery, but of 
 sufficient value to merit a thoughtful visit of half a day. 
 From the Picture-Gallery you go to the Library by means 
 of the large stairway, over which is rounded an enormous 
 vaulted ceiling, painted all over with frescoes by Luca 
 Giordano. The Library is an immense hall adorned with 
 large allegorical paintings, and contains more than fifty
 
 THE ESCURIAL. 199 
 
 thousand rare volumes, four thousand of which were given 
 by Philip II., and beyond this is another hall, which con- 
 tains a very valuable collection of manuscripts. From the 
 Library you go to the Convent. Here human imagina- 
 tion is completely lost. If my reader knows Espronceda's 
 Estudiante de Salamanca, he will remember that the persistent 
 young man, when following the mysterious lady whom he 
 met at night at the foot of a tabernacle, runs from street to 
 street, from square to square, and from alley to alley, turning 
 and returning, until he arrives at a spot where he can no 
 longer see the houses of Salamanca and where he discovers 
 that he is in an unknown city; and in proportion as he 
 advances the town seems to grow larger, the streets longer 
 and the intertwining alleys more tortuous ; but he goes on 
 and on without stopping, not knowing if he is awake or 
 dreaming, if he is intoxicated or mad ; terror begins to enter 
 his brave heart and the most peculiar phantoms crowd into 
 his distracted mind: this is what happens to the stranger 
 in the Convent of the Escurial. You pass through a long 
 subterranean corridor, so narrow that you can touch the 
 wall with your elbows, so low that your head almost hits 
 the ceiling, and as damp as a grotto under the sea; on 
 reaching its end, you turn, and you are in another corridor. 
 You go on, pass through doors, and look around : other 
 corridors extend as far as your eye can see. At the end of 
 some of them you notice a feeble light, at the end of others 
 an open door which reveals 'a suite of rooms. Every now 
 and then you hear a footstep : you stop ; all is silent ; then 
 you hear it again ; you do not know if it is above your head, 
 or to the right, or the left, or before you, or behind you.
 
 200 THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 You are about to enter a door j you recoil in terror : at 
 the end of a long corridor you see a man, motionless as a 
 spectre, who is staring at you. You continue your journey 
 and arrive in a strange court, surrounded by high walls and 
 overgrown with grass, full of echoes, and illuminated by a 
 wan light which seems to come from some strange sun ; it 
 reminds you of the haunts of witches described to you in 
 your childhood. You go out of the court, walk up a stair- 
 way, arrive in a gallery, and look down : there beneath you 
 is another, and deserted, court. You walk down another 
 corridor, you descend another stairway, and you find your- 
 self in a third court ; then again more corridors, stairways, 
 suites of empty rooms, and narrow courts, and everywhere 
 granite, a wan light, and the stillness of death. For a short 
 time you think you could retrace your steps ; then your 
 memory forsakes you, and you recall nothing : it seems as 
 if you had walked ten leagues, that you have been in this 
 labyrinth for a month, and that you will never get out of 
 it. You come to a court, and exclaim : " I have seen this 
 before ! " No you are mistaken : it is another one. You 
 think you are on one side of the building and you are on 
 the opposite one. You ask your guide for the cloister, and 
 he replies : "It is here," and you continue walking for half 
 an hour. You fancy you are dreaming : you have glimpses 
 of long walls, frescoed, and adorned with pictures, the 
 crucifix, and with inscriptions ; you see and you forget ; 
 you ask yourself " Where am I ? " You see a light as if 
 from another world : you have never conceived of such a 
 peculiar light. Is it the reflection of the granite ? Is it 
 moonlight ? No, it is daylight ; but a daylight sadder than
 
 THE ESCURIAL. 2OI 
 
 darkness ; it is a false, sinister, fantastic daylight. Let us 
 go on ! From corridor to corridor, from court to court, 
 you look before you with mistrust ; you expect to see sud- 
 denly at the turn of a corner a row of skeleton monks with 
 hoods drawn over their eyes and their arms folded ; you 
 think of Philip II.; you fancy you hear his step growing 
 ever fainter down the distant passages ; you remember all 
 you have read of him, of his terrors, of the Inquisition ; and 
 everything becomes suddenly plain ; you understand it all 
 for the first time: the Escurial is Philip II., you see him 
 at every step, and you hear him breathe ; for he is here, 
 living and fearful, and the image of his terrible God is with 
 him. Then you want to revolt, to raise your thought to 
 the God of your heart and hope, and to conquer the mys- 
 terious terror which this place inspires ; but you cannot ; 
 the Escurial envelops you, possesses you, crushes you; the 
 cold of its stones penetrates into your very bones, the 
 sadness of its sepulchral labyrinths takes possession of your 
 soul. If you were with a friend, you would say : " Let us 
 go ! " ; if you were with your loved one, you would trem- 
 blingly clasp her to your heart ; if you were alone, you 
 would take flight. Finally you ascend the stairway, and, 
 entering a room, go to the window to salute rapturously the 
 mountains, the sunshine, liberty, and the great and generous 
 God who loves and pardons. 
 
 How one breathes again at this window ! 
 
 From it you see the gardens, which occupy a restricted 
 space and which are very simple, but elegant and beautiful, 
 and in perfect harmony with the building. You see in 
 them twelve charming fountains, each surrounded by four
 
 2O2 THE ESCURIAL. 
 
 squares of box-wood, representing the royal escutcheons, 
 designed with such skill and trimmed with such precision 
 that in looking at them from the windows they seem to 
 be made of plush and velvet, and they stand out from 
 the white sand of the walks in a very striking manner. 
 There are no trees, nor flowers, nor pavilions here ; in 
 all the gardens nothing is to be seen but fountains and 
 squares of box-wood and these two colours white and 
 green and such is the beauty of this noble simplicity 
 that the eye is enchanted with it, and when it has passed 
 out of sight, the thought returns and rests there with 
 pleasure mingled with a gentle melancholy. . . . 
 
 An illustrious traveller has said that after having spent 
 a day in the Convent of the Escurial, one should feel 
 happy for the remainder of his life in thinking that he 
 might be still between those walls, but that he has escaped. 
 That is very nearly true. Even now, after so long a 
 time, on rainy days when I am sad I think about the 
 Escurial, then I look around the walls of my room and I 
 become gay ; during nights of insomnia, I see the courts 
 of the Escurial; when I am ill and drop into a feverish 
 and heavy sleep, I dream that all night I am wandering in 
 these corridors, alone and followed by the phantom of a 
 monk, screaming and knocking at all the doors without 
 finding a way out, until I decide to go to the Pantheon, 
 where the door bangs behind me and shuts me in among 
 the tombs. 
 
 With what delight I saw the myriad lights of the 
 Puerto del Sol, the crowded cafes and the great and noisy 
 street of the Alcala ! When I went into the house I
 
 THE ESCURIAL. 2O3 
 
 made such a noise, that the servant, who was a good and 
 simple Gallician, ran excitedly to her mistress and said : 
 " Me parece el itallano se ha vuelto loco" (I think the 
 Italian has lost his senses). 
 
 La Spagna (Florence, 1873).
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA. 
 
 JAMES FERGUSSON. 
 
 THERE does not seem to be any essential difference 
 either in plan or form between the Saiva and 
 Vaishnava temples in the south of India. It is only by 
 observing the images or emblems worshipped, or by reading 
 the stories represented in the numerous sculptures with 
 which a temple is adorned, that we find out the god to 
 whom it is dedicated. Whoever he may be, the temples 
 consist almost invariably of the four following parts, 
 arranged in various manners, as afterwards to be explained, 
 but differing in themselves only according to the age in 
 which they were executed : 
 
 1. The principal part, the actual temple itself, is called 
 the Vimana. It is always square in plan, and surmounted 
 by a pyramidal roof of one or more storeys ; it contains the 
 cell in which the image of the god or his emblem is placed. 
 
 2. The porches or Mantapas, which always cover and 
 precede the door leading to the cell. 
 
 3. Gate pyramids, Gopuras^ which are the principal 
 features in the quadrangular enclosures which always sur- 
 round the Ftmanas. 
 
 4. Pillared halls or Choultries^ used for various purposes, 
 and which are the invariable accompaniments of these 
 temples.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA. 205 
 
 Besides these, a temple always contains tanks or wells 
 for water to be used either for sacred purposes or the 
 convenience of the priests, dwellings for all the various 
 grades of the priesthood attached to it, and numerous other 
 buildings designed for state or convenience. . . . 
 
 The population of southern India in the Seventeenth and 
 Eighteenth Century was probably hardly less than it is now 
 some thirty millions and if one-third or one-fourth 
 of such a population were to seek employment in building, 
 the results, if persevered in through centuries, would be 
 something astonishing. A similar state of affairs prevailed 
 apparently in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, but with 
 very different results. The Egyptians had great and lofty 
 ideas, and a hankering after immortality, that impressed 
 itself on all their works. The southern Indians had no 
 such aspirations. Their intellectual status is, and always 
 was, mediocre; they had no literature of their own no 
 history to which they could look back with pride, and their 
 religion was, and is, an impure and degrading fetishism. 
 It is impossible that anything grand and imposing should 
 come out of such a state of things. What they had to 
 offer to their gods was a tribute of labour, and that was 
 bestowed without stint. To cut a chain of fifty links 
 out of a block of granite and suspend it between two 
 pillars, was with them a triumph of art. To hollow deep 
 cornices out of the hardest basalt, and to leave all the 
 framings, as if of the most delicate woodwork, standing 
 free, was with them a worthy object of ambition, and 
 their sculptures are still inexplicable mysteries, from our 
 ignorance of how it was possible to execute them. All
 
 206 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA. 
 
 that millions of hands working through centuries could do, 
 has been done, but with hardly any higher motive than to 
 employ labour and to conquer difficulties, so as to astonish 
 by the amount of the first and the cleverness with which 
 the second was overcome and astonished we are ; but 
 without some higher motive true architecture cannot exist. 
 The Dravidians had not even the constructive difficulties 
 to overcome which enabled the Mediaeval architects to 
 produce such noble fabrics as our cathedrals. The aim 
 of architects in the Middle Ages was to design halls which 
 should at the same time be vast, but stable, and suited for 
 the accommodation of great multitudes to witness a lofty 
 ritual. In their struggles to accomplish this they developed 
 intellectual powers which impress us still through their 
 works. No such lofty aims exercised the intellectual 
 faculties of the Hindu. His altar and the statue of his 
 god were placed in a dark cubical cell wholly without orna- 
 ment, and the porch that preceded that was not neces- 
 sarily either lofty or spacious. What the Hindu architect 
 craved for, was a place to display his powers of ornamen- 
 tation, and he thought he had accomplished all his art 
 demanded when he covered every part of his building with 
 the most elaborate and most difficult designs he could 
 invent. Much of this ornamentation, it is true, is very 
 elegant, and evidences of power and labour do impress 
 the human imagination, often even in defiance of our 
 better judgment, and nowhere is this more apparent than 
 in these Dravidian temples. It is in vain, however, we 
 look among them for any manifestation of those lofty aims 
 and noble results which constitute the merit and the great-
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA. 2O/ 
 
 ness of true architectural art, and which generally charac- 
 terise the best works in the true styles of the western 
 world. . . . 
 
 Immediately in front of his choultrie, Tirumulla Nayak 
 commenced a gopura, which, had he lived to complete it, 
 would probably have been the finest edifice of its class in 
 southern India. It measures 174 ft. from north to south, 
 and 107 ft. in depth. The entrance through it is 21 ft. 
 9 in. wide ; and if it be true that its gateposts are 60 ft. 
 (Tripe says 57 ft.) in height, that would have been the 
 height of the opening. It will thus be seen that it was 
 designed on even a larger scale than that at Seringham, 
 and it certainly far surpasses that celebrated edifice in the 
 beauty of its details. Its doorposts alone, whether 57 ft. 
 or 60 ft. in height, are single blocks of granite, carved 
 with the most exquisite scroll patterns of elaborate foliage, 
 and all the other carvings are equally beautiful. Being un- 
 finished, and consequently never consecrated, it has escaped 
 whitewash, and alone, of all the buildings of Madura, its 
 beauties can still be admired in their original perfection. 
 
 The great temple at Madura is a larger and far more 
 important building than the choultrie ; but, somehow 01 
 other, it has not attracted the attention of travellers to the 
 same extent that the latter has. No one has ever attempted 
 to make a plan of it, or to describe it in such detail as 
 would enable others to understand its peculiarities. It 
 possesses, however, all the characteristics of a first-class 
 Dravidian temple, and, as its date is perfectly well known, 
 it forms a landmark of the utmost value in enabling us to 
 fix the relative date of other temples.
 
 2O8 THE TEMPLE OF MADURA. 
 
 The sanctuary is said to have been built by Viswanath, 
 the first king of the Nayak dynasty, A. D. 1520, which may 
 possibly be the case ; but the temple itself certainly owes 
 all its magnificence to Tirumulla Nayak, A. D. 1622-1657, 
 or to his elder brother, Muttu Virappa, who preceded 
 him, and who built a mantapa, said to be the oldest thing 
 now existing here. The Kalyana mantapa is said to have 
 been built A. D. 1707, and the Tatta Suddhi in 1770. 
 These, however, are insignificant parts compared with those 
 which certainly owe their origin to Tirumulla Nayak. 
 
 The temple itself is a nearly regular rectangle, two of 
 its sides measuring 720 ft. and 729 ft., the other two 
 834 ft. and 852 ft. It possessed four gopuras of the first 
 class, and five smaller ones ; a very beautiful tank, sur- 
 rounded by arcades; and a hall of 1000 columns, whose 
 sculptures surpass those of any other hall of its class I am 
 acquainted with. There is a small shrine, dedicated to 
 the goddess Minakshi, the tutelary deity of the place, 
 which occupies the space of fifteen columns, so the real 
 number is only 985 ; but it is not their number, but their 
 marvellous elaboration that makes it the wonder of the 
 place, and renders it, in some respects, more remarkable 
 than the choultrie about which so much has been said and 
 written. I do not feel sure that this hall alone is not a 
 greater work than the choultrie; taken in conjunction with 
 the other buildings of the temple, it certainly forms a far 
 more imposing group. 
 
 History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (New York, 1891).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 THE Cathedral absorbs the attention of every traveller 
 who visits Milan. It dominates the town, stand- 
 ing in the centre as its chief attraction and marvel. To it 
 one hastens immediately on arriving, even on a night when 
 there is no moon, to grasp At least a few of its outlines. 
 
 The piazza del Duomo, irregular enough in its form, is 
 bordered with houses of which it is customary to speak 
 ill ; the guide never omits telling the traveller that these 
 should be razed to make this a symmetrical square in the 
 Rivoli taste. I am not of this opinion. These houses 
 with their massive pillars and their saffron-coloured awnings 
 standing opposite to some irregular buildings of unequal 
 height, make a very good setting for the Cathedral. 
 Edifices often lose more than they gain by not being 
 obstructed : I have been convinced of this by several 
 Gothic monuments, the effect of which was not spoiled by 
 the stalls and the ruins which had gathered around them, 
 as might have been believed ; this is not, however, the 
 case with the Cathedral, which is perfectly isolated ; but I 
 think that nothing is more favourable to a palace, a church, 
 or any regularly constructed building than to be surrounded 
 by heterogeneous buildings which bring out the proportions 
 of the noble order.
 
 2IO THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 
 
 When we look at the Cathedral from the square, the 
 effect is ravishing : the whiteness of the marble, standing 
 out from the blue of the sky, strikes you first ; one would 
 say that an immense piece of silver lace had been placed 
 against a background of lapis lazuli. This is the first 
 impression, and it will also be the last memory. When- 
 ever I think of the Duomo of Milan, it always appears 
 like this. The Cathedral is one of those rare Gothic 
 churches of Italy, yet this Gothic resembles ours but 
 little. We do not find here that sombre faith, that dis- 
 quieting mystery, those dark depths, those severe forms, 
 that darting up from earth towards the sky, that character 
 of austerity which repudiates beauty as too sensual and 
 only selects from a subject what is necessary to bring you 
 a step nearer to God ; this is a Gothic full of elegance, 
 grace, and brilliancy, which one dreams of for fairy palaces 
 and with which one could build alcazars and mosques as 
 well as a Catholic temple. The delicacy in its enormous 
 proportions and its whiteness make it look like a glacier 
 with its thousand needles, or a gigantic concretion of sta- 
 lactites ; it is difficult to believe it the work of man. 
 
 The design of the facade is of the simplest : it is an 
 angle sharp as the gable-end of an ordinary house and 
 bordered with marble lace, resting upon a wall without 
 any fore-part, of no distinct order of architecture, pierced 
 by five doors and eight windows and striped with six 
 groups of columns with fillets, or rather mouldings which 
 end in hollowed out points surmounted by statues and filled 
 in their interstices with brackets and niches supporting and 
 sheltering figures of angels, saints, and patriarchs. Back
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 211 
 
 of these spring out from innumerable fillets, like the pipes 
 of a basaltic grotto, forests of little steeples, pinnacles, 
 minarets, and needles of white marble, while the central 
 spire which resembles frost-work, crystallized in the air, 
 rises in the azure to a terrific height and places the Virgin, 
 who is standing upon its tip with her foot on a crescent, 
 within two steps of Heaven. In the middle of the f^ade 
 these words are inscribed : Marlae nascenti, the dedication 
 of the Cathedral. 
 
 Begun by Jean Galeas Visconti, continued by Ludovico 
 le More, the basilica of Milan was finished by Napoleon. 
 It is the largest church known after Saint Peter's in Rome. 
 The interior is of a majestic and noble simplicity: rows 
 of columns in pairs form five naves. Notwithstanding 
 their actual mass, these groups of columns have a lightness 
 of effect on account of the grace of their shafts. Above 
 the capitals of the pillars there is a kind of gallery, per- 
 forated and carved, where statues of saints are placed ; then 
 the mouldings continue until they unite at the summit of 
 the vault, which is ornamented with trefoils and Gothic 
 knots made with such perfection that they would deceive 
 the eye, if the plaster, which has fallen in places, did not 
 reveal the naked stone. 
 
 In the centre of the cross an opening, surrounded by a 
 balustrade, allows you to look down into the crypt, where 
 the remains of Saint Charles Borromeo rest in a crystal 
 coffin covered with plates of silver. Saint Charles Bor- 
 romeo is the most revered saint of the district. His virtues 
 and his conduct during the plague in Milan made him 
 popular, and his memory is always kept alive.
 
 212 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 
 
 At the entrance of the choir upon a grille which supports 
 a crucifix, surrounded by angels in adoration, we read the 
 following inscription framed in wood : Attendlte ad petram 
 unde excisi tstis. On each side there are two magnificent 
 pulpits of wood, supported by superb bronze figures and 
 ornamented with silver bas-reliefs, the subjects of which 
 are their least value. The organs, placed not far from the 
 pulpits, have fine paintings by Procacini, if my memory 
 does not deceive me, for shutters ; above the choir there is 
 a Road to the Cross, sculptured by Andrea Biffi and several 
 other Milanese sculptors. The weeping angels, which 
 mark the stations, have a great variety of attitudes and 
 are charming, although their grace is somewhat effeminate. 
 
 The general impression is simple and religious ; a soft 
 light invites you to reflection ; the large pillars spring to 
 the vault with a movement full of vitality and faith ; not 
 a single detail is here to destroy the majesty of the whole. 
 There is no overcharging and no surfeit of luxury : the 
 lines follow each other from one end to the other, and 
 the design of the edifice is understood in a single glance. 
 The superb elegance of the exterior seems but a veil for 
 mystery and humility within ; the blatant hymn of marble 
 makes you lower your voice and speak in a hushed tone : 
 the exterior, by reason of its lightness and whiteness, is, 
 perhaps, Pagan ; the interior is, most assuredly, Christian. 
 
 In the corner of a nave, just before ascending the dome, 
 we glance at a tomb filled with allegorical figures cast in 
 bronze by the Cavalier Aretin after Michael Angelo in a 
 bold and superb style. You arrive straightway on the roof 
 of the church after climbing a stairway decorated at every
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 21$ 
 
 angle with prohibitive, or threatening inscriptions, which 
 do not speak well in favour of the Italians' piety or sense 
 of propriety. 
 
 This roof all bristling with steeples and ribbed with flying- 
 buttresses at the sides, which form corridors in perspective, 
 is made of great slabs of marble, like the rest of the edifice. 
 Even at this point it is higher than the highest monuments 
 of the city. A bas-relief of the finest execution is sunk in 
 each buttress ; each steeple is peopled with twenty-five 
 statues. I do not believe there is another place in the 
 world that holds in the same amount of space so large a 
 number of sculptured figures. One could make an important 
 city with the marble population of the Cathedral statues. 
 Six thousand, seven hundred and sixteen have been counted. 
 I have heard of a church in the Morea painted in the Byzan- 
 tine style by the monks of Mount Athos, which did not 
 contain less than three thousand figures. This is as nothing 
 in comparison to the Cathedral of Milan. With regard to 
 persons painted and sculptured, I have often had this dream 
 that if ever I were invested with magical power I would 
 animate all the figures created by art in granite, in stone, in 
 wood, and on canvas and people with them a country which 
 would be a realization of the landscapes in the pictures. 
 The sculptured multitude of this Cathedral bring back this 
 fantasy. Among these statues there is one by Canova, a 
 Saint Sebastian, lodged in an aiguille, and an Eve by Cristo- 
 foro Gobi, of such a charming and sensual grace that it is 
 a little astonishing to see her in such a place. However, 
 she is very beautiful, and the birds of the sky do not appear 
 to be scandalized by her Edenesque costume.
 
 214 THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 
 
 From this platform there unfolds an immense panorama : 
 you see the Alps and the Apennines, the vast plains of 
 Lombardy, and with a glass you can regulate your watch 
 from the dial of the church of Monza, whose stripes of 
 black and white stones may be distinguished. . . . 
 
 The ascent of the spire, which is perforated and open to 
 the light, is not at all dangerous, although it may affect 
 people who are subject to vertigo. Frail stairways wind 
 through the towers and lead you to a balcony, above which 
 there is nothing but the cap of the spire and the statue 
 which crowns the edifice. 
 
 I will not try to describe this gigantic basilica in detail. 
 A volume would be needed for its monograph. As a mere 
 artist I must be content with a general view and a personal 
 impression. After one has descended into the street and 
 has made the tour of the church one finds on the lateral 
 facades and apses the same crowd of statues, the same 
 multitude of bas-reliefs : it is a terrifying debauch of sculp- 
 ture, an incredible heap of wonders. 
 
 Around the Cathedral all kinds of little industries prosper, 
 stalls of second-hand booksellers, opticians selling their wares 
 in the open air, and even a theatre of marionnettes, whose 
 performances I promise myself not to miss. Human life 
 with its trivialities swarms and stirs at the foot of this 
 majestic edifice, which, like petrified fireworks, is bursting 
 its white rockets in the sky ; here, as everywhere, we find 
 the same contrast of sublimity of idea and vulgarity of fact. 
 The temple of the Saviour throws its shadow across the hut 
 of Punchinello. 
 
 Voyage en Italie (Paris, new ed., 1884).
 
 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 
 
 AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 
 THE mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most 
 beautiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful 
 in the Moslem world. It was built at just that happy 
 moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely 
 to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original 
 architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of 
 Roman and early Christian edifices. The mosques of a 
 few centuries earlier (as, for instance, that of Tuliin, which 
 marks the first departure from the old Byzantine model) 
 consisted of little more than a courtyard with colonnades 
 leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A little 
 more than a century later, and the national style had already 
 experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse which 
 finally resulted in the bastard Neo-Byzantine Renaissance 
 represented by the mosque of Mehemet Ali. But the 
 mosque of Sultan Hassan, built ninety-seven years before 
 the taking of Constantinople, may justly be regarded as the 
 highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it had 
 used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and 
 before its new-born originality became modified by influence 
 from beyond the Bosphorus. Its pre-eminence is due neither 
 to the greatness of its dimensions, nor to the splendour of
 
 2l6 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 
 
 its materials. It is neither so large as the great mosque at 
 Damascus, nor so rich in costly marbles as Saint Sophia in 
 Constantinople; but in design, proportion, and a certain 
 lofty grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and 
 every other mosque, whether original or adapted, with which 
 the writer is acquainted. 
 
 The whole structure is purely national. Every line and 
 curve in it, and every inch of detail, is in the best style of 
 the best period of the Arabian school. And above all, it 
 was designed expressly for its present purpose. The two 
 famous mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having, 
 on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences 
 of adaptation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by 
 the figure of the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the 
 mosaic-work of the apse, filled in with gold tesserae of later 
 date; while the magnificent gates of the great mosque at 
 Damascus are decorated, among other Christian emblems, 
 with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan 
 Hassan built by En Nasir Hassan in the high and palmy 
 days of the Memlook rule, is marred by no discrepancies. 
 For a mosque it was designed, and a mosque it remains. 
 Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin. 
 
 A number of small streets having lately been demolished 
 in this quarter, the approach to the mosque lies across 
 a desolate open space littered with debris, but destined to 
 be laid out as a public square. With this desirable end in 
 view, some half dozen workmen were lazily loading as 
 many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting 
 rubbish. If they persevere, and the Minister of Public 
 Works continues to pay their wages with due punctuality,
 
 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN.
 
 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 2I/ 
 
 the ground will perhaps get cleared in eight or ten years' 
 time. 
 
 Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great 
 steps, which were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, 
 we observed a long and apparently fast-widening fissure 
 reaching nearly from top to bottom of the main wall of the 
 building, close against the minaret. It looked like just 
 such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, 
 and, being still new to the East, we wondered the Govern- 
 ment had not set to work to mend it. We had yet to learn 
 that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here, as in Con- 
 stantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no 
 matter how venerable, are allowed to moulder away, inch 
 by inch, till nothing remains but a heap of ruins. 
 
 Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some 
 more steps and along a gloomy corridor, we came to the 
 great court, before entering which, however, we had to take 
 off our boots and put on slippers brought for the purpose. 
 The first sight of this court is an architectural surprise. It 
 is like nothing that one has seen before, and its beauty equals 
 its novelty. Imagine an immense marble quadrangle, open 
 to the sky and enclosed within lofty walls, with, at each 
 side, a vast recess framed in by a single arch. The quad- 
 rangle is more than 100 feet square, and the walls are more 
 than 100 feet high. Each recess forms a spacious hall for 
 rest and prayer, and all are matted ; but that at the eastern 
 end is wider and considerably deeper than the other three, 
 and the noble arch that encloses it like the proscenium of a 
 splendid stage, measures, according to Fergusson, 69 feet 5 
 inches in the span. It looks much larger. This principal
 
 2l8 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 
 
 hall, the floor of which is raised one step at the upper end, 
 measures 90 feet in depth and 90 in height. The dais is 
 covered with prayer-rugs, and contains the holy niche and 
 the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who 
 came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they 
 either went away or turned aside into one of the other 
 recesses to rest. There was a charming fountain in the 
 court, with a dome-roof as light and fragile-looking as a big 
 bubble, at which each worshipper performed his ablutions 
 on coming in. This done, he left his slippers on the 
 matting and trod the carpeted dais barefoot. . . . 
 
 While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the 
 intricate Arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode 
 came up with a big key and invited us to visit the tomb of 
 the founder. So we followed him into an enormous vaulted 
 hall a hundred feet square, in the centre of which stood a 
 plain, railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer at 
 the foot. We afterwards learned that for five hundred 
 years that is to say, ever since the death and burial of 
 Sultan Hassan this coffer had contained a fine copy of 
 the Koran, traditionally said to have been written by Sultan 
 Hassan's own hand ; but that the Khedive, who is collecting 
 choice and antique Arabic MSS., had only the other day 
 sent an order for its removal. 
 
 Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions 
 of this noble sepulchral hall, the walls of which are covered 
 with tracery in low relief incrusted with discs and tesserae 
 of turquoise-coloured porcelain ; while high up, in order to 
 lead off the vaulting of the roof, the corners are rounded by 
 means of recessed clusters of exquisite Arabesque woodwork,
 
 THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 219 
 
 like pendant stalactites. But the tesserae are fast falling 
 out, and most of their places are vacant ; and the beautiful 
 woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed, like 
 time-worn banners which the first touch of a brush would 
 bring down. 
 
 Going back again from the tomb to the courtyard, we 
 everywhere observed traces of the same dilapidation. The 
 fountain, once a miracle of Sarascenic ornament, was fast 
 going to destruction. The rich marbles of its basement 
 were cracked and discoloured, its stuccoed cupola was 
 flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its 
 lace-like wood tracery shredding away 'by inches. 
 
 Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with 
 pretty confidence on the brink of the basin, and having 
 splashed, and drunk, and preened its feathers like a true 
 believer at his ablutions, flew up to the top of the cupola 
 and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still. Large 
 spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The 
 sky showed overhead as a square opening of burning solid 
 blue ; while here and there, reclining, praying, or quietly 
 occupied, a number of turbaned figures were picturesquely 
 scattered over the matted floors of the open halls around. 
 Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged, making a waistcoat ; near 
 him, stretched on his face at full length, sprawled a basket- 
 maker with his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes 
 beside him ; and here, close against the main entrance, lay 
 a blind man and his dog ; the master asleep, the dog keeping 
 watch. It was, as I have said, our first mosque, and I well 
 remember the surprise with which we saw that tailor sewing 
 on his buttons, and the sleepers lying about in the shade.
 
 22O THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN. 
 
 We did not then know that a Mohammedan mosque is as 
 much a place of rest and refuge as of prayer ; or that the 
 houseless Arab may take shelter there by night or day as 
 freely as the birds may build their nests in the cornice, or as 
 the blind man's dog may share the cool shade with the sleep- 
 ing master. 
 
 A Thousand Miles up the Nile (London, zd ed., 1889).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES. 
 EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 
 
 THE ancient capital of the Treveri has the privilege 
 of being known by two modern names, native and 
 foreign, each of which preserves a letter of the ancient 
 name which is lost in its rival. Treveris is by its own 
 people contracted into Trier, while by its neighbours it 
 is cut short into Treves. But one who looks out from the 
 amphitheatre beyond its walls on the city which boasts 
 itself to have stood for thirteen hundred years longer than 
 Rome, will be inclined to hold that the beauty of its 
 position and the interest of its long history cannot lose 
 their charm under any name. It was not without reason 
 that the mythical Trebetas, son of Ninus, after wandering 
 through all lands, pitched on the spot by the Mosel as the 
 loveliest and richest site that he could find for the founda- 
 tion of the first city which arose on European soil. . . . 
 
 Trier holds, north of the Alps, a position which is in 
 some respects analogous to the position of Ravenna south 
 of the Alps. The points both of likeness and unlikeness 
 between the two cities may be instructively compared. In 
 physical position no two cities can well be more opposite. 
 No two spots can be more unlike than Trier, with its hills, 
 its river, and its bridge, and Ravenna, forsaken by the sea, 
 left in its marshy flat, with its streets, which were once
 
 222 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES. 
 
 canals like those of Venice, now canals no longer. In 
 their history the two cities have thus much in common, 
 that each was a seat of the Imperial power of Rome in 
 the days of its decline. Each too is remarkable for its 
 rich store of buildings handed on from the days of its 
 greatness, buildings which stamp upon each city an unique 
 character of its own. But, when we more minutely com- 
 pare either the history or the surviving antiquities of the 
 two cities, when we compare the circumstances under 
 which each city rose to greatness, we shall find on the 
 whole less of likeness than of unlikeness. The difference 
 may be summed up when we say that Trier is the city of 
 Constantine, that Ravenna is the city of Honorius. . . . 
 
 Ravenna has nothing of any consequence belonging 
 either to heathen Roman or to mediaeval times ; its monu- 
 ments belong to the days of Honorius and Placidia, to the 
 days of the Gothic kingdom, to the very first days of the 
 restored Imperial rule. To these, except one or two of 
 the churches of Rome, there is nothing in the West to 
 answer. The monuments of Trier are spread over a far 
 wider space of time. They stretch from the first days of 
 Roman occupation to an advanced stage of the Middle 
 Ages. The mighty pile of the Black Gate, the Porta Nigra 
 or Porta Mortis, a pile to which Ravenna, and Rome 
 herself, can supply no rival, is a work which it is hard to 
 believe can belong to any days but those when the city 
 was the dwelling-place of Emperors. Yet scholars are 
 not lacking who argue that it really dates from the early 
 days of the Roman only, from a date earlier than that 
 which some other scholars assign to the first foundations
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES. 223 
 
 of the colony, from the days of Claudius. The amphi- 
 theatre is said to date from the reign of Trajan. The 
 basilica, so strangely changed into a Protestant church by 
 the late King of Prussia, can hardly fail to be the work 
 of Constantine. But, after all, the building at Trier 
 which will most reward careful study is the metropolitan 
 church. At the first glimpse it seems less unique than 
 the Porta Nigra ; its distinct outline is massive and pictur- 
 esque, but it is an outline with which every one who has 
 seen many of the great churches of Germany must be 
 thoroughly familiar. Or, if it has a special character of 
 its own, it seems to come from the blending of the four 
 towers of the main buildings with a fifth, the massive tower 
 of the Llebfrauenkirche, which, in the general view, none 
 would fancy to be one of the most perfect and graceful 
 specimens of the early German Gothic of the Thirteenth 
 Century. It is only gradually that the unique character 
 of the building dawns on the inquirer. What at first sight 
 seemed to be a church of the type of Mainz, Worms, and 
 Speyer, and inferior to them in lacking the central tower 
 or cupola, turns out to be something which has no parallel 
 north of the Alps, nor, we may add, south of them either. 
 It is a Roman building of the Sixth Century none the 
 less Roman for being built under a Frankish king pre- 
 serving large portions of a yet earlier building of the 
 Fourth. The capitals of its mighty columns peep out 
 from amid the later work, and fragments of the pillars lie 
 about in the cloister and before the western door, as the 
 like fragments do in the Forum of Trajan. Repaired and 
 enlarged in the Eleventh Century in remarkably close
 
 224 THE CATHEDRAL OF TREVES. 
 
 imitation of the original design, the church has gone 
 through a series of additions and recastings, in order to 
 change it into the likeness of an ordinary mediaeval German 
 church. Had St. Vital at Ravenna, had St. Sophia itself, 
 stood where the Dom of Trier stands, the same misapplied 
 labour would most likely have been bestowed upon them. 
 But, well pleased as we should have been to have had such 
 a building as this kept to us in its original form, there is 
 no denying that those who enjoy spelling out the changes 
 which a great building has gone through, comparing the 
 statements of the local chroniclers with the evidence of 
 the building itself a process which, like every other 
 process of discovery, is not without its charm will find 
 no more attractive problem of the kind than is supplied by 
 the venerable minster of Trier. 
 
 Historical and Architectural Sketches (London, 1876).
 
 THE VATICAN. 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 THE hollow of the Janiculum between S. Onofrio 
 and the Monte Mario is believed to have been 
 the site of Etruscan divination. 
 
 " Fauni vatesque canebant." 
 
 Ennius. 
 
 Hence the name, which is now only used in regard to the 
 Papal palace and the Basilica of S. Peter, but which was 
 once applied to the whole district between the foot of the 
 hill and the Tiber near S. Angelo. 
 
 " . . . Ut paterni 
 Fluminis ripae, simul et jocosa 
 Redderet laudes tibi Vaticani 
 Montis imago." 
 
 Horace, Od. i. 20. 
 
 Tacitus speaks of the unwholesome air of this quarter. 
 In this district was the Circus of Caligula, adjoining the 
 gardens of his mother Agrippina, decorated by the obelisk 
 which now stands in the front of S. Peter's, near which 
 many believe that S. Peter suffered martyrdom. 1 
 
 Here Seneca describes that while Caligula was walking 
 
 1 Pliny xxxv. 15. 
 15
 
 226 THE VATICAN. 
 
 by torchlight he amused himself by the slaughter of a 
 number of distinguished persons senators and Roman 
 ladies. Afterwards it became the Circus of Nero, who 
 from his adjoining gardens used to watch the martyrdom 
 of the Christians l mentioned by Suetonius as " a race 
 given up to a new and evil superstition " and who used 
 their living bodies, covered with pitch and set on fire, as 
 torches for his nocturnal promenades. 
 
 The first residence of the Popes at the Vatican was 
 erected by S. Symmachus (A. D. 498514) near the fore- 
 court of the old S. Peter's, and here Charlemagne is 
 believed to have resided on the occasion of his several 
 visits to Rome during the reigns of Adrian I. (772-795) 
 and Leo III. (795-816). During the Twelfth Century 
 this ancient palace having fallen into decay, it was rebuilt 
 in the Thirteenth by Innocent III. It was greatly enlarged 
 by Nicholas III. (1277-81) ; but the Lateran continued to 
 be the Papal residence, and the Vatican palace was only 
 used on state occasions, and for the reception of any 
 foreign sovereigns visiting Rome. After the return of the 
 Popes from Avignon, the Lateran palace had fallen into 
 decay, and, for the sake of the greater security afforded by 
 the vicinity of S. Angelo, it was determined to make the 
 Pontifical residence at the Vatican, and the first Conclave 
 was held there in 1378. In order to increase its security, 
 John XXIII. constructed the covered passage to S. Angelo 
 in 1410. Nicholas V. (1447-55) had the idea of making 
 it the most magnificent palace in the world, and of uniting 
 in it all the government offices and dwellings of the 
 1 Tac. Ann. xv. 44.
 
 THE VATICAN. 22? 
 
 cardinals. He wished to make it for Christendom that 
 which the Milliarium Aureum in the Forum was to the 
 Roman Empire, the centre whence all the messengers of 
 the spiritual empire should go forth, bearing words of life, 
 truth, and peace. 1 Unfortunately Nicholas died before he 
 could carry out his designs. The building which he com- 
 menced was finished by Alexander VI., and still exists 
 under the name of Tor di Borgia. In the reign of this 
 Pope, his son Cesare murdered Alphonso, Duke of Bis- 
 ceglia, husband of his sister Lucrezia, in the Vatican 
 (August 1 8, 1500). To Paul II. was due the Court of 
 S. Damasus. In 1473 Sixtus IV. built the Sixtine Chapel, 
 and in 1490 " the Belvedere " was erected as a separate 
 garden-house by Innocent VIII. from designs of Antonio 
 da Pollajuolo. Julius II., with the aid of Bramante, 
 united this villa to the palace by means of one vast court- 
 yard, and erected the Loggie around the court of S. Dam- 
 asus ; he also laid the foundation of the Vatican Museum 
 in the gardens of the Belvedere. The Loggie were com- 
 pleted by Leo X. ; the Sala Regia and the Paoline Chapel 
 were built by Paul III. Sixtus V. divided the great court 
 of Bramante into two by the erection of the library, and 
 began the present residence of the Popes, which was 
 finished by Clement VIII. (1592-1605). Urban VIII. 
 built the Scala Regia; Clement XIV. and Pius VI., the 
 Museo Pio-Clementino (for which the latter pulled down 
 the chapel of Innocent VIII., full of precious frescoes by 
 Mantegna) ; Pius VII., the Braccio Nuovo ; Leo XII., 
 the picture-gallery ; Gregory XVI., the Etruscan Museum, 
 1 See Rio.
 
 228 THE VATICAN. 
 
 and Pius IX., the handsome staircase leading to the court 
 of Bramante. 
 
 The length of the Vatican Palace is 1151 English feetj 
 its breadth, 767. It has eight grand staircases, twenty 
 courts, and is said to contain 11,000 chambers of different 
 sizes. 
 
 The principal entrance to the Vatican is at the end of 
 the right colonnade of S. Peter's. Hence a door on the 
 right opens upon the staircase leading to the Cortile di 
 S. Damaso, and is the nearest way to all the collections, 
 and the one by which visitors were admitted until the fall 
 of the Papal government. The fountain of the Cortile, 
 designed by Algardi in 1649, ls ^ by the Acqua Dam- 
 asiana, due to Pope Damasus in the Fourth Century. 
 
 Following the great corridor, and passing on the left 
 the entrance to the portico of S. Peter's, we reach the 
 Scala Regia, a magnificent work of Bernini, watched by 
 the picturesque Swiss guard of the Pope. Hence we enter 
 the Sala Regia, built in the reign of Paul III. by Antonio 
 di Sangallo, and used as a hall of audience for ambassadors. 
 It is decorated with frescoes illustrative of the history of 
 the Popes. 
 
 On the right is the entrance of the Paoline Chapel 
 (Cappella Paolina), also built (1540) by Antonio di San- 
 gallo for Paul III. Its decorations are chiefly the work of 
 Sabbatini and F. Zucchero, but it contains two frescoes 
 by Michelangelo. 
 
 On the left of the approach from the Scala Regia is the 
 Sixtine Chapel (Cappella Sistina), built by Baccio Pintelli 
 in 1473 f r Sixtus IV.
 
 THE VATICAN. 229 
 
 The lower part of the walls of this wonderful chapel 
 was formerly hung on festivals with the tapestries executed 
 from the cartoons of Raffaelle ; the upper portion is 
 decorated in fresco by the great Florentine masters of the 
 Fifteenth Century. . . . 
 
 On the pillars between the windows are the figures of 
 twenty-eight Popes, by Sandro Botticelli. . . . 
 
 The avenue of pictures .is a preparation for the sur- 
 passing grandeur of the ceiling. 
 
 The pictures from the Old Testament, beginning from 
 the altar, are : I . The Separation of Light and Dark- 
 ness ; 2. The Creation of the Sun and Moon ; 3. The 
 Creation of Trees and Plants ; 4. The Creation of Adam ; 
 5. The Creation of Eve; 6. The Fall and the Expul- 
 sion from Paradise ; 7. The Sacrifice of Noah ; 8. The 
 Deluge ; 9. The Intoxication of Noah. 
 
 The lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles 
 occupied by the Prophets and Sibyls in solemn contem- 
 plation, accompanied by angels and genii. Beginning 
 from the left of the entrance, their order is i. Joel; 
 2. Sibylla Erythraea ; 3. Ezekiel ; 4. Sibylla Persica ; 5. 
 Jonah; 6. Sibylla Libyca; 7. Daniel; 8. Sibylla Cumaea; 
 Q.Isaiah; 10. Sibylla Delphica. 
 
 In the recesses between the Prophets and Sibyls are a 
 series of lovely family groups representing the Genealogy 
 of the Virgin, and expressive of calm expectation of the 
 future. The four corners of the ceiling contain groups 
 illustrative of the power of the Lord displayed in the 
 especial deliverance of His chosen people. 
 
 Only 3000 ducats were paid to Michelangelo for all his
 
 23O THE VATICAN. 
 
 great work on the ceiling of the Sixtine ; less than a 
 common decorator obtains in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 It was when Michelangelo was already in his sixtieth 
 year that Clement VII. formed the idea of effacing the 
 three pictures of Perugino at the end of the chapel, and 
 employing him to paint the vast fresco of The Last Judg- 
 ment in their place. It occupied the artist for seven years, 
 and was finished in 1541, when Paul III. was on the 
 throne. During this time Michelangelo frequently read 
 and re-read the wonderful sermons of Savonarola, to refresh 
 his mind, and that he might drink in the inspiration of 
 their own religious awe and Dantesque imagination. . . . 
 
 The small portion of the Vatican inhabited by the 
 Pope is never seen except by those who are admitted to a 
 special audience. The three rooms occupied by the pontiff 
 are furnished with a simplicity which would be inconceiv- 
 able in the abode of any other sovereign prince. The 
 furniture is confined to the merest necessaries of life ; 
 strange contrast to Lambeth and Fulham ! The apart- 
 ment consists of the bare Green Saloon ; the Red Saloon, 
 containing a throne flanked by benches ; and the bedroom, 
 with yellow draperies, a large writing table, and a few 
 pictures by old masters. The Papal life is a lonely one, 
 as the dread of an accusation of nepotism has prevented 
 any of the later Popes from having any of their family 
 with them, and etiquette always obliges them to dine, etc., 
 alone. Pius IX. seldom saw his family, but Leo XIII. is 
 often visited twice a day by his relations " La Sainte 
 Famille," as they are generally called. 
 
 No one, whatever the difference of creed, can look upon
 
 THE VATICAN. 231 
 
 this building, inhabited by the venerable men who have 
 borne so important a part in the history of Christianity 
 and of Europe, without the deepest interest. . . . 
 
 The windows of the Egyptian Museum look upon 
 the inner Garden of the Vatican, which may be reached by 
 a door at the end of the long gallery of the Museo Chiara- 
 monti, before ascending to the Torso. The garden which 
 is thus entered, called Giardino della Pigna, is in fact merely 
 the second great quadrangle of the Vatican, planted, under 
 Pius IX., with shrubs and flowers, now a desolate wilder- 
 ness its lovely garden having been destroyed by the 
 present Vatican authorities to make way for a monumental 
 column to the Council of 1870. Several interesting relics 
 are preserved here. In the centre is the Pedestal of the 
 Column of Antoninus Pius, found in 1709 on the Monte 
 Citorio. The column was a simple memorial pillar of 
 granite, erected by the two adopted sons of the Emperor, 
 Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. It was broken up to 
 mend the obelisk of Psammeticus I. at the Monte Citorio. 
 Among the reliefs of the pedestal is one of a winged genius 
 guiding Antoninus and Faustina to Olympus. The modern 
 pillar and statue are erections of Leo XIII. In front of 
 the great semicircular niche of Bramante, at the end of the 
 court-garden, is the famous Pigna, a gigantic fir-cone, 
 which is said once to have crowned the summit of the 
 Mausoleum of Hadrian. Thence it was first removed to 
 the front of the old basilica of S. Peter's, where it was 
 used for a fountain. In the fresco of the old S. Peter's 
 at S. Martino al Monte the pigna is introduced, but it is 
 there placed in the centre of the nave, a position it never
 
 232 THE VATICAN. 
 
 occupied. It bears the name of the bronze-founder who 
 cast it " P. Cincivs. P. L. Calvivs. fecit." Dante saw 
 it at S. Peter's, and compares it to a giant's head (it is 
 eleven feet high) which he saw through the mist in the 
 last circle of hell. 
 
 "La faccia mi parea longa e grossa 
 Come la pina di S. Pietro in Roma." 
 
 Inf. xxxi. 58. 
 
 On either side of the pigna are two lovely bronze 
 peacocks, which are said to have stood on either side of 
 the entrance of Hadrian's Mausoleum. 
 
 A flight of steps leads from this court to the narrow 
 Terrace of the Navlcella, in front of the palace, so called 
 from a bronze ship with which its fountain is decorated. 
 The visitor should beware of the tricksome waterworks 
 upon this terrace. 
 
 Beyond the courtyard is the entrance to the larger 
 garden, which may be reached in a carriage by the courts 
 at the back of S. Peter's. Admittance is difficult to obtain, 
 as the garden is constantly used by the Pope. Pius IX. 
 used to ride here upon his white mule. It is a most 
 delightful retreat for the hot days of May and June, and 
 before that time its woods are carpeted with wild violets 
 and anemones. No one who has not visited them can 
 form any idea of the beauty of these ancient groves, in- 
 terspersed with fountains and statues, but otherwise left to 
 nature, and forming a fragment of sylvan scenery quite 
 unassociated with the English idea of a garden. . . . 
 
 The Sixteenth Century was the golden age for the
 
 THE VATICAN. 233 
 
 Vatican. Then the splendid court of Leo X. was the 
 centre of artistic and literary life, and the witty and 
 pleasure-loving Pope made these gardens the scene of his 
 banquets and concerts ; and, in a circle to which ladies 
 were admitted, as in a secular court, listened to the recita- 
 tions of the poets who sprang up under his protection, 
 beneath the shadow of their woods. 
 
 Walks in Rome (isth ed., London, 1896).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 IT is the admitted privilege of a custode who loves his 
 cathedral to depreciate, in its comparison, all the other 
 cathedrals of his country that resemble, and all the edifices 
 on the globe that differ from it. But I love too many 
 cathedrals though I have never had the happiness of 
 becoming the custode of even one to permit myself the 
 easy and faithful exercise of the privilege in question ; and 
 I must vindicate my candour and my judgment in the out- 
 set, by confessing that the Cathedral of AMIENS has nothing 
 to boast of in the way of towers, that its central flecbe is 
 merely the pretty caprice of a village carpenter, that the 
 total structure is in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity 
 to Beauvais, and in decorative splendour to Rheims, and in 
 loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges. It has nothing 
 like the artful pointing and moulding of the arcades of 
 Salisbury nothing of the might of Durham ; no Dsdalian 
 inlaying like Florence, no glow of mythic fantasy like 
 Verona. And yet, in all, and more than these, ways, out- 
 shone or overpowered, the Cathedral of Amiens deserves 
 the name given it by M. Viollet le Due 
 
 " The Parthenon of Gothic Architecture." . . . 
 
 Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen 
 at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 235 
 
 existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate loco- 
 motion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one 
 quarter of an hour, not out of breath for the contempla- 
 tion of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathe- 
 dral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, 
 you can see elsewhere as well as here but such carpenter's 
 work you cannot. It is late, fully developed flamboyant 
 just past the Fifteenth Century and has some Flemish 
 stolidity mixed with the playing French fire of it ; but wood- 
 carving was the Picard's joy from his youth up, and, so far 
 as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the 
 goodly trees of the world. 
 
 Sweet and young-grained wood it is : oak, trained and 
 chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years 
 since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, 
 to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like 
 living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing 
 pinnacle it shoots and wreathes itself into an enchanted 
 glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any 
 forest, and fuller of story than any book. 1 
 
 1 Arnold Boulin, master-joiner (menuisier) at Amiens, solicited the 
 enterprise, and obtained it in the first months of the year 1508. A 
 contract was drawn and an agreement made with him for the construc- 
 tion of one hundred and twenty stalls with historical subjects, high 
 backings, crownings, and pyramidal canopies. It was agreed that the 
 principal executor should have seven sous of Tournay (a little less than 
 the sou of France) a day, for himself and his apprentice, (threepence a 
 day the two say a shilling a week the master, and sixpence a week 
 the man,) and for the superintendence of the whole work, twelve 
 crowns a year, at the rate of twenty-four sous the crown ; (i. e. twelve 
 shillings a year). The salary of the simple workman was only to be 
 three sous a day. For the sculptures and histories of the seats, the
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 
 
 I have never been able to make up my mind which was 
 really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the 
 first time. . . . 
 
 I think the best is to walk from the Hotel de France 
 or the Place de Perigord, up the street of Three Pebbles, 
 towards the railway station stopping a little as you go, so 
 as to get into a cheerful temper, and buying some bon-bons 
 or tarts for the children in one of those charming patissier's 
 shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and 
 just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open 
 arches, through which you can turn passing the Palais de 
 Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has 
 really something about it to please everybody. It is simple 
 and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pin- 
 nacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece though it 
 is n't and everybody must like the taper and transparent 
 fret-work of the JTeche above, which seems to bend in the 
 west wind, though it does n't at least, the bending is a 
 long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and 
 submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And 
 coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the 
 pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head 
 a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like 
 a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, 
 though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness and 
 her gay soubrette's smile ; and she has no business there, 
 
 bargain was made separately with Antoine Avernier, image cutter, 
 residing at Amiens, at the rate of thirty-two sous (sixteen pence), the 
 piece. Most of the wood came from Clermont en Beauvoisis, near 
 Amiens ; the finest, for the bas-reliefs from Holland, by St. Valery 
 and Abbeville.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 237 
 
 neither, for this is Saint Honore's porch, not her's j and grim 
 and grey Saint Honore used to stand there to receive you, 
 he is banished now to the north porch where nobody ever 
 goes in. This was done long ago in the Fourteenth Cen- 
 tury days when the people first began to find Christianity 
 too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and 
 would have bright glancing soubrette Madonnas everywhere, 
 letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burnt for a 
 witch. And thenceforward things went their merry way, 
 straight on, fa allait, fa ira to the merriest days of the 
 guillotine. 
 
 But they could still carve in the Fourteenth Century and 
 the Madonna and her hawthorn-blossom lintel are worth 
 your looking at, much more the field above, of sculpture 
 as delicate and more calm, which tells you Saint Honore's 
 own story, little talked of now in his Parisian faubourg. . . . 
 
 A Gothic cathedral has, almost always, these five great 
 entrances ; which may be easily, if at first attentively, 
 recognized under the titles of the Central door (or porch), 
 the Northern door, the Southern door, the North door, and 
 the South door. But when we use the terms right and left, 
 we ought always to use them as in going out of the cathedral, 
 or walking down the nave, - the entire north side and aisles . 
 of the building being its right side, and the south its left, 
 these terms being only used well and authoritatively, when 
 they have reference either to the image of Christ on the 
 apse or on the rood, or else to the central statue, whether 
 of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint in the west front. At 
 Amiens, this central statue, on the " trumeau " or supporting 
 and dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ Im-
 
 238 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 
 
 manuel, God with us. On His right hand and His left, 
 occupying the entire walls of the central porch, are the 
 apostles and the four greater prophets. The twelve minor 
 prophets stand side by side on the front, three on each of its 
 great piers. 
 
 The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firman, the first 
 Christian missionary to Amiens. 
 , The southern porch to the Virgin. 
 
 But these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great 
 foundation of Christ and the Prophets ; and their narrow 
 recesses partly conceal their sculpture until you enter them. 
 What you have first to think of, and read, is the scripture 
 of the great central porch and the facade itself. 
 
 You have then in the centre of the front, the image of 
 Christ Himself, receiving you : " I am the Way, the truth 
 and the life." And the order of the attendant powers may 
 be best understood by thinking of them as placed on Christ's 
 right and left hand : this being also the order which the 
 builder adopts in his Scripture history on the facade so 
 that it is to be read from left to right ;'. e. from Christ's 
 left to Christ's right, as He sees it. Thus, therefore, 
 following the order of the great statues : first in the central 
 porch, there are six apostles on Christ's right hand, and 
 six on His left. On His left hand, next Him, Peter; then 
 in receding order, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Simon ; 
 on His right hand, next Him, Paul; and in receding order, 
 James the Bishop, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Jude. 
 These opposite ranks of the Apostles occupy what may be 
 called the apse or curved bay of the porch, and form a 
 nearly semicircular group, clearly visible as we approach.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 239 
 
 But on the sides of the porch, outside the lines of apostles, 
 and not clearly seen till we enter the porch are the four 
 greater prophets. On Christ's left, Isaiah and Jeremiah, on 
 His right, Ezekiel and Daniel. 
 
 Then in front, along the whole facade read in order 
 from Christ's left to His right come the series of the 
 twelve minor prophets, three to each of the four piers of the 
 temple, beginning at the south angle with Hosea, and 
 ending with Malachi. 
 
 As you look full at the facade in front, the statues which 
 fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower 
 recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. 
 And the entire mass of the front is seen, literally, as built on 
 the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ 
 Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally that ; for 
 the receding Porch is a deep " angulus " and its mid-pillar is 
 the " Head of the Corner." 
 
 Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that 
 is to say of the Prophets who foretold Christ, and the 
 Apostles who declared Him. Though Moses was an 
 Apostle of God, he is not here though Elijah was a 
 Prophet of God, he is not here. The voice of the entire 
 building is that of the Heaven at the Transfiguration. 
 " This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him." 
 
 There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, as it 
 seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the gates 
 of the temple, singing " Hosanna to the Son of David; " 
 and see no image of his father, then? Christ Himself 
 declare, " I am the root and offspring of David ; " and yet 
 the Root have no sign near it of its Earth ?
 
 240 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 
 
 Not so. David and his Son are together. David is the 
 pedestal of the Christ. 
 
 We will begin our examination of the Temple front, 
 therefore with this goodly pedestal stone. The statue of 
 David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in 
 front of the pedestal. He holds his sceptre in his right 
 hand, the scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all 
 Divinely right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaim- 
 ing, kinghood forever. 
 
 The pedestal of which this statue forms the fronting or 
 western sculpture, is square, and on the two sides of it are 
 two flowers in vases, on its north side the lily, and on its 
 south the rose. And the entire monolith is one of the 
 noblest pieces of Christian sculpture in the world. 
 
 Above this pedestal comes a minor one, bearing in front 
 of it a tendril of vine, which completes the floral symbolism 
 of the whole. The plant which I have called a lily is not 
 the Fleur de Lys, nor the Madonna's, but an ideal one with 
 bells like the crown Imperial (Shakespeare's type of " lilies 
 of all kinds "), representing the mode of growth of the lily of 
 the valley, which could not be sculptured so large in its 
 literal form without appearing monstrous, and is exactly 
 expressed in this tablet as it fulfils, together with the 
 rose and vine, its companions, the triple saying of Christ, 
 " I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley." 
 " I am the true Vine." 
 
 On the side of the upper stone are supporters of a 
 different character. Supporters, not captives nor victims ; 
 the Cockatrice and Adder. Representing the most active 
 evil principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity;
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS. 24! 
 
 still Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, ac- 
 complishing His final will. 
 
 Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediaeval 
 traditional form, the cockatrice half dragon, half cock ; the 
 deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping 
 the other with her tail. 
 
 The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The cockatrice 
 king serpent or highest serpent saying that he is God, 
 and will be God. 
 
 The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder 
 or nether snake) saying that he is mud and will be mud. 
 
 Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue of 
 Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon; the images of 
 Carnal sin, or Human sin, as distinguished from the Spir- 
 itual and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels 
 also fell. 
 
 The Bible of Amiens (Our Fathers Have Told Us}, (Sunnyside, 
 Orpington, Kent, 1884). 
 
 16
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 THE external aspect has nothing worthy of note. The 
 only objects that attract the eye are the four high 
 white minarets that rise at the four corners of the edifice, 
 upon pedestals as big as houses. The famous cupola looks 
 small. It appears impossible that it can be the same dome 
 that swells into the blue air, like the head of a Titan, and 
 is seen from Pera, from the Bosphorus, from the Sea of 
 Marmora, and from the hills of Asia. It is a flattened 
 dome, flanked by two half domes, covered with lead, and 
 perforated with a wreath of windows, supported upon four 
 walls painted in stripes of pink and white, sustained in their 
 turn by enormous bastions, around which rise confusedly 
 a number of small mean buildings, baths, schools, mauso- 
 leums, hospitals, etc., which hide the architectural forms 
 of the basilica. You see nothing but a heavy, irregular 
 mass, of a faded colour, naked as a fortress, and not to all 
 appearance large enough to hold within it the immense 
 nave of Santa Sofia's church. Of the ancient basilica 
 nothing is really visible but the dome, which has lost the 
 silvery splendour that once made it visible, according to 
 the Greeks, from the summit of Olympus. All the rest 
 is Mussulman. One summit was built by Mahomet the
 
 w 
 
 D 
 O
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 243 
 
 Conqueror, one by Selim II., the other two by Amurath III. 
 Of the same Amurath are the buttresses built at the end 
 of the Sixteenth Century to support the walls shaken by 
 an earthquake, and the enormous crescent in bronze 
 planted upon the top of the dome, of which the gilding 
 alone cost fifty thousand ducats. 
 
 On every side the mosque overwhelms and masks the 
 church, of which the head only is free, though over that 
 also the four imperial minarets keep watch and ward. On 
 the eastern side there is a door ornamented by six columns 
 of porphyry and marble ; at the southern side another door 
 by which you enter a court, surrounded by low, irregular 
 buildings, in the midst of which bubbles a fountain for 
 ablution, covered by an arched roof with eight columns. 
 Looked at from without, Santa Sofia can scarcely be 
 distinguished from the other mosques of Stamboul, unless 
 by its inferior lightness and whiteness ; much less would 
 it pass for the " greatest temple in the world after Saint 
 Peter's." . . . 
 
 Between the four enormous pilasters which form a 
 square in the middle of the basilica, rise, to the right and 
 left as you enter, eight marvellous columns of green breccia 
 from which spring the most graceful arches, sculptured 
 with foliage, forming an elegant portico on either side 
 of the nave, and sustaining at a great height two vast 
 galleries, which present two more ranges of columns and 
 sculptured arches. A third gallery which communicates 
 with the two first, runs along the entire side where the 
 entrance is, and opens upon the nave with three great 
 arches, sustained by twin columns. Other minor galleries
 
 244 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 
 
 supported by porphyry columns, cross the four temples 
 posted at the extremity of the nave and sustain other 
 columns bearing tribunes. This is the basilica. The 
 mosque is, as it were, planted in its bosom and attached 
 to its walls. The Mirab, or niche which indicates the 
 direction of Mecca, is cut in one of the pilasters of the 
 apse. To the right of it and high up is hung one of 
 the four carpets which Mahomet used in prayer. Upon 
 the corner of the apse, nearest the Mirab^ at the top of a 
 very steep little staircase, flanked by two balustrades of 
 marble sculptured with exquisite delicacy, under an odd 
 conical roof, between two triumphal standards of Mahomet 
 Second, is the pulpit where the Ratib goes up to read the 
 Koran, with a drawn scimetar in his hand, to indicate that- 
 Santa Sofia is a mosque acquired by conquest. Opposite 
 the pulpit is the tribune of the Sultan, closed with a gilded 
 lattice. Other pulpits or platforms, furnished with balus- 
 trades sculptured in open work, and ornamented with small 
 marble columns and arabesque arches, extend here and 
 there along the walls, or project towards the centre of the 
 nave. To the right and left of the entrance, are two 
 enormous alabaster urns, brought from the ruins of Per- 
 gamo, by Amurath III. Upon the pilasters, at a great 
 height are suspended immense green disks, with inscrip- 
 tions from the Koran in letters of gold. Underneath, 
 attached to the walls, are large cartouches of porphyry 
 inscribed with the names of Allah, Mahomet, and the first 
 four Caliphs. In the angles formed by the four arches 
 that sustain the cupola, may still be seen the gigantic wings 
 of four mosaic cherubim, whose faces are concealed by
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 245 
 
 gilded rosettes. From the vaults of the domes depend 
 innumerable thick silken cords, to which are attached 
 ostrich eggs, bronze lamps, and globes of crystal. Here 
 and there are seen lecterns, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and 
 copper, with manuscript Korans upon them. The pave- 
 ment is covered with carpets and mats. The walls are 
 bare, whitish, yellowish, or dark grey, still ornamented here 
 and there with faded mosaics. The general aspect is 
 gloomy and sad. 
 
 The chief marvel of the mosque is the great dome. 
 Looked at from the nave below, it seems indeed, as 
 Madame de Stae'l said of the dome of Saint Peter's, like an 
 abyss suspended over one's head. It is immensely high, 
 has an enormous circumference, and its depth is only one- 
 sixth of its diameter; which makes it appear still larger. 
 At its base a gallery encircles it, and above the gallery 
 there is a row of forty arched windows. In the top is 
 written the sentence pronounced by Mahomet Second, as 
 he sat on his horse in front of the high altar on the day 
 of the taking of Constantinople : " Allah is the light of 
 heaven and of earth ; " and some of the letters, which are 
 white upon a black ground, are nine yards long. As every 
 one knows, this aerial prodigy could not be constructed 
 with the usual materials ; and it was built of pumice-stone 
 that floats on water, and with bricks from the island of 
 Rhodes, five of which scarcely weigh as much as one 
 ordinary brick. . . . 
 
 When you have visited the nave and the dome, you 
 have only begun to see Santa Sofia. For example, who- 
 ever has a shade of historic curiosity may dedicate an hour
 
 246 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 
 
 to the columns. Here are the spoils of all the temples in 
 the world. The columns of green breccia which support 
 the two great galleries, were presented to Justinian by the 
 magistrates of Ephesus, and belonged to the Temple of 
 Diana that was burned by Erostratus. The eight porphyry 
 columns that stand two and two between the pilasters 
 belonged to the Temple of the Sun built by Aurelian at 
 Balbek. Other columns are from the Temple of Jove at 
 Cizicum, from the Temple of Helios of Palmyra, from 
 the temples of Thebes, Athens, Rome, the Troad, the 
 Ciclades, and from Alexandria ; and they present an infinite 
 variety of sizes and colours. Among the columns, the 
 balustrades, the pedestals, and the slabs which remain of 
 the ancient lining of the walls, may be seen marbles from 
 all the ruins of the Archipelago; from Asia Minor, from 
 Africa and from Gaul. The marble of the Bosphorus, 
 white spotted with black, contrasts with the black Celtic 
 marble veined with white ; the green marble of Laconia 
 is reflected in the azure marble of Lybia ; the speckled 
 porphyry of Egypt, the starred granite of Thessaly, the red 
 and white striped stone of Jassy, mingle their colours with 
 the purple of the Phrygian marble, the rose of that of 
 Synada, the gold of the marble of Mauritania, and the 
 snow of the marble of Paros. . . . 
 
 From above can be embraced at once with the eye and 
 mind all the life of the mosque. There are to be seen 
 Turks on their Icnees, with their foreheads touching the 
 pavement ; others erect like statues with their hands before 
 their faces, as if they were studying the lines in their 
 palms ; some seated cross-legged at the base of columns,
 
 THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOFIA. 247 
 
 as if they were reposing under the shadow of trees ; a 
 veiled woman on her knees in a solitary corner ; old men 
 seated before the lecterns, reading the Koran ; an imaum 
 hearing a group of boys reciting sacred verses ; and here 
 and there, under the distant arcades and in the galleries, 
 imaum, ratib, muezzin, servants of the mosque in strange 
 costumes, coming and going silently as if they did not 
 touch the pavement. The vague harmony formed by the 
 low, monotonous voices of those reading or praying, those 
 thousand strange lamps, that clear and equal light, that 
 deserted apse, those vast silent galleries, that immensity, 
 those memories, that peace, leave in the soul an impression 
 of mystery and grandeur which words cannot express, nor 
 time efface. 
 
 Constantinople (London, 1878, translation by C. Tilton).
 
 I 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 
 
 T is said that the line in Heber's " Palestine " which 
 describes the rise of Solomon's temple originally ran 
 
 " Like the green grass, the noiseless fabric grew ; " 
 
 and that, at Sir Walter Scott's suggestion, it was altered to 
 its present form 
 
 " Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric sprung." 
 
 Whether we adopt the humbler or the grander image, the 
 comparison of the growth of a fine building to that of a 
 natural product is full of instruction. But the growth of 
 an historical edifice like Westminster Abbey needs a more 
 complex figure to do justice to its formation : a venerable 
 oak, with gnarled and hollow trunk, and spreading roots, 
 and decaying bark, and twisted branches, and green shoots ; 
 or a coral reef extending itself with constantly new accre- 
 tions, creek after creek, and islet after islet. One after 
 another, a fresh nucleus of life is formed, a new combina- 
 tion produced, a larger ramification thrown out. In this 
 respect Westminster Abbey stands alone amongst the 
 edifices of the world. There are, it may be, some which 
 surpass it in beauty or grandeur; there are others, certainly,
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 249 
 
 which surpass it in depth and sublimity of association ; but 
 there is none which has been entwined by so many con- 
 tinuous threads with the history of a whole nation. . . . 
 
 If the original foundation of the Abbey can be traced 
 back to Sebert, the name, probably, must have been given 
 in recollection of the great Roman sanctuary, whence 
 Augustine, the first missionary, had come. And Sebert 
 was believed to have dedicated his church to St. Peter in 
 the Isle of Thorns, in order to balance the compliment he 
 had paid to St. Paul on Ludgate Hill : a reappearance, 
 in another form, of the counterbalancing claims of the rights 
 of Diana and Apollo the earliest stage of that rivalry 
 which afterwards expressed itself in the proverb of " rob- 
 bing Peter to pay Paul." 
 
 This thin thread of tradition, which connected the ruinous 
 pile in the river-island with the Roman reminiscences of 
 Augustine, was twisted firm and fast round the resolve of 
 Edward ; and by the concentration of his mind on this 
 one subject was raised the first distinct idea of an Abbey, 
 which the Kings of England should regard as their peculiar 
 treasure. . . . 
 
 The Abbey had been fifteen years in building. The 
 King had spent upon it one-tenth of the property of the 
 kingdom. It was to be a marvel of its kind. As in its 
 origin it bore the traces of the fantastic childish character 
 of the King and of the age, in its architecture it bore 
 the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occu- 
 pied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By 
 birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. 
 Accordingly, the Church at Westminster was a wide
 
 250 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. 
 " Destroying the old building," he says in his Charter, " I 
 have built up a new one from the very foundation." Its 
 fame as " a new style of composition " lingered in the 
 minds of men for generations. It was the first cruciform 
 church in England, from which all the rest of like shape 
 were copied an expression of the increasing hold which 
 the idea of the Crucifixion in the Tenth Century had laid 
 on the imagination of Europe. Its massive roof and pillars 
 formed a contrast with the rude rafters and beams of the 
 common Saxon churches. Its very size occupying, as 
 it did, almost the whole area of the present building was 
 in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large square 
 blocks of grey stone, were duly laid. The east end was 
 rounded into an apse. A tower rose in the centre crowned 
 by a cupola of wood. At the western end were erected 
 two smaller towers, with five large bells. The hard strong 
 stones were richly sculptured. The windows were filled 
 with stained glass. The roof was covered with lead. The 
 cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, 
 with its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were 
 all begun, and finished in the next generation on the same 
 plan. This structure, venerable as it would be if it had 
 lasted to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly 
 one vast dark arch in the southern transept certainly the 
 substructures of the dormitory, with their huge pillars, 
 " grand and regal at the bases and capitals " the massive 
 low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little 
 Dean's Yard and some portions of the refectory and of 
 the infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 251 
 
 which astonished the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the 
 first age of the Norman monarchy. . . . 
 
 In the earliest and nearly the only representation which 
 exists of the Confessor's building that in the Bayeux 
 Tapestry there is the figure of a man on the roof, with 
 one hand resting on the tower of the Palace of West- 
 minster, and with the other grasping the weathercock of 
 the Abbey. The probable intention of this figure is to 
 indicate the close contiguity of the two buildings. If so, 
 it is the natural architectural expression of a truth valuable 
 everywhere, but especially dear to Englishmen. The close 
 incorporation of the Palace and the Abbey from its earliest 
 days is a likeness of the whole English Constitution a 
 combination of things sacred and things common a union 
 of the regal, legal, lay element of the nation with its reli- 
 gious, clerical, ecclesiastical tendencies, such as can be found 
 hardly elsewhere in Christendom. The Abbey is secular 
 because it is sacred, and sacred because it is secular. It is 
 secular in the common English sense, because it is " saecu- 
 lar " in the far higher French and Latin sense : a " saecular " 
 edifice, a " sascular " institution an edifice and an insti- 
 tution which has grown with the growth of ages, which has 
 been furrowed with the scars and cares of each succeeding 
 century. 
 
 A million wrinkles carve its skin ; 
 
 A thousand winters snow'd upon its breast, 
 
 From cheek, and throat, and chin. 
 
 The vast political pageants of which it has been the theatre, 
 the dust of the most worldly laid side by side with the dust 
 of the most saintly, the wrangles of divines or statesmen
 
 252 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 which have disturbed its sacred peace, the clash of arms 
 which has pursued fugitive warriors and princes into the 
 shades of its sanctuary even the traces of Westminster 
 boys who have played in its cloisters and inscribed their 
 names on its walls belong to the story of the Abbey no 
 less than its venerable beauty, its solemn services, and its 
 lofty aspirations. . . . 
 
 The Chapel of Henry VII. is indeed well called by his 
 name, for it breathes of himself through every part. It is 
 the most signal example of the contrast between his close- 
 ness in life, and his " magnificence in the structures he had 
 left to posterity" King's College Chapel, the Savoy, 
 Westminster. Its very style was believed to have been a 
 reminiscence of his exile, being " learned in France," by 
 himself and his companion Fox. His pride in its grandeur 
 was commemorated by the ship, vast for those times, which 
 he built, " of equal cost with his Chapel," " which after- 
 wards, in the reign of Queen Mary, sank in the sea and 
 vanished in a moment." 
 
 It was to be his chantry as well as his tomb, for he was 
 determined not to be behind the Lancastrian princes in 
 devotion ; and this unusual anxiety for the sake of a soul 
 not too heavenward in its affections expended itself in the 
 immense apparatus of services which he provided. Almost 
 a second Abbey was needed to contain the new establish- 
 ment of monks, who were to sing in their stalls " as long 
 as the world shall endure." Almost a second Shrine, sur- 
 rounded by its blazing tapers, and shining like gold with its 
 glittering bronze, was to contain his remains. 
 
 To the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel was dedicated
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 253 
 
 he had a special devotion. Her u in all his necessities he 
 had made his continual refuge ; " and her figure, accordingly, 
 looks down upon his grave from the east end, between the 
 apostolic patrons of the Abbey, Peter and Paul, with " the 
 holy company of heaven that is to say, angels, arch- 
 angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, 
 confessors and virgins," to " whose singular mediation and 
 prayers he also trusted," including the royal saints of 
 Britain, St. Edward, St. Edmund, St. Oswald, St. Margaret 
 of Scotland, who stand, as he directed, sculptured, tier above 
 tier, on every side of the Chapel ; some retained from the 
 ancient Lady Chapel ; the greater part the work of his own 
 age. Around his tomb stand his " accustomed Avours or 
 guardian saints" to whom "he calls and cries" "St. 
 Michael, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. 
 George, St. Anthony, St. Edward, St. Vincent, St. Anne, 
 St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Barbara," each with their 
 peculiar emblems, " so to aid, succour, and defend him, 
 that the ancient and ghostly enemy, nor none other evil or 
 damnable spirit, have no power to invade him, nor with 
 their wickedness to annoy him, but with holy prayers to be 
 intercessors to his Maker and Redeemer." These were 
 the adjurations of the last mediaeval King, as the Chapel 
 was the climax of the latest mediaeval architecture. In 
 the very urgency of the King's anxiety for the perpetuity 
 of these funeral ceremonies, we seem to discern an uncon- 
 scious presentiment lest their days were numbered. 
 
 But, although in this sense the Chapel hangs on tena- 
 ciously to the skirts of the ancient Abbey and the ancient 
 Church, yet that solemn architectural pause between the
 
 254 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 two which arrests the most careless observer, and renders 
 it a separate structure, a foundation " adjoining the Abbey " 
 rather than forming part of it corresponds with mar- 
 vellous fidelity to the pause and break in English history 
 of which Henry VII.'s reign is the expression. It is the 
 close of the Middle Ages : the apple of Granada in its 
 ornaments shows that the last Crusade was over ; its flow- 
 ing draperies and classical attitudes indicate that the 
 Renaissance had already begun. It is the end of the 
 Wars of the Roses, combining Henry's right of conquest 
 with his fragile claim of hereditary descent. On the one 
 hand, it is the glorification of the victory of Bosworth. 
 The angels, at the four corners of the tomb, held or hold 
 the likeness of the crown which he won on that famous 
 day. In the stained-glass we see the same crown hanging 
 on the green bush in the fields of Leicestershire. On the 
 other hand, like the Chapel of King's College at Cambridge, 
 it asserts everywhere the memory of the " holy Henry's 
 shade"; the Red Rose of Lancaster appears in every pane 
 of glass : and in every corner is the Portcullis the " Alters 
 securitas," as he termed it, with an allusion to its own 
 meaning, and the double safeguard of his succession 
 which he derived through John of Gaunt from the Beau- 
 fort Castle in Anjou, inherited from Blanche of Navarre 
 by Edmund Crouchback ; whilst Edward IV. and Eliza- 
 beth of York are commemorated by intertwining these 
 Lancastrian symbols with the Greyhound of Cecilia Neville, 
 wife of Richard, Duke of York, with the Rose in the 
 Sun, which scattered the mists at Barnet, and the Falcon 
 on the Fetterlock, by which the first Duke of York ex-
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 255 
 
 pressed to his descendants that " he was locked up from 
 the hope of the kingdom, but advising them to be quiet 
 and silent, as God knoweth what may come to pass." 
 
 It is also the revival of the ancient, Celtic, British ele- 
 ment in the English monarchy, after centuries of eclipse. 
 It is a strange and striking thought, as we mount the 
 steps of Henry VII. 's Chapel, that we enter there a mauso- 
 leum of princes, whose boast it was to be descended, not 
 from the Confessor or the Conqueror, but from Arthur 
 and Llewellyn ; and that round about the tomb, side by 
 side with the emblems of the great English Houses, is to 
 be seen the Red Dragon of the last British king, Cad- 
 wallader " the dragon of the great Pendragonship " of 
 Wales, thrust forward by the Tudor king in every direc- 
 tion, to supplant the hated White Boar of his departed 
 enemy the fulfilment, in another sense than the old 
 Welsh bards had dreamt, of their prediction that the 
 progeny of Cadwallader should reign again. . . . 
 
 We have seen how, by a gradual but certain instinct, 
 the main groups have formed themselves round particular 
 centres of death : how the Kings ranged themselves 
 round the Confessor; how the Prince and Courtiers clung 
 to the skirts of Kings; how out of the graves of the 
 Courtiers were developed the graves of the Heroes ; how 
 Chatham became the centre of the Statesmen, Chaucer of 
 the Poets, Purcell of the Musicians, Casaubon of the 
 Scholars, Newton of the Men of Science : how, even in 
 the exceptional details, natural affinities may be traced; 
 how Addison was buried apart from his brethren in letters, 
 in the royal shades of Henry VII.'s Chapel, because he
 
 256 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 clung to the vault of his own loved Montague ; how 
 Ussher lay beside his earliest instructor, Sir James Fuller- 
 ton, and Garrick at the foot of Shakespeare, and Spelman 
 opposite his revered Camden, and South close to his 
 master Busby, and Stephenson to his fellow-craftsman 
 Telford, and Grattan to his hero Fox, and Macaulay be- 
 neath the statue of his favourite Addison. 
 
 These special attractions towards particular graves and 
 monuments may interfere with the general uniformity of 
 the Abbey, but they make us feel that it is not a mere 
 dead museum, that its cold stones are warmed with the 
 life-blood of human affections and personal partiality. It 
 is said that the celebrated French sculptor of the monu- 
 ment of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg, after showing 
 its superiority in detail to the famous equestrian statue of 
 Marcus Aurelius at Rome, ended by the candid avowal, 
 " Et cependant cette mauvaise bete est vivante, et la mlenne est 
 morte" Perhaps we may be allowed to reverse the saying, 
 and when we contrast the irregularities of Westminster 
 Abbey with the uniform congruity of Salisbury or the 
 Valhalla, may reflect, " Cette belle bete est morte, mais la 
 mlenne est vivante" 
 
 Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey (London, 1866).
 
 THE PARTHENON. 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 FROM whatever point the plain of Athens with its 
 semicircle of greater and lesser hills may be sur- 
 veyed, it always presents a picture of dignified and lustrous 
 beauty. The Acropolis is the centre of this landscape, 
 splendid as a work of art with its crown of temples ; and 
 the sea, surmounted by the long low hills of the Morea, is 
 the boundary to which the eye is irresistibly led. Moun- 
 tains and islands and plain alike are made of limestone, 
 hardening here and there into marble, broken into delicate 
 and varied forms, and sprinkled with a vegetation of low 
 shrubs and brushwood so sparse and slight that the naked 
 rock in every direction meets the light. This rock is 
 grey and colourless ; viewed in the twilight of a misty 
 day, it shows the dull, tame uniformity of bone. With- 
 out the sun it is asleep and sorrowful. But by reason of 
 this very deadness, the limestone of Athenian landscape is 
 always ready to take the colours of the air and sun. In 
 noonday it smiles with silvery lustre, fold upon fold of 
 the indented hills and islands melting from the brightness 
 of the sea into the untempered brilliance of the sky. At 
 dawn and sunset the same rocks array themselves with 
 a celestial robe of rainbow-woven hues: islands, sea, and 
 
 17
 
 258 THE PARTHENON. 
 
 mountains, far and near, burn with saffron, violet, and 
 rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and 
 almandine and amethyst, each in due order and at proper 
 distances. The fabled dolphin in its death could not have 
 showed a more brilliant succession of splendours waning 
 into splendours through the whole chord of prismatic 
 colours. This sensitiveness of the Attic limestone to 
 every modification of the sky's light gives a peculiar 
 spirituality to the landscape. . . . 
 
 Seen from a distance, the Acropolis presents nearly the 
 same appearance as it offered to Spartan guardsmen when 
 they paced the ramparts of Deceleia. Nature around is 
 unaltered. Except that more villages, enclosed with olive- 
 groves and vineyards, were sprinkled over those bare hills 
 in classic days, no essential change in the landscape has 
 taken place, no transformation, for example, of equal 
 magnitude with that which converted the Campagna of 
 Rome from a plain of cities to a poisonous solitude. All 
 through the centuries which divide us from the age of 
 Hadrian centuries unfilled, as far as Athens is concerned, 
 with memorable deeds or national activity the Acropolis 
 has stood uncovered to the sun. The tones of the marble 
 of Pentelicus have daily grown more golden ; decay has 
 here and there invaded frieze and capital; war too has 
 done its work, shattering the Parthenon in 1687 by the 
 explosion of a powder-magazine, and the Propylaea in 
 1656 by a similar accident, and seaming the colonnades 
 that still remain with cannon-balls in 1827. Yet in spite 
 of time and violence the Acropolis survives, a miracle of 
 beauty : like an everlasting flower, through aK that lapse
 
 THE PARTHENON. 259 
 
 of years it has spread its coronal of marbles to the air, 
 unheeded. And now, more than ever, its temples seem 
 to be incorporate with the rock they crown. The slabs 
 of column and basement have grown together by long 
 pressure or molecular adhesion into a coherent whole. 
 Nor have weeds or creeping ivy invaded the glittering 
 fragments that strew the sacred hill. The sun's kiss alone 
 has caused a change from white to amber-hued or russet. 
 Meanwhile, the exquisite adaptation of Greek building to 
 Greek landscape has been enhanced rather than impaired 
 by that " unimaginable touch of time," which has broken 
 the regularity of outline, softened the chisel-work of the 
 sculptor, and confounded the painter's fretwork in one 
 tint of glowing gold. The Parthenon, the Erechtheum, 
 and the Propylaea have become one with the hill on which 
 they cluster, as needful to the scenery around them as the 
 everlasting mountains, as sympathetic as the rest of nature 
 to the successions of morning and evening, which waken 
 them to passionate life by the magic touch of colour. . . . 
 In like manner, when moonlight, falling aslant upon 
 the Propylaea, restores the marble masonry to its original 
 whiteness, and the shattered heaps of ruined colonnades 
 are veiled in shadow, and every form seems larger, grander, 
 and more perfect than by day, it is well to sit on the 
 lowest steps, and looking upwards, to remember what 
 processions passed along this way bearing the sacred 
 peplus to Athene. The Panathenaic pomp, which Pheidias 
 and his pupils carved upon the friezes of the Parthenon, 
 took place once in five years, on one of the last days of 
 July. All the citizens joined in the honour paid to their
 
 260 THE PARTHENON. 
 
 patroness. Old men bearing olive branches, young men 
 clothed in bronze, chapleted youths singing the praise of 
 Pallas in prosodial hymns, maidens carrying holy vessels, 
 aliens bending beneath the weight of urns, servants of the 
 temple leading oxen crowned with fillets, troops of horsemen 
 reining in impetuous steeds : all these pass before us in 
 the frieze of Pheidias. But to our imagination must be 
 left what he has refrained from sculpturing, the chariot 
 formed like a ship, in which the most illustrious nobles 
 of Athens sat, splendidly arrayed, beneath the crocus- 
 coloured curtain or peplus outspread upon a mast. Some 
 concealed machinery caused this car to move ; but whether 
 it passed through the Propylaea, and entered the Acropolis, 
 admits of doubt. It is, however, certain that the proces- 
 sion which ascended those steep slabs, and before whom 
 the vast gates of the Propylasa swang open with the 
 clangour of resounding bronze, included not only the 
 citizens of Athens and their attendant aliens, but also 
 troops of cavalry and chariots ; for the mark of chariot- 
 wheels can still be traced upon the rock. The ascent is 
 so abrupt that this multitude moved but slowly. Splen- 
 did indeed, beyond any pomp of modern ceremonial, must 
 have been the spectacle of the well-ordered procession, 
 advancing through those giant colonnades to the sound of 
 flutes and solemn chants the shrill clear voices of boys 
 in antiphonal chorus rising above the confused murmurs 
 of such a crowd, the chafing of horses' hoofs upon the 
 stone, and the lowing of bewildered oxen. To realise 
 by fancy the many-coloured radiance of the temples, and 
 the rich dresses of the votaries illuminated by that sharp
 
 THE PARTHENON. 26l 
 
 light of a Greek sun, which defines outline and shadow 
 and gives value to the faintest hue, would be impossible. 
 All we can know for positive about the chromatic decora- 
 tion of the Greeks is, that whiteness artificially subdued 
 to the tone of ivory prevailed throughout the stonework 
 of the buildings, while blue and red and green in distinct, 
 yet interwoven patterns, added richness to the fretwork 
 and the sculpture of pediment and frieze. The sacra- 
 mental robes of the worshippers accorded doubtless with 
 this harmony, wherein colour was subordinate to light, and 
 light was toned to softness. 
 
 Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propylaea, we 
 may say with truth that all our modern art is but child's 
 play to that of the Greeks. Very soul-subduing is the 
 gloom of a cathedral like the Milanese Duomo, when 
 the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the bands of sun- 
 light falling from the dome, and the crying of choirs up- 
 borne on the wings of organ music fills the whole vast 
 space with a mystery of melody. Yet such ceremonial 
 pomps as this are but as dreams and shapes of visions, 
 when compared with the clearly defined splendours of a 
 Greek procession through marble peristyles in open air 
 beneath the sun and sky. That spectacle combined the 
 harmonies of perfect human forms in movement with the 
 divine shapes of statues, the radiance of carefully selected 
 vestments with hues inwrought upon pure marble. The 
 rhythms and melodies of the Doric mood were sympathetic 
 to the proportions of the Doric colonnades. The grove 
 of pillars through which the pageant passed grew from 
 the living rock into shapes of beauty, fulfilling by the
 
 262 THE PARTHENON. 
 
 inbreathed spirit of man Nature's blind yearning aftei 
 absolute completion* The sun himself not thwarted 
 by artificial gloom, or tricked with alien colours of stained 
 glass was made to minister in all his strength to a pomp, 
 the pride of which was a display of form in manifold 
 magnificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the ritual 
 of a race at one with Nature, glorying in its affiliation to 
 the mighty mother of all life, and striving to add by human 
 art the coping-stone and final touch to her achievement. 
 
 Sketches in Italy and Greece (London, 1874).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 
 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN. 
 
 THE approach to Rouen is indeed magnificent. I 
 speak of the immediate approach ; after you reach 
 the top of a considerable rise, and are stopped by the barriers, 
 you then look down a straight, broad, and strongly paved 
 road, lined with a double row of trees on each side. As the 
 foliage was not thickly set, we could discern, through the 
 delicately clothed branches the tapering spire of the Cathedral 
 and the more picturesque tower of the Abbaye St. Ouen 
 with hanging gardens and white houses to the left 
 covering a richly cultivated ridge of hills, which sink as it 
 were into the Boulevards and which is called the Faubourg 
 Cauchoise. To the right, through the trees, you see the 
 river Seine (here of no despicable depth or breadth) covered 
 with boats and vessels in motion : the voice of commerce 
 and the stir of industry cheering and animating you as you 
 approach the town. I was told that almost every vessel 
 which I saw (some of them two hundred and even of three 
 hundred tons burthen) was filled with brandy and wine. 
 The lamps are suspended from the centre of long ropes, 
 across the road ; and the whole scene is of a truly novel and 
 imposing character. But how shall I convey to you an 
 idea of what I experienced, as, turning to the left, ancl
 
 264 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 
 
 leaving the broader streets which flank the quay, I began to 
 enter the penetralia of this truly antiquated town ? What 
 narrow streets, what overhanging houses, what bizarre, 
 capricious ornaments ! What a mixture of modern with 
 ancient art ! What fragments, or rather what ruins of old 
 delicately-built Gothic churches ! What signs of former 
 and of modern devastation ! What fountains, gutters, groups 
 of never-ceasing men, women and children, all occupied, 
 and all apparently happy ! The Rue de la Grosse Horloge 
 (so called from a huge, clumsy, antiquated clock which 
 goes across it) struck me as being not among the least 
 singular streets of Rouen. In five minutes I was within 
 the court-yard of the Hotel Vatel, the favourite residence of 
 the English. 
 
 It was evening when I arrived in company with three 
 Englishmen. We were soon saluted by the laquais de place 
 the leech-like hangers-on of every hotel who begged 
 to know if we would walk upon the Boulevards. We 
 consented; turned to the right; and, gradually rising gained 
 a considerable eminence. Again we turned to the right, 
 walking upon a raised promenade ; while the blossoms of 
 the pear and apple trees, within a hundred walled gardens, 
 perfumed the air with a delicious fragrance. As we con- 
 tinued our route along the Boulevard Beauvoisine^ we gained 
 one of the most interesting and commanding views imagin- 
 able of the city of Rouen just at that moment lighted up 
 by the golden rays of a glorious sun-set which gave a 
 breadth and a mellower tone to the shadows upon the 
 Cathedral and the Abbey of Saint Ouen 
 
 I have now made myself pretty well acquainted with the
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 265 
 
 geography of Rouen. How shall I convey to you a sum- 
 mary, and yet a satisfactory description of it ? It cannot 
 be done. You love old churches, old books, and relics of 
 ancient art. These be my themes, therefore : so fancy 
 yourself either strolling leisurely with me, arm in arm, in 
 the streets or sitting at my elbow. First for the Cathedral : 
 for what traveller of taste does not doff his bonnet to 
 the Mother Church of the town through which he happens 
 to be travelling or in which he takes up a temporary 
 abode ? The west front, always the forte of the architect's 
 skill, strikes you as you go down, or come up, the principal 
 street La Rue des Calmes, which seems to bisect the 
 town into two equal parts. A small open space (which, 
 however has been miserably encroached upon by petty 
 shops) called the Flower-garden, is before this western front ; 
 so that it has some little breathing room in which to expand 
 its beauties to the wondering eyes of the beholder. In my 
 poor judgment, this western front has very few elevations 
 comparable with it including even those of Lincoln and 
 York. The ornaments, especially upon three porches, 
 between the two towers, are numerous, rich, and for the 
 greater part entire : in spite of the Calvinists, J the 
 French Revolution, and time. Among the lower and 
 smaller basso-relievos upon these porches is the subject 
 
 1 The ravages committed by the Calvinists throughout nearly the 
 whole of the towns of Normandy, and especially in the Cathedrals 
 towards the year 1560, afford a melancholy proof of the effects of 
 religious animosity. But the Calvinists were bitter and ferocious per- 
 secutors. Pommeraye in his quarto volume Histoire de I'figlise 
 Cathedrale de Rouen (1686) has devoted nearly one hundred pages to 
 an account of Calvinistic depredations.
 
 266 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 
 
 of the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. She is 
 maneuvering on her hands, her feet being upwards. To 
 the right, the decapitation of Saint John is taking place. 
 
 The southern transept makes amends for the defects of 
 the northern. The space before it is devoted to a sort of 
 vegetable market : curious old houses encircle this space : 
 and the ascent to the door, but more especially the curiously 
 sculptured porch itself, with the open spaces in the upper 
 part light, fanciful and striking to a degree produce an 
 effect as pleasing as it is extraordinary. Add to this the 
 ever-restless feet of devotees, going in and coming out, the 
 worn pavement, and the frittered ornaments, in consequence 
 seem to convince you that the ardour and activity of 
 devotion is almost equal to that of business. 
 
 As you enter the Cathedral, at the centre door, by 
 descending two steps, you are struck with the length and 
 loftiness of the nave, and with the lightness of the gallery 
 which runs along the upper part of it. Perhaps the nave 
 is too narrow for its length. The lantern of the central 
 large tower is beautifully light and striking. It is supported 
 by four massive clustered pillars, about forty feet in circum- 
 ference ; l but on casting your eye downwards, you are 
 shocked at the tasteless division of the choir from the nave 
 by what is called a Grecian screen : and the interior of the 
 transepts has undergone a like preposterous restoration. 
 The rose windows of the transepts, and that at the west 
 end of the nave, merit your attention and commendation. 
 I could not avoid noticing to the right, upon entrance, per- 
 haps the oldest side chapel in the Cathedral : of a date, little 
 
 1 M. Licquet says each clustered pillar contains thirty-one columns.
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 267 
 
 less ancient than that of the northern tower, and perhaps of 
 the end of the Twelfth Century. It contains by much the 
 finest specimens of stained glass of the early part of the 
 Sixteenth Century. There is also some beautiful stained 
 glass on each side of the Chapel of the Virgin, behind the 
 choir ; but although very ancient, it is the less interesting, 
 as not being composed of groups, or of historical subjects. 
 Yet, in this, as in almost all the churches which I have 
 seen, frightful devastations have been made among the 
 stained-glass windows by the fury of the Revolutionists. . . . 
 As you approach the Chapel of the Virgin, you pass by 
 an ancient monument, to the left, of a recumbent Bishop, 
 reposing behind a thin pillar, within a pretty ornamented 
 Gothic arch. To the eye of a tasteful antiquary this can- 
 not fail to have its due attraction. While, however, we are 
 treading upon hallowed ground, rendered if possible more 
 sacred by the ashes of the illustrious dead, let us move 
 gently onwards towards the Chapel of the Virgin, behind 
 the choir. See, what bold and brilliant monumental figures 
 are yonder to the right of the altar ! How gracefully they 
 kneel and how devoutly they pray ! They are the figures 
 of the Cardinals D'Amboise uncle and nephew : the 
 former minister of Louis XII. and (what does not neces- 
 sarily follow, but what gives him as high a claim upon the 
 gratitude of posterity) the restorer and beautifier of the 
 glorious building in which you are contemplating his figure. 
 This splendid monument is entirely of black and white 
 marble, of the early part of the Sixteenth Century. The 
 figures just mentioned are of white marble, kneeling upon 
 cushions, beneath a rich canopy of Gothic fret-work. . . .
 
 268 THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN. 
 
 The south-west tower remains, and the upper part of the 
 central tower, with the whole of the lofty wooden spire : 
 the fruits of the liberality of the excellent men of whom 
 such honourable mention has been made. Considering that 
 this spire is very lofty, and composed of wood, it is surprising 
 that it has not been destroyed by tempest or by lightning. 1 
 The taste of it is rather capricious than beautiful. . . . 
 
 Leaving the Cathedral, you pass a beautifully sculptured 
 fountain (of the early time of Francis I.) which stands at 
 the corner of a street, to the right ; and which, from its 
 central situation, is visited the live-long day for the sake of 
 its limpid waters. 
 
 A Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in France 
 and Germany (London, 1829). 
 
 1 Within three years of writing it, the spire was consumed by 
 lightning. The newspapers of both France and England were full of 
 this melancholy event; and in the year 1823 M. Hyacinthe Langlois 
 of Rouen, published an account of it, together with some views of the 
 progress of the burning.
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 THERE is every style in the Castle of Heidelberg. It 
 is one of those buildings where are accumulated and 
 mingled beauties which elsewhere are scattered. It has 
 some notched towers like Pierrefonds, some jewelled facades 
 like Anet, some fosse-walls fallen into the moat in a single 
 piece like Rheinfels, some large sorrowful fountains, moss- 
 grown and ready to fall, like the Villa Pamfili, some regal 
 chimney-pieces filled with briers and brambles, the 
 grandeur of Tancarville, the grace of Chambord, the terror 
 of Chillon. . . . 
 
 If you turn towards the Palace of Frederick IV. you 
 have before you the two high, triangular pediments of this 
 dark and bristling facade, the greatly projecting entablatures, 
 where, between four rows of windows, are sculptured with 
 the most spirited chisel, nine Palatines, two Kings, and five 
 Emperors. 
 
 On the right you have the beautiful Italian front of 
 Otho-Heinrich with its divinities, its chimerae, and its 
 nymphs who live and breathe velveted by the soft shadows, 
 with its Roman Caesars, its Grecian demi-gods, its Hebraic 
 heroes, and its porch which was sculptured by Ariosto. 
 On the left you catch a glimpse of the Gothic front of
 
 2/O THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 Louis the Bearded, as savagely dug out and creviced as if 
 gored by the horns of a gigantic bull. Behind you, under 
 the arches of a porch, which shelters a half-filled well, you 
 see four columns of grey granite, presented by the Pope 
 to the great Emperor of Aix-la-Chapelle, which in the 
 Eighth Century went to Ravenna on the border of the 
 Rhine, in the Fifteenth, from the borders of the Rhine to 
 the borders of the Neckar, and which, after having wit- 
 nessed the fall of Charlemagne's Palace at Ingelheim, have 
 watched the crumbling of the Palatines' Castle at Heidel- 
 berg. All the pavement of the court is covered with ruins 
 of flights of steps, dried-up fountains, and broken basins. 
 Everywhere the stones are cracked and nettles have broken 
 through. 
 
 The two facades of the Renaissance which give such an 
 air of splendour to this court are of red sandstone and the 
 statues which decorate them are of white sandstone, an 
 admirable combination which proves that the great sculptors 
 were also great colourists. Time has rusted the red sand- 
 stone and given a golden tinge to the white. Of these two 
 facades one, that of Frederick IV., is very severe ; the other, 
 that of Otho Heinrich, is entirely charming. The first is 
 historical, the second is fabulous. Charlemagne dominates 
 the one, Jupiter dominates the other. 
 
 The more you regard these two Palaces in juxtaposition 
 and the more you study their marvellous details, the more 
 sadness gains upon you. Strange destiny for masterpieces 
 of marble and stone ! An ignorant visitor mutilates them, 
 an absurd cannon-ball annihilates them, and they were not 
 mere artists but kings who made them. Nobody knows
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 2/1 
 
 to-day the names of those divine men who built and 
 sculptured the walls of Heidelberg. There is renown there 
 for ten great artists who hover nameless above this illus- 
 trious ruin. An unknown Boccador planned this Palace 
 of Frederick IV. ; an ignored Primaticcio composed the 
 facade of Otho-Heinrich ; a Caesar Caesarino, lost in the 
 shadows, designed the pure arches to the equilateral triangle 
 of Louis V.'s mansion. Here are arabesques of Raphael, 
 and here are figurines of Benvenuto. Darkness shrouds 
 everything. Soon these marble poems will perish, their 
 poets have already died. 
 
 For what did these wonderful men work ? Alas ! for 
 the sighing wind, for the thrusting grass, for the ivy which 
 has come to compare its foliage with theirs, for the tran- 
 sient swallow, for the falling rain, and for the enshrouding 
 night. 
 
 One singular thing here is that the three or four bom- 
 bardments to which these two facades have been subjected 
 have not treated them in the same way. Only the cornice 
 and the architraves of Otho-Heinrich's Palace have been 
 damaged. The immortal Olympians who dwell there 
 have not suffered. Neither Hercules, nor Minerva, nor 
 Hebe has been touched. The cannon-balls and shells 
 crossed each other here without harming these invulnerable 
 statues. On the other hand, the sixteen crowned knights, 
 who have heads of lions on the grenouillieres of their 
 armour and who have such valiant countenances, on the 
 Palace of Frederick IV. have been treated by the bombs as 
 if they had been living warriors. Nearly every one of 
 them has been wounded. The face of the Emperor Otho
 
 2/2 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 has been covered with scars ; Otho, King of Hungary, 
 has had his left leg fractured ; Otho-Heinrich, the Palatine, 
 has lost his hand; a ball has disfigured Frederick the Pious; 
 an explosion has cut Frederick II. in half and broken Jean 
 Casimir's loins. In the assaults which were levelled at the 
 highest row, Charlemagne has lost his globe and in the 
 lower one Frederick IV. has lost his sceptre. 
 
 However, nothing could be more superb than this legion 
 of princes all mutilated and all standing. The anger of 
 Leopold II. and of Louis XIV., the thunder the anger 
 of the sky, and the anger of the French Revolution the 
 anger of the people, have vainly assailed them ; they all 
 stand there defending their facade with their fists on their 
 hips, with their legs outstretched, with firmly planted heel 
 and defiant head. The Lion of Bavaria is proudly scowl- 
 ing under their feet. On the second row beneath a green 
 bough, which has pierced through architrave and which is 
 gracefully playing with the stone feathers of his casque, 
 Frederick the Victorious is half drawing his sword. The 
 sculptor has put into his face an indescribable expression 
 of Ajax challenging Jupiter. and Nimrod shooting his arrow 
 at Jehovah. These two Palaces of Otho-Heinrich and 
 Frederick IV. must have offered a superb sight when seen 
 in the light of that bombardment on the fatal night of 
 May 21, 1693. 
 
 To-day the Tower of Frederick the Victorious is called 
 the Blown-up Tower. 
 
 Half of this colossal cylinder of masonry lies in the 
 moat. Other cracked blocks detached from the top of 
 the tower would have fallen long ago if the monster-trees
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 2/3 
 
 had not seized them in their powerful claws and held them 
 suspended above the abyss. 
 
 A few steps from this terrible ruin chance has made a 
 ruin of ravishing beauty; this is the interior of Otho- 
 Heinrich's Palace, of which until now I have only described 
 the facade. There it stands open to everybody under the 
 sunshine and the rain, the snow and the wind, without a 
 ceiling, without a canopy, and without a roof, whose dis- 
 mantled walls are pierced as if by hazard with twelve 
 Renaissance doors, twelve jewels of orfevrerie, twelve 
 chefs (Fceuvre^ twelve idyls in stone entwined as if they 
 issued from the same roots, a wonderful and charming 
 forest of wild flowers, worthy of the Palatines, consule 
 digrue. I can only tell you that this mixture of art and 
 reality is indescribable ; it is at once a contest and a har- 
 mony. Nature, who has a rival in Beethoven, finds also a 
 rival in Jean Goujon. The arabesques form tendrils and 
 the tendrils form arabesques. One does not know which 
 to admire most, the living or the sculptured leaf. 
 
 This ruin appears to be filled with a divine order. 
 
 It seems to me that this Palace, built by the fairies of 
 the Renaissance, is now in its natural state. All these 
 marvellous fantasies of free and savage art would be out 
 of harmony in these halls when treaties of peace or war 
 were signed here, when grave princes dreamed here, and 
 when queens were married and German emperors created 
 here. Could these Vertumnuses, Pomonas, or Ganymedes 
 have understood anything about the ideas that came into 
 the heads of Frederick IV. or Frederick V., by the grace 
 
 of God Count Palatine of the Rhine, Vicar of the Holy 
 
 18
 
 2/4 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 Roman Empire, Elector and Duke of Upper and Lower 
 Bavaria? A grand seigneur slept in this chamber beside 
 a king's daughter, under a ducal baldaquin ; now there is 
 neither seigneur^ king's daughter, baldaquin, nor even ceil- 
 ing to this chamber; it is now the home of the bind-weed, 
 and the wild mint is its perfume. It is well. It is better 
 thus. This adorable sculpture was made to be kissed by 
 the flowers and looked upon by the stars. . . . 
 
 The night had fallen, the clouds were spread over the sky, 
 and the moon had mounted nearly to the zenith, while I 
 was still sitting on the same stone, gazing into the darkness 
 which had gathered around me and into the shadows which 
 I had within me. Suddenly the town-clock far below me 
 sounded the hour ; it was midnight : I rose and descended. 
 The road leading to Heidelberg passes the ruins. At the 
 moment when I arrived before them, the moon, veiled by 
 the- diffused clouds and surrounded by an immense halo, 
 threw a weird light upon this magnificent mass of mouldering 
 ruins. . . . 
 
 The ruin, always open, is deserted at this hour. The 
 idea of entering it possessed me. The two stone giants, 
 who guard the stone court, allowed me to pass. I crossed 
 the dark porch, upon which the iron portcullis still hangs, 
 and entered the' court. The moon had almost disappeared 
 beneath the clouds. There was only a pallid light in the 
 sky. 
 
 Nothing is grander than that which has fallen. This 
 ruin, illuminated in such a way, at such an hour, was inde- 
 scribably sad, gentle, and majestic. I fancied that in the 
 scarcely perceptible rustling of the trees and foliage there
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 2/5 
 
 was something grave and respectful. I heard no footstep, 
 no voice, no breath. In the court there was neither light, 
 nor shadow ; a sort of dreamful twilight outlined everything 
 and veiled everything. The confused gaps and rifts allowed 
 the feeble rays of moonlight to penetrate the most remote 
 corners ; and in. the black depths of the inaccessible arches 
 and corridors, I saw white figures, slowly gliding. 
 
 It was the hour when the facades of old abandoned build- 
 ings are no longer facades, but faces. I walked over the 
 uneven pavement without daring to make any noise, and I 
 experienced between the four walls of this enclosure that 
 strange disquietude, that undefined sentiment which the 
 ancients called " the horror of the sacred woods." There 
 is a kind of insurmountable terror in the sinister mingled 
 with the superb. 
 
 However, I climbed up the green and damp steps of the old 
 stairway without rails and entered the old roofless dwelling 
 of Otho-Heinrich. Perhaps you will laugh ; but I assure 
 you that to walk at night through chambers which have been 
 inhabited by people, whose doors are dismantled, whose 
 apartments each have their peculiar signification, saying to 
 yourself: "Here is the dining-room, here is the bed-room, 
 here is the alcove, here is the mantel-piece, and to feel 
 the grass under your feet and to see the sky above your 
 head, is terrifying. A room which has still the form of a 
 room and whose ceiling has been lifted ofF, as it were like 
 the lid of a box, becomes a mournful and nameless thing. 
 It is not a house, it is not a tomb. In a tomb you feel the 
 soul of a man ; in this place you feel his shadow. 
 
 As soon as I passed the Knights' Hall I stopped. Here
 
 2/6 THE CASTLE OP HEIDELBERG. 
 
 there was a singular noise, the more distinct because a sepul- 
 chral silence filled the rest of the ruin. It was a weak, pro- 
 longed, strident rattle, mingled at moments with a little, dry 
 and rapid hammering, which at times seemed to come from 
 the depths of the darkness, from a far-away copse, or the 
 edifice itself; at times, from beneath my feet between the 
 rifts in the pavement. Whence came this noise ? Of 
 what nocturnal creature was it the cry, or the knocking ? 
 I am not acquainted with it, but as I listen to it, I cannot help 
 thinking of that hideous, legendary spinner who weaves rope 
 for the gibbet. 
 
 However, nothing, nobody, not a living person is here. 
 This hall, like the rest of the Palace, is deserted. I struck 
 the pavement with my cane, the noise ceased, only to begin 
 again a moment afterwards. I knocked again, it ceased, 
 then it began again. Yet I saw nothing but a large frightened 
 bat, which the blow of my cane on the stones had scared 
 from one of the sculptured corbels of the wall, and which 
 circled around my head in that funereal flight which seems 
 to have been made for the interior of ruined towers. . . . 
 
 At the moment I descended the flight of stairs the moon 
 shone forth, large and brilliant, from a rift in the clouds ; 
 the Palace of Frederick IV., with its double pediment, 
 suddenly appeared, magnificent and clear as daylight with 
 its sixteen pale and formidable giants; while, at my right, 
 Otho's facade, a black silhouette against the luminous sky, 
 allowed a few dazzling rays of moonlight to escape through 
 its twenty-four windows. 
 
 I said clear as daylight I am wrong. The moon upon 
 ruins is more than a light, it is a harmony. It hides no
 
 THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 detail, it exaggerates no wounds, it throws a veil on broken 
 objects and adds an indescribable, misty aureole of majesty 
 to ancient buildings. It is better to see a palace, or an old 
 cloister, at night than in the day. The hard brilliancy of 
 the sunlight is severe upon the ruins and intensifies the 
 sadness of the statues. . . . 
 
 I went out of the Palace through the garden, and, descend- 
 ing, I stopped once more for a moment on one of the lower 
 terraces. Behind me the ruin, hiding the moon, made, half 
 down the slope, a large mass of shadow, where in all directions 
 were thrown out long, dark lines, and long, luminous lines, 
 which striped the vague and misty background of the land- 
 scape. Below me lay drowsy Heidelberg, stretched out at 
 the bottom of the valley, the length of the mountain; all 
 the lights were out ; all the doors were shut ; below Heidel- 
 berg I heard the murmur of the Neckar, which seemed to 
 be whispering to the hill and valley ; and the thoughts which 
 filled me all the evening, the nothingness of man in the 
 Past, the infirmity of man in the Present, the grandeur of 
 Nature, and the eternity of God, came to me altogether, 
 in a triple figure, whilst I descended with slow steps into 
 the darkness between this river awake and living, this 
 sleeping town, and this dead Palace. 
 
 Le Rhln (Paris, 1842).
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 THE charm which Venice still possesses, and which 
 for the last fifty years has rendered it the favourite 
 haunt of all the painters of picturesque subject, is owing 
 to the effect of the palaces belonging to the period we 
 have now to examine, mingled with those of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 The effect is produced in two different ways. The 
 Renaissance palaces are not more picturesque in themselves 
 than the club-houses of Pall Mall ; but they become 
 delightful by the contrast of their severity and refinement 
 with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath 
 them, and of their white and solid masonry with the 
 green waves. Remove from beneath them the orange 
 sails of the fishing boats, the black gliding of the gondolas, 
 the cumbered decks and rough crews of the barges of 
 traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their 
 foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more 
 interest than those of London or Paris. But the Gothic 
 palaces are picturesque in themselves, and wield over us 
 an independent power. Sea and sky, and every other 
 accessory might be taken away from them, and still they 
 would be beautiful and strange. They are not less strik-
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 279 
 
 ing in the loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where 
 many were built during the period of the Venetian au- 
 thority in those cities) than in the most crowded thorough- 
 fares of Venice itself j and if they could be transported 
 into the midst of London, they would still not altogether 
 lose their power over the feelings. 
 
 The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness 
 of all pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken 
 for their subject the principal of these Gothic buildings, 
 the Ducal Palace. In spite of all architectural theories 
 and teachings, the paintings of this building are always 
 felt to be delightful ; we cannot be wearied by them, 
 though often sorely tried ; but we are not put to the same 
 trial in the case of the palaces of the Renaissance. They 
 are never drawn singly, or as the principal subject, nor 
 can they be. The building which faces the Ducal Palace 
 'on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among 
 architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes ; it is painted 
 only incidentally, for the completion, not the subject, of 
 a Venetian scene; and even the Renaissance arcades of 
 St. Mark's Place, though frequently painted, are always 
 treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church and 
 colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the 
 peculiar charm which we have hitherto felt, not so much 
 to its greater size as compared with other Gothic build- 
 ings, or nobler design (for it never yet has been rightly 
 drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other Gothic 
 structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition 
 of the Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; 
 tliey exhaust their own life by breathing it into the Renais-
 
 28O THE DUCAL PALACE. 
 
 sance coldness : but the Ducal Palace stands comparatively 
 alone, and fully expresses the Gothic power. . . . 
 
 The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, 
 was built successively in the three styles. There was a 
 Byzantine Ducal Palace, a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a 
 Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second superseded the first 
 totally ; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that 
 is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and 
 the existing building is formed by the union of the two. 
 
 We shall review the history of each in succession, 
 ist. The BYZANTINE PALACE. 
 
 The year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the 
 Venetians determined to make the island of Rialtb the 
 seat of the government and capital of their state. Their 
 Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly took 
 vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group 
 of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future" 
 Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the rising 
 of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure founda- 
 tions, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For the 
 offices of religion he built the Church of St. Mark ; and on, 
 or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he 
 built a palace for the administration of the government. 
 
 The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with 
 the birth of Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, 
 is entrusted the last representation of her power. . . . 
 
 In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by 
 fire, but repaired before 1116, when it received another 
 emperor Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honoured 
 by imperial praise. Between 1173 and the close of the
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 28 I 
 
 century, it seems to have been again repaired and much 
 enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. . . . 
 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. 
 
 The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important 
 change in the Venetian government which gave stability 
 to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297, 
 under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus charac- 
 terized by Sansovino : "A prompt and prudent man, 
 of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who 
 laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this 
 republic, by the admirable regulations which he introduced 
 into the government." . . . 
 
 We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that " in 
 1301 another saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo 
 under the Doge Gradenigo^ and finished in 1309, in which 
 year the Grand Council first sat in it." In the first year, 
 therefore, of the Fourteenth Century, the Gothic Ducal 
 Palace of Venice was begun ; and as the Byzantine Palace, 
 was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the 
 Gothic Palace, was, in its foundation, coeval with that of 
 the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal repre- 
 sentation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal 
 Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its 
 Pericles. . . . 
 
 Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in com- 
 pletion ; the paintings on the roof being only executed 
 in 1400. They represented the heavens covered with 
 stars, this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge 
 Steno. . . . The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber 
 for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal
 
 282 THE DUCAL PALACE. 
 
 Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build 
 it, the energies of the entire period which I have above 
 described as the central one of her life. 
 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. 
 
 I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain 
 that the reader understands clearly the state of the palace 
 in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now 
 been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred 
 and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had 
 been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of 
 the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, 
 and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with 
 which it was decorated, full of the life, knowledge, and 
 hope of the Fourteenth Century, with the rude Byzan- 
 tine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The 
 magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new 
 Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually 
 known in Venice as the " Palazzo Nuovo j " and the old 
 Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its 
 decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the build- 
 ing which had been raised at its side, was of course known 
 as the " Palazzo Vecchio." That fabric, however, still 
 occupied the principal position in Venice. The new 
 Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it 
 towards the Sea ; but there was not the wide quay in 
 front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the 
 Sea Facade as important as that of the Piazzetta. There 
 was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water ; 
 and the old pakce of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and 
 interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 283 
 
 square where the nobles daily met. Every increase of 
 the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy 
 between it and the companion building more painful ; and 
 then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea 
 of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing 
 the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendour as the 
 Sea Facade. . . . The Great Council Chamber was used 
 for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the 
 Senate as Doge, the 3rd of April, 1423, . . . and the 
 following year, on the 2yth of March, the first hammer 
 was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. 
 
 That hammer stroke was the first act of the period 
 properly called the " Renaissance." It was the knell of 
 the architecture of Venice, and of Venice herself. . . . 
 
 The whole work must have been completed towards 
 the middle of the Sixteenth Century. . . . But the palace 
 was not long permitted to remain in this finished form. 
 Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst 
 out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the 
 precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of 
 all the upper rooms on the Sea Facade, and most of those 
 on the Rio Facade, leaving the building a mere shell, 
 shaken and blasted by the flames. . . . The repairs neces- 
 sarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and 
 interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the 
 palace : still the only serious alteration in its form was 
 the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of 
 the palace, to the other side of the Rio del Palazzo ; and the 
 building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect them with the 
 palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work 
 brought the whole edifice into its present form. . . .
 
 284 THE DUCAL PALACE. 
 
 The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the cor- 
 ridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals 
 which extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree 
 angle to the pilaster which carries the party wall of the 
 Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful, com- 
 position in massy capitals meant for hard service and 
 distant effect, these are among the finest things I know 
 in Gothic Art ; and that above the fig-tree is remarkable 
 for its sculptures of the four winds ; each on the side 
 turned towards the wind represented. Levante, the east 
 wind ; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it 
 is always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the 
 sun out of the sea : Hotro, the south wind ; crowned, 
 holding the sun in its right hand : Ponente, the west 
 wind ; plunging the sun into the sea : and Tramontana, 
 the north wind ; looking up at the north star. This 
 capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason 
 than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnifi- 
 cent verbiage of Milton : 
 
 " Thwart of these, as fierce, 
 Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, 
 Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise, 
 Sirocco and Libecchio." 
 
 I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three 
 young ones on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side ; 
 but there is no end to the fantasy of these sculptures ; and 
 the traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he 
 comes to the great pilaster or complicated pier which sus- 
 tains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio j that is to 
 say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting
 
 THE DUCAL PALACE. 285 
 
 from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the 
 series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, 
 and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old ; the fifty-first 
 is the first Renaissance capital of the lower arcade; the 
 first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the time 
 of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital ; and that capital, 
 with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from 
 the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is 
 masonry of the Fourteenth and the other of the Fifteenth 
 Century. . . . 
 
 I can only say that, in the winter of 1851 the "Para- 
 dise " of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and 
 that the Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and 
 the Sala de' Pregadi were full of pictures by Veronese 
 and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so 
 many kingdoms, so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, 
 that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, 
 whence the great chain of the Alps, crested with silver 
 clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal 
 Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the 
 building as on the hills, and could believe that God had 
 done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness 
 of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had 
 been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lift- 
 ing the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, 
 and veiling them with their various mantle of purple 
 flower and shadowy pine. 
 
 Stones of Venice (London, 1851-' 3).
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 
 
 EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 
 
 THE Mosque of Cordova, which was converted into 
 a cathedral when the Moors were expelled but 
 which has, notwithstanding, always remained a Mosque, 
 was built on the ruins of the primitive cathedral not far 
 from the Guadalquiver. Abd-er-Rahman began to build 
 it in the year 785 or 786. "Let us build a Mosque," 
 said he, " which will surpass that of Bagdad, that of 
 Damascus, and that of Jerusalem, which shall be the 
 greatest temple of 'Islam and become the Mecca of the 
 Occident." The work was begun with ardour ; and 
 Christian slaves were made to carry the stones of razed 
 churches for its foundation. Abd-er-Rahman, himself, 
 worked an hour every day ; in a few years the Mosque 
 was built, the Caliphs who succeeded Abd-er-Rahman 
 embellished it, and it was completed after a century of 
 continuous labour. 
 
 " Here we are," said one of my hosts, as we suddenly 
 stopped before a vast edifice. I thought it was a fortress ; 
 but it was the wall that surrounded the Mosque, in which 
 formerly opened twenty large bronze doors surrounded by 
 graceful arabesques and arched windows supported by Jight 
 columns ; it is now covered with a triple coat of plaster.
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 287 
 
 A trip around the boundary-wall is a nice little walk after 
 dinner : you can judge then of the extent of the building. 
 
 The principal door of this enclosure is at the north, on 
 the spot where Abd-er-Rahman's minaret rose, from whose 
 summit fluttered the Mohammedan standard ; I expected 
 to see the interior of the Mosque at once, and I found 
 myself in a garden full of orange-trees, cypresses, and 
 palms, enclosed on three sides by a very light portico, and 
 shut in on the fourth side by the facade of the Mosque. 
 In the time of the Arabs there was a fountain in the centre 
 for their ablutions, and the faithful gathered under the 
 shade of these trees before entering the temple. I remained 
 there for some moments looking around me and breathing 
 the fresh and perfumed air with a very lively sensation ; 
 my heart was beating rapidly at the thought of being so 
 near the famous Mosque, and I felt myself impelled with 
 a great curiosity and yet held back by an indescribable 
 childish trembling. " Let us go in ! " said my companions. 
 " Another moment ! " I replied. " Let me taste the 
 pleasure of anticipation." Finally I stepped forward, and 
 without glancing at the marvellous door, which my com- 
 panions showed me, I entered. 
 
 I do not know what I did, or said when I entered ; but 
 certainly some strange exclamation must have escaped me, 
 or I must have made some extraordinary gesture, for several 
 people who were near me at that moment began to laugh 
 and turned around to look about them, as if they wanted 
 to discover what caused the excitement I manifested. 
 
 Imagine a forest, and imagine that you are in the depths 
 of this forest, and that you can see nothing but the trunks
 
 288 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 
 
 of the trees. Thus, no matter on what side of the Mosque 
 you look, the eye sees nothing but columns. It is a limit- 
 less forest of marble. Your glance wanders down the long 
 rows of columns, one by one, which every now and then 
 are intersected by other interminable rows, until it reaches 
 a twilight background where you seem to see the white 
 gleam of still other columns. Nineteen naves extend be- 
 fore the visitor; they are intersected by thirty-three other 
 naves, and the whole building is supported by more than 
 nine hundred columns of porphyry, jasper, breccia, and 
 marbles of every colour. The central nave, much larger 
 than the others, leads to the Maksurah, the most sacred 
 spot in the temple, where they read the Koran. A pale 
 ray of light falls from the high windows here and shines 
 upon a row of columns ; beyond, there is a dark spot ; 
 and, still further away, another ray of light illuminates 
 another nave. It is impossible to describe the mystical 
 feeling and admiration that this sight evokes in your soul. 
 It is like the sudden revelation of an unknown religion, 
 nature, and life, which carries your imagination to the 
 delights of that Paradise, so full of love and voluptuous- 
 ness, where the blessed ones seated under the shadow of 
 thick-leaved plane-trees and thornless rose-bushes drink 
 from crystal vases that wine, sparkling like jewels, which 
 is mixed by immortal virgins, and sleep in the arms of 
 houris with large black eyes. All these pictures of eternal 
 pleasure, which the Koran promises to the faithful, rush 
 upon the mind at this first sight of the Mosque in such a 
 vital, intense, and bewildering manner that for an instant 
 they give you a sweet intoxication which leaves your heart
 
 D 
 O<
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 289 
 
 in a state of indescribable and gentle melancholy. Con- 
 fusion in the mind and a rushing fire through the veins 
 that is your first sensation- on entering the Cathedral of 
 Cordova. 
 
 We begin to wander from nave to nave, observing every- 
 thing in detail. What variety there is in this edifice, which 
 seemed all alike at the first glance ! The proportions of 
 the columns, the designs of the capitals and the forms of 
 the arches, change, so to speak, at every step you take. 
 Most of the columns are ancient and were brought by the 
 Arabs from Northern Spain, Gaul, and Roman Africa ; 
 and some of them, it is said, belonged to a temple of Janus 
 on whose ruins was built the church which the Arabs 
 destroyed in order to erect this Mosque. On many of 
 the capitals you can still distinguish the cross, which was 
 carved upon them and which the Arabs erased with their 
 chisels. In some of the columns pieces of curved iron are 
 fixed, to which it is said the Arabs chained the Christians ; 
 one, particularly, is exhibited, to which, according to 
 popular tradition, a Christian was chained for many long 
 years, and during this time he dug at the stone with his 
 nails to make a cross, which the guides show you with 
 deep veneration. 
 
 We stood before the Maksura, the most complete and 
 marvellous example of Arabian Art of the Tenth Century. 
 There are three adjacent chapels in front of it, with 
 vaulted ceilings of dentelated arches and walls covered with 
 superb mosaics in the form of large bunches of flowers 
 and inscriptions from the Koran. The principal Mihrab, 
 the holy place where the spirit of God dwells, is at the
 
 290 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 
 
 back of the central chapel. It is a niche with an octa- 
 gon base and arched at the top by an enormous shell of 
 marble. In the Mihrab, and fastened on a stool of aloe- 
 wood, was kept the Koran, copied by the hand of the 
 Caliph Othman, covered with gold and ornamented with 
 pearls ; and the faithful made the tour of it seven times 
 on their knees. On approaching the wall, I felt the pave- 
 ment sink under my feet : the marble is hollowed out ! 
 
 Coming out of the niche, I stopped for a long time to 
 look at the ceiling and the walls of the principal church, 
 the only portion of the Mosque which is almost intact. It 
 is a dazzling array of crystal of a thousand colours, an 
 interlacing of arabesques which confounds the imagination, 
 a complication of bas-reliefs, of gold-work, of ornaments, 
 and of details of design and hues of a delicacy, a grace, 
 and a perfection to drive the most patient painter to 
 despair. It is impossible to recall clearly that prodigious 
 work ; you might return a hundred times to look at it, 
 yet it would only be remembered as an aggregation of 
 blue, red, green, golden, and luminous points, or a com- 
 plicated embroidery whose patterns and colours are con- 
 tinually changing. Such a miracle of art could only 
 emanate from the fiery and indefatigable imagination of 
 the Arabs. 
 
 Again we wandered about the Mosque, examining here 
 and there on the walls the arabesques of the ancient doors, 
 of which you get glimpses from beneath the detestable 
 Christian paint. My companions looked at me, laughed, 
 and whispered to each other. 
 
 " You have not seen it yet ? " asked one.
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 
 
 What ? " 
 
 They looked at each other again and smiled. . 
 
 " Do you think you have seen the entire Mosque ? " 
 said the one who had first spoken. 
 
 u I ? Yes," I replied, looking around me. 
 
 " Well, you have not seen it all : what remains to be 
 seen is a church nothing more!" 
 
 " A church ! " I cried, stupefied, " where is it ? " 
 
 " Look ! " said the other companion, pointing it out, 
 "it is in the very centre of the Mosque." 
 
 " Good heavens ! And I had not noticed it at all ! " 
 
 By that you may judge of the size of the Mosque. 
 We went to see the church. It is very beautiful and 
 very rich, with a magnificent high altar and a choir worthy 
 of ranking with those of Burgos and Toledo ; but, like all 
 things which do not harmonize with their surroundings, 
 it annoys you instead of exciting your admiration. Even 
 Charles V., who gave the Chapter permission to build it 
 here, repented when he saw the Mussulman temple. Next 
 to the church there is a kind of Arabian chapel, admirably 
 preserved and rich in mosaics not less beautiful and varied 
 than those of the Maksura ; it is said that the doctors of 
 this religion met there to read the Book of the Prophet. 
 
 Such is the Mosque of to-day. 
 
 What must it have been in the time of the Arabs ! It 
 was not enclosed then by a surrounding wall, but it was 
 open in such a way that the garden could be seen from 
 every one of its parts, while from the garden you could 
 see the entire length of the long naves, and the breeze 
 carried the perfume from the orange-trees and flowers to
 
 THE MOSQUE OF CORDOVA. 
 
 the very arches of the Maksura. Of the columns, which 
 to-day number less than a thousand, there were fourteen 
 hundred ; the ceiling was of cedar and larch sculptured 
 and incrusted with the most delicate work ; the walls were 
 of marble ; the light of eight hundred lamps filled with 
 perfumed oil made the crystals in the mosaics sparkle like 
 diamonds and caused a marvellous play of colour and 
 reflection on the floor, on the arches, and on the walls. 
 " An ocean of splendours," a poet said, " filled this mys- 
 terious enclosure, the balmy air was impregnated with 
 aromas, and the thoughts of the faithful strayed until they 
 became lost in the labyrinth of columns which glimmered 
 like lances in the sunlight." 
 
 La Spagna (Florence, 1873).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM. 
 
 AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. 
 
 ON July 25 we left Kristiania for Throndtjem the 
 whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles be- 
 ing very comfortable, and only costing thirty francs. The 
 route has no great beauty, but endless pleasant variety rail 
 to Eidswold, with bilberries and strawberries in pretty birch- 
 bark baskets for sale at all the railway stations ; a vibrating 
 steamer for several hours on the long, dull Miosem lake ; 
 railway again, with some of the carriages open at the sides ; 
 then an obligatory night at Koppang, a large station, where 
 accommodation is provided for every one, but where, if there 
 are many passengers, several people, strangers to each other, 
 are expected to share the same room. On the second day 
 the scenery improves, the railway sometimes running along 
 and sometimes over the river Glommen on a wooden cause- 
 way, till the gorge of mountains opens beyond Storen, into 
 a rich country with turfy mounds constantly reminding us 
 of the graves of the hero-gods of Upsala. Towards sunset, 
 beyond the deep cleft in which the river Nid runs between 
 lines of old painted wooden warehouses, rises the burial 
 place of S. Olaf, the shrine of Scandinavian Christianity, 
 the stumpy-towered Cathedral of Throndtjem. The most 
 northern railway station, and the most northern cathedral in 
 Europe.
 
 294 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM. 
 
 Surely the cradle of Scandinavian Christianity is one of 
 the most beautiful places in the world ! No one had ever 
 told us about it, and we went there only because it is the 
 old Throndtjem of sagas and ballads, and expecting a wonder- 
 ful and beautiful cathedral. 
 
 But the whole place is a dream of loveliness, so exquisite 
 in the soft silvery morning light on the fyord and delicate 
 mountain ranges, the rich nearer hills covered with bilberries 
 and breaking into steep cliffs that one remains in a state of 
 transport, which is at a climax while all is engraven upon an 
 opal sunset sky, when an amethystine glow spreads over the 
 mountains, and when ships and buildings meet their double 
 in the still transparent water. Each wide street of curious 
 low wooden houses displays a new vista of sea, of rocky 
 promontories, of woods dipping into the water; and at the 
 end of the principal street is the grey massive Cathedral 
 where S. Olaf is buried, and where northern art and poetry 
 have exhausted their loveliest and most pathetic fancies 
 around the grave of the national hero. 
 
 The " Cathedral Garden," for so the graveyard is called, 
 is most touching. Acres upon acres of graves are all kept 
 not by officials, but by the families they belong to like 
 gardens. The tombs are embowered in roses and honey- 
 suckle, and each little green mound has its own vase for cut 
 flowers daily replenished, and a seat for the survivors, which 
 is daily occupied, so that the link between the dead and the 
 living is never broken. 
 
 Christianity was first established in Norway at the end of 
 the Tenth Century by King Olaf Trygveson, son of Trygve 
 and of the lady Astrida, whose romantic adventures, when
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM. 295 
 
 sold as a slave after her husband's death, are the subject 
 of a thousand stories. When Olaf succeeded to the throne 
 of Norway after the death of Hako, son of Sigurd, in 996, 
 he proclaimed Christianity throughout his dominions, heard 
 matins himself daily, and sent out missionaries through his 
 dominions. But the duty of the so-called missionaries had 
 little to do with teaching, they were only required to baptize. 
 All who refused baptism were tortured and put to death. 
 When, at one time, the estates of the province of Throndtjem 
 tried to force Olaf back to the old religion, he outwardly 
 assented, but made the condition that the offended pagan 
 deities should in that case be appeased by human sacrifice 
 the sacrifice of the twelve nobles who were most urgent in 
 compelling him ; and upon this the ardour of the chieftains 
 for paganism was cooled, and they allowed Olaf unhindered 
 to demolish the great statue of Thor, covered with gold and 
 jewels, in the centre of the province of Throndtjem, where 
 he founded the city then called Nidaros, upon the river 
 Nid. . . . 
 
 Olaf Trygveson had a godson Olaf, son of Harald 
 Grenske and Asta, who had the nominal title of king given 
 to all sea captains of royal descent. From his twelfth year, 
 Olaf Haraldsen was a pirate, and he headed the band of 
 Danes who destroyed Canterbury and murdered S. Elphege 
 a strange feature in the life of one who has been himself 
 regarded as a saint since his death. By one of the strange 
 freaks of fortune common in those times, this Olaf Harald- 
 sen gained a great victory over the chieftain Sweyn, who 
 then ruled at Nidaros, and, chiefly through the influence of 
 Sigurd Syr, a great northern landowner, who had become
 
 296 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM. 
 
 the second husband of his mother, he became seated in 1016 
 upon the throne of Norway. His first care was for the 
 restoration of Christianity, which had fallen into decadence 
 in the sixteen years which had elapsed since the defeat of 
 Olaf Trygveson. The second Olaf imitated the violence 
 and cruelty of his predecessor. Whenever the new religion 
 was rejected, he beheaded or hung the delinquents. In 
 his most merciful moments he mutilated and blinded them: 
 u he did not spare one who refused to serve God.". . . 
 
 However terrible the cruelties of Olaf Haraldsen were in 
 his lifetime, they were soon dazzled out of sight amid the 
 halo of piracies with which his memory was encircled by 
 the Roman Catholic Church. . . . 
 
 It was when the devotion to S. Olaf was just beginning 
 that Earl Godwin and his sons were banished from Eng- 
 land for a time. Two of these, Harold and Tosti, became 
 vikings, and, in a great battle, they vowed that if they were 
 victorious, they would give half the spoil to the shrine of S. 
 Olaf; and a huge silver statue, which they actually gave, 
 existed at Throndtjem till 1500, and if it existed still would 
 be one of the most important relics in archaeology. The 
 old Kings of Norway used to dig up the saint from time to 
 time and cut his nails. When Harold Hardrada was going 
 to England, he declared that he must see S. Olaf once again. 
 " I must see my brother once more," he said, and he also cut 
 the saint's nails. But he also thought that from that 
 time it would be better that no one should see his brother 
 any more it would not be for the good of the Church 
 so he took the keys of the shrine and threw them into the 
 fyord ; at the same time, he said, it would be good for men
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF THRONDTJEM. 297 
 
 in after ages to know what a great king was like, so he 
 caused S. Olafs measure to be engraved upon the wall in 
 the church at Throndtjem his measure of seven feet 
 and there it is still. 
 
 Around the shrine of Olaf in Throndtjem, in which, in 
 spite of Harald Hardrada, his " incorrupt body " was seen 
 more than five hundred years after his death, has arisen the 
 most beautiful of northern cathedrals, originating in a small 
 chapel built over his grave within ten years after his death. 
 The exquisite 'colour of its green-grey stone adds greatly 
 to the general effect of the interior, and to the- delicate 
 sculpture of its interlacing arches. From the ambulatory 
 behind the choir opens a tiny chamber containing the Well 
 of S. Olaf, of rugged yellow stone, with the holes remaining 
 in the pavement through which the dripping water ran away 
 when the buckets were set down. Amongst the many 
 famous bishops of Throndtjem, perhaps the most celebrated 
 has been Anders Arrebo, " the father of Danish poetry " 
 (15871637), who wrote the " Hexameron," an extraordi- 
 narily long poem on the Creation, which nobody reads now. 
 The Cathedral is given up to Lutheran worship, but its 
 ancient relics are kindly tended and cared for, and the 
 building is being beautifully restored. Its beautiful Chapter 
 House is lent for English service on Sundays. 
 
 Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia (London, 1885).
 
 LEANING TOWER OF PISA. 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 FROM the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, 
 the first view of the fertile plain in which the town 
 of Pisa lies with Leghorn a purple spot in the flat dis- 
 tance is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends 
 enchantment to the view ; for the fruitful country, and 
 rich woods of olive-trees through which the road subse- 
 quently passes, render it delightful. 
 
 The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and 
 for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the Lean- 
 ing Tower, all awry in the uncertain light ; the shadowy 
 original of the old pictures in school-books, setting forth 
 " The Wonders of the World." Like most things con- 
 nected in their first associations with school-books and 
 school-times, it was too small. I felt it keenly. It was 
 nothing like so high above the wall as I had hoped. It was 
 another of the many deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, 
 Bookseller, at the corner of St. Paul's Church-yard, Lon- 
 don. His Tower was a fiction, but this was reality and, 
 by comparison, a short reality. Still, it looked very well, 
 and very strange, and was quite as much out of the 
 perpendicular as Harris had represented it to be. The 
 quiet air of Pisa, too ; the big guard-house at the gate,
 
 THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA.
 
 LEANING TOWER OF PISA. 299 
 
 with only two little soldiers in it ; the streets, with scarcely 
 any show of people in them ; and the Arno, flowing 
 quaintly through the centre of the town ; were excel- 
 lent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. 
 Harris (remembering his good intentions), but forgave 
 him before dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to 
 see the Tower next morning. 
 
 I might have known better; but, somehow, I had 
 expected to see it casting its long shadow on a public 
 street where people came and went all day. It was a 
 surprise to me to find it in a grave, retired place, apart 
 from the general resort, and carpeted with smooth green 
 turf. But, the group of buildings clustered on and about 
 this verdant carpet ; comprising the Tower, the Baptistery, 
 the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo ; is 
 perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful in the whole 
 world ; and, from being clustered there together away 
 from the ordinary transactions and details of the town, 
 they have a singularly venerable and impressive character. 
 It is the architectural essence of a rich old city, with all 
 its common life and common habitations pressed out, and 
 filtered away. 
 
 SIMOND compares the Tower to the usual pictorial 
 representations in children's books of the Tower of Babel. 
 It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the 
 building than chapters of laboured description. Nothing 
 can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure ; noth- 
 ing can be more remarkable than its general appearance. 
 In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy 
 staircase), the inclination is not very apparent ; but, at the
 
 300 LEANING TOWER OF PISA. 
 
 summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of 
 being in a ship that has heeled over, through the action 
 of an ebb tide. The effect upon the low side, so to speak 
 looking over from the gallery, and seeing the shaft recede 
 to its base is very startling ; and I saw a nervous traveller 
 hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, 
 as if he had some idea of propping it up. The view within, 
 from the ground looking up, as through a slanted tube 
 is also very curious. It certainly inclines as much as 
 the most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural im- 
 pulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were 
 about to recline upon the grass below it to rest, and con- 
 template the adjacent buildings, would probably be, not 
 to take up their position under the leaning side ; it is so 
 very much aslant. 
 
 Pictures from Italy (London, 1845).
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 
 W. H. FREMANTLE. 
 
 THE foundation of St. Martin's Church and the 
 lower part of its walls, which are Roman, stood 
 in 598 as they stand to-day ; and they were the walls 
 of the little church which had been given to the Christian 
 Queen Bertha and her chaplain Bishop Luithart, by her 
 pagan husband King Ethelbert. When Augustine passed 
 towards the city, as described by the Venerable Bede, with 
 his little procession headed by the monk carrying a board 
 on which was a rough picture of Christ, and a chorister 
 bearing a silver cross, his heart, no doubt, beat high with 
 hope : but his hope would have grown into exultation 
 could he have looked forward through the centuries, and 
 beheld the magnificent Cathedral which was to spring up 
 where his episcopal throne was fixed, and the energetic 
 and varied Christian life which has issued from this first 
 home of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. To us the scene is 
 full of historical recollections. Between the place where 
 we are standing and the Cathedral are the city walls, on 
 the very site which they occupied in the days of Ethelbert, 
 and the postern-gate through which Queen Bertha came 
 every day to her prayers ; in the nearer distance, a little 
 to the right of the Cathedral, are the remains of the great
 
 3O2 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 abbey which Augustine founded ; to our left is the Pil- 
 grims' Way, by which, after Becket's canonization, those 
 who landed at Dover made their way to the shrine of St. 
 Thomas. 
 
 The eye glances over the valley of the Stour, enclosed 
 between the hill on which we are placed and that of St. 
 Thomas, crowned by the fine buildings of the Clergy 
 Orphan School ; and ranges from Harbledown (Chaucer's 
 " little town under the Blean ycleped Bob-up-and-down ") 
 on the left to the Jesuit College at Hale's Place farther to 
 the right j and thence down the valley to Fordwich, where 
 formerly the waters of the Stour joined those of the 
 Wantsome, the estuary separating Thanet from the main- 
 land. This town at the Domesday epoch was a port with 
 flourishing mills and fisheries. There the Caen stone was 
 landed to build the Cathedral, and the tuns of wine from 
 the monks' vineyards in France were lifted out of the 
 ships by the mayor's crane. . . . 
 
 But it is time that we go into the Cathedral precincts. 
 Making use of a canon's key, we pass, by Queen Bertha's 
 Postern, through the old city walls, along a piece of the an- 
 cient Queningate lane a reserved space between the walls 
 of the city and the precincts, along which the citizens 
 and troops could pass freely for purposes of defence: 
 through the Bowling Green, where the tower of Prior 
 Chillenden is seen to have been used as a pigeon-house, 
 into the Cathedral Yard. In so doing we pass under a 
 Norman archway of the date of Lanfranc and the Con- 
 queror, which formerly stood in a wall separating the 
 cemetery of the monks from that of the laity ; then along
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 303 
 
 the south side of the Cathedral, passing Anselm's chapel, 
 and the beautiful Norman tower attached to the south- 
 eastern transept, with its elaborate tracery, which shows 
 how delicate Norman work could be ; past the south 
 porch, over which is a bas-relief of the altar where the 
 sword of Becket's murderer was preserved ; and round, 
 past the western door, into the cloister. 
 
 The cloister occupies the same space as the Norman 
 cloister built by Lanfranc, but of the Norman work only 
 a doorway remains at the north-east corner ; there is some 
 Early English arcading on the north side, but the present 
 tracery and fan-worked roof belong to the end of the 
 Fourteenth Century, when Archbishops Sudbury, Arundell, 
 and Courtenay, and Prior Chillenden (13901411) rebuilt 
 the nave, the cloister and the chapter-house. The later 
 work cuts across the older in the most unceremonious way, 
 as is seen especially in the square doorway by which we 
 shall presently enter the " Martyrdom," which cuts into 
 a far more beautiful portal of the decorated period. . . . 
 
 If from the place at which we have in imagination 
 been standing, at the north-west corner of the cloister, we 
 look for a moment behind us, we see in the wall a blocked- 
 up door, with a curious door at the side of it. The hole 
 is said to have been made in order to pass bottles and 
 other articles through from the cellarer's lodgings, which 
 were on the other side of the wall. The doorway was the 
 entrance from the Archbishop's Palace, which occupied 
 the space a little further to the west ; and through it 
 Becket passed out to his death, on the 2gth of December, 
 1170. . . .
 
 304 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 Henry had to do penance, and practically to concede 
 the clerical immunities for which Becket had contended ; 
 and Becket became a saint, " the holy, blissful martyr," 
 himself the worker of a thousand miracles, and his shrine 
 the goal of pilgrimages from all parts of England and of 
 Europe. But, whatever we may think of this, his death 
 was certainly the making of Canterbury and its Cathedral. 
 Four years after Becket's death the choir was burned 
 down (1174): but the treasure which was poured into 
 the martyr's church enabled the monks to rebuild it in its 
 present grander proportions ; and the city, which before 
 was insignificant, became wealthy, populous, and re- 
 nowned. 
 
 The crypt was the first place of Becket's interment, and 
 into the crypt we now pass. . . . The pavement in the 
 centre of the Trinity Chapel (the part east of the screen) 
 is very rough, being composed of the stones which formed 
 the steps and pavement of the shrine ; but the marble 
 pavement around it is still as it was when the shrine was 
 standing, and a perceptible line marks the impress of the 
 pilgrims' feet as they stood in a row to see the treasures. 
 The shrine stood upon a platform approached by three 
 marble steps, some stones of which, grooved by the pilgrims' 
 knees, are still seen in the flooring. The platform was 
 paved with mosaic and medallions, specimens of which 
 may still be seen in the present pavement. Above this 
 platform was the chased and gilded coffin of the saint, 
 supported by three arches, which were hung with votive 
 offerings of extreme richness, and between two of which 
 sick persons were allowed to pass, so that by rubbing
 
 .THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 305 
 
 themselves against the stones they might draw forth virtue 
 from the relics of the saint. The whole was covered 
 with an oaken case richly decorated, which at a given signal 
 from the monk whom Erasmus styles the mystagogus, 
 or master of the mysteries, was drawn up and revealed the 
 riches within to the wondering gaze of the pilgrims. In 
 the painted windows of the chapel are the records of the 
 miracles wrought by the intercession of St. Thomas : here, 
 a dead man being carried out to burial is raised ; there, the 
 parents of a boy who has been drowned in the attempt to 
 catch frogs in the river are informed of their loss by his 
 companions with eager gestures, and he too is restored to 
 life ; and in each case offerings of gold and silver are 
 poured upon the shrine ; the madman is seen coming back 
 in his right mind; " Amens accedit, sanus recedit : " and 
 on several occasions the saint himself comes on the scene 
 to heal the sick man on his bed, in one case flying forth 
 from the shrine in his episcopal robes. The worship of 
 Becket was the favourite cultus of the unreformed Church 
 of England ; yet, strange to tell, from the day when Henry 
 gave orders to demolish the shrine, and to expunge his 
 name from all the service books and his memorials from 
 all the churches, no one seems to have thought anything 
 more about him. The blow which, to adapt the language 
 of the Old Testament, " destroyed Becket out of Israel," 
 though violent, was timely. 
 
 The Black Prince, whose wife was the Fair Maid of 
 Kent, was especially attached to Canterbury, and founded 
 two chantries in the crypt or undercroft. These now form 
 the entrance to the French Church, where the descendants
 
 306 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 of the Walloon and Huguenot refugees still worship in the 
 forms of their ancestors. The Prince had desired to be 
 buried below ; but, partly from the special devotion which 
 he had to the Trinity, partly that so great a man might 
 have the place of honour, his tomb was erected at the 
 side of Becket's shrine. He left to the Church of Canter- 
 bury his velvet coat embroidered with lions and lilies, his 
 ornamental shield, his lion-crested helmet, his sword and 
 his gauntlets, all of which still hang above his bronze 
 effigy, except the sword, which is said to have been 
 removed by Cromwell, and of which only part of the 
 scabbard remains. The effigy is believed to be a good 
 likeness. It was placed upon the tomb where the body 
 lies soon after his death, which occurred on the 8th of 
 June, 1376, the feast of the Trinity, as recorded in the 
 inscription in the French of his own Aquitaine. The 
 Prince of Wales's feathers and the lions and lilies, with 
 the Prince's two mottoes, " Ich diene," (I serve), and 
 " Houmout," (High Courage), form the ornaments of the 
 tomb, which is also surrounded by some French verses 
 chosen by the Prince himself, and describing the vanity 
 of earthly glory. . . . 
 
 And now we leave the Cathedral, and pass out of the 
 precincts by the Christ Church Gate, still beautiful even 
 in its defacement, and through the narrow Mercery Lane, 
 where stood in old times the booths for the sellers of relics 
 and of the little leaden bottles supposed to contain in their 
 water some drops of St. Thomas's blood ; where also stood 
 the Chequers of the Hope, at which Chaucer's pilgrims 
 regaled themselves, and of which one fragment, marked by
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY. 307 
 
 the Black Prince's emblem of the lion with protruding 
 tongue, may still be seen at the corner of the lane ; down 
 the High Street, where we pass the old East Bridge 
 Hospital, founded by Lanfranc, endowed by Becket, and 
 saved from confiscation by Cranmer, with its low Norman 
 doorway and the crypt under its hall ; and leave the city 
 by the West Gate, which was erected by Archbishop 
 Sudbury on the line where the eastern wall ran along the 
 Stour ; and past the Falstaff Inn, where the sign of the 
 roystering old knight hangs out on some beautiful ancient 
 ironwork, and welcomes the cyclists who specially affect 
 his inn ; and so on to the South Eastern Railway Station. 
 
 We entered Canterbury on foot with Augustine, we 
 leave it by a modern railway. 
 
 Farrar, Our English Minsters (London, 1893).
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 HAVING passed through the gate, you enter a large 
 square called Plaza de las Algives in the centre 
 of which you find a well whose curb is surrounded by 
 a kind of wooden shed covered with spartium matting 
 and where, for a cuarto, you can have a glass of water, 
 as clear as a diamond, as cold as ice, and of the most 
 delicious flavour. The towers of Quebrada, the Homenaga, 
 the Armeria, and of the Vela, whose bell announces the 
 hours when the water is distributed, and stone-parapets, 
 on which you can lean to admire the marvellous view 
 which unfolds before you, surround one side of the square; 
 the other is occupied by the Palace of Charles V., an 
 immense building of the Renaissance, which you would 
 admire anywhere else, but which you curse here when 
 you remember that it covers a space once occupied by a 
 portion of the Alhambra which was pulled down to make 
 room for this heavy mass. This Alcazar was, however, 
 designed by Alonzo Berruguete ; the trophies, the bas- 
 reliefs, and the medallions of its facade have been accu- 
 mulated by means of a proud, bold, and patient chisel; 
 the circular court with its marble columns, where, in all
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 309 
 
 probability, the bull-fights took place, is certainly a mag- 
 nificent piece of architecture, but non erat hie locus. 
 
 You enter the Alhambra through a corridor situated in 
 an angle of the Palace of Charles V., and, after several 
 windings, you arrive in a large court, designated indif- 
 ferently under the names of Patio de los Arraynes (Court of 
 Myrtles), of the Alberca (of the Reservoir), or of the 
 Mezouar (an Arabian word signifying bath for women). 
 
 When you issue from these dark passages into this 
 large space flooded with light, the effect is similar to that 
 produced by a diorama. You can almost fancy that an 
 enchanter's wand has transported you to the Orient of four 
 or five centuries ago. Time, which changes everything in 
 its flight, has altered nothing here, where the apparition 
 of the Sultana Cbdine des cceurs and of the Moor Tarfe in 
 his white cloak would not cause the least surprise. . . . 
 
 The antechamber of the Hall of the Ambassadors is 
 worthy of the purpose for which it was intended: the 
 boldness of its arches, the variety and interlacing of its 
 arabesques, the mosaics of its walls, and the work on its 
 stuccoed ceiling, crowded like the stalactite roof of a grotto 
 and painted with azure, green, and red, traces of which 
 colours are still visible, produce an effect both charming 
 and bizarre. 
 
 On each side of the door which leads to the Hall of 
 the Ambassadors, in the jamb of the arch itself and where 
 the facing of glazed tiles, whose triangles of glaring colours 
 adorn the lower portion of the walls, are hollowed out, 
 like little chapels, two niches of white marble sculptured 
 with an extreme delicacy. It was here that the ancient
 
 3IO THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 Moors left their Turkish slippers before entering, as a 
 mark of deference, just as we remove our hats in places 
 that demand this respect. 
 
 The Hall of the Ambassadors, one of the largest in 
 the Alhambra, fills the whole interior of the tower of 
 Comares. The ceiling, composed of cedar, shows those 
 mathematical combinations so common to the Arabian 
 architect : all the bits are arranged in such a way that all 
 their converging or diverging angles form an infinite 
 variety of designs ; the walls disappear under a network 
 of ornaments, so packed together and so inextricably 
 interwoven that I can think of no better comparison than 
 pieces of lace placed one above the other. Gothic archi- 
 tecture, with its stone lace-work and its perforated roses, 
 cannot compare with this. Fish-slices and the paper 
 embroidery cut out with a punch, which the confectioners 
 use to decorate their sweets, can alone give you any idea 
 of it.- One of the characteristics of the Moorish style is 
 that it offers very few projections and profiles. All the 
 ornamentation is developed on flat surfaces and is hardly 
 ever more than four or five inches in relief; it is really 
 like a kind of tapestry worked on the wall itself. One 
 feature in particular distinguishes it the employment of 
 writing as a motive of decoration ; it is true that Arabian 
 letters, with their mysteriously winding forms, lend them- 
 selves remarkably to this use. The inscriptions, which 
 are almost always suras of the Koran, or eulogies to 
 various princes who have built and decorated these halls, 
 unfold upon the friezes, on the jambs of the doors, and 
 round the arches of the windows interspersed with flowers,
 
 312 THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 burned beneath the floor to pass through. You can still 
 see on the walls the fantastic frescoes of Bartholomew de 
 Ragis, Alonzo Perez, and Juan <le la Fuente. Upon the 
 frieze the ciphers of Isabella and Philip V. are intertwined 
 with groups of Cupids. It is difficult to imagine anything 
 more coquettish and charming than this room, with its 
 small Moorish columns and its surbased arches, over-hang- 
 ing an abyss of azure, the bottom of which is studded with 
 the roofs of Grenada and into which the breeze brings the 
 perfumes from the Generalife, that enormous cluster of 
 oleanders blossoming in the foreground of the nearest hill, 
 and the plaintive cry of the peacocks walking upon the dis- 
 mantled walls. How many hours have I passed there in 
 that serene melancholy, so different from the melancholy 
 of the North, with one leg hanging over the precipice and 
 charging my eyes to photograph every form and every out- 
 line of this beautiful picture unfolded before them, and 
 which, in all probability, they will never behold again ! 
 No description in words, or colours, can give the slightest 
 hint of this brilliancy, this light, and these vivid tints. The 
 most ordinary tones acquire the worth of jewels and every- 
 thing else is on a corresponding scale. Towards the close 
 of day, when the sun's rays are oblique, the most incon- 
 ceivable effects are produced : the mountains sparkle like 
 heaps of rubies, topazes, and carbuncles ; a golden dust 
 bathes the ravines; and if, as is frequent in the summer, 
 the labourers are burning stubble in the field, the wreaths 
 of smoke, which rise slowly towards the sky, borrow the 
 most magical reflections from the fires of the setting 
 sun.
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 313 
 
 The Court of Lions is 120 feet long and 73 feet wide, 
 while the surrounding galleries do not exceed 20 feet in 
 height. These are formed by 128 columns of white marble, 
 arranged in a symmetrical disorder of groups of fours and 
 groups of threes ; these columns, whose highly-worked 
 capitals retain traces of gold and colour, support arches 
 of extreme elegance and of a very unique form. . . . 
 
 To the left and midway up the long side of the gallery, 
 you come to the Hall of the Two Sisters, the pendant to the 
 Hall of the Abencerrages. The name of las Dos Hermanas 
 is given to it on account of two immense flag-stones of 
 white Macael marble of equal size and exactly alike which 
 you notice at once in the pavement. The vaulted roof, or 
 cupola, which the Spanish very expressively call media 
 naranja (half an orange), is a miracle of work and patience. 
 It is something like a honey-comb, or the stalactites of a 
 grotto, or the soapy grape-bubbles which children blow 
 through a pipe. These myriads of little vaults, or domes, 
 three or four feet high, which grow out of one another, 
 intersecting and constantly breaking their corners, seem 
 rather the product of fortuitous crystallization than the work 
 of human hands ; the blue, the red, and the green still shine 
 in the hollows of the mouldings as brilliantly as if they had 
 just been laid on. The walls, like those in the Hall of the 
 Ambassadors, are covered from the frieze to the height of a 
 man with the most delicate embroideries in stucco and of 
 an incredible intricacy. The lower part of the walls is 
 faced with square blocks of glazed clay, whose black, green, 
 and yellow angles form a mosaic upon the white back- 
 ground. The centre of the room, according to the inva-
 
 314 THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 riable custom of the Arabs, whose habitations seem to be 
 nothing but great ornamental fountains, is occupied by a 
 basin and a jet of water. There are four fountains under 
 the Gate of Justice, as many under the entrance-gate, and 
 another in the Hall of the Abencerrages, without counting 
 the Taza de los Leone's, which, not content with vomiting 
 water through the mouths of its twelve monsters, tosses a 
 jet towards the sky through the mushroom-cap which sur- 
 mounts it. All this water flows through small trenches in 
 the floors of the hall and pavements of the court to the foot 
 of the Fountain of Lions, where it is swallowed up in a 
 subterranean conduit. Certainly this is a species of dwell 
 ing which would never be incommoded with dust, but you 
 ask how could these halls have been tenanted during the 
 winter. Doubtless the large cedar doors were then shut 
 and the marble floors were covered with thick carpets, 
 while the inhabitants lighted fires of fruit-stones and odo- 
 riferous woods in the braseros, and waited for the return of 
 the fine season, which soon comes in Grenada. 
 
 We will not describe the Hall of the Abencerrages, 
 which is precisely like that of the Two Sisters and contains 
 nothing in particular except its antique door of wood, 
 arranged in lozenges, which dates from the time of the 
 Moors. In the Alcazar of Seville you can find another 
 one of exactly the same style. 
 
 The Taza de los Leones enjoys a wonderful reputation in 
 Arabian poetry : no eulogy is considered too extravagant 
 for these superb animals. I must confess, however, that it 
 would be hard to find anything which less resembles lions 
 than these productions of Arabian fantasy ; the paws are
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 315 
 
 simple stakes like those shapeless pieces of wood which one 
 thrusts into the bellies of pasteboard dogs to make them 
 keep their equilibrium ; their muzzles streaked with trans- 
 verse lines, very likely intended for whiskers, are exactly 
 like the snout of a hippopotamus, and the eyes are so primi- 
 tive in design that they recall the crude attempts of children. 
 However, if you consider these twelve monsters as chimeras 
 and not lions, and as a fine caprice in ornamentation, pro- 
 ducing in combination with the basin they support a pictur- 
 esque and elegant effect, you will then understand their 
 reputation and the praises contained in this Arabian inscrip- 
 tion of twenty-four verses and twenty-four syllables engraved 
 on the sides of the lower basin into which the waters fall 
 from the upper basin. I ask the reader's pardon for the 
 rather barbarous fidelity of the translation : 
 
 " O thou, who lookest upon the lions fixed in their place ! 
 remark that they only lack life to be perfect. And you to whom 
 will fall the inheritance of this Alcazar and Kingdom, take them 
 from the noble hands of those who have governed them without 
 displeasure and resistance. May God preserve you for the work, 
 which you will accomplish, and protect you forever from the 
 vengeance of your enemy ! Honour and glory be thine, O 
 Mohammed ! our King, endowed with the high virtues, with 
 whose aid thou hast conquered everything. May God never per- 
 mit this beautiful garden, the image of thy virtues, to be surpassed 
 by any rival. The material which covers the substance of this 
 basin is like mother-of-pearl beneath the shimmering waters ; this 
 sheet of water is like melted silver, for the limpidity of the water 
 and the whiteness of the stone are unequalled ; it might be called 
 a drop of transparent essence upon a face of alabaster. It would 
 be difficult to follow its course. Look at the water and look
 
 316 THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 at the basin, and you will not be able to tell if it is the water 
 that is motionless, or the marble which ripples. Like the prisoner 
 of love whose face is full of trouble and fear when under the gaze 
 of the envious, so the jealous water is indignant at the marble and 
 the marble is envious of the water. To this inexhaustible stream 
 we may compare the hand of our King which is as liberal and 
 generous as the lion is strong and valiant." 
 
 Into the basin of the Fountain of Lions fell the heads of 
 the thirty-six Abencerrages, drawn there by the stratagem 
 of the Zegris. The other Abencerrages would have shared 
 the same fate if it had not been for the devotion of a little 
 page who, at the risk of his own life, ran to warn the sur- 
 vivors from entering the fatal court. Your attention will 
 be attracted by some large red spots at the bottom of the 
 basin an indelible accusation left by the victims against 
 the cruelty of their murderers. Unfortunately, the learned 
 declare that neither the Abencerrages nor the Zegris 
 existed. Regarding this fact, I am entirely guided by 
 romances, popular traditions, and Chateaubriand's novel, 
 and I solemnly believe that these crimson stains are blood 
 and not rust. 
 
 We established our headquarters in the Court of the 
 Lions ; our furniture consisted of two mattresses which were 
 rolled up in a corner during the day, a copper lamp, an 
 earthenware jar, and a few bottles of sherry which we placed 
 in the fountain to cool. Sometimes we slept in the Hall of 
 the Two Sisters, and sometimes in that of the Abencerrages, 
 and it was not without some slight fear that I, stretched 
 out upon my cloak, looked at the white rays of the moon 
 which fell through the openings of the roof into the water
 
 THE ALHAMBRA. 317 
 
 of the basin quite astonished to mingle with the yellow, 
 trembling flame of a lamp. 
 
 The popular traditions collected by Washington Irving 
 in his Tales of the Alhambra came into my memory ; the 
 story of the Headless Horse and of the Hairy Phantom 
 solemnly related by Father Echeverria seemed very probable 
 to me, especially when the light was out. The truth of 
 legends always appears much greater at night when these 
 dark places are filled with weird reflections which give a 
 fantastic appearance to all objects of a vague outline : 
 Doubt is the son of day, Faith is the daughter of the night, 
 and it astonishes me to think that St. Thomas believed in 
 Christ after having thrust his finger into his wounds. I am 
 not sure that I did not see the Abencerrages walking through 
 the moonlit galleries carrying their heads under their arms : 
 anyhow the shadows of the columns always assumed forms 
 that were diabolically suspicious, and the breeze as it passed 
 through the arches made me wonder if it was not a human 
 breath. 
 
 Voyage en Espagne (Paris, new ed., 1865).
 
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