I%)Ks^)m)%'dW«dW>%w«¥MVMv,vv>y.'.'^^t^_ IN THE SIERRA MORENA. n ann ^ 2^2:^122 SPliISi PICTIilS DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL By the Author of "StV/SS PICTURES" AND "■ITALIAN PICTURESr W\\\ lllustratbits W 6u5labc Hod antr oibn emimitt Artists. cu>^.'-". ^fi ^ .-•:%je- v>?^.- 1 1» A X 1/ ^.^^rii, '.. ■? LONDON: THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY: 56, PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD; AND 164, PICCADILLY. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFDRD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. GIFT A1 S?T ORTY years ago Mr. Ford, writing in the Quarterly Review, complained that Spain was almost unde- scribed and unvisited. Though "a land of adventure and romance, full of historic and poetic and legendary association, yet is it withal a kind of terra-incognita — a mysterious realm untravelled by the crowd, and where the all-wandering foot of the all-pervading Englishman but seldom rambles. The beef-steak and the tea-kettle which infallibly mark the progress of John Bull, and have been introduced even into Greece and the Holy Land, are as yet unknown in the ventas and posados of the Peninsula." This statement is becoming, year by year, less true. Old residents and tourists in Spain are beginning to complain of the invasion of the Northern hordes. Numerous English and American travellers may now be met with, not only in such places as Granada and Seville, but in Segovia or Ronda, or Avila. And books of Spanish travel have multiplied in proportion. 69: But notwithstanding the many books on Spain which have recently ap- peared, it is hoped that the preparation of this volume has not been a work of supererogation. The writer has enjoyed many facilities for acquainting himself with the actual condition of the Spanish people, and for examining their social, moral, and religious conditions. He has diligently availed him- self of the opportunities afforded him ; and he has endeavoured to narrate, simply and honestly, that which he himself has seen and known of the Cosas if Espana. COL DE PEKTUS, PYKENEES. CONTENTS. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. TXGE "AFRICA BEGINS AT THE PYRENEES " — UNLIKE THE REST OF EUROPE- LITTLE VISITfeD — GENERAL ASPECT OF" THE COUNTRY — RIVERS "WITHOUT WATER — AFRICAN VEGETATION — MOORISH MANNERS AND CUSTOMS — RAILWAYS AND DILIGENCES — STAGNATION AND DECAY — CAUSES OF DEGENERACY AND ITS REMEDY . . . . . ■ ^3 PARIS TO MADRID. VARIOUS ROUTES TO MADRID — THROUGH FRANCE — BORDEAUX — THE LANDES — THE PYRENEES — BAYONNE — BIARRITZ — SAN SEBASTIAN — BILBAO — CORUNA — THE SPANISH ARMADA — SANTIAGO DE COMPOS- TELLA — SPANISH DILIGENCES — IRUN — SPANISH CUSTOM-HOUSE — BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES — THE BASQUES — VITTORIA — BURGOS — ' INCIDENT IN SIEGE OF BURGOS — SPANISH BEGGARS — THE CID — VALLADOLID — AVILA 29 MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. MADRID — SITUATION — CLIMATE — NOT ALTOGETHER WANTING IN PIC- TURESQUENESS — STREET CRIES — ^ THE PRADO — CHURCH OF THE ATOCHA — THE QUEMADERO — BULL-FIGHTS — PICTURE GALLERY — WORK OF EVANGELISATION — THE ESCORIAL — SEGOVIA • - • 75 THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. GENERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY — ARANJUEZ — THE TAGUS — TOLEDO — LA MANCHA AND DON QUIXOTE — CORDOVA — THE KINGDOM OF GRANADA — LOJA — THE VEGA — THE ALHAMBRA AND GENERALLIFFE — CITY OF GRANADA .......... I09 SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. PAGE ROMAN ORIGIN — ITALICA AND TRIANA — MOORISH CHARACTER — THE GIRALDA — THE ALCAZAR — TORRE DEL ORO — TRADE OF SEVILLE — ^ CASA DEL AYUNTAMIENTO AND LONJA — GIPSY MUSICIANS AND DANCERS — MURILLO — CATHEDRAL — THE INQUISITION . . . -153 HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. CADIZ — TRAFALGAR — GIBRALTAR — RONDA — MALAGA — CARTHAGENA — MURCIA — ELCHE — VALENCIA — ROMAN SETTLEMENTS ALONG THE COAST — BARCELONA — LERIDA — SARAGOSSA — CONCLUSION . . . 187 LEANING TOWKK, SAKAGUSSA. i 1 PASS OF POQUIERA IN THE ALPUJARRAS, FIRST IMPRESSIONS. AFRICA BEGINS AT THE PYRENEES — UNLIKE THE REST OF EUROPE — LITTLE VISITED GENERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY RIVERS WITHOUT WATER — -AFRICAN VEGETATION ]\IOORISH MANNERS AND CUSTOMS — RAILWAYS AND DILIGENCES STAGNATION AND DECAY — CAUSES OF DEGENERACY AND ITS REMEDY. FRICA begins at the Pyrenees." The proverb is a French one, and must therefore be taken with some modifica- tions. For our sprightly neighbours are apt to claim a monopoly of culture and refinement for themselves, and, like the Chinese, to regard other nations as " outer barbarians." Fixing the southern limits of civilisation at the Pyrenees, they would proceed to define it as bounded by the English Channel on the north, the Rhine on the east, and the Bay of Biscay on the west. But, after making all due allowance for national prejudice and self-conceit, the epigram contains a large measure of truth. It expresses with tolerable accuracy the first impressions of the traveller in Spain. For on crossing the Pyrenees every- thing is so new and strange that the tourist seems to have passed into a new Elsewhere the characteristic differences one another by almost imperceptible degrees. The frontier between France and Belgium, Germany or Switzer- land may be crossed with little or nothing to remind the traveller that he continent rather than a new country, of neighbouring nations melt into FIRST IMPRESSIONS. is entering a new territory. Railways have made international intercourse easy. Commerce has made it profitable. Fashion has made it popular. Germans flock to Paris for business or pleasure. Frenchmen flock to the Rhine, to Baden, to Switzerland, for health or recreation. Italy attracts its yearly crowds of artists, antiquarians, students, and holiday-makers. National peculiarities are thus rubbed off. The various countries of Europe become assimilated to one another. The infinite variety of dress, manners, and customs which used to give such a charm to foreign travel is rapidly disappearing, and European society is being reduced to a dead level, to a monotonous uniformity. But Spain has resisted the influence far more than other countries. It is only recently that railways have invaded her territory. Her roads were so impassable and her hotels so execrable that there was little to attract the ordinary tourist. It needed some courage to encounter the horrors of a Spanish venfa, and not a little physical endurance to survive the dislocating jolts of a Spanish diligence. She had no external commerce to lead her own sons abroad or to invite foreigners to settle within her borders. The extension of railways, and the growing commerce of Spain will sooner or later assimilate the Peninsula to the rest of Europe. But at present Europe ends at the Pyrenees. And Spain resembles Africa or the East in those very points in which she differs from the rest of Europe. The soil has that dry and sterile look with which African travellers are familiar. One may travel for hours over tracts of country in which there is scarcely a living thing to disturb the solitude ; leagues upon leagues of bare rock without a particle of soil clinging to their sides ; vast undulating plains, treeless and waterless ; districts, each as large as an English county, covered with blocks of granite or limestone, like the desert of Sinai. Geologically, as well as in appearance, Spain is but a northern extension of the Sahara. Those who visit Spain, expecting to find exuberant fertility, will be disappointed. There are indeed hiiertas, which produce their three or four crops a year, and repay the slightest amount of labour by harvests of incredible richness. But these seem like oases in an arid waste. Probably less than one half of the soil is under cultivation. Certainly the general aspect of the country is that of utter sterility and barrenness. This impression is rendered yet more intense by the numerous zuadys, or dry river-beds, which are everywhere met with. Sometimes they are quite dry, and not a drop of water flows down them except during winter storms. More commonly the stream which once filled up a wide channel has shrunk into a streamlet, which trickles amongst the stones and sand-banks in the middle of its channel. It is said that the French troops on entering Madrid in triumph, and seeing the dry bed of the Manzanares, exclaimed, " What, has the river run away too !" This is partly occasioned by the diminished rainfall, partly by the water being drawn off for purposes of irrigation. Rivers which were once navigable to a considerable distance inland can now scarcely float a barge. SPANISH VEGETATION. The Guadalquivir, for instance, in the time of the Romans was available for ships as high as Cordova ; it now only affords a difficult and shallow channel up to Seville. The wide, stony, sandy channels of these shrunken streams add to the desolate aspect of the country. The vegetation, too, especially of the south of Spain, is African rather than European. Hedges of cactus and prickly pear, thickets of pomegranates in the open fields, plantations of sugar-cane, groves of oranges, and tall feathery palm-trees, give a strange tropical aspect to the scenery. At Elche on the east coast, for instance, it is difficult to believe oneself in Europe. Here are groves of palm trees in wild luxuriance. Flat-roofed Moorish houses stand AQUEDUCT NEAR SEVILLE. amidst the giant stems and overarching branches of the forest, which stretches away into the distance as far as the eye can reach. The scene is that of Barbary or of Egypt, and the traveller needs constantly to remind himself that he is in Europe — not in Africa. The towns and villages, especially in the south of Spain, retain much of their Moorish character. The Moors themselves were indeed ruthlessly banished or burned by the Inquisition. But they have left their mark behind them. It could indeed scarcely be otherwise. After holding the country for FIRST IMPRESSIONS. eight centuries, the traces of their occupation cannot be easily effaced. In Toledo, in Cordova, in Granada, or in the older parts of Seville it would be easy to believe oneself in a Moorish or Egyptian town. The narrow streets are enclosed by high walls, almost windowless, and perforated by only a single low door. Everything looks gloomy and sombre. But peep through the iron grating which protects the doorway, and you will see a patio, bright with flowers, and fountains, and greenery. The windows of the chambers open into this quadrangle, and the inmates can enjoy light and air, bright sunshine and cool shade, without leaving the seclusion of their homes, or being exposed to the gaze of any not belonging to the family. This style of architecture has been handed down directly from the Moors. And in numberless details of dress and daily life the same influence may be traced. The mantilla which forms the head-dress of almost every woman in Spain is simply a relic of the veil universally worn by the wives and daughters of the Moslem. Wander into the outskirts of any town in Spain, and you will hardly fail to stumble upon groups of ragged, picturesque varlets, lying at full length upon some sunny bank, sunning themselves, just as a group of Bedouins would do. Go out into the country, and you will hear the creaking of the waterwheel, and see the patient oxen, treading their ceaseless round, turning the ponderous machine, which has come down unchanged from the days of the Moors. The peasants of Andalusia, Murcia, and Granada are seldom to be seen without a long staff, which they grasp and carry exactly as an Arab does his spear. The velvet hat of the Spanish majo is clearly a reminiscence of the turban. In private houses, hotels, and cafes, servants are summoned by clapping the hands as in the "Arabian Nights." But it is doubtless the stagnation and apathy of Spain to which the French proverb chiefly refers. And this cannot fail to impress every traveller. In Madrid there is indeed a certain amount of life and bustle on the surface ; for the highest ambition of every Madrileno seems to be to make his city as much like Paris as possible. But Parisian civilisation and activity are merely a thin veneer. Beneath the surface, and in all matters of business, Madrid is as slow and stagnant as ever. Some of the towns on the east coast, Barcelona and Valencia for instance, are awakening to a keener and more active life. Their proximity to Marseilles brings them into intimate connection with that port, and they have derived a considerable amount of French vivacity from this source. There is likewise an extensive British and American trade springing up, and the bustle and energy of commerce are arousing the drowsy population from their stupor. But the change is only beginning. It has not had time to penetrate below the surface, and the surrounding country is altogether untouched by it. The Rambla at Barcelona might be the boulevard of a French town, but the side streets are purely Spanish and oriental in their character. Spain, as a whole, strikes one as being at least two centuries behind the rest of Europe, and little effort is made to recover the lost ground. To r SPANISH RAILWAYS AND DILIGENCES. every proposal for Improvement the all-sufficing reply is, Manana (To-morrow), or Veremos (We'll see about it). Off the lines of railway Spain seems to have remained unchanged since the days of the Moors ; and even railway travelling partakes of the drowsy and slumberous character of the country. The trains travel more slowly, stop more frequently, and linger longer at the stations than in any other country in Europe. On some of the most important lines of the Peninsula only a single train runs daily. Large gaps are left unfinished year after year which have to be traversed by diligences. Thus the main-line, connecting Cordova and Malaga with Granada, is incomplete between Archidona THE RAMBLA, BARCELONA. and Loja, a distance of five hours. The traveller from Barcelona, Valencia, and the other important towns on the east coast, to Marseilles, Lyons, or Paris, must spend the whole night in the diligence between Gerona and Perpignan — a journey Avhich, having once taken, he is not likely to forget. With few exceptions the roads in the interior can only be traversed on horseback. They are a succession of holes and ruts, they cross unbridged rivers ; they seem to wander aimlessly over hill and valley, and break off in the middle, like a cattle track rather than a highway. All that we read of our English roads in the days of Queen Elizabeth, may be vividly realized in the Spanish roads of to-day. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. The traveller in Spain cannot fail to be struck by the contrast between the past and the present. Everywhere he meets with trophies which attest the energy and greatness of the country in former centuries. Three hundred years ago the Spanish monarchy was the most powerful in the world. The sun never set upon her dominions. But for the stubborn resistance of a few Protestants who refused to be coerced, she would have given the law to Europe. Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries were her vassals. The eastern and the western hemisphere poured their wealth into her coffers. Great public STREET IN BARCELONA. works were undertaken worthy of the wealth and power of their projectors. Palaces and cathedrals, convents and halls of learning, arose in stately mag- nificence over the land. But what their ancestors built, the degenerate descendants are unable even to keep in repair. Some of the noblest edifices of mediaeval Spain are crumbling into ruins. Wherever we turn we are confronted by the evidences of a glorious past, and of a base and ignoble present. What has caused this degeneracy ? What has made Spain sink from the NIGHT DILIGENCE BETWEEN GERONA AND PERPIGNAN. CAUSES OF ITS DEGENERACY AND ITS REMEDY. first to the last place amongst the nations of Europe ? Only one reply Is possible. The Iniquitous Inquisition crushed out all freedom alike of thought and action. The most intelligent and Industrious of her population were burned or banished. Moor, Jew, and Protestant Indiscriminately, were sentenced to the flames. The dread tribunal had its officers and Its dungeons In every town, its spies in every house. No man was safe except by a mute, unquestioning submission. The highest personages in the state were not above its reach ; the meanest and poorest peasant was not too obscure for Its notice. Beneath this crushing, blighting despotism, all freedom and all courage perished. For three, centuries Spain has been suffering the penalties of her slavish submission to Rome. The last few years have seen the power of Rome broken ; a violent reaction against the priesthood has set In ; defiant Infidelity threatens to take the place of blind, bigoted superstition. The transition Is natural and common. In proportion as the Spaniards discover how much their country has suffered under the tyranny of the Papacy, Is likely to be their tendency to reject all religion, for they have known no religion save that of Rome. After many generations of absolute uniformity of religious profession, Spain Is now divided Into two hostile camps. On the one hand, there are those who, terrified at the rapid spread of infidelity, cling more blindly and tenaciously than ever to the superstitions of their fathers. These are confronted by great masses, who, confounding all religion with superstition and priestcraft, are beginning to say that there Is no God. This religious antagonism Is echoed and reflected in the political confusion which prevails. The Carllsts insist upon and fight for "the right dl-vine of kings to govern wrong." The Federal Republicans, pushing their theories to the extreme, threaten the disintegration of Spain into a loosely connected cluster of semi-Independent provinces. The stern repressive tyranny of former ages is rapidly passing over into a lawless anarchy. It is impossible to mix with the people without being Impressed by the dangers with which Spain is thus threatened. A careful examination of the condition of Spanish society left a strong conviction on the mind of the writer, that the only hope for the country lies in the Gospel. This alone can rescue Spain from the degrading slavery of the past, and yet preserve It from the excesses and licentiousness of an infidel reaction. It can give true liberty, and, at the same time, teach those whom It has emancipated how to use the freedom it has conferred. It has Indeed been the fashion to affirm that spiritual and evangelical religion can never take root in Spain, and that the genius of the people requires that religious truth should be embodied in ceremonies and symbolical forms. The experience of the last few years disproves the assumption ; there is scarcely a consider- able town in Spain in which the gospel Is not preached in its plainest and simplest form ; and wherever preached, multitudes gather to hear the word. In many places the congregations are In excess of any accommodation provided for them. Thousands have thrown ofl* the yoke of Rome, and professed their FIRST IMPRESSIONS. adherence to Protestantism. As the writer of these "pages contrasted the glories of the past with the degradation of the present, as he investigated the causes of that degradation and sought for the remedy, he felt himself forced to the conclusion that, in a sober, rational religious freedom, there is yet hope for Spain. True emancipation can only come through the freedom wherewith Christ makes his people free. To Spain, as to all the world besides, "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." I'ASS IN THE PYRENEES, NEAR PERPIGNAN. PARIS TO MADRID. SPANISH CONTRABANDISTAS. PARIS TO MADRID. VARIOUS ROUTES TO MADRID — THROUGH FRANCE — BORDEAUX — THE LANDES — THE PYRENEES BAYONNE — BIARRITZ — SAN SEBASTIAN BILBAO — CORUNA — THE SPANISH ARMADA SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELLA SPANISH DILIGENCES IRUN SPANISH CUSTOM-HOUSE — BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES — THE BASQUES — ■ VITTORIA — BURGOS — INCIDENT IN SIEGE OF BURGOS — SPANISH BEGGARS — THE CID — VALLADOLID — AVILA. ^N early Spanish historian maintains that the first settlers of the Peninsula were borne thither through the air by No other mode of conveyance was deemed worthy of the dignity and grandeur of the nation about to be founded ; and Castilian pride had fixed the date of the settlement so soon after the creation of the world, that it was difficult to see how the aboriginal inhabitants could have reached their destination in any other way. Subsequent writers, without committing themselves to this hypothesis, yet gave it a respectful consideration. The age was credu- lous of marvels ; and it was a matter of faith that, not individuals only, but considerable edifices — the house of the V^irgin at Loretto, for instance — had been thus transported from land to land. In these prosaic and degenerate days aerial flights are out of the question. We are reduced to the simple alternative of reaching Spain by sea or by land. Those who select the former mode of transit may sail direct to Gibraltar, or, crossing France to Marseilles, they may take passage thence to one of the eastern or southern ports of Spain. There is something to be said in behalf of either of these routes. But the majority of tourists will find as much sea in the English Channel as they care to encounter, and will prefer to complete their journey PARIS TO MADRID. by land. They will then have a choice between two lines — the eastern and the western. The Pyrenees can only be crossed by wheel-carriages at the two extremities where the mountain range subsides into the sea. The passes CHIEF RAILWAYS IN SPAIN. which lie between are only available for stout pedestrians or for muleteers. The boast of Louis Ouatorze, *' // ny a plus de Pyrenees,'' is not yet quite fulfilled. Of these two routes, the western, by way of Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Irun, THROUGH FRANCE. is the easier, and the speedier. The railway is complete for the whole distance. On the eastern side it is as yet unfinished, and the journey from Gerona to Perpignan has to be made by diligence. Let us enter by the western and return by the eastern route. No railway journey through central France can be very interesting. The scenery is never grand, seldom even picturesque. The line runs through a level plain, "flat, fair, and fertile." There are no hills, and but few trees. The absence of hedgerows gives the country a bare formal look to one accustomed to the rural scenery of England or of Normandy. The route to Bordeaux however, is not devoid of interest. Orleans, Tours, Poitiers, Angouleme, are passed in succession. Glimpses of most of them may be gained from the railway in hurrying past. It stirs one's blood to hear the names bawled out at the stations, as one remembers the great part which our forefathers played through all this region. To one who has a few hours to spare they can scarcely be spent more pleasantly than in lingering amongst these medi3eval towns, where Joan of Arc and the Black Prince, "old John o'Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," our Henrys, and our Edwards have left indelible traces of their presence. Bordeaux offers a convenient and agreeable resting-place in the long journey from Paris to Madrid. It is one of the finest maritime cities in Europe, with broad boulevards, fine open squares, and public gardens of great beauty and extent. It lies in a semicircle round its noble harbour, which is commonly full of vessels, and the line of quays remind one of an English port from their activity and bustle. The journey onward from Bordeaux leads across the Landes. A few years ago this district was the most desolate and barren which can be well conceived. The desert of Sahara could scarcely present a more monotonous and dreary waste. Sand borne inland by the violent winds from the Bay of Biscay formed a vast plain, which produced little except a meagre crop of prickly shrubs, and of withered stunted grass. A few flocks of sheep and goats wandered across the desolate plains and picked a scanty subsistence amongst the sand-hills. They were guarded by a half-savage race of shepherds, who from early childhood were acccustomed to walk on stilts. It was a strange sight to see a family — men, women, and children — stalking across the endless plains raised far above the ground, clad in sheep skins, and followed by immense Pyreneean wolf-dogs. It has been found, however, that parts of the Landes which were thought to be hopelessly barren may be made productive as pine forests. Large tracts have been enclosed for this purpose, and the railway now passes through leagues of young plantations, which are a source of great wealth to the proprietors. The rude denizens of the Landes resent this intrusion into their domains, and destructive fires have broken out by which many valuable forests have been 29 PARIS TO MADRID. destroyed. These are suspected, not without reason, to have been the work of incendiaries. But resent and resist it as they may, the onward march of civiHza- tion continues to invade the soil. Year by year the number of stilted Landais diminishes. Pine forests and cultivated fields now occupy the region where a few years ago the traveller only saw barren plains. As Bayonne is approached the Pyrenees come into view. To one accus- tomed to the Alps the Pyreneean range wants grandeur. There are no vast sweeps of glacier and snowfield like those of Switzerland. In the whole chain '*^-»V/Yj^ i-C. there is no coup d'oeil which can compare with that from the Corner Grat, the Wengern Alp, or the Brevent. But the Pyrenees have a charm and beauty of their own. The stiff, formal, and wearisome succession of pines is exchanged for rich masses of chestnut and beech. In the judgment of many persons, the picturesque variety and glowing colour of Pyreneean scenery affords an ample compensation for the want of Alpine grandeur and sublimity. Entering Spain during the present year, I saw the Pyrenees under excep- tionally favourable circumstances. The night had been wild and stormy. As the day advanced dense thunder clouds still overspread the sky. But gradually FIRST VIEW OF THE PYRENEES. they gathered themselves around the mountains, veiling them in almost pitchy darkness, whilst the Bay of Biscay, which just then came into view, was radiant in sunshine. The waves seemed to leap into light and to laugh for joy. The contrast was most striking. On the left hand all was gloom and darkness. We could hear the thunder bellowing among the hills, and see the clouds cleft in twain by the " quick cross lightning." But on the right all was brightness" and joy. The sea bore no traces of the storms of the previous night, and the mountains in their hugeness seemed to set the tempests at defiance. One could ANGOULEME. not but think of Him "who by his strength setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power ; which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people." Bayonne, though French, bears unmistakable traces of its proximity to Spain. The shops have their signs painted in both languages. The bullock- carts, the trains of mules and asses with gay trappings of scarlet worsted, the canvas shoes with hempen soles worn by the peasantry, the peculiar forms of the earthenware, are all Spanish. But the bustle and activity of the streets. PARIS TO MADRID. the architecture of the houses, the habits of the people are distinctively French. Africa does not begin till we have passed the Pyrenees. A short distance from Bayonne is Biarritz, which under the patronage of the late imperial family became the most fashionable watering-place in France. Its nearness to the Spanish frontier doubtless first commended it to the notice of the Empress. But it needs no such adventitious aid to account for its popularity. Looking out upon the open sea, the great waves of the Atlantic roll right into the bay, and break in trampling thunders upon the beach ; the beach curves round in a semicircle for miles, the smooth sweep of pure white sand broken by picturesque rocks, and rock-pools of crystalline clearness, at SAN SEliASTIAN. frequent intervals ; and the Pyrenees come down almost to the water's edge, giving a succession of noble inland views. Tourists proceeding direct from Bayonne to Madrid will reach the frontier at Hendaye soon after passing Biarritz. But those who propose to visit the north-western provinces — the Asturias, Galicia, and Leon — may advantageously deviate from the ordinary route and avail themselves of a steamer which sails from Bayonne for San Sebastian, Bilbao, Santander, and Coruiia. Some magnificent coast scenery is passed, and in fine weather the trip is a most enjoyable one. San Sebastian stands out finely as it is approached from the sea. Its SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN. rugged cone of rock, surmounted by the citadel, rises to a height of four hundred feet. The destruction of the ramparts has diminished its importance as a mihtary post, but it is rapidly becoming a fashionable resort for sea-bathing. The town is bright and cheerful, and is charmingly situated at the foot of the rock and along the isthmus which connects it with the mainland. No English- man can pass this spot without mingled feelings of pride and sorrow. The readers of Napier's Peninsular War will remember how desperately the French maintained their last position here, and with what dash and daring the British soldier advanced from trench to trench, and foot by foot, until its final over- throw, amidst blood and carnage such as we shudder to contemplate. Among the survivors of that awful struggle was the "gallant young Campbell," after- wards Lord Clyde, who gained his first laurels at this eventful siege. Bilbao, without much to attract the traveller, is a quaint interesting town. The narrow irregular streets — too narrow to admit two carriages abreast — the massive houses, with immense projecting roofs, the picturesque dresses of the PARIS TO MADRID. Basque peasantry, and the life and bustle inseparable from a seaport, even in Spain, make a few hours pass away very agreeably. Santander is simply a thriving seaport, and contains little to detain the tourist or to call for description. Coruna is interestingf from its historical associations. It claims to have been a Phoenician and Carthaginian settlement, and it seems probable that the lighthouse just outside the town was already in existence at the time of the Roman occupation. In the early maritime history of England it holds an important place as the Groyne — a corruption of the French name La Corogne. Here John of Gaunt landed to claim the crown of Spain (1386), and hence Philip II. sailed to marry our Queen Mary, hoping thus to unite the crowns of Spain and England. When the Invincible Armada was seriously damaged by storms off Cape Finisterre it put into the Groyne to refit. The English govern- ment, deceived by the assurances of the Spanish Court, had given way to a false security, and believed that no invasion would be attempted, at least for that year. The nation was undisciplined and unprepared to meet so terrible a foe. But for the inevitable delay in the port of Coruna the result might have been far different. But he must be blind indeed who does not see the hand of God in the whole history of this memorable assault upon our religion and liberties. Six days after sailing from Coruiia, on Friday the 29th of July, 1588, the fleet sighted land off the Lizard, and were soon detected by those who were looking out. •' It was about the lovely close of a warm summer's day There came a gallant merchant ship full sail to Plymouth bay ; The crew had seen Castile's black fleet, beyond Aurigny's isle, At rest, at twilight, on the waves, lie heaving many a mile," * That day and night ten thousand beacon-fires were lighted up throughout the lengrth and breadth of the land. All alone the southern shores from Land's End to Margate, from the watchers of the undercliff of the Isle of Wight to the dwellers in the northern border land, the warning flames flared forth, telling Englishmen that at last the hour was come when they must meet the enemy. At this great hour of agony and peril the mercy of God graciously supplied all that was lacking. The courage of the Queen and people was high ; the hour of danger drew them closer in heart together ; the most magnificent eftbrts were made for the defence of our shores. Better still than all, the voice of prayer and supplication was heard throughout the land, prayer and suppli- cation that was fully and beyond measure answered. In looking back upon this period of our national annals, it is delightful to see how firm and high was the trust and faith of good men in the power of God to aid, help, and deliver them. The Queen calle-"" ' " rainy night." As fine serene nights in HONEY-SELLER OF MADRID. Spain are numerous, out of all pro- MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA, portion to rainy ones, the cry of sereno has given to the watchmen the name by which they are universally known. The suburbs of Madrid are very pleasant. The Prado, the fashionable i^ SERENOS. drive and promenade of the city, begins at the Puerta de Recoletos, and extends to the Puerta de Atocha, a distance of between two and three miles. It has 78 .c-^^x^"'^^ BALCONIED WINDOWS. THE PRADO. avenues of noble trees, shady walks for promenaders, and a broad well-kept road for carriao-es. As every Spaniard spends his evenings in the open air, and as he is generally willing to practise the most rigid parsimony at home in order to keep up a good appearance abroad, the Prado presents a most brilliant spectacle. Scarcely can Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne make a finer show of equipages or company. A lady's judgment, however, upon a point of this kind will have more weight than that of one belonging to the ruder sex. Let us hear the fair authoress of Cosas de Espana : " We made our way to the * Prado' this afternoon, at the witching hour which assembles all the beauty and fashion of the capital in a moving crowd on this singular and world-famed promenade. The weather was brilliant, and the sight a most inspiring one. The company was numerous, and consisted of cavaliers and cavalieres, handsomely dressed, and mounted on magnificent horses ; senoras and fascinating sefioritas, with argus-eyed duennas, lazily reclined in open carriages : and graceful, veiled and mantled women with their be-cloaked male relatives, treading with that light step and graceful movement peculiar to the daughters of the Peninsula, the umbrageous walks : * Illam, quicquid agit, quoque vestigia flectit Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.' Mounted guards were stationed at fixed intervals on the broad avenue, and rode backwards and forwards until they met each other, along the two-mile length of this busy scene. The dresses were very rich, and we observed great luxury in the bonnets worn by the fair Matritenses, who, in their rage for something foreign, rob themselves of the most attractive ornament of their costume. This ' outlandish ' head-dress is as yet, we were glad to see, limited to the upper ten thousand ; and the middle-class damsels, who have the good taste to adhere to their bewitching natural accessories, gain immensely by their forbearance. We had not as yet seen the arch and matchless Sevillanas, in whom those coquettish Spanish characteristics, almost irresistible in a Madril'eiia, are multiplied and intensified ; and to our unpractised eye the Prado presented a scene of enchantment to which nothing seemed wanting. It was so unique a vision, that we ceased to wonder at the romances which it is not surprising it should have suggested to vivid imagina- tion ; indeed, the incidents in which it seemed to abound might well form the woofs of some of the most intricate webs of fiction." The Madrilenos are especially proud of the fountains which adorn the Prado. They are eight in number, and are certainly very fine. Those of Cybele, Neptune, and Apollo are the most admired. Not very far from the Prado is the famous church of the Atocha. The Virgin, to whom it is dedicated, is the tutelar saint of Madrid, and, in an especial degree, the patroness of the Royal Family. The shrine is hung round with flags and banners, the trophies of many a battle-field in which the Spanish arms were victorious, and the Virgin itself is almost hidden from view by the mass of votive MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. offerings — wax-figures, tresses of hair, crutches, clothes, etc. — which have been suspended there by votaries. The Queen used to go to this church every Sunday afternoon in an open carriage drawn by eight fine mules, and accom- panied by her husband and children. She presented to it her wedding and her coronation robes, the dresses she wore on festivals, especially that of the Epiphany, and her "best clothes" in general. A fabulous antiquity is claimed for the image, which is quite black, perhaps from age and the smoke of innumerable candles. FOUNTAIN OF CYBELE, MADRID. The etymologists here, as everywhere in Spain, have run wild in devising derivations for the name A toe ha. Some deduce it from Antioch, alleging that it was consecrated by St. Peter, in a church in that city ; others contend that it Is a corruption of theotokos, and that miracles were wrought by it in demon- stration of orthodox doctrine during the Nestorian controversy. These are but specimens of the wild and baseless conjectures in which Spanish philologists delight. Miracles even more baseless and Incredible are ascribed to the Vi'rgen de Atocha. It gave speech to a dumb beggar, who Immediately exclaimed — CHURCH OF THE ATOCHA. FATHER CLARETE. Da me un mar to : "Give me a farthing." It stopped a mason in mid-air who was falling from a roof. The list of its pretended miracles would fill a volume. It failed, however, to do anything for its especial devotee, Isabella II., though she lavished upon it gold, silver, jewels, fans, court-dresses, and embroidered slippers, which made this ugly black doll the most sumptuously dressed person in Madrid. The Queen, with her councillors. Father Clarete and the Sor Patrocinio, have had to escape from the anger of an indignant people, and to seek safety in exile. The Church of the Atocha may serve to illustrate the superstition, obsctirantism, and idolatrous worship of the papacy. If we visit another suburb of Madrid we may find a most striking illustration of the pitiless cruelty of its persecutions. In the year 1869 a number of labourers were employed in making the excavations neces- sary for the construction of a new boulevard. A little below the surface they came to a layer of some black substance, a few inches in thickness and several yards in length. As they dug deeper many other layers, like the first, but varying in length and thick- ness, were laid bare. On examina- tion the black substance was found to consist of charcoal intermixed with fragments of charred wood, bones, iron links, nails, and rivets, which had been exposed to the action of fire. It proved to be the Quemadero or burning place of the Inquisition, and these were the remains of the numerous autos da fd. The atito da fi itself took place in the Plaza Mayor, where the heretics were arraigned before the judges, condemned, dressed in the san benito, handed over to the secular arm, then led forth to this place "without the gate," and consigned to the flames. After each incremation sand was strewn over the spot, and it served as the SOR PATROCINIO, THE BLEEDING NUN. MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. rubbish-heap of Madrid until the Inquisition again led forth its victims. For some generations it had been covered up and forgotten, till at last the language of Scripture was fulfilled : " The earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain." The sensation caused by the discovery of these remains was immense, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain and the civilised world. Judging from the num- ber and extent of the layers laid bare, many hundreds of persons must have been burned to death on this spot alone, thus affording most striking proof that the number of those who perished in the fires of the Inquisition, as given by Llorente and other writers on the subject, are by no means exaggerated. Among other horrors said to have been found were two bony hands transfixed by a large nail, and clasped in the attitude of prayer ; and the ribs of another victim with the spear still protruding by which he had been trans- fixed. On the attempt being made to separate them from the surrounding substance they crumbled into dust. Shortly after the discovery I visited the spot, and much as I had heard of the horrors of the Quemadero, I was not prepared for the sight I beheld. Layer above layer, like the strata in a geological model, were these silent but most eloquent witnesses to the murderous cruelty of Rome. Numerous city- Arabs were running to and fro, offering for sale bones and fragments of wood or iron picked out from the sides of the mound. I preferred, however, to search for myself, and in a ver)- few minutes filled a small box with relics which were imbedded in the charcoal. One could not wonder that when this frightful disclosure was commented upon in the Cortes by the eloquence of Echegaray it struck a heavier blow against religious intolerance than could have been pro- duced by any string of arguments founded merely on theoretical considerations. SPANISH PRIEST. A book on Spain must of necessity contain some account of a bull-fight ; for " the bull-fight," says Ford, " let moralists say what they will, is the sight of Spain. There the past is linked with the present, and Spanish nationality is revealed, for trans- Pyreneean civilisation has not yet invaded this sacred spot." But if a bull- fight be described at all, it ought to be described as it is. To conceal its savage brutality, to keep out of sight its disgusting and revolting incidents, and to fling over the whole a halo of romantic sentiment, is not to instruct, but to deceive. 84 BULL-FIGHT. The following plain unvarnished narrative, in which " nothing is extenuated, naught set down in malice," may be taken as a truthful description of an ordinary bull-fight. Entering the Plaza de Toros, one sees a vast amphitheatre, open to the sky, with an arena in the centre. The seats, which rise tier above tier, in concentric circles, will accommodate many thousand spectators : that at Seville seats eleven thousand persons ; that at Madrid, twelve thousand five hundred ; that at Valencia, seventeen thousand. The seats are commonly filled to their utmost capacity before the hour of commencement. A double barrier encloses the arena, so that if the bull leaps over the first, there still remains a second between himself and the spectators. At the hour announced, generally four o'clock in the afternoon — at a bull- fight even Spaniards are punctual and brook no delay — a procession enters the arena, headed by mounted alguazils, dressed in a quaint mediaeval costume, followed by chiilos, bandei'-illeros, picadors, and matadors. The procession is closed by one or two teams of mules, three abreast, and gaily caparisoned. Having marched round the arena to the music of a military band, and saluted the president, who occupies a state box opposite the principal entrance, the various performers take their places, like the fielders in a game of cricket. A trumpet sounds ; the president tosses the key of the toril to the alguazil, who catches it in his plumed hat, and proceeds to unlock and open the door, leaping aside the instant he has done so, to escape being knocked down and gored by the bull. In a few seconds the noble brute rushes in, with head erect, and looks proudly round. The crowd of spectators greet him with excited shouts and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Catching sight of one of the chulos, he dashes at him. The chulo skips aside, waves his mantle over the eyes of the bull, and escapes. The bull singles out another, and another, and another of the gay and glittering throng, but with the same result. Some- times he presses a man so closely, and charges upon him so repeatedly, that the fugitive has to escape by leaping over the barrier, which he does as light as a bird. This part of the fiesta is very beautiful. The brilliant dresses and agile movements of the men, who skim and disport themselves over the arena like a cloud of butterflies, the gallant bearing of the bull, his sleek hide and powerful graceful form, make a dazzling spectacle. The slight element of 8s BULL-FIGHTERS. MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. danger, too, adds to the excitement. It is seldom that any of the toreros are hurt. But it does sometimes happen that one of them sHps down and is gored by the bull in his endeavours to escape. The possibility that this may be the case adds intensity to the interest with which the affair is watched. But to the Spaniards all this is mere child's play. If it continues too long they become impatient, and begin to clamour for more exciting sport. Two mounted picadors now come forward and engage the notice of the bull. The horses they ride are wretched beasts, fit only for the knacker's yard, and they are generally blinded or blindfolded, to make them stand the charge of the bull without flinching. Each picador is armed with a long heavy spear. ■~i^^g^^ THE BULL-FIGHT. of which from one to two inches of the blade is exposed. They are protected from injury by a thick padding over their bodies, and greaves of iron and leather upon their legs. The bull forthwith charges upon one of these assailants, and is received by him upon his spear or garrocha. Sometimes the horseman succeeds in repelling his assailant, but more often the bull, mad with excitement, is only infuriated by the wound, and presses on in spite of the spear-head in his shoulder. The picador must now endeavour to wheel his horse and so escape the charge. This, however, is very difficult, and if he fail, the horns of the bull are driven deep into the horse's body. The chulos BULL-FIGHT. endeavour to draw off the attention of the assailant, and thus help their comrade to escape. The other picador is then attacked, and so the struggle goes on. Sometimes the horse falls dead in a moment, the horns penetrating some vital part. More often it staggers away bleeding and desperately wounded. Some- times the horse and man together are lifted clean off the ground and flung with tremendous force to the earth. I once saw two horses staggering about the arena at the same time, their entrails hanging out upon the ground ; yet the picadors kept their seats unmoved, whilst the crowd yelled forth its fierce delight at the spectacle. When a horse has been wounded, it is not removed from the arena. So long as it can keep on its legs the torero retains his place upon its back, and invites or repels the attacks of the bull ; a handful of tow may be thrust into the gaping wound to stanch the blood and protract for a few minutes its wretched life. When it sinks down to die, it is left unheeded to struggle in its death agony. The picador leaves the arena for a moment, and returns upon another horse, which is to suffer the same fate. From four to six horses are commonly killed by each bull. In about ten or fifteen minutes the bull, enfeebled by loss of blood, and exhausted by his repeated charges, begins to flag. It is needful to rouse him to fresh fury. Loud shouts are heard for the banderillas. The trumpet again sounds, and two banderilleros enter. The first steps forward with a long barbed dart in each hand, gaily decorated with streamers of ribbons and flowers, and, if the bull be lethargic, armed with fireworks. He stands just in front of the poor beast, and as it stoops to toss him he fixes one in each shoulder, and skips nimbly aside. The gaily decorated instruments of torture fall over by their own weight, but remain fixed in the wound. A second and a third pair are thrust into the poor wretch's neck alongside the first. The bull some- times bounds into the air with pain and fury, sometimes roars and tears up the sand in his vain endeavours to rid himself of the torturing darts. He rushes to and fro, trying to escape or to avenge himself upon his tormentors. His hide, glossy as the finest satin when he entered the arena, is now covered with blood ; his eye, which flashed like fire, is dim and bloodshot ; his parched tongue hangs from his mouth. It is impossible to goad or torture him into further fighting. The matador or espada now comes forward, and watching his opportunity, plunges his sword between the vertebrae into the spine. The bull drops dead. The people thunder forth their applause. If the feat has been courageously or cleverly performed, the ladies shower down their bouquets and the men their hats and caps upon their favourite hero. The teams of mules enter and drag out the dead bodies of the bull and the horses ; sand is sprinkled over the pools of blood in the arena ; the trumpet again sounds, another bull enters, and the same sickening spectacle is repeated again and again, with slight variations, till the stock of bulls and horses is exhausted. It only remains to add that at a first-class fiesta, like those at Madrid, Seville, or Valencia, from six to eight bulls, and from twenty to forty horses, MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. are killed each time ; that they are always celebrated on a Sunday, or at one of the great Church festivals ; that each bull-fight costs from three to four hundred pounds ; and that the profits of the performance, which are often considerable, go to the hospitals of the town. It is surely needless to point out the brutal and the brutalising effect of this sport upon the spectators. No one can see it for the first time without a sense of faintness and of sickening horror. Yet gradually this feeling wears off. Not a few Englishmen resident in Spain are known to the writer, who have overcome their natural repugnance, and visit the corrida dc toros as often as opportunity offers. As for the Spaniards themselves, it still remains the favourite amusement of the people. All classes, all ages, both sexes, may be seen watching with keen and eager interest the bloody spectacle which recalls most vividly the cruel sports of the Coliseum. Few persons can have been present at a bull-fight without being forcibly reminded of the worst times of pagan Rome, when men and beasts were brought together, and "butchered to make a Roman holiday." It does not come within the plan of this work to describe the "objects of interest " in the places visited. A glance at Murray or O'Shea will show them to be less numerous in Madrid than in most capitals of the same size and pretensions. The Armoury and the collection of paintings in the Real Museo are the only exhibitions which deserve special notice. The pictures are of extraordinary merit and value. The great Spanish painters, Murillo, Velasquez, and Ribera, are splendidly represented. Of the Italian school there are forty- three Titians — a gallery in themselves. Raphael has ten great pictures ; one or two are of doubtful authenticity ; one or two others have been injured by over-cleaning ; but there are three of first-rate excellence — a Holy Family, known as the Perla, which once belonged to our Charles I. ; a Christ bearing the Cross, known to art-critics as el Pasmo, from having been painted for the Church of la Madonna del Spasimo in Sicily ; and a picture of Tobit and the Fish, "a simple, grand, symmetrical composition." Guido, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Rubens, Teniers, Snyders, Breughel, Claude, and other great names in art, have some of the finest productions upon the walls. The pictures altogether exceed two thousand in number ; and it is perhaps no exaggeration when Ford styles it the "richest gallery in the world." Before leaving Madrid it seems proper to take notice of the work of evange- lisation in progress there. The Spaniards had been kept for many generations in blind, unquestioning adhesion to the Church of Rome. They had been either ignorant of the existence of Protestantism, or had been taught to believe that it was an atheistic and immoral system. Much preparatory work had therefore to be done in the way of removing prejudices. The misconceptions prevalent as to the nature of Protestantism produced indeed one unexpectedly beneficial effect. Infidelity and atheism had made fearful progress amongst the people. Though 88 THE WORK OF EVANGELISATION. in outward form every one was, and was compelled to be, a Roman Catholic, yet multitudes were in heart estranged not only from the Papal Church, but from all religious belief. They had been sedulously taught that the Protestants were, openly and avowedly, what they themselves were secretly. Hence, after the revolution, when liberty came to be enjoyed, and places were opened for Protestant worship, crowds came together under the impression that they were invited to assist in an infidel propaganda. This idea was so fixed and inveterate that even to this day it has been found impossible altogether to eradicate it. Under the same impression the Bible was largely bought during the early days of the revolutionary excitement. The priests had strenuously insisted that to introduce the Bible into Spain would be to open the flood-gates to infidelity and anarchy. The people took them at their word. Wherever the Bible was offered for sale it was bought up with avidity, in the belief that it was an infidel book. Gradually these errors have been corrected, the ferment has subsided, and the work of evangelisation, as it loses its sensational and exciting character, bids fair to assume a healthier tone. The discovery of the relics of the martyrs who had perished in the fires of the Inquisition gave an immense impetus to the spread of the gospel. It brought vividly before the people the iniquities of the system from which they had just escaped. It showed them, too, that Protestantism was no new thing in Spain, but that it had flourished at the time of their greatest national glories, and that their national decline had been coincident with its suppression. There was a large distribution of Bibles and tracts amongst the excited crowds who flocked to the spot. If the Protestant preachers had chosen to avail themselves of the agitation thus produced, it would have been easy for them to have driven every priest from Madrid, amidst the curses and execrations of the people. A wiser and more Christian course was pursued. The evangelists working in the city, whilst they endeavoured to calm the agitation, turned it to good account. A personal narrative of what I saw during three days in May of the year 1870, will perhaps put the facts of the case before the reader in the briefest and most precise form. On Thursday, May 5, I visited in the morning the Protestant schools in the Madera baja. About eighty boys and girls were in attendance. They were bright, intelligent children, varying in age from six to fourteen years. The system of teaching seemed thoroughly good, and the children's knowledge of Scripture was extraordinary. In the afternoon I attended a meeting for prayer held by various English and English-speaking workers in Madrid, irrespective of sect or party. At five in the afternoon a service was held in the Madera baja. The congregation consisted of from six hundred to seven hundred persons- — all Spaniards, except about a dozen English visitors. I have never seen a more attentive and devout congregation, and I never heard a more earnest evangelical sermon. It was from the words, " Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The preacher MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. most eloquently and forcibly illustrated our need of peace with God, showed that till justified we could not be at peace, proved that only through Jesus Christ could we be justified, and appealed to his hearers to seek, at once, that peace which Christ promises to all His followers, a promise which is fulfilled in the experience of all who trust in Him. On Friday morning I met a number of youths w^ho were being sent to Pau, there to receive an education fitting them to return to Spain as teachers, or to hold other posts of usefulness and influence. I then saw several children from schools in connection with congregations south of the Puerta del Sol. They sang, very sweetly, a number of the hymns with which we are familiar in England and America; such as, " I think, when I read that sweet story of old ; " " There is a happy land ;" " Children, won't you rise and tell ?" and others. These have been translated into Spanish, and are sung to the familiar tunes which are becoming as great favourites with Spanish children as they have long been with those of England and America. In the evening I was present at a Bible class in the Lavapiese, where from twenty to thirty adults were going through a course of advanced Scriptural teaching, to prepare them for taking their place at the Communion Table. On Sunday morning I attended the chapel in the Madera baja, which will seat eight hundred and fifty persons. It was crowded to the doors. The sermon was from the words, " I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." The gift of the Holy Spirit, through Christ, to a dark, sinful, sorrowing world w^as the subject of discourse. At the close of the sermon it was announced that Signor Cabrera, of Seville, who was passing through Madrid, would hold a supplemental service. To this at least four hundred persons remained. In the afternoon I looked in at several Sunday schools, and in the evening attended service at the Lavapiese. There were from three to four hundred persons present, many of whom had Bibles, and I was exceedingly struck by the readiness and ease with which they turned to the passages of Scripture read or referred to by the preacher. It must not be supposed that these were all the meetings for Protestant worship held in the city at this time. I have merely named those at which I myself was present, and I have reported the impression which they produced on my own mind. There were at least five other services going on simultaneously with that at the Lavapiese, and I was informed that all were well filled, and some were crowded. Comparing the religious condition of Madrid two years previously with that which I found existing, I was forcibly reminded of the vision beheld by the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones. It had seemed impossible that those dry bones should live. A religious awakening and revival was beyond the reach of human hope. But already there is a movement and a " shaking." We have all possible encouragement to obey the command, and hopefully to trust GATEWAY OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEGOVIA. THE ESCORIAL. the promise which follows — "Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind ; prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind. Thus saith the Lord God : Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded me ; and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army."* The Escorial and Segovia may be visited en route to Madrid from the north. But for many reasons it is more convenient to take these places as a separate tour from the capital. The hotel accommodation is very bad at both of them ; and the diligence and railway trains are so ill-adjusted to one another that it is difficult to combine them as parts of a longer tour. We therefore include them in this chapter as excursions from Madrid. The Escorial is about thirty-five miles from Madrid, on the northern line of railway. Its situation, though ill-suited for a residence, is very grand as a piece of natural scenery. It stands with a vast sweep of barren moor in front, which stretches away into the distance in almost endless undulations. Behind it rise a range of hills of noble height and form, dark and savage in the foreground, till, as they recede into the distance, they melt into a tender delicious blue. The scenery is like that of the Highlands of Scotland. A young Scotchman resident in Madrid told me that he used to run over to the Escorial as often as he could get away from his duties in the city, '* it reminded him so much of his old home." But nowhere in Great Britain have we a line of snow-clad peaks like the Sierra de Guadarrama, which form the northern horizon. The keen, serrated edges stand up clear and sharp against the sky, and seem in the keen, pure air as though they were only a few miles away. Mr. Sala speaks of it as "a background of mountain scenery more beautiful and sublime than any I have seen out of Mexico." In this he probably exaggerates more suo. But he is certainly nearer the truth than the ordinary run of tourists, who go on repeating the same hackneyed description of the surrounding country, as though it had neither grandeur nor interest. Beauty it confessedly has none, but the scenery round Balmoral is not more grand and wild — and Balmoral has no chain of snow-peaks in view. It affords a striking illustration of the immense size of the Escorial that even in such a situation as this it looks massive and imposing. An ordinary palace would be dwarfed into insignificance in this waste of moorland and moun- tain. The stern and severe simplicity of its architecture, almost entirely without decoration or ornamentation of any kind, is in harmony with the scene, and adds to its impressiveness. One cannot, however, suppress a smile at the aptness of the description, that "it is like Newgate magnified a hundred times, with the cupola of Bethlehem Hospital on the roof." The Escorial was built by Philip II., originally with the view of founding a * Ezekiel xxxvii. i-io. MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. magnificent burial-place for the Spanish sovereigns ; but as he proceeded, his plans were enlarged, and not only was it formed to receive the royal dead, but it was also destined as a splendid though most gloomy residence for them during their lives. Nor was the all-powerful Church forgotten : a convent arose within the walls for the reception of a number of monks. In this strange manner did the royal bigot fulfil a vow made by him when suffering from the dread of the French army, about to engage his own forces and those of his allies in a decisive battle. Contrary to his panic fear, he was victorious, and in the first enthusiastic warmth of his gratitude, he fulfilled the vow he had made to erect a convent on a certain spot. Building became his favourite pursuit, and the immense pile rose gradually under his auspices. For nine- teen years after its completion (it was nearly twenty-two years before it was finished) did this singular sovereign reside within its melancholy walls, and finally he died there in 1598. As it first appears in sight the palace has a very imposing effect, but a nearer - approach rather lessens these first impressions. It has too modern an aspect, though this in reality arises from the materials used in the building, which have in no way suffered from the lapse of time. Still, even on a near approach, it is very fine. The severity and simplicity of taste apparent in the stately pile give a certain grandeur of effect that is very striking on a first view. Its situation is in perfect keeping with its style of archi- tecture. It is, as it were, actually built on the rocks ; and, unlike any other royal palace, it has no external embellishments of luxuriant nature to set it off: all is rugged, and grand, and melancholy. The grey granite of which it is composed sends a cold shudder through one, as one thinks of the cold, cruel heart of its royal founder ! The grand entrance is never opened excepting to admit the reigning sovereign, or the corpse of the monarch when brought there for interment. I have never been more impressed than by the sight of the chapel of the Escorial. Instead of entering it by stately portals, as is usually the case, this sacred edifice is approached from a dark passage. As one emerges from it, and stands at the arched entrance, it is impossible to describe the effect produced by its simple majesty. After a while you begin to wonder what it is that has produced so startling an impression. There is no ornament of any kind — nothing to interfere with the solemn feeling that one stands in a building consecrated to the worship of the Almighty : there is nothing to diminish the grandeur of the idea. All is solemn and imposing ; everything trifling seems banished. One can hardly understand how a Roman Catholic chapel can have preserved such severe simplicity in everything belonging to it. Truly the architect of that chapel was a master in his profession. There are none of those puerile trifling decorations which, in Spain, so often mar the beauty of the churches ; but all is in severe taste, from the sombre black-and-white pavement to the beautiful screens of bronze and jasper. ALCAZAR AT SEGOVIA. THE ESCORIAL. After gazing at this beautiful chapel the visitor is but little inclined to listen to the legends poured forth by the guides, of the relics collected by the "pious founder." They are said to have amounted to between seven and eight thousand. Peyron enumerates eleven whole bodies, three hundred heads, six hundred legs and arms, three hundred and forty-six veins and arteries, fourteen hundred odd bits, teeth, toes, etc. When the French were here in 1808 they stripped off the gold and precious stones from the relicario, carried away the shrine, and tied up the relics in a table-cloth, with a polite note to the prior, requesting his acceptance of these precious objects, adding, that if the relics really possessed the miraculous virtues ascribed to them, they would easily cause a new shrine to grow up around themselves. It is needless to add that this scoffing wish has not been realised. The Panleon, or royal sepulchre, is under the chapel, and is so arranged that the royal dead lie immediately below the high altar. I last visited the Escorial on one of those delicious days in the late autumn which in Spain are so supremely enjoyable. As we left the clear radiant sunshine and the keen bright air of the mountains for the close dank vapours of the sepulchre, and the yellow lurid light of the torches, the contrast was not a little affecting. The impres- siveness and pathos of the occasion were deepened by the strange weird noises of the wind, which had risen with great rapidity and violence, and seemed to wail, and howl, and shriek through the deserted courts of the Escorial with a thrilling effect. It was as though the builders of this grand and massive pile, the lords of this once mighty land, were bewailing their follies and their crimes. Like all the edifices in Spain which are not in actual occupation, the Escorial seems falling out of repair. On every side are traces of dilapidation. If speedy means be not taken to arrest the progress of decay, this immense palace, convent, and sepulchre will soon become a ruin, like the kingdom of which it is at once the centre and the type. Quite recently it has had a narrow escape of destruction by fire, and in the present deplorable state of Spanish finances there is little probability that the damage done will ever be repaired. Passing the royal palace of San Ildefonso, and the wild and wooded scenery of La Granja, we reach Segovia, one of the most interesting cities even in Spain to the archaeologist and antiquarian. Spanish tradition carries it back to Tubal and Hercules. Sober philology finds in its name traces of an old Iberian origin. And its monumental remains attest and illustrate its pre- Roman, Roman, Gothic, and Moorish occupation. The city is situated on a rocky ridge at a considerable elevation above the plain. Its picturesque old walls, the Alcazar, the curious round towers, the quaint balconied houses, the cathedral, and, above all, the magnificent aqueduct, form a spectacle of rare interest and beauty. But, like all Spanish cities, it has a decayed and im- poverished look. Once it was the centre of an important manufacture. Its MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. Streets were thronged with active and thriving traders. Vast flocks of sheep were driven in from the surrounding country, to be washed in the waters of the Eresma ; and their fleeces suppHed the raw material which kept busy the numerous looms of the Segovian weavers. In the seventeenth century thirty- four thousand persons were engaged in the manufacture of woollen cloths. The whole population of the city at present does not exceed ten thousand, and a few small poor manufactories in the suburb of San Lorenzo are all that remain of its once thriving industry. The aqueduct is supposed to have been built by the Emperor Vespasian. The Segovians ascribe to it a much earlier origin, and call it el ptiente del diablo. Of course they have a wild legend to account for the devil having engaged in so arduous a task as the erection of this magnificent work. Its real object was to convey water over a steep ravine, of seven hundred feet wide and more than ninety feet deep. To effect this, two ranges of arches were thrown across, one above the other. The upper one is on a level with the high land on either side, and has, or had, one hundred and fifty-nine arches. Though the middle part of the aqueduct is ninety-four feet from the ground, yet the bases of the abutments are not more than eight feet wide — a fact which may illustrate, to those who have not seen it, the lightness, grace, and beauty of the structure. It is constructed of granite blocks about two feet square, which are hewn and fitted with such admirable accuracy that they are put together without mortar or cement of any kind. Though they depend for their cohesion solely upon the excellence of the workmanship, yet very few of the blocks have fallen away. The edges, however, are rounded and weather-worn. The cathedral is a spacious and imposing pile of the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a fine but not a first-rate specimen of Gothic architec- ture. Ford, however, says, " It is one of the finest in Spain, and deserves great attention." The view from the tower is superb. At Segovia we meet for the first time with one of those castellated and fortified palaces which the Moors built in every important city, and of which we shall meet with numerous specimens as we travel southwards. The Alcazar of Segovia stands west of the city, on the extremity of a rocky peninsula, which is separated from the surrounding country by the deep bed of the Eresma on one side, and on the other by the abrupt ravine which intersects the city. A deep trench cut across the rocky platform on which it stands completely isolates it, and made it almost impregnable before the introduction of siege artillery. It forms a most picturesque object, and is not without historical interest. Originally the abode and stronghold of the Moorish rulers of the country, it has in later times served as a prison for the pirates of Barbary and Morocco who have been taken along the coast of Spain. It may therefore very easily have happened that a descendant of the very prince who reared this stately pile has been brought hither a prisoner, and consigned to its dungeons. The central tower was for a long period the abode of state prisoners accused or condemned 98 SEGOVIA. of high treason. The readers of Gil Bias will remember that he was confined in this very tower. Here, too, our Charles I. was entertained in princely fashion on his romantic visit to Spain in search of a wife. "He lodged there on Wednesday, 13th September, 1623, and supped," says the record, "upon certaine trouts of extraordinary greatness." AQUEDUCT AT SEGOVIA. A diligence of more than ordinary badness connects Segovia with Villalba, whence the railway carries to the capital in little more than an hour. MADRID, THE ESCORIAL, AND SEGOVIA. Note. — In the interval between the appearance of the first and second editions of Spanish Pictures, the forebodings expressed in the preceding chapter respecting the future of Spain have been but too fully verified. The first edition had scarcely left the press when an announcement that the Prince of HohenzoUern-Sigraaringen was a favoured candidate for the Spanish throne furnished the occasion for the war between France and Germany. The obnoxious candidature being withdrawn, the council of ministers, who had been foiled in so many previous attempts, addressed themselves to Amadeus, Duke d'Aosta, second son of the King ot Italy. His official acceptance of the candidature was notified on the 19th October, 1870, and on the i6th November following, a large majority of the Cortes voted his election as King of Spain. He landed at Cartagena on the 30th December, expecting to be met by General Prim. But Prim lay helpless in Madrid, the victim of assassination. Before the young king set out for the capital, news of the general's death reached him. He entered Madrid on the 2nd January, 187 1, and for two years manfully endeavoured to secure liberty, order, and prosperity for his adopted country. Having seen his efforts thwarted by factious politicians, his queen insulted by the nobility, and having narrowly escaped death by the hands of assassins, he renounced the crown, and returned to Italy early in 1873. Since then the country has been torn to pieces by civil war. A federal republic at Madrid, the Carlists in the northern provinces, and Intransigentes everyAvhere have been contending fiercely for the mastery. A period of anarchy has set in, the end of which it is impossible to foresee. THE LATE KING AND QUEEN OF SPAIN. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. UKt-^r \ASh IN THE ALHAMBRA. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. GENERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY ARANJUEZ THE TAGUS — TOLEDO — LA MANCHA AND DON QUIXOTE CORDOVA THE KINGDOM OF GRANADA LOJA THE VEGA THE ALHAMBRA AND GENERALLIFFE CITY OF GRANADA. "T^HERE are few routes in Spain of deeper or ^ more varied interest than that over which we are about to pass in the present chapter. The scenery is pecuharly and characteristically Spanish, Snow-capped sierras ; bare mountain sides on which not a particle of soil rests ; arid, treeless, water- less plains ; rivers of high-sounding historic names shrunk to narrow streamlets ; hills rich in mineral treasures waiting only human industry to bring forth their hidden wealth ; and vegas which irriga- tion has turned into gardens of almost incredible fertility, succeed one another along the whole line of travel. Here, too, are scenes famous in history and romance. We traverse La Mancha, whose villages have been made " familiar in our mouths as household words" by the genius of Cervantes, We cross battle-fields where Moslem and Christian did such desperate deeds of valour, the record of which lies on the border-land between history and romance. Where, too, in stern, hard, historic reality Lord Wellington and the British army defeated, one after another, the most skilful generals and the bravest troops which France could send against them. We linger in cities where some of the noblest productions of Roman, Moorish, and Christian art attest the genius of their builders. And we rest at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, whose eternal snows look down upon the fertile huerta of Granada and upon the fortress and palace of the Alhambra, the fame of whose beauty has gone into all lands. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. The general aspect of the district and its inhabitants has been often described, but never with more vivid, graphic, picturesque force than by Washington Irving. The truthfulness and accuracy of the sketch will be recognised by every one who has travelled through La Mancha, Granada, and Andalusia : "Many are apt to picture Spain to their imaginations as a soft southern region, decked out with all the luxuriant charms of voluptuous Italy. On the contrary, though there are exceptions in some of the maritime provinces, yet, for the greater part, it is a stern, melancholy country, with rugged moun- tains, and long sweeping plains, destitute of trees, and indescribably silent and lonesome, partaking of the savage and solitary character of Africa. What adds to this silence and loneliness is the absence of singing-birds, a natural conse- quence of the want of groves and hedges. The vulture and the eagle are seen wheeling about the mountain-cliffs, and soaring over the plains, and groups of shy bustards stalk about the heaths ; but the myriads of smaller birds, which animate the whole face of other countries, are met with in but few provinces in Spain, and in those chiefly among the orchards and gardens which surround the habitations of man. "In the interior provinces the traveller occasionally traverses great tracts cultivated with grain as far as the eye can reach, waving at times with verdure, at other times naked and sunburnt ; but he looks round in vain for the hand that has tilled the soil. At length, he perceives some village on a steep hill or rugged crag, with mouldering battlements and ruined watch-tower ; a strong- hold, in old times, against civil war or Moorish inroad ; for the custom among the peasantry of congregating together for mutual protection is still kept up in most parts of Spain, in consequence of the maraudings of roving freebooters. But though a great part of Spain is deficient in the garniture of groves and forests, and the softer charms of ornamental cultivation, yet its scenery is noble in its severity, and in unison with the attributes of its people. " There is something, too, in the sternly simple features of the Spanish landscape that impresses on the soul a feeling of sublimity. The immense plains of the Castiles and of La Mancha, extending as far as the eye tan" reach, derive an interest from their very nakedness and immensity, and possess, in some degree, the solemn grandeur of the ocean. In ranging over these boundless wastes, the eye catches sight here and there of a straggling herd of cattle attended by a lonely herdsman, motionless as a statue, with his long slender pike tapering up like a lance into the air; or beholds a long train of mules slowly moving along the waste, like a line of camels in the desert ; or a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian characten The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in the field, the shepherd in the plain, has his musket and his knife. The wealthy villager i!iii'|iiiiiiiii!ii,i'iy!i GENERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. rarely ventures to the market-town without his tralmco, and, perhaps, a servant on foot with a blunderbuss on his shoulder ; and the most petty journey is undertaken with the preparation of a warlike enterprise. "It has a most picturesque effect also to meet a train of muleteers in some mountain pass. First you hear the bells of the leading mules breaking, with their COUNTRYMAN OF GRANADA. simple melody, the stillness of the airy height ; or, perhaps, the voice of the muleteer admonishing some tardy or wandering animal, or chanting, at the full stretch of his lungs, some traditionary ballad. At length you see the mules slowly winding along the cragged defile, sometimes descending precipitous cliffs, THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. SO as to present themselves in full relief against the sky, sometimes toiling up the deep arid chasms below you. As they approach, you descry their gay decorations of worsted tufts, tassels, and saddle-cloths ; while, as they pass by, the ever-ready trabuco slung behind the packs and saddles gives a hint of the insecurity of the road. " The ancient kingdom of Granada, into which we were about to penetrate, COUNTRYMAN OF GRANADA, is one of the most mountainous regions of Spain. Vast sierras, or chains of mountains, destitute of shrub or tree, and mottled with variegated marbles and granites, elevate their sunburnt summits against a deep-blue sky ; yet in their rugged bosoms lie engulfed the most verdant and fertile valleys, where the desert and the garden strive for master}^ and the very rock is, as it were. ARANJUEZ. compelled to yield the fig, the orange, and the citron, and to blossom with the myrtle and the rose. "In the wild passes of these mountains the sight of walled towns and villages, built like eagles' nests among the cliffs, and surrounded by Moorish battlements, or of ruined watch-towers perched on lofty peaks, carries the mind back to the chivalric days of Christian and Moslem warfare, and to the romantic struggle for the conquest of Granada. In traversing these lofty sierras the traveller is often obliged to alight and lead his horse up and down the steep and jagged ascents and descents, resembling the broken steps of a staircase. Some- times the road winds along dizzy precipices, without parapet to guard him from the gulfs below, and then will plunge down steep and dark and dangerous declivities. Sometimes it straggles through rugged barrancos, or ravines, worn by winter torrents, the obscure path of the contrabandista ; while, ever and anon, the ominous cross, the monument of robbery and murder, erected on a mound of stones at some lonely part of the road, admonishes the traveller that he is among the haunts of banditti, perhaps at that very moment under the eye of some lurking bandolero. Sometimes, in winding through the narrow valleys, he is startled by a hoarse bellowing, and beholds above him, on some green fold of the mountain side a herd of fierce Andalusian bulls, destined for the combat of the arena. I have felt, if I may so express it, an agreeable horror in thus contemplating near at hand these terrific animals, clothed with tremen- dous strength, and ranging their native pastures in untamed wildness, strangers almost to the face of man : they know no one but the solitary herdsman who attends upon them, and even he at times dares not venture to approach them. The low bellowing of these bulls, and their menacing aspect as they look down from their rocky height, give additional wildness to the savage scenery around." Leaving Madrid by the Calle de Alcala, and the Prado, we reach the railway station for Toledo and Cordova. The view of the city from this point and for some miles along the road is magnificent. It stands nobly upon an elevated plateau, with the snowy Guadarramas as a background, and a clear intensely-blue sky above. Judging from this view alone, one would be disposed to retract all that has been said in disparagement of the site of Madrid. In about an hour and a half Aranjuez is reached. Most people who have heard or read any accounts of Spain will remember how famous this place has been as a royal palace. Situated in a valley wooded and well watered by streams, it enjoys cool green shade and healthful breezes when the rest of Castile is burned into an arid waste. Fountains abound in the gardens. Birds, so rare elsewhere in Spain, are numerous. Nightingales keep up a perpetual melody, prompting the listener to exclaim, with Izaak Walton : " He that should hear, as I have, the clear airs of the nightingale, the sweet descants, the rising and falling of her voice, THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. might well be lifted above the earth and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for Thy saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music here on earth !' " The stately elms and planes bear comparison with those of our own well-wooded island. The palace itself, however, and the gardens are formal and unattractive. They were constructed by the Bourbons at a time when French taste — or want of taste — was dominant throughout Europe : " Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother, And half the garden but reflects the other," Those who care for rare glass and china, for porcelain grotesques, for gilt clocks which will not keep time, and gilt chairs which were never meant to be sat upon, may find abundance of such fine things here. The stables are fine. ARANJIEZ. and contain some noble animals. Such mules are probably not to be seen out of Spain. Immediately on leaving Aranjuezthe Tagus comes into view. It is a noble river even at thi:> distance inland, and meanders gracefully through green meadows, which owe their fertility to its refreshing stream. Water is the one requisite for Spanish agriculture. Where irrigation is practicable, and where the Spaniard has energy enough to irrigate the thirsty soil, crops of almost incredible richness may be raised. To some extent the Tag-us is utilized for this purpose — but for this only. By a little exertion it might be made navigable to the sea, and thus confer an inestimable boon upon the central provinces of Spain. Madrid would share in the benefit and be brousfht into communication with Lisbon and the sea. "Schemes have been proposed hy foreigners to effect this, and they THE TAGUS AND TOLEDO. have been approved by the Spanish authorities. Meanwhile, nothing has been done. The thing remains in projection to the present day. Verdmos ! for ' Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper,' says Bacon. Meantime this Tagus, a true thing of wild romantic Spain, is made for the poet and artist ; how stern, solemn, and striking indeed is the lovely unused river ! No commerce ever made it a highway, its waters have reflected castles and dungeons, instead of quays and warehouses ; few cities have risen on its banks as on the Rhine, scarcely even a village. It flows away solitary and unseen ; its waters without boats, its shores without life." * Toledo soon comes into view, standing proudly upon a rocky eminence. Even those who are already familiar with the cities of Granada and Andalusia can hardly fail to be impressed by the imposing grandeur of the site, the air of venerable antiquity, and the picturesque, Oriental aspect of Toledo. But visitors from the north who now see for the first time one of the old Moorish capitals of Spain can scarcely find words to express the emotions it awakens. It looks like what it is — one of the oldest cities in Europe. The vulgar tradition of the district, indeed, affirms that Adam was the first king of Spain, with Toledo for his capital, and that the sun started from a point vertical to the city. The Jews assert that it was settled by their forefathers who fled from Palestine in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and they derive its name from the Hebrew word Toledoth, understanding it to mean *'the city of generations." This much is certain that it was in existence 193 B.C. when it was taken by Marcus Fulvius Novilior. On the decline of the Roman power it became the capital of the Gothic kingdom. Here the half-mythical King Wamba reigned. And here, according to tradition, Roderick, the last of the Goths, committed the outrage upon the beautiful Florinda which prompted her father, Count Julian, to call in the Moors to avenge his private wrongs. f Under the dominion of the Moors, Toledo rose to a very high degree of prosperity. The Christians were protected in the enjoyment of their property and the exercise of their faith. The Jews held posts of high influence and authority, like Joseph and Mordecai, administering the affairs of an alien government to the advantage of the rulers and of the people and to their own enrichment. The system of agriculture introduced by the Arabs into Spain was calculated to increase immensely the productiveness of a country where cultivation is greatly hindered by the extreme dryness of the soil and climate. * Ford's " Handbook for Spain," vol. i. p. 100. + The local tradition, as I heard it from a young peasant who volunteered to be my guide through the district, makes of the beautiful Florinda, " a Moorish maiden of whom the king became enamoured as he saw her bathing in the Tagus, at the foot of the Alcazar, whereupon great troubles followed." " What troubles?" I asked. "Ah !" replied my informant, " to know that you must read history, in which are many things hard to understand and difficult to believe." So untrustworthy is even local tradition. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. The soil was everywhere irrigated by the aid of streams and rivers where they were available and elsewhere by the digging of wells 'and the construction of ndrias. After the conquest of Toledo by the Christians in 1085, its prosperity declined. The conquerors broke faith with the Moors. The terms of capitulation were violated. The mosques were turned into churches. The property of the Moors which had been secured to them by treaty was taken from them. At length they were glad to escape from a city which, though dear to them as their birthplace, was now embittered by injustice and cruelty. After a considerable lapse of time, Toledo again rose from its ruins, and be- came a most flourishing commercial and manufacturing city. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it had a population of not fewer than two hundred thousand souls. It was the Sheffield and the Birmingham of the Middle Ages. A " Toledo blade" was famous throughout Europe and was scarcely inferior to one of Damascus. At a time of great depression its in- habitants petitioned for a redress of grievances, and to illustrate their fallen CLOISTERS AT TOLEPO, TOLEDO. condition protested that there no longer remained in the city more than thirty thousand artisans. At present the entire population of Toledo does not exceed fifteen thousand, and it displays no tendency to increase. The streets are silent and deserted. The houses are falling into decay. Its manufactures are almost extinct. Even the world-famous fabric de annas offers but a shadow of its former greatness and prosperity. This condition of decay is partly due to the departure or the banishment of the Moors, partly to the bloody persecutions of the Jews and their descendants, who had professed Christianity in order to save their property, their liberty, and their lives. They were amongst the most in- dustrious and the richest of the inhabitants. To this fact perhaps they were especially indebted for the suspicions and the solicitude of the Holy Office which enriched itself by their plunder. The loss of its liberties and privileges under Charles V., and the enslavement of the whole nation under his successors, accelerated and completed the downfall of Toledo, the decline of which in industry and wealth is even more remarkable than in any other part of Spain. There is great diversity of judgment respecting the cathedral. Critics of a severe and simple taste find it too florid and ornate. They complain, too, of its mixed and irregular character, and of the intrusion of an enormous coro — large even for Spain — into the body of the church, obstructing the view, and marring the general effect. The truth of these criticisms may be admitted. And yet it is a most noble edifice. The general effect is gorgeous beyond description — the more gorgeous on account of the Moorish element which manifests itself every- where. " A practised eye," says Mr. Fergusson, in his Handbook of Architec- ture, "will detect on every side a tendency to depart from the sober constructive rules of the pure Gothic, and to give rein to an Oriental exuberance of fancy which is so typical of the style. The cathedral of Toledo is even more remark- able for the richness of its furniture than for that of its architecture. The altars, the screens of its tombs, the candelabra, the paintings on glass and canvas, make up a mass of ornament to which no parallel is to be found in France or England. Many cathedrals in these countries may once have possessed furniture equally rich ; but spoliation and neglect, and, worse than either, the so-called spirit of restoration, have swept most of this away, and it is in Spain only that we are carried into the bodily presence of a mediaeval church. Even Toledo has been sadly disfigured with whitewash ; and neglect and poverty are fast fulfilling the destructive mission of the age. Still enough remains to enable the architect to understand and re-create the glorious vision of a cathedral as it appeared in ancient days." The once splendid convent called San Fuan de los Reyes, though gutted of its treasures by the French, and now closed and falling into ruins, deserves a visit. It stands finely on an eminence looking down upon the Tagus, which flows far down in the valley below. An immense number of fetters and manacles are suspended over the entrance of the church and round its sides, placed there as THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. votive offerings by captives who had escaped from slavery amongst the Moors. Many other churches in central and southern Spain have similar records of the cruelties inflicted by the Moslem on their captives. This fact should be re- membered when we judge the Spanish conquerors severely for the hard measure dealt out to the Moors after their defeat. For eight hundred years a bitter and ceaseless warfare had been waged between the two peoples. The Spaniards of the days of Ferdinand and Isabella inherited the hatred and revenge accumulated during long centuries of pitiless warfare. The gospel enjoins forgiveness of injuries, bids us, when smitten on the one cheek, to turn the other, and lays down the golden rule to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. But, however much we regret, we cannot greatly wonder that these pacific precepts should be forgotten in the moment of victory closing a struggle so protracted and so fierce. Near the Museum is the Juderia or Jews' quarter. It has been already stated that the Jews at one time were very numerous and influential in Toledo. Many archaeologists and historians, indeed, believe that the city was originally a Jewish settlement.* Two synagogues, now turned into churches, yet remain. They are Oriental in style, and though rich in arabesque work, are more simple and severe in taste than are most Moorish edifices. One built in the ninth century is called the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca. The French de- graded it to a store-house and cavalry stable, and it is now unused. The ceiling is said to be constructed from the cedars of Lebanon, and the soil to have been brought from Mount Zion. The other synagogue was built by Samuel Levy, treasurer to Don Pedro the Cruel, in 1357. The ornamentation of the ceiling and walls is delicate and beautiful. The eighty-fourth Psalm, in very elegant Hebrew letters, runs as a cornice round the building. "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts ! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." Space will only permit the mention of one more out of the innumerable places of profound jnterest in this most picturesque old city — the Alcazar. It was built soon after the Moorish occupation of Spain on the site of the Roman * The shrewd and well-informed author of A Year in Spain, so highly commended by Ford in the Quarterly Review, as a book of unusual merit, and betraying a rare knowledge of the country, says : " It was in the neighbourhood of Toledo that Taric the Moslem general, at the time of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs, found that precious table adorned with hyacinths and emeralds, which Gelif Alexis, in his description of Spain, calls the table of Solomon bar David. This table is supposed to have been saved by the captive Jews, with other precious and sacred vessels, from the pillage of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and brought with them into Spain. It was probably the same table of shew-bread spoken of in the Book of Kings and by Josephus. There can be little doubt that this was the original table of shew-bread made by Solomon, and that it was secreted b}- the Jews when the treasures of the temple were carried by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon." We may hesitate to accept this conclusion, notwithstanding the arguments by which the writer proceeds to support it. But that so competent a writer should give credence to the legend may illustrate the high position held by the Jews at Toledo. ' LA MANCHA. Arx, which probably had already superseded some yet earlier fortress — Car- thaginian or Iberian. It was enlarged, strengthened, and beautified by successive monarchs of Spain down to the days of Charles V. and Philip II. It has been used as a palace, a fortress, and a prison, a poor-house in which paupers were employed in silk-weaving, and barracks for French troops. It has been twice burned, and for many years has been left, roofless and neglected, to crumble into ruins. A feeble and desultory effort is now being made to restore it ; but those who know how such matters are managed in Spain entertain little hope from such efforts. It is more imposing in ruins than in any restoration it is likely to receive at the hands of the Spaniards. The view from the top is superb. Leaving Toledo by the noble Moorish gateway, the Puerta del Sol, and crossing the Romano-Gothic bridge which spans the Tagus, we reach the station. Convenient as railways are everywhere, especially in Spain, one cannot but feel that a railway here is something of an incongruity and an anachronism. The vehement denunciations of the ferro carril by F'ord seem almost justifiable at Toledo and Cordova. To resume our journey southward we must retrace our steps to Castillejo, near Aranjuez, in order to rejoin the main line from Madrid for Cordova and Seville. Soon after doing so we cross the frontier of La Mancha, the towns and villages of which have been made familiar to us by the genius of Cervantes. He sketched from nature. His art was intensely realistic. Except in the character of the Don himself, almost every detail can be made out and verified at the present day. Here is Toboso, the home of the " never- to-be-enough-admired Dulcinea ;" yonder the Venta de Quesada where the knight of the sorrowful countenance received the accolade. The lakes of Ruydera and the cave of Montesinos, the muleteers, and the windmills, and the wine skins, are all to be seen just as Cervantes described them. Shortly after passing the Venta de Cardenas and the Torre Nueva the railway enters a wild and savage gorge, the Despefiaperros, or " Pitch the dogs over." This name it owes doubtless to some desperate, but forgotten, struggle between Moor and Christian in the times when this was the border-land between the two races. Down these precipitous cliffs "the infidel dogs "were hurled to perish in the depths below. Shortly after leaving the gorge of Despeiiaperros, we pass the mineral district of Linares, the resources of which are being developed by English capital and energy, and enter the fertile plains of Andalusia. The traveller crossing Europe from north to south, can scarcely fail to be struck by the successive zones of vegetation through which he passes. Soon after entering France a few straggling vines remind him that he is reaching the vine country. These become more numerous as he continues his journey, till he reaches districts where the whole landscape is covered with vineyards as far as the THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. eye can reach. Then come, in the south of France, first an occasional oHve- tree, with its meagre, grey, willow-like foliage. Groves of olives gradually take the place of single trees, till the hill-sides are covered with them for miles. As we approach Cordova the cactus and prickly-pear, which had been growing more common ever since we left Madrid, are now used as the fences of fields and gardens, and grow wild in dense masses on the enbankments of the railway. Groves of oranges and lemons too begin to appear with their glossy leaves and golden fruit. And here and there a tall feathery palm-tree rises, the advanced guard of the great army of giants we shall meet farther south. Reaching the old Moorish capital the road into the city leads us along a shady Alameda, with gardens on either side, where the cool plash of water from innumerable fountains, the fragrance of roses and orange-blossoms, the palms and bananas and oleanders in infinite profusion are doubly delightful after the weary monotony of brown bare hills over which we have been passing. Cordova is now a poverty-stricken, decayed, and dilapidated city, of about forty thousand inhabitants, without trade, without manufactures, without life or movement of any kind. It has a dejected and deserted air, beyond almost any other town I have ever visited. Yet in the days of the Moors it was the capital of a kingdom which contained eighty large cities, three hundred towns of the second class, and innumerable villages. It is said, perhaps with an Oriental exaggeration and disregard of arithmetical accuracy, that twelve thousand hamlets stood on the banks of the Guadalquivir alone. The revenues of Abd-ur-rahman amounted to upwards of five million pounds annually, and he was one of the richest and most powerful monarchs in Europe. The city contained, if we may trust the statement of the Moorish chroniclers, six hundred mosques, fifty hospitals, eight hundred schools, nine hundred public baths, eighty thousand shops, two hundred and sixty-three thousand houses, six hundred inns, a library of six hundred thousand volumes, and one million of inhabitants. The surrounding country was laid out in parks, pleasure grounds, and forests. All this grandeur has disappeared. From one of the stateliest capitals in the world it has shrunk into an insignificant and pauperized town ; and but for the activity and energy of some English firms carrying on business in the vicinity, there seems to be nothing to avert its further decadence. One relic of its former glories it yet retains — its incomparable Cathedral, which was erected shortly after the foundation of the western caliphate. Its founder resolved to give his capital the finest mosque in the world. He is reported to have himself traced the plan, and to have worked upon the building daily with hod and trowel, in order to set to his people an example of dili- gence, humility, and piety. The Arab historians say that it originally rested upon twelve hundred columns. On one side were nineteen gates, of which CORDOVA. the centre was covered with gold plates, the others were of bronze beauti- fully decorated. The minarets terminated in gilt balls surmounted by golden pomegranates. The vast edifice was lit by four thousand seven hundred lamps fed by oil perfumed with amber, aloes, and frankincense. They add numerous other marvels, which if only approximately true, justify the claim set up for it as one of the wonders of the world. And enough -remains to warrant us in crediting all which they report. Entering at any of the doors one is bewildered by a perfect forest of columns. THE GREAT MOSQt'E, CORDOVA. which stretch away in every direction. Nearly a thousand of the original number are yet remaining. Their number seems greater than it really is, and the bewildering effect of the whole is increased by the artful arrangement of the building. Twenty-nine naves run in one direction and nineteen in the other. A sort of geometrical pattern is thus traced, the intricacy of which produces a marvellous effect. The columns were brought from all the shores of the Mediterranean. The temples of Sicily, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Egypt, Phoenicia, were despoiled of their finest marbles to contribute to this masterpiece of Moorish art. They are of marbles of all hues, green and THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. blood-coloured, black and white, red and yellow, of chalcedony, lapis-lazuli, porphyr}', granite, serpentine, and verde antique — all monoliths, and all highly polished. The building has suffered much from the tasteless and reckless zeal of the ecclesiastics who turned the mosque into a cathedral. They ran up an enormous coro in the centre of the building, removing many of the finest columns to make way for it. They whitewashed the edifice from end to end, hiding the brilliant arabesques and delicate fretwork of the Arab artists who had been engaged upon it. And they have constructed about forty tawdry chapels, full of gaudy, tinsel ornament. When Charles V. visited Cordova _ and saw what mischief had been - -- - 1^ 3-:^^ , done, he reproached the bishop and chapter, saying — " You have built here what you, or any one, might have built anywhere else ; but you have destroyed what was unique in the world." Only a few parts of the edifice remain uninjured by the hands of the spoiler. Amongst these is the Mih-rab or sanctuary, in the which the Koran was deposited. It is a recess lined with mosaics, said, with probable truth, to be the finest in the world. The roof is formed of a single block of pure white marble, carved into a shell. The cornices are inlaid with Arabic inscriptions in letters of gold. When lit up by the sacristan the recess seems a fairy cavern, radiant with gold and jewels. The brother of the Emperor of Morocco, visit- FDiTNTAiN AND ORANGE-TREES, CORDOVA. ing Spain a fcw ycars ago, tra- versed the ]Mih-rab on his knees, weeping bitterly and beating upon his breast at the contrast between the past and present condition of his people as illustrated by this gem of art. Like most other Moorish buildings, the exterior of the Cathedral is plain and unimpressive. But the Patio dc los Narranjos, or Court of Oranges, is surpassingly beautiful. This is a large quadrangle enclosed within the Cathedral walls. The pavement is of coloured marbles arranged in mosaic patterns. Fountains fall into marble basins. Tall palm-trees rise in stately CORDOVA. grace from amongst groves of orange, lemon, and citron trees, the great size and age of which give support to the tradition that they were planted by the Moors — some of them by Abd-ur-rahman himself. The air is heavy with the fragrance of the orange-blossoms, even when the branches are borne down with the weight of the ripe golden fruit, Spanish girls gather to gossip around the fountains as they fill their vessels, the forms of which are classical in design, handed down from the times of the Romans. Few things can be conceived more enjoyable than to sit in the cool shade of these noble trees, whilst the green light flickers around one from the glossy leaves, to inhale the fragrance, to let the eye wander from point to point, each of which seems more beautiful than the last, __ --^—^■. and to listen to the strains of the Cathedral organ and the choir, as they fall fitfully upon the ear. The Cordovese take a special pride in the bridge which spans the Guadalquivir, with its sixteen buttressed arches. It seems to be a Moorish superstructure up- on Roman foundations. Tradition ascribes it to Octavius Caesar, which is probable enough. The Romans had an important settle- ment here, and the city took an active part in the civil wars be- tween Pompey and Caesar. Here Lucan and the two Senecas were born. The city itself has small claims to beauty. The streets are even narrower, more crooked, and more dilapidated than those of Toledo. The walls which surround it present a curious patchwork ; the brickwork of the Romans, the stonework of. the Goths, and the ifapia of the Moors join on to one another. The enclosure within the walls now is the same as in the days of the city's prosperity ; so that the abodes of thirty thousand people now straggle over a space which once held a million. The vacant spots thus left are either encumbered with ruins or are laid out as gardens, in which the fruits and flowers of the tropics flourish, unprotected, in the open air, intermingled with the pro- ductions of more temperate climes. The peach, the pear, and the apple, the orange, the fig, and the banana come to perfection side by side. But the palms are the special glory of Cordova. In the Alamedas and gardens the MOORISH BRIDGE AND GATE, CORDOVA. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. dwarf variety flourishes most luxurianth', springing from an undergrowth of semi-tropical plants. Others rise high above the walls and housetops of the city, and are among the first objects which the traveller sees as he approaches it. It is said that all the palms in Spain descend from one planted by PALMS IN THE ALAMEDA, CORDOVA. Abd-ur-rahman in his favourite garden on the banks of the Guadalquivir. He composed a poem in praise of it, of which the following is a translation : " Beautiful palm-tree ! like me, thou art a stranger in the l.ind ; But thy roots find a friendly and a fertile soil, Thy head rises into a genial atmosphere ; The balmy west breathes kindly amongst thy branches. Thou hast nothing to fear from evil fortune ; But I am ever exposed to its treachery ! When cruel fate and the fuiy of Abbas drove me from my dear country, CORDOVA. My tears often watered the palm-trees which grew upon the banks of the Euphrates. Neither the trees nor the river have preserved the memory of my sorrow. And thou too, beautiful palm ! hast also forgotten thy country. But I remember with a ceaseless and unavailing regret." One of the hotels in Cordova deserves passing mention, on account of the ingeniously bad English in which it invites the custom of tourists. The following is a copy verbatim et literatim of this curious document : Rizzi Hotel Situated in the Nmost centrick place of Cordova. This splendid and distinguished establishment contains spacious and elegant rooms with independant lodging house for families who wish live in. The foods are served into and out of establishment besides of the table d'hote with wines of all countries after the bill of fare. Ynterpre ters who speak English france germany Ytalian. Yt also has ackney coach and hole of post office. Spring season hotel Belongs to Rizzi Hotel. Yt is the most picture sque region of the Sierra Morena brow. The water and clime of the land are very beautiful ! ! ! From Cordova to Granada the journey is made by railway as far as Archidona, a distance of about eighty miles. Here a gap in the communication occurs, and a diligence ride of four hours brings the traveller to Loja. This part of the journey is very picturesque. The grandeur of the scenery affords ample compensation for the execrable condition of the road, over which the diligence jolts and pitches to an alarming extent. Wild, savage sierras, inter- sected by almost inaccessible ravines, groves of olives, forests of cork wood, and rich fertile valleys where winter is unknown, and which produce two or three harvests in the year, succeed one another. Soon the Sierra Nevada comes into view, and adds that element of beauty to the scene which only snowy peaks can give. In the final conflicts between the Spaniards and the Moors this was the border land, the possession of every inch of which was fiercely and repeatedly contested. The readers of Washington Irving's Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, or of Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, will recognise the name of every town and hamlet, every mountain height and savage gorge he passes, and will connect each with some deed of desperate daring. Loja, which was the key of the kingdom of Granada, played a most important part in the final struggle. It is intrenched amongst rugged hills, surrounded by deep ravines, was strongly fortified, and was defended by a powerful garrison under the command of Ali Atar, one of the boldest and ablest of the Moorish generals. Again and again the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella attacked it in vain. The bravest troops and the most skilful dispositions were powerless against a fortress so strongly situated and so bravely defended. It was only THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. taken at last after a siege of thirty-four days, in which the Conde de Escalas, as the Spaniards called Lord Scales, and a strong body of English archers rendered important services. At Loja we enter upon the rich and beautiful vega of Granada. Rejoicing in perpetual sunshine, watered abundantly by innumerable streams, and re- plenished through the summer by the snows of the Sierra Nevada, it is a region of almost incredible fertility. "The Moorish territory of Granada contained," says Mr. Prescott, in his History of the Reign of Ferdinmid and Isabella, "within a circuit of about one hundred and eighty leagues, all the physical resources of a great empire. Its broad valleys were intersected by mountains rich in mineral wealth, whose hardy population supplied the state with husbandmen and soldiers. Its pastures were fed by abundant fountains, and its coasts studded with com- modious ports, the principal marts in the Mediterranean. In the midst, and crowning the whole as with a diadem, rose the beautiful city of Granada. In the days of the Moors it was encompassed by a wall, flanked by a thousand and thirty towers, with seven portals. Its population, according to a con- temporary, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, amounted to two hundred thousand souls ; and various authors agree in attesting, that, at a later period, it could send forth fifty thousand warriors from its gates. This statement will not appear exaggerated, if we consider that the native population of the city was greatly swelled by the influx of the ancient inhabitants of the districts lately conquered by the Spaniards. On the summit of one of the hills of the city was erected the royal fortress or palace of the Alhambra, which was capable of containing within its circuit forty thousand men. The light and elegant architecture of this edifice, whose magnificent ruins still form the most interesting monument in Spain for the contemplation of the traveller, shows the great advancement of the art since the construction of the celebrated mosque of Cordova. Its graceful porticos and colonnades, its domes and ceilings glowing with tints which in that transparent atmosphere have lost nothing of their original brilliancy, its airy halls, so constructed as to admit the perfume of surrounding gardens and agreeable ventilation of the air, and its fountains, which still shed their coolness over its deserted courts, manifest at once the taste, opulence, and Sybarite luxury of its proprietors. The streets are represented to have been narrow, many of the houses lofty, with turrets of curiously wrought wood or marble, and with cornices of shining metal, ' that glittered like stars through the dark foliage of the orange-groves ;' and the whole is compared to an 'enamelled vase, sparkling with hyacinths and emeralds.' * Such are the florid strains in which the Arabic writers fondly descant on the glories of Granada. * Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, torn. ii. p. 147. — Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis^ torn. ii. pp. 248 et seq. — Pedraza, Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada (Madrid, 1608), lib. i. Pedraza GRANADA — THE BANKS OF THE DARRO, KINGDOM OF GRANADA. "At the foot of this fabric of the genii lay the cultivated vega, or plain, so celebrated as the arena, for more than two centuries, of Moorish and Christian chivalry, every inch of whose soil may be said to have been fertilised with human blood. The Arabs exhausted on it all their powers of elaborate cultivation. They distributed the waters of the Xenil, which flowed through it, into a thousand channels for its more perfect irrigation. A constant suc- cession of fruits and crops was obtained throughout the year. The products of the most opposite latitudes were transplanted there with success ; and the hemp of the North grew luxuriant under the shadow of the vine and the olive. Silk furnished the principal staple of a traffic that was carried on through the ports of Almeria and Malaga. The Italian cities, then rising into opulence, derived their principal skill in this elegant manufacture from the Spanish Arabs. Florence, in particular, imported large quantities of the raw material from them as late as the fifteenth century. The Genoese are mentioned as having mercantile establishments in Granada ; and treaties of commerce were entered into with this nation, as well as with the crown of Aragon. Their ports swarmed with a motley contribution from ' Europe, Africa, and the Levant ;' so that ' Granada,' in the words of the historian, ' became the common city of all nations.' ' The reputation of the citizens for trustworthiness,' says a Spanish writer, ' was such, that their bare word was more relied on than a written contract is now among us ;' and he quotes the saying of a bishop, that ' Moorish works and Spanish faith were all that were necessary to make a good Christian.'" The short railway ride across the Vega from Loja to Granada is interesting, not only from its rare beauty, but from its historical associations. The hill called to this day El sospiro del Moi^o, or "the sigh of the Moor," is in view all the way. Here the unhappy Boabdil, as the Spaniards call Abdallah, the last Moorish king of Granada, turned to take his farewell look at the city which he had just surrendered. As he did so he burst into tears. "You do well," exclaimed his mother, "to weep like a woman over what you could not defend like a man." " Alas !" exclaimed the exile, " when were woes ever equal to mine ?" Pinos Puentes, which is about midway between Loja and Granada, is the spot where Christopher Columbus was for a second time prevented from leaving Spain when on the very point of doing so to offer his vservices to some has collected the various etymologies of the term Granada, which some writers have traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the pomegranate was first introduced from Africa ; others to the large quantities of grain in which its vega abounded ; others again to the resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate (lib. 2. cap. 17). The arms of the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to favour the derivation of its name from that of the fruit. 157 THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. Other country. Once at the convent of Rabida he stopped for a night's sheker before saiUng the next day from the neighbouring port of Palos. The prior entered into conversation with his guest, learned his business, became interested in it, and induced him to await the result of another appeal to Isabella. Columbus returned to Court, but again wearied out with coldness and delays, he had left, meaning to visit England and offer his services to Henry VII. The queen, unable to move the suspicious and avaricious Ferdinand, resolved to pledge her own jewels to raise the requisite funds. Her messenger overtook the great navigator at this point, brought him back to Court, and very speedily we find him once more in the convent of Rabida, rejoicing with his friend the prior over the removal of all the difficulties in the way of his memorable voyage. Near to Pinos Puentes is the Soto de Roma, so called from a fine grove of trees near the village of Roma, on the banks of the Xenil. This is the estate con- ferred upon the Duke ot Wellington by the Spanish Cortes, after the battle of Salamanca, in recognition of the services rendered by him. I was told on the spot that during the time of the late Duke, the property was neglected MONUMENT TO COLUMBUS. CONVENT OF SANTA MARIA DE RABIDA. and badly managed, but that now it is well cared for and very productive. The olive-groves were said to be unusually fine and extensive. The estate certainly seemed to be in excellent order, and the peasantry to be more than usually well-to-do. THE GENERALLIFFE. CITY OF GRANADA. Granada is a city of about eighty thousand inhabitants, on the edge of the Vega, and at the foot of some of the spurs of the Sierra Nevada which here come down into the plain. Its situation is most deHghtful. Seated at a height of 2445 feet above the sea level, the air cooled by the snows of the neighbouring sierra, abundantly supplied with water, that prime requisite in a southern climate, the city combines all the natural requisites for enjoyment. The Alhambra and the Generalliffe are 0:1 the crest of two hills which CIRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA. Stand above the city. The approach to the former is through avenues of elm-trees, planted here by the Duke of Wellington. They have thriven wonderfully, and though inferior in size to the forest-giants of our own parks, they afford a most delicious shade by their dense foliage. Washington Irving thinks it necessary to apologize for attempting to describe the Alhambra afresh after the numerous and minute descriptions which had been given of it. He himself, however, has done it so eloquently and well that it needs no apology to adopt his description with some additions, omissions, and modifications. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. Leaving our posada,* we traverse the renowned square of the Vivar- rambla, once the scene of Moorish jousts and tournaments, now a crowded market-place. Crossing an open place in front of the palace of the Captain- general, we ascend a confined and winding street, the name of which reminds us of the chivalric days of Granada. It is called the Street of the Gomeres, from a Moorish family famous in chronicle and song. This street leads up to a massive gateway of Grecian architecture, built by Charles V., forming the entrance to the domains of the Alhambra. _ We now find ourselves in a :^=._ -51 -^=^^""' deep narrow ravine, with beautiful ,-=:=^^^^^^^ ^^ #^-^_, _ groves, with a steep avenue, and various footpaths winding through it, bordered with stone seats and ornamented with fountains. To our left, we behold the towers of the Alhambra above us ; to our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, we are equally dominated by rival towers on a rocky eminence. These are the Torres Vermejos, or Ver- milion Towers, so called from their ruddy hue. No one knows their origin. They are of a date much anterior to the Alhambra : some suppose them to have been built by the Romans ; others, by a wandering colony of Phoenicians. Ascending the steep and shady avenue, we arrive at the foot of a huge square Moorish tower, form- ing a kind of barbican, through which passed the main entrance to the fortress. This portal is called the Gate of Justice, from the tribunal held within its porch, during the Moslem domination, for the immediate trial of petty causes : a custom common to the Oriental nations, and occasionally alluded to in the Sacred Scriptures. The great vestibule, or porch of the gate, is formed by an immense THE VERMILION TOWER. * There are now two excellent hotels in the grounds of the Alhambra, which are preferable to those in the city. GATE OF THE TORRE UE LAS INFANTAS, THE ALHAMBRA. Arabian arch, of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On the keystone of this arch is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like manner, a gigantic key. Those who pretend to some knowledge of Mahometan symbols, affirm that the hand is the emblem of doctrine, and the key of faith ; the latter, they add, was emblazoned on the standard of the Moslems when they subdued Andalusia, in opposition to the Christian emblem of the cross. It was a tradition handed down from the oldest inhabitants, that the hand and key were magical devices on which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this means it had remained standing for several hundred years, in defiance of storms and earthquakes, while almost all other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin, and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed.* Soon after passing the gate we come to the splendid pile commenced by Charles V., intended, it is said, to eclipse the residence of the Moslem kings. With all its grandeur and architectural merit, it appears like an arrogant intrusion ; and passing by it, we enter a simple, unostentatious portal, opening into the interior of the Moorish palace. The transition is almost magical : it seems as if we were at once transported into other times, and another realm, and were treading the scenes of Arabian story. We find ourselves in a great court, paved with white marble, and decorated at each end with light Moorish peristyles : it is called the Court of the Alberca. In the centre is an immense basin, or fishpond, a hundred and thirty feet in length by thirty in breadth, stocked with gold fish, and bordered by edges of roses. At the upper end of this court rises the great Tower of Comares. From the lower end we pass through a Moorish archway into the renowned Court of Lions. There is no part of the edifice that gives a more complete idea of its original beauty and magnificence than this ; for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the centre stands the '"■ Over the inner arch is a sculptured key, in which some see the Oriental symbol of power (Isaiah xxii. 22), and others the key of David (Rev. iii. 7), Others hold that it is allusive to "the power of the keys" by which the prophet opened the gates of heaven and hell. The key, however, was a symbolical sign among the Sufis denoting knowledge, " the key by which Allali opens the heart of true believers." It occurs over many Andalusian castles, especially those built after the arrival of the Almohades, a domineering religious sect, who bore this particular badge on their banners. — Murray's Handbook of Spain. THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. fountain, famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops ; and the twelve lions, which support them, cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The court is laid out in flower- beds, and surrounded by light Arabian arcades of open filigree work, supported by slender pillars of white marble. The architecture, like that of all the other parts of the palace, is characterised by elegance rather than grandeur ; bespeaking a delicate and graceful taste, and a disposition to indolent enjoyment. When one looks upon the fairy tracery of the peristyles, and the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls, it is difficult to believe that so much has survived the wear and tear of centuries, the shocks of earthquakes, and the violence of war : it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular tradition, that the whole is protected by a magic charm. In a recess there stands an immense vase enamelled in blue, white, and gold, about which various traditions cling. The peasantry regard it with mysterious awe ; for it, like most other things in the Alhambra, has some connection with magic. It is said to be one of two which were filled with gold-dust, and conveyed hither from Damascus, or Egypt, or jMorocco — a Spanish peasant's geography is not very precise — to defray the cost of building the palace. On the opposite side of the Court of Lions, is the hall of the Aben- cerrages ; so called from the gallant cavaliers of that illustrious line who were here perfidiously massacred. There are some who doubt the whole truth of this story ; but our attendant pointed out the very wicket of the portal through which they are said to have been introduced, one by one ; and the white marble fountain in the centre of the hall, where they were beheaded. He showed us, also, certain broad ruddy stains in the pave- ment, traces of their blood, which, according to popular belief, can never be effaced. Finding we listened to him with easy faith, he added, that there was often heard at night, in the Court of Lions, a low, confused sound, resembling the murmuring of a multitude ; with now and then a faint tinkling, like the distant clank of chains. These noises are probably produced by the bubbling currents and tinkling falls of water^ conducted under the pavement, through pipes and channels, to supply the fountains ; but, according to the legend, they are made by the spirits of the murdered Abencerrages, who nightly haunt the scene of their suffering, and invoke the vengeance of Heaven on their destroyer. From the Court of Lions we retrace our steps through the Court of the Alberca, or Great Fishpool ; crossing which, we proceed to the Tower of Comares, so called from the name of the Arabian architect. It is of massive strength and lofty height, domineering over the rest of the edifice, and overhanging the steep hill-side, which descends abruptly to the banks of the Darro. A Moorish archway admits us into a vast and lofty hall, 136 THE ALHAMBRA. which occupies the interior of the tower, and was the grand audience- chamber of the Moslem monarchs, thence called the Hall of Ambassadors. It still bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are richly stuccoed, and decorated with arabesques ; the vaulted ceiling of cedar-wood, almost lost in obscurity, from its height, still gleams with rich gilding, and the brilliant tints of the Arabian pencil. On three sides of the saloon are deep windows cut through the immense thickness of the walls, the balconies of which look down upon the verdant valley of the Darro, the streets and convents of the Albaycin, and - - - -.- command a prospect of the dis- r-^=:-^^- -"_, ^ u^ "^ tant Vega. OUTER WALL OF THE ALHAMBRA. ( Tlie Generalliffe in the distance.) On the outer wall of the Alhambra, overhang- ing the narrow glen, with its thickets of fig-trees, pomegranates, and myrtles, which divides it from the Generalliffe, is a tower of great beauty though seldom visited. It is called La Torre de las Infantas, the Tower of the Princesses, from having been, according to tradition, the residence of the daughters of the Moorish kings. The interior is equal for beauty of architecture and delicacy of ornament to any part of the palace. The elegance of the central hall, with its marble fountain, its lofty arches, and richly fretted dome, accords with the story of its having been the abode of royal beauty. An abundant supply of water, brought from the mountains by old Moorish aqueducts, circulates throughout the palace, supplying its baths and THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. fishpools, sparkling in jets within its halls, or murmuring in channels along the marble pavements. When it has paid its tribute to the royal pile, and visited its gardens and parterres, it flows down the long avenue leading to the city, tinkling in rills, gushing in fountains, and maintaining a perpetual verdure in those groves that embower and beautify the hill of the Alhambra. The reader has had a sketch of the interior of the Alhambra, and may be desirous of a general idea of its vicinity. We will mount the tower of Comares, and take a bird's-eye view of Granada and its environs. From the summit, we have immediately below us the whole plan of the Alhambra laid open, and can look down into its courts and gardens. At the foot of the tower is the Court of the Alberca, with its fishpool, bordered with flowers ; and yonder is the Court of Lions, with its fountains and its light INIoorish arcades ; and in the centre of the pile is the little garden of Lindaraxa, buried in the heart of the building, with its roses and citrons, and shrubbery of emerald green. On the northern side of the tower is a giddy height, the very founda- tions of which rise above the groves of the steep hill-side. A long fissure in the massive walls shows that the tower has been rent by earthquakes. The deep, narrow glen below us, which gradually widens as it opens from the mountains, is the valley of the Darro. It is a stream famous in old times for yielding gold, and its sands are still sifted, occasionally, in search of the precious ore. The airy palace, with its tall white towers and long arcades, which breasts yon mountain, among pompous groves and hanging gardens, is the Generalliffe, a summer palace of the Moorish kings, to which they resorted during the sultry months, to enjoy a still more breezy region than that of the Alhambra. The naked summit of the height above it, where you behold some shapeless ruins, is the Silla del Moro, or Seat of the Moor ; so called, from having been a retreat of the unfortunate Boabdil, during an insurrection, where he seated himself, and looked down mournfully upon his rebellious city. Let us leave this side of the tower, and turn our eyes to the west. Here you behold, in the distance, a range of mountains bounding the Vega, the ancient barrier between Moslem Granada and the land of the Christians. Among their heights you may still discern warrior towns, whose grey walls and battlements seem of a piece with the rocks on which they are built ; while here and there is a solitary Atalaya, or watch-tower, mounted on some lofty point, and looking down, as it were, from the sky into the valleys on either side. It was down the defiles of these mountains, by the pass of Lope, that the Christian armies descended into the Vega. It was round the base of yon grey and naked mountain, almost insulated from the rest, and stretching its bold rocky promontory into the bosom of the plain, 138 GIPSY CAVES NEAR GRANADA. VIEW FROM THE ALHAMBRA. that the invading squadrons would come bursting into view, with flaunting banners, and the clangour of drums and trumpets. How changed is the scene ! Instead of the glittering line of mailed warriors, we behold the patient train of the toilful muleteer, slowly moving along the skirts of the mountain. Here, towards the south, the eye revels on the luxuriant beauties of the Vega ; a blooming wilderness of grove and garden, and teeming orchard, with the Xenil winding through it in silver links, and feeding innumerable rills, conducted through ancient Moorish channels, which maintain the land- scape in perpetual verdure. Here are the beloved bowers and gardens and rural retreats, for which the Moors fought with such desperate valour. The very farmhouses and hovels which are now inhabited by boors, retain traces of arabesques and other tasteful decorations, which show them to have been elegant residences in the days of the Moslems. Beyond the embowered region of the Vega, you behold to the south a line of arid hills, down which a long train of mules is slowly moving. It was from the summit of one of those hills that Boabdil cast back his last look upon Granada, and gave vent to the agony of his soul. It is a spot famous in song and story — El sospiro del Moro — " The last sigh of the Moor." Now raise your eyes to the snowy summit of yon pile of mountains, shining like a white summer cloud in the blue sky. It is the Sierra Nevada, the pride and delight of Granada ; the source of her cooling breezes and perpetual verdure, of her gushing fountains and perennial streams. It is this glorious pile of mountains that gives to Granada that combination of delights, so rare in a southern city, the fresh vegetation and temperate airs of a northern climate, with the vivifying ardour of a tropical sun, and the cloudless azure of a southern sky. It is this aerial treasury of snow, which, melting in proportion to the increase of the summer heat, sends down rivulets and streams through every glen and gorge of the Alpuxarras, diffusing emerald verdure and fertility throughout a chain of happy and sequestered valleys. The Cathedral of Granada just misses being a grand and imposing edifice. It is built in the pseudo-classical style which prevailed in the six- teenth century. Its great height and width would be impressive but for its faulty proportions, and the hideous whitewash which covers the delicette cream- coloured stone gives it a mean and poverty-stricken look. The passion of the Spaniards for whitewash far exceeds that of our eighteenth-century church- wardens. Only a year or two ago they whitewashed the Generalliffe from end to end. The great interest of the Cathedral is to be found in the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella and the historical relics in the Capilla de los Reyes. An inscription which is to be found in every part of the Cathedral — as in many other churches in Spain — painfully illustrates the state of morality THROUGH CORDOVA TO GRANADA. amongst the people. It announces that "any man walking with or speaking to a woman in the church shall be subject to excommunication, and a fine of two ducats." In the mind of the Spaniard, religion and morality have little connection with each other. Crimes are committed during the performance of the most sacred rites. Passing the Cathedral of Granada the other day, a procession of ecclesiastical dignitaries came out, bearing the host beneath a canopy, with much appearance of devotion. The bystanders fell on their knees as it passed, and began to pray loudly. As we extricated ourselves from the kneeling crowd, some of the worshippers succeeded in picking the pockets of three of our party at the moment the host was receiving their adoration. The Cartuja, a suppressed Carthusian monastery, about a mile from the city, is well deserving a visit. Its doors, inlaid with ebony, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, its marbles of extraordinary richness and variety, and some relics of exquisite carving, attest its wealth and luxury before the hand of the spoiler was laid upon it. A series of fresco paintings in the cloisters afford a curious illustration of how histor}- is written by partisans. They profess to give a pictorial record of the Reformation in England. The Carthusians are represented as being tortured with a diabolical cruelty which makes one's blood run cold ; and miracles are being wrought on their behalf which, if authentic, must have secured an easy and universal victory for the Romanists. On my assuring the curator that our history had no trace of either the persecutions or the miracles, he shrugged his shoulders and turned away with a significant gesture of incredulity. Amongst the most curious places in the neighbourhood of the city is the cripsy town. Here, as in the heights above Carthagena, and in many other parts of Spain, the rocks are honeycombed into cave-dwellings. These excava- tions probably date from pre-historic times, and were the Work of some troglo- dytic race. They are now principally occupied by the gitanos. The settlement near Granada is said to consist of five thousand persons. The number is probably exaggerated, though the gitano chief himself assured me that the estimate was correct. Some of the caves are of considerable size, and are comfortably furnished. The gipsies profess to be good Catholics, but they practise many Moslem rites in secret ; and they always pray turning towards Mecca. ^f' SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION INTERIuR OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEVILLE, SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. ROMAN ORIGIN ITALICA AND TRIANA MOORISH CHARACTER THE GIRALDA THE ALCAZAR TORRE DEL ORO TRADE OF SEVILLE CASA DEL AYUNTAMIENTO AND LONJA — GIPSY MUSICIANS AND DANCERS — MURILLO — CATHEDRAL-^THE INQUISITION. ^•^7^,/^^'SSQ^0f^"^Sx Qeville, like most Spanish cities, claims 'P^^'-^^^^S^^sSa^^i Hercules for its founder. Gain- sayers, who doubt the tradi- tion, may be readily confuted by an inscription over one of the city gates which asserts the fact, with the addition that Julius Caesar surrounded it with walls and towers, and that " the holy king St. Ferdinand " gained it from the Infidel. That Caesar raised it into importance, made it the capital, and gave it the title of Romula, or Little Rome, is indeed certain. Cordova having espoused the cause of Pompey, his successful rival punished the error of choosing the wrong side by conferrini;- his favour upon Seville. In this cit)% or in the immediate neighbourhood, three Roman emperors were born — Trajan, Adrian, and Theodosius. Italica, pleasantly situated at the foot of olive-covered hills, five miles away, retains the ruins of a spacious amphitheatre, which is all that is left of a town founded by Scipio and adorned with sumptuous edifices by Adrian. Like most Roman remains THE ALCAZAR, SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. in Spain, it has served as a quarr}' for subsequent builders. Its massive stones have been removed to supply material for the neighbouring convent of San Isidro, and for a breakwater in the Guadalquivir. The tiers of benches may yet be traced, though they are broken and often buried beneath the mass of debris. A rank and luxuriant growth of grass and wild flowers, of cactus and prickly pear, covers the arena, the soil of which was fertilized through successive generations by the blood of martyrs, of gladiators, and of RUINS OF AMPHITHEATRE. wild beasts. In the vaults which once served as dens for the animals and as prisons for the captives, a few gitanos now lurk and beset the visitor with importunate entreaties for alms. All else is silent as the grave, where once stood a wealthy and magnificent city, the birthplace and home of emperors. The Triana, now a poverty-stricken suburb of Seville, lying between it and Italica, takes its name from the Emperor Trajan — oplivms, as the Romans called him, and from whom they draw the blessing pronounced upon his successors, " May he be happier than Augustus ! May he be better than Trajan !" CASA DEL PILATOS. THE GIRALDA, Whilst all traces of the Roman occupation of Seville and its neighbour- hood have so nearly disappeared, the Arabs have left their mark indelibly. The city is Moorish in style and character. The streets consist of labyrinths of narrow winding lanes like those of Toledo or Cordova. Grilles of light airy iron-work open into patios, bright with fountains and flowers and greenery. Even the modern houses retain this old Moorish arrangement, which is admirably adapted to the climate, securing cool shade, and a constant current of air. The Casa del Pilatos is a good specimen of this style of building. It was erected early in the sixteenth century by the Marquis of Tarifa, on his return from Jerusalem, in imitation of the so-called house of Pontius Pilate there. The principal court is very fine, with exquisite arabesque work, antique statuary, well-proportioned columns, and a marble fountain, supported by a group of well-designed dolphins, in the centre. By far the finest relic of purely Moorish architecture in the city is the tower of the Giralda. It rises to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet, from the angle of the Patio de los Narranjos, or Court of Orange-trees, and is surmounted by a vane or weathercock {girandola) from which it takes its name. This weathercock is the figure of a woman, which, though it weighs nearly three tons, is yet so finely balanced that it turns at the slightest breeze. Oddly enough, it represents Faith, and innumerable are the jokes current in Spain at the expense of the Sevillanos, who have chosen a woman and a weathercock — the emblems of fickleness and inconstancy — to represent the virtue which ought to be, before all things, steadfast. The Giralda is the most elegant structure of the kind in Spain, perhaps in Europe. I have seen it under all aspects, and am at a loss to say under which it looks most lovely — whether rising into the deep, radiant blue of an Andalusian noontide, flooded by a light so intense that every detail of fret- work, and arabesque, and fresco comes out with the utmost vividness ; or on the night of some high festival, when the belfry lights seem so unconnected with earth and so far up in the sky that they look like strange lurid stars ; or, perhaps more beautiful than all, in the brilliant light of a full moon, when everything is bathed in a fine white radiance, brilliant enough to bring out the marvellous beauty of the tower, and yet kindly veiling the marks of decay which deface it. So sensitive were the Moors to its beauty, that when Seville was conquered by Ferdinand they had arranged to destroy it before surrender- ing the city, that it might not fall into the hands of their enemies. They were only prevented from fulfilling their purpose by the threat that, if they did so, the city itself should be given up to be sacked by the troops. The vane and the belfry on which it rests are comparatively modern addi- tions. In the time of the Moors the tower terminated with an immense iron globe plated with burnished gold, which is said by Arab chroniclers to have reflected the sun's beams so brilliantly as almost to rival the sun itself. The SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. tower originally formed part of the great mosque of Seville. Immediately below the gilded ball was the gallery from which the muezzin called the people to prayers. Every morning the solemn cry, so familiar throughout the Moslem world, was heard, "Great is Allah! There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet ! Come to prayer! Prayer is better than sleep!" The cry was caught up and echoed from the towers of innumerable mosques throughout the city. The people aroused by it looked up and saw the beautiful Giralda in the pure light of dawn, the figure of the muezzin standing out clear and sharp against the morning sky, and the gilded globe, high above all, shining like a new sun in the heavens. THE CALL TO PRAYER. THE GIRALDA. THE ALCAZAR. The Alcazar of Seville is the most sumptuous of the Moorish palaces which remain. In strictness it ought not, perhaps, to be called Moorish, having been rebuilt by Pedro the Cruel, who enlarged and beautified the original edifice, employing for that purpose architects and builders who had been engaged on the Alhambra. Inferior to the Alhambra in size, situation, and artistic beauty, it is much richer in detail, and is in far better preser- vation. The Alcazar of Seville, indeed, looks too new and has too much paint and gilding about it. It was occupied as a palace long after the fairy- like courts of Granada had been allowed to fall into dilapidation. The Duke and Duchess -de Montpensier used it as an occasional residence up THE GOLDEN TOWER. to a very recent period. On my last visit the traces of a grand ball given only a short time before were still visible. The furniture is in modern French taste, and therefore out of keeping with the style of the building. The modern colouring is too hot and violent in tone. A purist in Moorish art will detect innumerable inconsistencies and anachronisms. The life of its present occupants is altogether unlike that for which it was first designed. And yet these signs of human occupation and interest enable one the better to repeople in imagination the palace with its old inmates. A bath-room with the water actually " laid on," a council-chamber in which councillors really meet, a garden in which the flowers and fruits are plucked daily, aid SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. one to realise the past far more vividly than when all is cold, silent, and deserted. On the banks of the Guadalquivir, at a little distance from the Alcazar, is an octagonal tower, four stories in height, which seems originally to have formed part of the outworks of the palace-fortress. It is partly Roman, partly Arabic in structure. Its name — the Torre del Oro, or Tower of Gold — has of course given rise to innumerable legends. The common tradition of Seville is that the first gold brought by Columbus from the New World was stored here. The fact may be as alleged; but the name is much older than the discovery of America, and goes back to the time of the Moors. Near the Torre del Oro is a quay, at which the external commerce of Seville is carried on. Under the Romans, under the Moors, even in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, this was an important port. After the discovery of America it was known as the Golden Gate of the Indies. Its streets were thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe. Its quays were covered with the produce of the eastern and the western hemisphere. Its river was crowded with galleons laden with gold and silver. Even so recently as 1601, Seville gave employment to sixteen thousand looms, and one hundred and thirty thousand persons were engaged in the manufactures which furnished the return freight of vessels from the Indies. Now the river is deserted save by small coasting vessels, and by a few steamers, built, owned, and manned by Englishmen. Its manufactures have almost disappeared. The government tobacco factory alone is flourishing. As many as five thousand women and girls are some- times to be seen at work here making snuff and cigars. A porcelain manufactory, owned and managed by Englishmen, some railway works and an iron foundry outside the town, in which English capital and energy are largely concerned, are almost the sole relics of the once world-famous industr}'^ of Seville. The town-hall {Casa del Aymntamiento) and the Exchange (Lojija) are two stately edifices reared at the time of the city's commercial prosperity. The former is remarkable not so much for its architecture as for the exquisite beauty and richness of its details. The ornamentation is in the style known as plateresque ; that is to say, it is like the work of a silver- smith operating upon stone instead of metal. The texture of the stone allows of the finest and most elaborate carving, and the atmosphere is so pure that work executed three centuries ago remains unimpaired by time. The chiselling of many parts is as sharp and perfect as though only executed yesterday: The Lonja is an immense quadrangle, each side being two hundred feet in width and sixty-three feet in height. Its style is severe and simple, but very elegant. Floors of black and white marble, a GIPSY DANCERS. magnificent staircase of rose and grey marble, and columns of alabaster and serpentine produce an effect of calm, cool magnificence, well suited for the meeting-place of merchant princes. But all is now silent and deserted. The whole of the documents connected with the discovery and conquest of the Indies are treasured up here ; the papers of Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro lie hid in the mahogany cases which line the walls. They are all registered and dated, but not shown. Seville is the head-quarters of the gipsy musicians and dancers. Here, at Granada, or at Murcia, it is always easy to arrange for a funcion. " Make way for the gipsy-girl," says Walter Thornbury in his Life in Spain, "who is going to show us how the Egyptian ghawasses and the Hindoo nautch-girls dance. She will dance the Romalis, which is the dance Tiberius may have seen, and which no one but a gipsy dances in Spain. She will dance it to the old Oriental music of hand-clapping, and to an old religious Eastern tune, low and melancholy, — diatonic, not chromatic, and full of sudden pauses, which are strange and startling. It will be sung in unison, and will have a chorus, in which every one will join. Ford, the great authority on Spain, says these tunes are relics of the old Greek and Phoe- nician music. Even their guitar, of that strange calabash shape, is Moorish ; it is worn and played just as it was four thousand years ago in Egypt. The dancing-girl is, to tell the whole truth, not romantic ; no antelope eyes ; no black torrents of overflowing hair ; no sweeping fringe of eyelash ; no serpentine waist ; no fairy feet ; no moonlight voice. No. She is rather like a sailor's wife at Wapping. She has ropy black hair, drawn back behind her ears, in which dangle heavy gold earrings. She wears a large, red, cauliflowered-pattern gown, and her small neat feet are protected by strong high-lows ; she is stout and thick-set, and by no means a sylph. I don't think the harebell would ever lift up his head again, if her strong foot had once come on it. She rises to the incitement of that quivering nasal wail that the wriggling cripple doles out from his straining throat, and, amid cries of ' Jaleo,' and various exclamations of delight, sways herself slowly with balancing arms and shuffling feet that hardly seem to move. Every now and then the girl lowers her arms, and begins to beat the palms of her brown hands together to the same low incantation tune that stirs you strangely by its supernatural and untiring ceaselessness. Her arms, when they sway, move in curves of perfect harmony ; and her hands, when they beat, beat in low unison like a muffled drum. As for the recitative song, it is more fit for Irish wake-singers or Arab serpent-charmers than for festive dancers, who dance to the pulsation of their own heart-music, and what other extraneous help Heaven may send them. The perpetual hand-clapping is exciting, just as the perpetual low beat of the Sioux calabash-drum is exciting. It keeps the mind in a state of fevered tension SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. highly stimulating to the imagination — tap, tap, tap, tap, it goes, like the perpetual drip, drip, of a wet day." I am bound to say that Mr. Thornbury's typographical description of the Gitana is more accurate than Mr. Phillips' pictorial one. Graceful forms and pretty faces may indeed be seen amongst them, but they are rare and are for the most part accompanied by a coarseness of feature and of figure which takes off the charm. Far more graceful and elegant are the sones and dances of the Spaniards, as seen in the streets durinof some village fiesta, when the national costumes and customs yet prevail. To describe or even enumerate the paintings by Murillo which adorn the walls of the IMuseo, the Caridad, the Cathedral, and almost every church and public building in the city, would take far more space than we have at our disposal. Some of his masterpieces are here. Seville was his birthplace and his home. He seems always to have regarded it with special affection, and to have worked with special enthusiasm upon whatever was intended to adorn its walls. The house in which he lived and died is yet pointed out. The great glory of Seville is its magnificent cathedral. In grandeur and sublimity it not -only surpasses ever}- other in Spain, but probably it is unequalled in Christendom. The Spaniards correctly characterise their three principal cathedrals as '^ La de Sevilla, la grande ; la de Toledo, la rica ; y la de Leon, la della" The extent of the church is four hundred and twenty feet by two hundred and sixty.* It is divided into seven naves, of which the centre rises to the immense height of one hundred and forty-five feet, whilst the dome of the transept is thirty feet higher still. Thirty massive columns support the roof, each fifteen feet in diameter. An enormous coro blocks up and encumbers the central space, and for some time prevents the eye from discovering the vast extent and magnificent proportions of the edifice. By degrees, however, its grandeur makes itself felt, and however much subsequent reflection may modify the judgment, few persons can visit this stately fane without feeling that they THE CACHUCA. * Ford says 431 feet by 315. 138 QIFSY MUSICIANS OF SPAIN. THE CATHEDRAL. Stand within the noblest Gothic church in Christendom. It was built upon the foundations of the Great Mosque, which occupied the site of a temple to Astarte or some other Phoenician deity. Traces of its Moorish origin yet remain, not only in a certaia Oriental feeling which appears in portions of the ornamentation, but many noble fragments of the earlier edifice have been built into the walls. Amongst these is the exquisite Puerta del Pardon, a horseshoe arch of rare beauty and richness. Amongst the objects of interest in the cathedral is the tomb of Fernando Colon or Columbus, son of the great discoverer. With the filial piety which so highly distinguished him, he here, as elsewhere, merged himself In the reputation of his illustrious father. The grave bears the inscription which Ferdinand placed on every spot to which he could gain access, " A Castila y a Leoji, Mtmdo nuevo did Colon " — To Castile and to Leon, Columbus gave a new world. Seville was the head-quarters of the Holy (?) Office in Spain. It was, too, one of the most important centres of the Spanish Reformation in the six- teenth century. This, therefore, seems the proper place for a brief narrative of the operations of the Inquisition and the suppression of Protestantism. The precise date of the introduction of the Inquisition into Spain is uncertain. In the year 1236, a papal brief was issued authorizing its estab- lishment in Castile, and Ferdinand el Santo, St. Ferdinand as he is called, is reported to have carried fuel, with his own hand, to burn his heretical subjects. For some time, however, its operations were desultory and in- termittent. In the year 1484 it received its permanent organisation under the infamous Torquemada, the first inquisitor-general. With some modifica- tions It retained for three centuries the form which he gave to it. Its period of greatest activity was after the introduction of Protestanism into Spain. The Lutherans were persecuted with such relentless severity that, though at one period Spain appeared to be on the verge of becoming a Protestant country, by the year 1570 the doctrines of the Reformation had been practically extirpated. Llorente calculated that during the three centuries of its existence 341,000 persons fell under its sentence. This estimate does not include those who escaped into exile, or who suffered indirectly from its cruelties.* * The following works may be advantageously studied in connection with this brief sketch : Histoire Critique de V Itiquisition de Espagne, par Don I. A. Llorente. The Spanish Protestants and their Persecutions, an Historical Sketch, by Senor Don Adolfo de Castro. A History of Religious Intolerance in Spain, by Senor Don Adolfo de Castro. The Reformation in Spain, by Thomas Macrie, D.D. The Quarterly Review for April, 1823, contains a very able article on the same subject. The great authority on the Spanish Inquisition from which subsequent writers have drawn their information is, of courbC, Llorente's history. He gives the following account of himself and his work in the preface : — " I held the post of secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid during the years 1789, 1790 and 1791, and I learned enough of the nature of this SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. In 1519 or 1520 some Latin copies of a few of Luther's writings came into Spain from Basle ; and towards the end of the latter year Luther's commentary on the Galatians was translated into Spanish. Subsequently there appeared the reformer's treatise on Christian liberty, and on Free Will. It is to these works, together with a new-born desire to " search the Scrip- tures," that we must ascribe, under the operation of the Holy Spirit, the fructifying of the good seed in many hearts in Spain. The change, indeed, was not rapid or instantaneous. A few earnest men were, in the words of Scripture, "pricked in their hearts," and began to inquire, "What shall we do?" When it pleased the Lord to "open the heart" of any man, he began to cry to God for mercy, and soon the answer, in some form or other, was sent to him — " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world :" " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." And, having found salvation for himself, he soon began to long to make it known to others. Still the progress of Divine truth was not at first rapid ; and for several years it excited little attention. A single individual, one Juan de Avila, was denounced to the Inquisition as early as the year 1525 ; but one of the inquisitors favoured and protected him. Five years later, Alonso de Valdes, secretary to the Chancellor of Charles V., being at Augsburg, had several interviews with Melancthon ; and on his return to Spain, he too was brought under the notice of the Holy Office. A chaplain to the emperor, Alfonso de Virves, was similarly dealt with on his return to Spain, being confined in the dungeons of the Inquisition for the space of four years ; after which he was ordered to abjure the doctrines of Luther, to be imprisoned in a monaster}-, and to be prohibited from preaching. As Charles' reign passed on, the establishment of the Reformation in Germany became a notorious fact, and a few men of note received grace to discern the real nature of the gospel. Amongst these was Rodrigo de Valer, a young gentleman of fashion, at Lebrija, near Seville. Suddenly he dis- establishment to be thoroughly convinced that it is vicious alike in its principles, in its constitu- tion, and in its administration. It is this conviction which led me to avail myself of the advan- tages of my position to collect notes, documents, extracts, and other materials relative to its history. My perseverance in this task, the pains I took and the expenses I incurred in procuring official records of the proceedings of the tribunal, and making extracts from the private papers of deceased inquisitors, furnished me with abundant material. And I further succeeded beyond my hopes in the acquisitions I made in 1809, 1810 and 181 1, when the Inquisition had been suppressed. At this period all the archives were put at my disposal, and from 1809 to 18 12 I devoted myself to abstracting from them whatever seemed important in the records of procedure, aUke in the capital and in the provinces. The design of this great labour has been to prepare and publish a critical history of the Inquisition in Spain from its commencement to its destruction, •which will include all the most remarkable events of the three centuries during which it lasted." EMINENT SPANISH REFORMERS. appeared from those circles of which he had been the ornament. A vast change had passed over him. Arrested by the power of the Spirit of God, the thoughts of unseen and eternal things wholly possessed his mind. Pro- curing a copy of the Scriptures, he became so thoroughly versed in God's word as to be able to repeat almost any passage in it from memory. When settled in a well-grounded faith, he returned to society a different man. He had now an errand and a purpose. He cultivated the society and the friendship of the clergy, " reasoning with them out of the Scriptures." He was summoned before the Holy Office ; but, on the first time of his appear- ance, some persons of influence interested themselves in his favour, and he was leniently dealt with. The inquisitors contented themselves with the confiscation of his property, and released his person, adding, however, a caution and an admonition. He was soon brought a second time before the tribunal. And now the influence of his friends could only avail to save his life ; the inquisitors condescending to assume that he was mad. About the year 1541 the final sentence was passed upon him. He was imprisoned in a monastery near the mouth of the Guadalquivir ; and here he died. But Valer had not lived in vain. "He was the first," says De Castro, "who publicly preached the Protestant doctrine in the heart of our country." One of the fruits of his labours was the conversion of an eminent member of the clerical body, Juan Gil, commonly called Dr. Egidius — a professor of divinity in Siguenza, and a preacher in the Cathedral of Seville. Valer succeeded in drawing him from the study of Aquinas and Scotus, to the more profitable reading of the word of God ; and thus he became a valued and useful preacher. He was joined by De Vargas, and by Con- stantine Ponce de la Fuente, who had been his fellow-students. These three distinguished men soon gathered a Christian Church among the people of Seville, and it was not long before the attention of the Inquisition was drawn to their proceedings. But Vargas died, Constantine was called to Flanders, and Egidius, whose reputation had previously stood so high that it had been intended to raise him to the archbishopric of Tortosa, was immured in the dungeons of the Holy Office, charged with heresy as to the doctrines of justification, human merit, purgatory, and the worship of images. He was brought to trial about the year 1550, and was finally sentenced, in 1 55 1 or 1552, to read a public abjuration, to be imprisoned for one year, and to be prohibited from preaching or writing for ten years. His im- prisonment then commenced, and on its termination he was once more free. He paid a visit to Valladolid, where he met a number of the converts to Scriptural truth. But travelling, after an imprisonment of several years, brought on a fever which quickly ended his days. A few years after, his bones were taken from their grave and burned by order of the Inquisition, who declared him to have died " in the Lutheran heresy." 163 SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. Three brothers, of the name of Enzinas, of Burgos, were also prominent in the Protestant movement ; and Juan, the eldest, being sent by his father on a visit to Rome, was seized by the officers of the Inquisition in that city, and publicly burned in the year 1546. The death of Juan Diaz, a friend and convert of Juan Enzinas, deserves particular notice. Diaz was a native of Cuenga, and had studied for several years at Paris. In order to be able to read the Scriptures in the original, he had learned Hebrew as well as Greek. He soon became grounded in the truth, and openly avowed the change which had taken place in his views. His brother Alfonso, who held high office in the Romish church, was filled with grief and anger at such a defection. He sought him out, and at length found him at Neuburg. For several days the brothers communed together, and Alfonso vainly used every effort to shake the resolve of Juan. At last he took his leave, feigning to depart for Italy. But returning to Neuburg at an early hour the next morning, he despatched a messenger with a letter to his brother, he himself accompanying the man and waiting at the gate while he went in. Juan rose from his bed, took the letter, and went to the window to read it. The assassin — for such was the pretended messenger — stepping softly behind him, struck him a deathblow with an axe which he had concealed beneath his cloak ; and then instantly joining Alfonso at the gate, the two succeeded in making their escape. But they were pursued and apprehended, and would have been tried and executed had not the Emperor Charles himself interposed. Ultimately, through the imperial favour, both the murderers were released. Alfonso repaired to Trent, where he was received with open arms by the holy fathers there assembled in council ; and afterwards to Rome, where he was equally honoured and caressed. But the most remarkable man in the whole of this movement was Constantine Ponce de la Fuente. He was one of those rare characters to whom the appellation "great" is by common consent applied. His learning was associated with a higher, taste and discernment than was common in his day. Such was the popular appreciation of his pulpit oratory, that when it was known that he was to preach in the Cathedral, that spacious edifice was crowded with hearers three or four hours before the time for com- mencing the service. When Philip went into Flanders, Charles sent Con- stantine in his suite, "to let the Flemings see that Spain was not without scholars and orators." And in an account of this royal progress, printed by authority, Constantine is described as " the greatest philosopher, the pro- foundest divine, and the most eloquent preacher who has been known in Spain for many ages." Various other friends of the Reformation were men of education and high position in Society. Francisco Zafra, a doctor of laws, was vicar of 164 EMINENT SPANISH REFORMERS. San Vincente. The Protestant church in Seville was under the pastoral care of Christobal Losada, assisted by Cassiodoro. Among its more distinguished members were Don Juan Ponce de Leon, and Domingo de Guzman," a son of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. At Valladolid the Protestants had for their pastor Domingo de Rojas, who was allied to some of the noblest families in Spain. A Romish historian says, speaking of the persecution of 1558, "All the prisoners in the inquisitions of Valladolid, Seville, and Toledo were persons abundantly well qualified. I shall pass over their names in silence, that I may not stain the honour of their ancestors or the nobility of the illustrious families which were thus infected with this poison."* And another writer confesses, that " had not the Inquisition taken care in time to put a stop to these preachers, the Protestant religion would have run through Spain like wild- fire." f A third uses this strong language : " There is not a city, and, if one may so speak, there is not a village, nor a hamlet, nor a noble house in Spain that has not had one or more illuminated with the light of the gospel."}; It was towards the close of 1557 that the watchful ecclesiastics who were attached to the court of Philip II. at Brussels discovered that many Lutheran books had been sent into Spain, and that heretical opinions were gaining ground in that country. They quickly transmitted this intelligence to the Inquisition at Seville. The emperor Charles, in his retirement at Yuste, was also informed of the same facts. He wrote to the regent, Juana, pressing the matter upon her, and even speaking of his own inclination to leave his retirement in order to superintend the needful inquiries. Thus urged, and themselves not backward, the inquisitors at once put their extensive police in motion. A very active and energetic man, named Hernandez, who had been concerned in the importation of Spanish New Testaments, was soon apprehended, and was repeatedly put to the torture, to extort from him the names of the persons with whom he had been acting. For three years he was kept in prison, and tortured from time to time; but his resolution never gave way, and from him they could wring nothing. But in other quarters they were more successful. Two individuals in Seville, and one in Valladolid, supplied them with the information they desired ; and when the necessary preparations had been completed, a general seizure of suspected persons filled the prisons. Two hundred were appre- hended in Seville in one day ; and the number was soon increased to eight hundred. At Valladolid eighty were seized, and in other towns proportionate numbers. The castles and prisons were found insufficient to contain the crowds who were accused or suspected of heresy. " The inquisitors were in the condition of a fisherman whose cast has been so successful that the draught of fishes seems likely to be too heavy for his net."§ Illescas : Hist. Pontif., vol. ii. p. 451. f Paramo: Hist Inquisition. X Valera : Preface to La Biblia. § Prescott, b. ii. ch. 3. i6s SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. li -L_J!u It was not until eighteen months had passed away that the Holy Office announced the conclusion of the trials of many of the accused, and issued its orders for a solemn auto de f^. This, the first of the public executions of the Protestants in Spain, took place at Valladolid, in May, 1559; and it was witnessed by the regent, Dofia Juana, and the young prince of the Asturias, Don Carlos, attended by all the principal grandees of the court. There suffered, on this occasion, .Dr. Augustin Cazalla, preacher to the emperor, a man of great learning and eloquence ; his brother Francisco ; Dona Beatriz Cazalla ; Alfonso Perez ; Dona Catalina de Ortega, and nine others. A second celebration of the same kind took place in the same city in the following October, at which Philip himself was present, accompanied by his sister Juana, his son Don Carlos, his nephew Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, and the principal grandees and higher ecclesiastics of the kingdom. The scene for this second auto de fi, at Valladolid, was the great square in front of the church of St. Francis. At one end a platform was raised, covered with rich carpeting, on which were ranged the seats of the ^inquisitors, em- blazoned with the arms of the Holy Office. Near, to this was the , royal gallery ; opposite to this gallery a large scaffold was erected. At six o'clock in the morning all the bells in the churches of the city began to toll, and a solemn procession moved from the dismal fortress of the Inquisition. First came a body of troops, to secure a free passage for the procession. Then came the condemned, each attended by two familiars of the Holy Office ; and those who were to suffer at the stake, by two friars in addition, who ceaselessly exhorted the heretic to abjure his errors. Those who were admitted to penitence wore a sable dress ; while the unfortunate martyr was enveloped in a loose sack of yellow cloth— the san benito — with his head surmounted by a cap of pasteboard, of a conical form, which, as well as the cloak, was painted with figures of flames, and of devils fanning them. Next came the magistrates of the city, the judges of the courts, the ecclesiastical orders, and the nobles of the land on horseback. These were followed by the members of the dread tribunal, and the fiscal bearing a 166 PUERTA DEL PARDON IN THE CATHED1AL, SEVILLE. AUTO DE Fli AT VALLADOLID. Standard of crimson damask, on which were displayed the arms of the Inquisition, and of its founders, Sixtus V. and Ferdinand the CathoHc. Then came a numerous train of famiHars, well mounted ; among whom were many gentry, who were proud to act as the body-guard of the Holy Office. The rear was brought up by an immense concourse of the people, who were estimated, on this particular occasion, to have amounted to 200,000. ** The inquisitors took their places, the condemned were conducted to the scaffold, and the royal gallery was occupied by the king, surrounded by the brilliant circle of which we have already spoken. A sermon * On the Faith' was preached by the bishop of Zamora ; and when he had concluded, the grand inquisitor administered an oath to all present, to defend the Holy Inquisition, to maintain the purity of the faith, and to give information against any one who should depart from it. As Philip took the oath, he rose from his seat, and drew his sword from the scabbard, as if to announce himself the personal champion of the Holy Office. " The secretary of the Inquisition then read aloud a schedule, containing the names of the prisoners, the crimes charged against them, and the punish- ments which had been decreed. Those who were admitted to penitence knelt down, abjured their errors, and received absolution. Some of these were condemned to imprisonment, some to lighter punishments ; but all suffered the loss of their whole property — a point never lost sight of by the Holy Inquisition. Thus stripped of everything, and branded with perpetual infamy, these poor sufferers were said, in the silky language of the Inquisition, to have been ' reconciled.' When these subdued victims had been remanded to their prisons, all eyes were turned to the remaining sufferers, who now stood, with cords round their necks, expecting their coming doom. Their haggard looks, their emaciated forms, and often their distorted limbs, told the story of their past sufferings ; many of them having been immured in the dungeons of the Inquisition for more than a year, during which time they had felt what the Holy Office could do in the infliction of bodily torture. The process against them was read, and the grand inquisitor consigned them to the corregidor, beseeching him * to treat them with all kindness and mercy ' — the meaning of which was, that he was immediately to burn them alive at the stake." In the present auto de fd the number of convicts .amounted to thirty, of whom sixteen were "reconciled," and the remainder handed over to the secular authorities. One of these was Don Carlos de Seso, a noble Florentine, who had stood high in the favour of Charles V. Marrying a Castilian lady of rank, he took up his abode in Valladolid, and while there resident he became a convert to Protestantism. Durinof the fifteen months which he spent in the cells of the Inquisition, no sufferings shook De Seso's constancy. As he passed before the royal gallery, he said to Philip, whom he well knew. SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. "Is It thus you allow your innocent subjects to be treated ?" To which Philip replied, "If it were my own son, I would fetch the wood to burn him, were he such a wretch as thou art."* The ceremony lasted from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. The aiitos de fi which were celebrated at Seville were even more memo- rable than those at Valladolid. The first of these was solemnized on the 24th of September, 1559. It was attended by four bishops, the members of the royal court of justice, the chapter of the cathedral, and a great assem- blage of nobles and gentry. Twenty-one persons here suffered death, and eighty were condemned to lighter punishments. Among those who died was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, son of the Count de Baylen, and a near relative of the Duchess de Begar, who was herself present at the spectacle. Another sufferer was Don Juan Gonzalez, one of the most celebrated preachers in Andalusia. He had left his mother and his brethren behind him in prison, and was accompanied by two sisters, who, like himself, were doomed to the flames. Four monks of the convent of San Isidoro also laid down their lives for the truth. Four ladies of the highest families were also among the victims — Dona Isabel de Baena, Maria de Mrves, Maria de Cornel, and Maria de Bohorques, daughter of a grandee of the first class. A second auto de ft^ at Seville took place in December, 1560, when four- teen persons suffered death, and thirty-four received inferior punishments. Julian Hernandez here died, fearless and triumphant ; and eight women, some of them distinguished by their rank and education, met death without shrinking. Maria Gomez suffered, along with three daughters and a sister. One lady of rank, Dona Juana de Bohorques, had previously passed to her rest. She had been apprehended on suspicion of heresy ; her sister Maria having suffered in the auto of September. This young lady was put into the rack, which was applied with such violence that the cords cut to the bones of her arms and legs. In the agony an internal blood-vessel burst, and she was carried back to her cell insensible, where she shortly afterwards expired. Even the fiends in human shape who had thus handled her were appalled at their own deed, the character of which could not be concealed. Of two of the most eminent men in Spain who were despatched without either the rack or the stake, we must speak with more particularity. The first of these was Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, already spoken of. He was, beyond all doubt, the most distinguished scholar in Spain. When in- formation was conveyed to Charles V. that his favourite chaplain was thrown into prison, he exclaimed, "If Constantine be a heretic, he is a great one." Constantine was kept in prison for nearly two years. Either respect for the emperor, whose favourite he had been, or a consciousness of his place in the public esteem, seems to have deterred the inquisitors from subjecting this * Cabrera : Filippe II., lib. v., c. 3. PRISON OF THE INQUISITION, BARCELONA. CRUELTIES OF THE INQUISITION. eminent man to the torture. " He was thrust into a low, damp, and noisome vault, where he endured more than his brethren had done from the torture." Here putrid air and unwholesome diet soon brought on a dysentery, which quickly ended his days. The inquisitors at the auto de f^ of December, 1560, presented his effigy as that of a deceased heretic. The second of the names alluded to is that of Bartolome de Carranza y Miranda. He had taken part in the Council of Trent, and had attended Philip H. to England, where he had seen many of the martyrs of the Marian days. On his return to Spain he was advanced to the first dignity in the Spanish Church — the archbishopric of Toledo. But the Inquisition had been instructed by the Pope to spare neither archbishops, nor cardinals, nor kings, nor emperors. He was no Protestant ; he had, indeed, counselled the persecution of Protestants ; but in his writings he had seemed to favour the doctrine of justification by faith. Before he had been a year in his primacy, the officers of the Inquisition appeared at the doors of the archl- episcopal palace, dragged the prelate from his bed, hurried him into a coach, and conveyed him to the prison of the Inquisition at Valladolid. He was kept, without trial or sentence, for more than seven years. At the end of that time, the Pope himself grew indignant at such treatment of the highest prelate in Spain, and removed the cause into his own court. Carranza was carried to Rome, and lodged as a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo. Pius V. was inclined to favour Carranza, but his successor, Gregory XIII., had a contrary bias. The delays interposed by the Spanish accusers protracted the cause for nine years longer. • At last, in 1576, more than sixteen years after his first accusation and imprisonment, the Pope pronounced sentence- He found Carranza "violently suspected of heresy," ordering him to abjure certain Lutheran propositions, to be suspended from his archiepiscopal func- tions and confined in the Dominican convent of Orvieto for five years. Such was the close of a persecution of almost eighteen years. In sixteen days after receiving this sentence he departed this life. Meanwhile, the work of persecution had suffered no delay in Spain, and long before the archbishop's cause had been decided, the last embers of Protestantism had been trampled out. After the four aiUos de fi of which we have spoken, a number of similar ceremonials took place in succeeding years, until the prisons of the Inquisition were relieved from their burdens. At Seville, in 1563, a celebration took place, in which six persons were committed to the flames, besides those criminals who were "reconciled." In Murcia, In 1560, an auto was solemnized, and in 1563 another. At Toledo, In 1560, the Inquisition prepared a grand auto for the entertainment of their young queen, Elizabeth of France, Philip's third wife. Next year, at the same place, four priests were burned alive, and nineteen penitents were "reconciled." One of the latter was a page of the household, who escaped through the SEVILLE AND THE INQUISITION. queen's intercession. In 1565 another auto is recorded, in which a number of Lutherans were condemned to the fire, and to minor punishments. In 1571 a Hke ceremony occurs, in which two persons were burned aUve, and thirty-one condemned to other punishments. Especially active, too, were the tribunals of Logrono, Saragossa, and Barcelona. " And thus," says Mr. Prescott, " the fires lighted for the Protestants continued to burn with fury in all parts of the country, until at length they slackened and died away, from mere want of fuel to feed them. The year 1570 may be regarded as the period of the last auto de f6 in which the Lutherans played a conspicuous part. The subsequent celebrations were chiefly devoted to relapsed Jews and Moriscos ; and if a Protestant heretic sometimes appeared, it was 'but as the gleaning of grapes after the vintage is done.' Never was there a persecution which did its work more thoroughly. A period of little more than ten years had sufficed to extirpate Protestantism from the land ; and Spain might now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled her garments." PRISON OF THE INQUISITION, CORDOVA. HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. -^ '■^^^^y^ CADIZ TRAFALGAR — GIBRALTAR TANGIERS — RONDA — MALAGA — CARTHAGENA MURCIA — ELCHE — VALENCIA — ROMAN SETTLEMENTS ALONG THE COAST BARCELONA LERIDA SARAGOSSA — CONCLUSION. ROM Seville to Cadiz the traveller may, if he pleases, take the steamer down the Guadalquivir. But he is not likely to do so twice. The river is so shallow, the practicable channel so narrow and tortuous, that the naviga- tion is very slow. The banks offer nothing to interest the weary traveller. The stream itself is languid and turbid. The high-sounding Guadalquivir {wady-l-gebir, or Great River) has nothing romantic but the name. Cadiz is a bright, cheerful city. Its situation is perhaps unsurpassed in Europe. Even Genoa scarcely presents a finer aspect from the sea. The great Atlantic waves roll in upon its beach, or dash in masses of green crystal upon its sea-walls. Its houses of white stone, surmounted by Moorish turrets, domes, and pinnacles, have a most imposing effect. Steaming out from the Bay of Cadiz we soon find ourselves approaching Trafalgar.* Passing Barossa — a name famous in the Peninsular War— the coast trends inwards, leaving a wide, open bay. Upon the flat shores, just * I was curious to learn the true pronunciation of this word. The usual Spanish accentua- tion makes it Trafalgar. But the seamen along the coast pronounce it Trafalgar, as in the familiar line of Childe Harold—"' Alike the Armada's pride and spoils of Trafalgar." CADIZ FROM THE SEA. HOMEWARD BV THE EAST COAST. under the shelter of a range of hills stretching away far inland, lies the little white-walled village of Conil, over which a cluster of tall feathery palm-trees rise in stately beauty. A long, low, sandy spit, with a lighthouse at the extremity runs out to seaward. And then comes the bay in which British naval supremacy was secured for half a century. Sailing over the smooth, sunlit waters, with shoals of porpoises gambolling around, it was difficult to realise that just below us lay the shattered navies of two great nations. The enormous masses of the Atlas range on the right are soon confronted by the rock of Gibraltar on the left, and shortly we steam into the bay, and cast anchor beneath the British flag. To an Englishman who has been travelling, GIBRALTAR. or residing abroad, for some time, it is not a little exciting to land on this bit of British territory, to see the British uniform, to be accosted in British speech in all the varieties of its vernacular, and to hear the familiar strains of " God Save the Queen," " Rule Britannia," or " The British Grenadiers." Except at Alexandria, there is perhaps no spot where so many and various nationalities meet as at Gibraltar. It is a perfect Babel of strange tongues. All the tribes of Northern Africa are there, from the negro of Soudan to the Jew of Tangiers. Every island and port in the Levant sends its contingent. The Peninsular and Oriental steamers bring visitors from the farthest east, and a Chinese mandarin jostles against a Lascar sailor. But amidst all these 178 GIBRALTAR. various nationalities the Briton seems more than ever conscious of his supe- riority, and to verify Goldsmith's description : " Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by." The rock itself, its batteries, galleries, and caverns, and the magnificent view from its summit, have been described so frequently and so fully, as to make another description a work of supererogation. Those who do not object to three days in the saddle may advantageously take the route from Gibraltar to Malaga by way of Ronda. For a great SIGNAL ROCK. part of the journey the road passes through magnificent mountain scenery ; sometimes skirting the edge of a precipitous abyss, soml5times winding along the depths of a ravine, the steep sides of which almost shut out the sun, and then emerging upon some breezy table-land, with noble views of Spanish sierras and African mountains, and the blue Mediterranean lying between them. Ronda itself is one of the most picturesque cities in Europe. It stands on a steep rock encircled by the Guadiana, which foams and dashes through a chasm so narrow as to be bridged over. The bridge which spans the Tajo, or rift in the rock, is a most striking object as looked at from beneath. At a height of six or seven hundred feet above the Moorish mills HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. and castle in the valley, it seems as though suspended from the clouds. The beautiful river emerging into light and sunshine from the gloomy defiles through which it has struggled, leaps from rock to rock as though rejoicing in its emancipation. Ford may well wax enthusiastic, and exclaim, " There is but one Ronda in the world." MALAGA. Malaga, which may be reached in one long day from Ronda, is an active and prosperous city of one hundred and ten thousand inhabitants. It retains few traces of its extreme antiquity except its name, which is said to be Phoe- nician ; though philologists cannot decide whether it comes from Mclech, a king, or Mclach, salt fish. Its cathedral, like that of Granada, is an immense but unimpressive pile, Graeco-Roman in style, and much defaced by whitewash. From its great height it is visible far out to sea, and at a distance its size makes it an imposing object. MALAGA — PORT, QUAY, AND CATHEDRAL. Malaga is memorable in the history of Spanish evangelization. Half a century ago two priests, attached to one of the churches, were accustomed to retire to a secluded spot at a distance from the city where, unobserved, they might read the Scriptures and pray together, A young friend occasionally joined them. Suddenly they disappeared. What became of them could never be discovered. The young layman, their companion, escaped, and survived to see the day when he could openly and joyfully profess that Saviour whom he had faithfully served in secret. HOMEWARD BV THE EAST COAST. In a cellar in Malaga, too, the first modern edition of the New Testament was printed secretly and stealthily. A devoted Christian, at the peril of his life, prepared three thousand copies, which, like seed sown in secret, has sprung up and borne an abundant harvest unto everlasting life. Onward from Malaga land communication fails us. The traveller is de- pendent upon coasting steamers, at least as far as Carthagena. If, however, he is fortunate in the choice of his ^-^.^^ . boat, this is not to be regretted. fc ^? K- _ The coast scenery is very fine, and he will probably call at a number of very interesting towns and villages which otherwise he could only visit by a long and tedious land journey. The whole journey from Gibraltar to Barcelona may be made most agreeably by steamer, and a few hours may be well spent at such picturesque, out-of-the-way places as Estepona, Marbella, Motril, and Adra, with a longer stay at the more important cities. There is little along the east coast to detain us till we reach Carthagena. This ruinous and dilapidated city is one of the old- est in Europe. The sides of the rock overhanorino- it formed the abode of some early Troglodytic race, who excavated numerous cave-dwellings, which are still occupied by the peasantry. To them succeeded the Phoenicians, by whom a fortress and light- house were reared on the summit of the rock. The Carthaginians came next. Here the Barca family established themselves, and gave the city its present name — New Carthage. Livy and other historians describe the march of Sclpio Africanus across the plain to take the Carthaginian stronghold in the rear, and vividly depict the consternation of the garrison as they watched the foe approaching to attack them on a side which was undefended. Under the Romans it formed one of the most important posts in Spain. The magnitude and splendour of the city are attested by columns of exquisitely- coloured marbles, which are built into the walls of poverty-stricken houses, by the numerous inscriptions which, till a few months ago, were visible in the old Phoenician fort on the hill-top, and by the constant recurrence of the imperial IN THE ALAMEUA AT MALAGA. CARTIIAGENA, labouk.i:rs ok vai.encja. s'lcrn, S. P. O. R. on slabs of stone now forming part of the pavement. Colonia Victrix Julia, or Carlkago Nova, as the Romans called the city, declined under the Goths. But under the Moors it again sprang into importance. They restored and enlarged the castle above the city. Until a few months ago a magnificent horse-shoe arch, with beautiful arabesque work, was yet standing. It was often visited by Ferdinand and Isabella, who could appreciate the magnificent natural harbour, which makes it one of the best ports in the Mediterranean. But from that time it began to decline — sharing in the decline of Spain — till now its dockyards and arsenals are silent and deserted. The bay, which seems to invite the commerce of the Mediterranean and the Levant, is visited only by a few coasting vessels and fishing boats. Last year, the populace showing signs of discontent, the government employed them to tear down the castle, with its relics of Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, and Moorish occupation, and cast the stones into the bay. A few bare, roofless walls are all that now re- main of the lighthouse by which vessels trading to Tarshish may have steered, and of the fortress which the family of Hannibal held, and which Scipio stormed. The stones torn from them lie along the beach or form a mound in the sea. Local tradition declares that a superb suite of tapestry in the old dis- mantled cathedral was brought back from the Indies by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage, and was suspended there by him as a grateful recognition of God's mercy, in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella. This is not quite exact. The truth seems to be that the tapestry was paid for by the gold which Columbus brought back with him, and that It represents the birds and beasts, the fruits and flowers PEASANT OF ARAGON. if3 HOMEWARD BV THE EAST COAST. of the New World, as far as he could describe them. That it was suspended by Columbus seems certain, attested as it is by the familiar escutcheon and legend which are placed over it. It will scarcely be credited that the cathedral is rapidly falling into ruins, and that the tapestr}^ is rotting from the walls. From Carthagena to Murcia, the capital of the province, is a short railway journey. Lying out of the route of travellers, it is almost unvisited ; and having little commerce, except with the peasantry of its fertile hiicrta, it retains its old costume, manners, and customs, with even more than Spanish tenacity. The men wear a tartan plaid, like that of a Scotch shepherd, only more brilliant in colour. The women greatly affect bright yellow and scarlet, and even the poorest contrive to interweave a few flowers into their hair. The costumes through the whole of the eastern provinces are very strange and very Moorish. Hempen sandals take the place of shoes ; the legs are either bare or covered by a footless cotton stocking. In many districts the peasantry wear very wide calico drawers, reaching down to the knees, and looking like 184 AT A GIPSY FESTIVAL NEAR MURCIA* MURCIA. a short petticoat, and a close-fitting jacket covered with spangles and embroidery. The plaid is commonly substituted along this coast for the mantle patronised by the Castilians. In the suburbs of Murcia is a large gipsy settlement, numbering some I'KASAMT OF THE EAbT COAST. hundred families. Recently I had the good fortune to fall in with a great festival which they were celebrating amongst themselves. I and my com- panions were the only busn^ present. A few friendly words soon made us quite at home with these strange people, and we saw their characteristic HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. dances, games, and amusements as few strangers have the opportunity of doing. The dances of the children, whilst one old contrabandista played the tambourine, another the guitar, and an old woman marked the time with her castanets, was a most amusing sight. The road from Murcia or Carthagena leads through Elche, whose forests of palms have been already referred to. Single palms or small clusters of them are common throughout the southern provinces of Spain. This is the only spot in Europe where they flourish in such numbers as to cover a large extent ALICANTE. of ground. Here they grow by thousands. The dates which they produce form an important article of export. About a dozen miles from Elche is Alicante, a city grandly situated, and which, as approached from the sea, has a most imposing effect. But, like many other Spanish towns, it is disappointing on a nearer view. Denia and Gandia are small but interesting coast-towns. The old walls and fortifica- tions are curious, and will well repay a visit. The former was a place of importance under the Romans, and was the naval station of Sertorius. Valencia del Cid is so called from the Cid Campeador, whose chivalrous VALENCIA. deeds were narrated at some length in connection with his birthplace, Burgos. Having wrested the city from the Moors, after a siege of ten months, he despatched ,' a mes- senger for his wife and daughters. Scarcely had they joined him before an army of fifty thousand horse- men and an innumerable host of infantry — so says the chronicle — under the command of the King of J!^_ Tunis, marched to retake Valencia. The Cid led Ximena and her two daughters to the summit of a high tower, that they might look down upon the mighty host who were encamped beneath the walls. They were terrified at the si^ht ; but he s-C^v^:tn> HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. encouraged them by the assurance of speedy victory. Though his whole force was three thousand nine hundred and seventy men, he charged fiercely upon the enemy, and defeated them. The tower of Miguelete is pointed out by tradition as that to which the Cid led Ximena. The view from the summit is very fine. It extends over the bright and picturesque city, with its innumerable towers and domes, the rich fertile vega, the Lake of Albufera, and the blue waters of the Mediterranean. ^^^Zb^^£:^- RUINS AT TARRAGONA. At Valencia the steamer may advantageously be exchanged for the rail- road. The coast loses much of the bold strikine character it has had hitherto. A long stretch of shallows and sandbanks compels the vessels to keep well out to sea. And the district through which the railway passes is one of unusual interest. Some of the most important Roman settlements were along this coast. Shortly after leaving Valencia, Murviedro, the ancient Saguntum, is reached. Few towns out of Italy hold a more prominent place than this in the pages of Roman history. From the days of Hannibal to the fall of the empire it was constantly rising into notice. Tortosa, a little way farther up YOUNG WOMAN OF VALENCIA. CITIES ON THE EAST COAST. the coast, was likewise an important Roman station. Coins, struck here under the empire, yet remain. Still farther to the north is Tarragona, once the abode of the Scipios, Augustus, and Adrian. It is said to have contained a million inhabitants at the time of its prosperity, and to have been styled an imperial city. Its population has now dwindled to less than twenty thousand. The fertile country in its rear still secures to it a commerce in fruit, oil, and wine, but it retains only a shadow of its former o-reatness. THE PORT OF BARCELONA. I In all these cities, and throughout the whole route from Valencia, we find the traces of bygone splendour. Temples, theatres, bridges, aqueducts, fortresses, attest the vigour and magnificence of the old imperial dominion. These have served as quarries for modern builders. The mole at Tarragona is constructed out of the stones of the amphitheatre. Suchet used the Temple of Diana and the Amphitheatre at Saguntum to strengthen his lines during the Peninsular War. Everywhere we meet with the same wilful and reckless dilapidations. Barcelona has already been described as one of the most busy and thriv- ing cities in Spain. Yet even here the streets at a short distance from the 193 HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. quays and Rambla* are as stagnant and as purely Spanish as any in the peninsula. The Cathedral is a striking specimen of the stern, sombre, severe style of architecture in which the Spaniards delighted before the introduction of French taste under the Bourbons. From Barcelona a railway runs past Lerida, through the old kingdom of Aragon, to Saragossa. Though stern and bare, the countr)^ is not devoid of picturesqueness and interest. The spurs of the Pyrenees run down into it, and afford a succession of bright smiling valleys enclosed by barren hills. The Pyrenees themselves are constantly in sight, and form the boundary on the north. Lerida is finely situated, and is very strongly fortified. The Cathedral can only be visited with difficulty, and by permission of the com- mandant of the district, it having been appropriated by the military authorities. So eminent an authority on architectural matters as Mr. Street says, that " it alone is worth the journey from England to see," being one of the finest and purest specimens of the Early Pointed Style he has ever examined. A grotesque tradition of the district affirms that Herodias and her daughter * Rambla is a common name for the chief street in towns along the east coast of Spain. It is a Moorish word, meaning a river-bed, which, dry in the summer, senes as a roadway. Ramleh, near Alexandria, is the same word. SARAGOSSA. were drowned in the river here. They were dancing on the ice when it broke beneath them. Herodias sank at once, but the ice inclosed the neck of Salome and beheaded her ! Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, "was in the pre-Roman times called Saduba ; but Augustus bestowed upon it the imperial title of Caesarea Augusta, of which high-sounding epithet Saragossa is a corruption. It is a gloomy and poverty-stricken town of about sixty thousand inhabitants. Its ruined and dilapidated appearance is in a great measure due to the French, who, in RUINED CONVENT AT SARAGOSSA. the famous siege, fought their way into it bit by bit, and house by house. Hospitals, churches, palaces, convents, crumbled away beneath the fire of their artillery, as the inhabitants sullenly fell back before them. The Ebro, on which the city stands, is spanned by a fine stone bridge, built in 1487. From this bridge a striking view of the two cathedrals is obtained. As Ford remarks, in this land of contrasts and inconsistencies, Madrid, the capital, has no cathedral, whilst Cadiz and Saragossa have two apiece. La Seo, the old cathedral, is a Gothic edifice, vast, severe, and gloomy, though HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. much defaced by modern improvements (?) in the worst possible taste. EI Pilar is dedicated to the Virgin, and takes its name from the absurd legend attached to it. St. James, so it is said, applied to the Virgin for permission to preach the Gospel in Spain. She gave her consent, and having "kissed her hand " he set out on his journey. In due time he reached Saragossa, and forthwith converted eight pagans before he slept. Greatly desiring to see the Mother of his Lord once again, a company of angels brought her to him on a pillar of jasper. She commanded him to build a chapel to her BRIDGE AT SARAGOSSA. honour on the spot where the pillar rested, and then returned to Palestine. The Church of Our Lady of the Pillar was one of the most popular shrines throughout Spain. Fifty thousand persons have been known to visit it on the day set apart for the commemoration of the pretended miracle. The edifice became one of the richest in Europe. Costly marbles, gold, silver, precious stones, and embroidered garments were lavished upon it. It stirs one's indignation that the tender, simple, and beautiful narrative of the Gospel should be encumbered by legends like these, at once wicked and absurd. 196 ACROSS THE PYRENEES. In the steep, narrow, and gloomy streets of Saragossa there are some fine specimens of ancient domestic architecture. The spiral pillars, delicately carved open work, and noble staircase of the inner courts of the Casa de la Infanta are greatly to be admired. The Torre Nueva is an interesting specimen of a leaning tower. Its deviation from the perpendicular however is due, not to a whim of the architect, but to faulty foundations. Tourists who keep closely to the beaten tracks of travel must return from Saragossa to Barcelona. Train and diligence will convey them thence CASTLE OF I'AU. across the eastern Pyrenees by way of Gerona and Perpignan into the great French system of railways. The route is one of much interest and beauty, though the hotel accommodation on the Spanish side is rough and poor. More adventurous travellers may make their way nearly due north from Saragossa. As far as Huesca a railway is available. From thence the tourist must be contented with rustic vehicles till he reaches the slopes of the mountains, and must cross the Pyrenees on foot or horseback. If he have a few days to spare he will be able, by this route, to visit Gavarnie, the baths of Luchon, Bagnerres de Bigorre, Eaux Chaudes, and other points of great interest, and HOMEWARD BY THE EAST COAST. at last find himself at Pau, the capital of the Pyrenees. After some weeks spent in the cities and plains of the peninsula, the fresh mountain air and the grand mountain scenery will be doubly delightful. In our rambles through Spain we have been traversing a country of which, we may say, in the words of Scripture, it is "a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates ; a land of oil olive, and honey . . . a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." Under its former occupants, from the Phoenicians to the Moors, it was one of the granaries and gardens of Europe. Its commanding position on the great highway of the world's commerce, the exuberant fertility of its soil, its exhaustless mineral treasures, and the industry and energy of its people, seemed to secure for it a high position amongst the nations. Only three centuries ago it held unquestionably the first place in Europe. Under the paralysing influence of political tyranny and papal bigotry its cities have fallen into decay ; its fields have been smitten with barrenness ; its commerce and manufactures have perished. It retains but the ruins of its former greatness. A few years the decadence seemed to have been arrested, and a measure of improvement might be traced. The yoke of Rome had been broken. The government of, perhaps, the most corrupt court in Europe had come to an end. The Gospel was faithfully preached to crowds of eager listeners, and millions of books and tracts enforcing the principles of morality and godliness were circulated amongst the people. But who can now forecast the future of Spain ? No settled government has yet been established, and there is a danger, increasing day by day, of anarchy succeeding to the despotism of former years. The people are rapidly passing from super- stition into infidelity : great multitudes of them have already done so. The writer cannot conclude without again avowing his conviction that its only hope lies in the spread of true religion. Of Spain, as of every other country, it is true that, " Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." 198 CHRONOLOGY OF SPAIN. I— PRIOR TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST, (Partly Conjectural.') n.c. B.C. Tarshish : ancient name of Spain. Tarifa was 227 — 222. probably Tartessus.* 213. Phoenicians in Spain, at Gades (Cadiz), at Malaca 209 — 206. (Malaga), and Corduba (Cordova). Rhodians and Phocians in Catalonia and Valencia. 205 — 146. The Carthaginians in Gades, 139 — 134. The Carthaginians overrun Andalusia, Murcia, 132 — 19. Valencia, and Catalonia, and found Cartagena. 2250. 1600. 900. 480. 235- The Romans interpose. Fall of Saguntum. Asdrubal defeated by the Romans. Scipio Africanus in Spain. Carthaginians finally expelled. Spain a Roman province. Resistance and fall of Numantia. Long wars of the Asturians and Cantabrians with the Romans. Their submission. II.— UNDER THE ROMANS. A.D. 14 — 97- Tiberius to Nerva. 97 — 1 1 7- Trajan, a Spaniard, emperor. 117 — 138. Adrian, a Spaniard, emperor. 138 — 161. Antoninus Pius, emperor. 161 — 180. Marcus Aurelius, a Spaniard, emperor. 251. Christian martyrs in Saragossa. 260. An irruption of the Franks and Suevi. 305. A Council at Eliberis, near Corduba. 325. Council of Nice : Hosius of Corduba, president. 384. Priscillian and his adherents condemned. III.— UNDER THE GOTHS. 402. Suevi and Vandals ravage Spain. 411. Ataulfo. 415. Wallia. 418. Goths overcome Van- dals and Suevi. 420. Theodoric l. Goths expel the Vandals. 438. Richilan, King of Spain. 451. Thorismund. 452. Theodoric II. 466. Euric. 483. Alaric. 506. Gensalric. 511. Theodoric il. 522. Amalaric. 531. Theudis. 548. Theudisela. 549. Agilan. 554. Athanagild. 567. Liuva. 570. Leovigild. Recared i. Liuva. Witeric. 610. Gundemar. 612. Sisebert. 621. Recared 11. 621. Swintila. 587. 601. 603. 631. Sisenand. 636. Chintila. 640. Tulga. 642. Chindaswind. 649. Receswind. 672. Wamba. 680. Ervigius. 687. Egica. 701. Witiza. 709. Roderic. 71 1. Landing of the Moors : Battle of Xeres de la Frontera : Fall of the Gothic monarchy. IV.— UNDER THE ARABS AND MOORS. 712 — 714. Musa arrives in Spain. The peninsula subdued. MOSLEM SPAIN. 713, 714. Tarik and Musa, viceroys of the caliph. 716. Alhaur ben Abderahman. 721. Alsama ben Melic. Abderahman ben Abdalla. 723. Ambisa ben Johim. 733. Defeat of the Moslem army at Tours. 755. Several viceroys. Dissensions among them. -787. Abderahman, first Moslem king. 778. Invasion of Charlemagne. 796. Hixem, the Just and Good. 821. Alhakem. 81:2. 733- 755- 777, 787- 796- 821- 852- 912 961 976— 912. 961. 976. IOI2. Abderahman II. Mohammed i. Almondhir. Abdalla. Abderahman III. Alhakem II. Hixem li. Most splendid period of the Moslem dominion. ASTURIAS. Pelayo defeats the Moslems. Fruela tributary. Alfonso I. Aurelio. Alfonso II. independent. Ramiro i. Ordono i. Alfonso III. Garcia. Ordono II. Fruela 11. Alfonso IV. Ramiro II. Ordono III. Sancho I. Ramiro III. Bermudo 11. Favila, his son. Alfonso V. Almansor lays waste Galicia and Asturias. Battle of Calat Onosor, a.d. 1002. Defeat of the Moslems. Close of the period of absolute Mohammedan supremacy. MOSLEM SPAIN. IOI2 — 1094. Dissension among the Moslems. 1085. Alfonso I. takes Toledo. 1086. Battle of Zalaca. 1094 — 1 144. The Almoravides. 1 147— 1225. The Almohades. 1212. Battle of Navas de Tolosa. Murcia invaded by Fernando. Valencia taken by Jayme i. CHRISTIAN SPAIN. 1037. T'ernando l. Castile. 1035. Ramiro i. Aragon. . I Sancho 11. Castile. 1063. Sancho i. ^5- ■! Alfonso VI. Leon. 1094. Pedro i. 1135. Fernando II. Leon. 1104. Alfonso i. Sancho III. Castile. n34. Ramiro 11. Alfonso III. Castile. 1163. Alfonso 1 1. Alfonso IX. Leon. 1196. Pedro 11. Fernando in. Castile. 1213. Jayme i. "57- 1158. 1 187. 1217. All Spain Christian, except Granada, ♦ See Psa, Ixxii. 10; Jonah, i. 3 ; Isaiah Ix. 9; Ixvi, 19. The name Tarshish first appears as that of a grandson of Japheth, Gen, 199 MOSLEM KINGDOM OF GRANADA. A.D. 1238. Mohammed i. founder of kingdom — the Alhambra. 1273. Mohammed il. 1302. Mohammed in. 1309. Nassir. 1313. Ismail. 1325. Mohammed IV. 1333- Vussef. 1354. Mohammed V. 1359. Ismail II. 1360. Abu Saref. 1391. Yussefli. 1396. Mohammed vi. 1408. Yussef III. 1423. Muley Mohammed vii. 1445. Mohammed ix. 1454. Mohammed x. 1463. Muley Ali Abul Hassan. 1483. Abu Abdalla. 1492. Fall of Granada. SPAIN. A.D. 1469. Isabella of Castile marries Ferdinand of Aragon. 1478. Reorganization of the Inquisition. 1479. Gastile and Aragon are united. 1492. Fall of the Moslem kingdom of Granada. 1498. Discovery of America by Columbus. 1504. Death of Isabella ; her daughter Juana succeeds. 1506. Death of Philip, husband of Juana. 1516. Death of Ferdinand. Charles I. (v. of Germany). 1520. Insurrection of Santiago. 1 52 1. Re-establishment of the royal authority. 1527. Insurrection of the Moriscos suppressed. 1556. Charles resigns the crown. Philip 11. 1588. Equipment and destruction of the Armada. 1598. Horrible death of Philip. Philip in. 1 62 1. Philip IV., king of Spain and Portugal. 1640. Revolt and independence of Portugal. 1665. Death of Philip. Charles li. 1759. Charles in. 1 700. Philip V. War of the Succession. 1 7 1 3. Treaty of Utrecht. 1746. Death of Philip. Ferdinand vi. 1788. Charles IV. : abdicated 1808. 1808. Ferdinand vii. forced to resign by Napoleon : Joseph Bonaparte placed upon the throne. Peninsular War. 1813. Ferdinand vii. restored ; enters Madrid, May 14. 1820, A rising in Spain. Ferdinand convokes the Cortes, and swears to the constitution. 1 82 1. Revolution in South America. 1823. French army in Spain. Overthrow of the con- stitution. ^833. Ferdinand dies : queen Christina regent during minority of her daughter. 1 841. Espartero elected regent. 1843. Isabella li. declared queen. 1868, Revolution : Serrano regent. LEON AND CASTILE, ARAGON. PORTUGAL, 1248. Fernando in. 1248. Alfonso in. 1252. Alfonso X. 1276. Pedro in. 1274. Dionis. 1284. Sancho iv. 1295- Fernando iv. 1285. Alfonso in. I3I2. Alfonso XI. I29I. Jayme n. 1327- Alfonso IV. 1325- Alfonso IV. 1350. Pedro the Cruel. 1336. Pedro IV. 1357- Pedro I. 1369- Enrique il. 1367. Fernando I 1379- Juan I. 1387. Juan I. 1383- Joam I. 1390. Enrique ill. 1395- Martin. 1406. Juan II. 1412. 1416. Fernando I. Alfonso V. 1433- Duardo. 1454- Enrique IV. 1458. Juan II. 1438. Alfonso v. 1474. Isabella. 1479. Fernando ll. 1481. Joam II. Castile and Aragon unitec . PORTUGAL. 1495. Manuel. 1521. Joam III. 1557. Sebastian. 1578. Henrique. 1580. Annexed to Spain. independence. 1640. /I"surrection; ^ \Joam IV. 1656. Alfonso VI. 1683. Pedro n. 1 707. Joam V. 1750. Jose. 1777. Maria. 1792. Joam VI. regent. 1807. The French occupy Portugal. 1809. Wellington expels them. 1814. Joam VI. emperor of Brazil, king of Portugal. 1826, Death of Joam vr. ; Pedro, his son, emperor of Brazil, and his daughter, Maria, queen of Portugal. 1828. Dom Miguel usurps the crown. 1833. Maria n. restored. 1853. Pedro V. 1861. Luis L "^^ HOME USB 'month loons may beT^^^^'> AFTER 7 DAYS FORM NO. DD6 An o^^^^^SITYOFCAUmSIIin' *' *°'"' 3/80 BERKELEV. CA 9,^^o«««LEY ®$