WANDERINGS IN SPAIN,

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE'S "WORKS.
IN 12mo, CLOTH VOLUMES.

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WANDERINGS IN

SPAIN

BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
AUTHOR OF "WALKS IN ROME," "WALKS IN LONDON,"
"CITIES OF ITALY.." "FLORENCE," "VENICE,"
" RUSSIA," ETC., ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited
9 Lafayette Place

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Toledo ..... Frontispiece.
Lerida . . . . . .14
Barcelona . .... 26
Cathedral, Tarragona . . . -34
At Elche ...... 52
Cordova ....... 56
Seville ..... 62
Gibraltar from Algeciras . . .86
Gate of Justice, Alhambra . . 94
Court of Blessing, Alhambra . . . • 98
Puerta del Sol, Toledo . . . 116
Statue of Philip IV., Madrid . . . 135
Segovia . . . . , . 152
Palace of La Granja . . . . .158
Salamanca ...... 170
Arco de Sancta Maria, Burgos . . .176

CONTENTS.

PAGE,
I. NAVARRE AND ARRAGON  I
II. IN CATALONIA  14
III. BARCELONA AND GERONA ... -25
IV. TARRAGONA AND POBLET ... -33
V. VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE . 44
VI. CORDOVA . . 56
VII. SEVILLE  62
VIII. CADIZ AND GIBRALTAR  86
IX. GRANADA  91
X. ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO  I15
XI. MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL . . . .133
XII. SEGOVIA AND AVILA  1 52
XIII. SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS . .169

INTRODUCTION.

THERE are many ways of making a tour in Spain. Of
these, the one which is usually chosen is the comfort
able tour, which takes the traveler by the main line of
railway to Madrid, showing him the cathedral of Burgos
and the palace of the Escorial on the way, and which
carries him on to Toledo, Cordova, Seville and Granada,
almost all places which may be visited and sojourned at
with little more of difficulty or of discomfort than is to
be met with between London and Paris. The traveler
who follows this route generally declines spending his
time in stopping at the smaller stations, even though they
may be directly on his way ; he is content with seeing what
he has been told is the cream of Spain. But he must not
imagine that in doing this he has really seen Spain, or that
such a tour can give him more than the most cursory
glimpse, if as much, into the character and the habits of
its people. And even the small benefit and interest which
such a traveler might receive on such a journey is barred
out from him, if he is hedged in, as is too often the case,
by ignorant couriers, or the ciceroni who lurk like blood
thirsty leeches around the doors of the principal hotels.
He who would really see Spain, must go prepared to
rough it, must be unembarrassed by a courier (a creature
the Spanish mind hates as much as it despises the
unfortunate master in leading-strings), must be content
with humble inns, coarse fare, windows often glassless,
vehicles always jolting, and above all must put all false

VI INTRODUCTION.
Anglican pride in his pocket, and treat every Spaniard,
from the lowest beggar upwards, as his equal. If he will
bear these things, especially if he will unstiff en his English
backbone, and genially and cordially respond to the many
humble courtesies which he will undoubtedly meet with,
he will enjoy Spain, and her abounding treasures of art,
of history, of legendary lore, and above all of kindly
generous hospitality, will be freely poured out for him.
He must take Spain as he finds her ; she is not likely to
improve ; she does not wish to improve ; the only way of
finding pleasure in her is to take her as she is, without
longing for her to be what she is not. The Spanish
standard of morals, of manners, of religion, of duty, of
all the courtesies which are due from one person to
another, however wide apart their rank, is a very differ
ent and in most of these points a much higher standard
than the English one, and, if an English traveler will not
at least endeavor to come up to it, he had much better
stay at home.
It is also necessary at once to lay aside all false expec
tations as to what one will find. Spain is not a beautiful
country. If a traveler expects to find the soft charm
and luxuriant loveliness of Italy, life in Spain will be a con
stant disappointment : no hope can possibly be more mis
placed. Spain is not the least like Italy : it has not even
the beauty of the greater part of France. Beyond the
Asturias and the valleys near the Pyrenees, there is not a
tree worth speaking of in the Peninsula. There is scarcely
any grass ; the shrubs may even be counted ; except
when the corn is out, which here lasts such a short time,
there is hardly any vegetation at all. Those who wish to
find beauty must only look for beauty of an especial
kind — without verdure, or refinement, or color. But the
artist will be satisfied without these, and will exult in the
long lines, in the unbroken expanse of the stony, treeless,

INTRODUCTION. vii
desolate sierras, while every crevice of the distant hills is
distinctly visible in the transparent atmosphere, and the
shadows of the clouds fall blue upon the pale yellow of
the tawny desert. In the central provinces, hundreds and
hundreds of miles may be traversed, and no single feature
of striking natural beauty be met with ; nothing more
than the picturesque effects which may always be obtained
by the groups of cattle, gathered round fountains by the
dusty wayside or standing out as if embossed against the
pale distances, or by the long trains of mules with their
drivers in brigand-like costume and flowing mantas bear
ing merchandise from one town to another. On these
plains, too, there is a silence which is almost ghastly, for
there are no singing birds, scarcely even any insects. Such
is the character of almost all the country now traversed
by the principal railways, which was formerly toiled
through in diligence or on mule-back. But even here,
just when the spirits begin to flag, and the wearied eye
longs to refresh itself, the traveler reaches one of the
grand old cities which seem to have gone to sleep for five
hundred years and to have scarcely waked up again,
where you step at once out of the reign of Amadeo or
Isabella II. into that of Philip II., and find the buildings,
the costumes, the proverbs, the habits, the daily life,
those of his time. You wonder what Spain has been
doing since, and the answer is quite easy — nothing. It
has not the slightest wish to do any thing more ; it is quite
satisfied. The Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isa
bella made a great nation of it, and filled it with glorious
works. Since then it has had, well — reverses, but it has
changed as little as ever it could. It has delighted in its
conservatism in every thing, down to the sleepy wicked
ness of its Bourbon sovereigns. We said to many a Span
iard who lamented over the absence of Isabella, " Oh, but
she was so dreadfully wicked." " Ah, yes," was the

Vlll INTRODUCTION.
answer, with a look of much sympathy for the exile, " she
had indeed all the dear old Spanish vices." And for the
sake of those ancestral vices even, many will not rest till
they have her back again.
How the Spaniards hate and abuse the railways, though
they use them ! Certainly they make them go as slow as
possible, and bring the trains as nearly as pos
sible to the speed of the old mule-traffic. And as for
carriages in country places, they are little more than a
square of bars with ropes between, through which you
tumble, and stick, and flounder as best you may, while
you are being furiously jolted over the rugged, rutty,
rocky roads.
Except in the Asturias and some parts of Galicia, I am
only aware of two places where there is any thing that may
be called beautiful country in Spain, and these are Monser-
rat, the noblest, the most gloriously beautiful of rocks,
and the palm-groves of Elche. The latter is indeed quite
surpassingly beautiful, and a painter might linger forever
upon the glowing loveliness of its contrasts, where the
stony yellow plain sweeps up close with the luxuriant palm-
woods. It has more of the ideal Africa than Africa itself,
and is the most splendid oasis in a singularly dismal desert.
Generally, African travelers complain of the Spanish
deserts as being deserts without any oases at all.
Travel in Spain then becomes a constant movement from
one town to another — towns which are not as beautiful as
those of Italy, not as picturesque as many of those in
France and Germany, but which have a peculiar charm of
their own in their tortuous whitewashed streets, their vast
brown moldering palaces, and their colossal churches,
which nothing but sight can give the impression of. Such
a town Kenelm Digby describes when he wishes that his
" Broadstone of Honor " may resemble " one of those
beautiful old cities in Spain, in which one finds every

INTRODUCTION. IX
thing : cool walks shaded by orange-trees along the
banks of a river ; great open squares exposed to the
burning sun, for festivities ; narrow, winding, dark streets,
composed of houses of every form, height, age, color ;
labyrinths of buildings, all confused together, palaces,
hospitals, convents, halls, all raised in an appropriate
style of architecture ; market-places, resounding to the
busy hum of men ; cemeteries, where living are as silent
as the dead ; in the center, the vast gothic cathedral,
with its airy spires and massive tower, its fine sculptured
portals, and its arches and capitals of varied tracery, its
deep vaults, its forestsof pillars, its burning chapels, its
multitude of saints, its high altar lighted with a thousand
tapers — wonderful structure ! imposing by its enormous
magnitude, curious in its details, sublime when seen
from a distance of two leagues, and beautiful when only
two paces from the eye. Then, in another quarter of the
city, the vast arch of aqueduct, constructed by the
Romans, or, concealed by a grove of palms and syca
mores, the ruins of the Oriental mosque, with its domes
of brass and enameled pavements."
Such a town as this is Salamanca on the beatiful
Tormes ; such is Segovia, with its richly decorated
streets, its wide views over the wild surrounding sierras,
and its deep green gorges filled with old churches and
convents. Such, above all, is Granada, the climax of the
beauty and interest of Spain, a place which alone is worth
all and tenfold the fatigue and trouble which may be
undertaken to reach it. Long before railway days, I
knew some ladies, who, being delayed for a few days
between two steamers at Malaga, determined to reach
Granada, though it was only possible to spend one day
there. Day and night, though in feeble health, they rode
on in ever- increasing exhaustion. At last, on the summit
of a desolate mountain, their strength altogether gave

x INTRODUCTION.
way, and they felt it impossible to proceed further. But
just then a solitary traveler approached from the other
side of the pass — the path was so narrow, so hemmed in
by precipices, that it was impossible to linger — there was
no time for many words, but as the stranger passed he
exclaimed, "Go on, go on, it is alike the Paradise of
Nature and of Art," — and they took courage and went
on, and found it, as so many thousands of travelers
have done since, the most perfectly beautiful place in the
world. There is no mine of interest which has been less
explored than that of Spain. Singularly little has been
written about it, even in its own language. The traveler's
library need not be very large. There is no book like
Ford, which can not be done without, but then it must
be the old original undistorted edition, which is now
very difficult to procure. O'Shea is a capital guide-book
for the commonly visited places, has more correct recent
information than Murray, from which it differs entirely
both in plan and material, and is the best for practical
purposes. The volume of Kugler's Handbook on the
Spanish Schools of Painting, may be found useful in the
galleries of Valencia, Seville and Madrid, though most of
itsinformation is given in a more agreeable and attention-
arresting form in a charming volume called " Spanish
Towns and Spanish Pictures," by Mrs. W. A. Tollemache.
Street's ponderous volume on the "Gothic Architecture
of Spain " may be instructively studied for the churches
of the north before leaving home. Hans Christian
Andersen's vivid sketches " In Spain " are pleasant read
ing upon the spot, and in French the admirable " Voyage
en Espagne " of Theophile Gautier. But if one goes
beyond mere architecture and picture-seeing, into that
which makes Spain what it is, the living, active — or rather
the dead, inactive — pulse of its people, filled with poeti
cal thoughts, existing in an atmosphere of semi-Eastern

INTRODUCTION. xi
imagery, which flows in songs and proverbs from their
lips, there are a series of modern Spanish romances,
giving an unexaggerated picture of the life and character
of the people, which should indeed be more carefully
studied than any hand-book, and which are the pleasant-
est companions. in the long, weary railway journeys, which
offer nothing to see and very little to think about. Per
fectly charming are the little novels and poems of Gustave
Becquer, the historical tales of Trueba, the poems of
Don Melchor de Palau — but above all the inexhaustible
wealth of beautiful word-pictures which may be enjoyed
in the stories of Fernan Caballero, which collect so
much, and reveal so much, and teach so much, that it is
scarcely possible sufficiently to express one's obligation
to them.
Tired of modern novels, a traveler who has taken the
trouble to make some acquaintance with the language
may be curious to know at least the names and charac
teristics of those who have used it with the greatest
success, for, with the single exception of Don Quixote,
Spanish authors are but little known beyond the Penin
sula. Graver students may be referred at once to the
" Literary Histories " of Bouterwek (tr. by Th. Ross) and
Ticknor. The earliest monument of Spanish literature (it is also
the earliest epic in any modern language) is the rhymed
chronicle known as the "Poem of the Cid." The hero's
exile and return, his conquest of Valencia, the marriage
of his daughters with the Infants of Carrion, the cruel
treatment they suffer from their husbands, and their
re-marriage with the Infants of Navarre and Arragon,
are the events told naively in these rude verses. The
Cid died in 1099, and the poem may date some fifty
years later. The ordinary reader will get an ample idea
of its gist and spirit in the admirable translations of John

xn INTRODUCTION.
Hookham Frere (in his collected works, vol. ii., pp. 411
—437)- After "The Cid" follow the rhymed tales of the
Romancero and Cancionero-General, and the many
volumes of romances and stories of knight errantry so
lovingly collected and studied by Don Quixote, and of
which the cure and the barber made so ruthless a
holocaust. All but antiquaries, however, will skip at once from
the age of Ruy Diaz to that of Charles V., when a new
race of poets began to seek their inspiration from clas
sical and Italian sources ; when Virgil, Horace and
Petrarch were studied and imitated, and the Italian son
net and canzone were acclimatized in Spain. Copious
stores of lyric and pastoral poetry still survive to keep
fresh in Spain the names of Boscan, Garcilaso, Mendoza,
Herrera, and Luis de Leon. At last (1547 — 1616)
appeared Cervantes. Don Quixote needs no word of
comment, but the reader may perhaps be reminded that
to the same pen Spain owes some capital stories, some
what in the style of Boccaccio (the Novelas Ejemplares),
and an admirable tragedy, "Numantia." The great out
burst of Spanish genius extends (just as in Greece and
England) through a period of little more than a century,
contained within the reigns of Philip II., III., IV. What
the Persian war was to the Greek, the discovery and con
quest of the New World was to the Spaniard ; and in the
lull which followed either event the passionate attach
ment to the altars and homes of their fatherland, and the
lofty pride in their history, which filled every breast in
both nations, found its highest expression in the drama.
Lope de Vega (1562 — 1635), who is said to have written
nearly two thousand plays, stands first in fertility and
inventive genius; Calderon (1600 — 1681) in wealth of
imagery and deep religious feeling. In his power of por-

INTRODUCTION. Xlll
traying the most tender "sensibility of principle," the
most perfect "chastity of honor," Calderon stands alone
among poets. Englishmen will do well to approach this
singular genius through the graceful essay of Archbishop
Trench, and the fragmentary translation of the Magico
Prodigioso by Shelley.
So far the great charm of Spanish literature lay in the
fact that its chefs-d'auvre were less mannered and learned,
and more original and national than those of other coun
tries. But before the death of Lope de Vega a new
school had arisen which affected a superlative purity of
expression and style. Ample specimens of its versatile
founder, Gongora (1561-1627), and an interesting account
of the controversies his works provoked, may be found in
an essay by Archdeacon Churton entitled "Gongora."
A beginner will find his best help to the language in
Del Mar's grammar, and Neuman and Baretti's diction
ary ; with these at his side let him begin by attacking
Padre Isla's translation of Gil Bias or one of Fernan
Caballero's novelettes.
Spain is now so encircled by railways that almost every
thing of importance may be visited by rail. The follow
ing is the tour we intended to make, though we were pre
vented ultimately from accomplishing a part of it, and it
embraces all the principal objects of interest in Spain and
Portugal. Irun (excursion in carriage to Fontarabia).
S. Sebastian.
Pamplona (ride to Roncesvalles).
Tudela (visit — by carriage — Tarrazona, and — on mules—
Veruela).
Tafalla and Olite.
Zaragoza. /
Huesca (walk or ride to visit the neighboring convents).
Lerida. Manresa (drive to the curious mines of Cardpfia),

xiv INTRODUCTION.
Monistrol (walk or drive to Monserrat, and remain some days
at the convent, seeing the neighborhood on foot).
Barcelona (visit Pedralles, and San Culgat del Vallis — going by
rail to Serdanola and walking from thence).
Ripoll, rail and drive.
Gerona. Martorell.
Tarragona (visit Poblet and other monasteries, taking the rail
way to Montblanch, and driving or walking from thence).
Saguntum.
Valencia. Jativa. Alicante, hence drive to —
Elche, drive to —
Orihuela, and on to —
Murcia.
Cordova' (ride or walk to the hermitages of Val Paraiso).
Seville (drive to Italica).
Xeres.
Cadiz, whence by sea, or ride by Tarifa, to —
AlgecirAS, steamer to —
Gibraltar, and on mules to —
Ronda, whence ride and rail to —
Malaga, or direct to —
Granada (excursion to the Alpuxarras and Alhama), diligence
to—
Jaen, and on to Menzibar, whence by rail to —
Merida.
Santarem. Lisbon (excursion to Cintra and Mafra), by rail to Carregado,
and carriage, by Caldas da Rainha, to —
Alcobaoa, and on to —
Batalha, and on to —
Coimbra.Oporto , carriage or sea to —
Vigo, carriage to — ¦
Santiago, diligence to —
Lugo, and to —
Villa Franca del Vierzo (whence ride or ,walk to the monas
teries), and carriage to —
Astorga.

INTRODUCTION. xv
Leon, diligence to —
Oviedo, ride to —
Covadonga, and ride on to —
Santander.Palencia.
Zamora, diligence to —
Salamanca, diligence to —
Avila. Madrid.
Toledo.Aranjuez, and return to —
Madrid (excursion by rail to Alcala, Guadalajara and Siguenza).
Vilalba, diligence to La Granja and diligence or carriage to —
Segovia, diligence back to Vilalba and rail to —
Escorial.
Valladolid (drive to the Tower of Simancas).
Burgos (drive to Miraflores and S. Pedro de Cerdena).
Irun.
As a certain degree of physical well-being is quite essen
tial to mental enjoyment, a Spanish traveler who intends
to visit obscure places should certainly not set out unpro
vided with some of the comforts of life — some tea, Lie-
big's soup, soap, and a few common medicines should on
no account be left behind. It should also be remembered,
that, except in the extreme south, and on part of the east
coast, the cold in Spain is quite as severe, or more so, than
in the north of Europe — though it is a dry, healthy cold —
and a good supply of warm wraps must be provided.
Spanish " Travelers' Rests " are of three kinds : — a
Fonda, which answers to an hotel ; a Posada, which repre
sents an inn, though generally of very inferior quality ;
and a Venta, which is the merest public-house. In almost
all the towns, however, are Casas de Huespedes, boarding
houses, where food and lodging are supplied at a fixed
price, and which, as regards the latter, are often very
comfortable ; of the former it is seldom that much can be
said. Houses of this kind which have rooms to be let

xvi INTRODUCTION.
furnished, hang out a piece of white paper from the middle
of their balcony, but when the rooms are unfurnished, the
paper is placed at the corner of the balcony. Almost all
Spanish houses are distinguished by a heavy shield or
coat-of-arms, often of very curious historical origin. Such
is the badge of " El Nodo " represented on the outside of
this volume, which is borne proudly over the gates of
Seville and its Alcazar, given by Alonzo el Sabio, when
that town alone was faithful to him in his misfortunes,
and meaning " No m'ha dejado " (" She has not deserted
me "), Madeja being expressed by the central figure repre
senting a skein.

CHAPTER I.
NAVARRE AND ARRAGON.
ZARAGOZA, December 29, 1871.
WE have entered Spain at the end of December, which
is by no means the best time of the year for begin
ning our tour. The traveler who intends to make a
long progress through the Peninsula, and who wishes to
do it comfortably and pleasantly, should not set out later
than October, when he may hope to pass through one
side of the bleak northern provinces, and reach beauty
and sunshine before the cold weather sets in. In this we
were prevented, but we have begun our journey, deter
mined to find all possible compensation for our fatigues,
to look at the bright side in every thing, and, above all,
not to be deterred by a little difficulty from seeing all we
have come to visit.
Our passage of the boundary-line between France and
Spain was by no means triumphant. Just at the critical
moment, when we were about to cross the Bidassoa, and
all heads were out of the windows watching for the famous
Isle of Pheasants, crash went the train off the line, knock
ing every body back into their seats, and swamping
sentiment into a fright. We seemed likely to be detained
for hours, but there is a wonderful strength in numbers,
and such a multitude of peasants obeyed the summons to
assist in lifting the refractory carriages on to the line
again, that less than an hour saw them all replaced, and
five minutes after, we steamed across the narrow channel
and entered Spain.

2 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
The change on crossing the boundary is strangely
instantaneous, and the traveler is forced at once to
realize how impossible it will be to travel in Spain without
at least some knowledge of its language ; for even on the
frontier no other is understood, and the most embarrass
ing confusion is in store for one who has not already
mastered the intricate varieties of the Spanish coinage in
which his fresh tickets have to be paid for. Immedi
ately, also, Spanish customs come into play. You ask his
worship the Porter to have the graciousness to assist you
in lifting your portmanteau (" Mozo, hagame Usted el
favor de llevar mi maleta "), and you implore his worship
the Beggar, your brother, for the love of God to excuse
you from giving him any thing (" Perdoneme Usted, por
Dios, hermano "). Pleasantly, however, does this excess
of Spanish courtesy strike you when you are about to
enter the railway carriage. However crowded it may be
already, however filled up with hand-bags and other
impedimenta of its occupants, the new-comers, who
would be scowled upon in England, are welcomed with
smiles and willing help ; places are at once made' for
them, their bags and baskets are comfortably stowed
away, and every thing that can be supplied is offered for
their convenience ; every Spanish gentleman is willing to
assist, translate, or advise ; and if you travel in the second-
class carriages, which, as in many parts of Germany, are,
in the north of Spain, often much more roomy and com
fortable, and generally far less crowded than the first, not
even the humblest peasant leaves it without lifting his
hat and wishing you a hearty " A Dios, Seftores."
The train crawls along in the most provoking way,
stopping at all the small stations for two, four, ten,
twenty minutes, and giving you ample time to survey the
scenery. You feel impatient, but your Spanish compan
ions are perfectly satisfied: " It is much safer, so satisfac-

NA VARRE AND ARRAGON. 3
tory never to have any accidents." Time is of no import
ance to them whatever. " One can smoke one's cigarri-
tos as well in one place as another." This insouciance was
fully displayed when we reached the junction station of
Alsasua, where we were to change for Pamplona, and
found our train had just been taken off by the company,
without any previous notice having been given to that
effect. It was pitch dark, and from the pouring rain which
had continued for several days, the wild country round
was like a swamp, so the prospect for a whole day's deten
tion was by no means exhilarating ; but finding our Span
ish friends received the announcement with no greater
expression of displeasure than a shrug of the shoulders,
we thought it better to take it in the same way, and, as
they said, to " avoid the fatigue of discomposing our
selves." Lanterns were brought to guide us down a
slippery causeway and through a slough of red mud to a
humble cottage-like Posada, where a woman with her
head tied up in a bright red-and-yellow handkerchief gave
us a warm reception, surrounded by her five cats and as
many children. We found every thing much better than
we had expected ; the small bed-rooms had clean boarded
floors, though no more furniture than was absolutely
necessary, and the straw mattresses were covered with
clean linen. There were no fire-places, but during the
evening each was warmed for a time with a brasero filled
with smoldering wood ashes. The night was bitterly
cold, for the hills close around were thickly covered with
snow ; and after a humble supper of broth, boiled eggs,
and potatoes, we clustered round a log-fire in the lower
room, our party being increased by the station-master and
two traveling bagmen, who diverted us with their various
experiences, while the cats fought and screeched in the
background. In the morning a small cup of chocolate
was served to each, with some dry bread, for we had

4 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
taken leave of butter on taking leave of French soil.
The hours of waiting passed more quickly than we ex
pected, and the following afternoon we were speeding
through the bleak, mountainous country, interspersed
with oak and cork woods.
Long before we reached it, we could see the rock-built
Pamplona, its brown towers and walls standing out as if
embossed against the delicate pale pink of the snow-
tipped mountains, and rising from the long reaches of the
dead green Cuenca, as the surrounding plain is called, the
cup which contains the precious " key of Navarre," and
which here closely resembles the Roman Campagna in
its desolation and coloring.
The station is deep in the valley, and an omnibus took
us into the town by a steep winding road, skirting the high
walls, and passing a drawbridge and gateway. The only
trees to be seen were a few white poplars, allowed to
linger in life when all other trees are cut down, in regard
to the old Spanish belief that they were the first trees the
Almighty created — the Adam of vegetation.
On entering the town the aspect of things is thoroughly
Spanish : the brightly-painted houses thickly hung with
balconies of wrought ironwork ; the small "plazas" with
their gray churches, in front of which groups of priests
are seen mingling with the gay costumes of the peas
antry ; the great square surrounded by its heavy arcade ;
the avenues and gardens, especially that known as " La
Taconera," the favorite resort of handsome black-robed
senoras in their flowing mantillas, for here, indeed, is a
bonnet unknown, and its wearer is followed about and
pointed at as a curiosity.
From the great Plaza, considered to be one of the
largest in Spain, in which 10,000 Jews were burned alive
to do honor to the marriage of a Count de Champagne —
a human bonfire, which was visible from all the country

NA VARRE AND ARRAGON. 5
round — a steep, stony street leads to the cathedral. Its
Ionic front, built by Ventura Rodriquez in 1780, causes
one to be agreeably surprised with the rest of the building,
which dates from 1397, when Charles the Noble (or III.)
pulled down an older church of 1 100, leaving only the
chapter-house and a part of the cloisters.
In the interior the tourist will first see the peculiar
arrangement which is usual in the Spanish churches.
Far down the nave, almost to its last pier, extends the
raised coro, used only by the canons and choristers, and
entirely shut in by its high partition walls, except where,
towards the east, a passage marked by low brass rails
(re/as), to prevent the priests from being pressed upon by
the people, leads to the high altar, where the huge and
splendid carved altar-piece, known as a retablo, takes the
place of the reredos of an English cathedral. At the
east end of the coro is the magnificent tomb of the
founder, with his figure and that of his queen Leonor.
The cloisters, inclosing a tangled garden and a lonely
cypress, are a perfect dream of beauty, each canopied
arch rising against the light open gallery of the second
story, so as to display its delicate stonework to perfection.
Here, among other curiosities, is the tomb of Miguel
Ancheta, sculptor of the choir stall-work, with a curious
epitaph, and a little chapel inclosed by an iron palisade
made from the chains taken in the battle of Las Navas
de Tolosa. The knocker of the north transept door,
formed by two serpents, is another noteworthy piece of
ancient ironwork.
From the cathedral we follow the line of the walls —
whose strength in the middle ages gave Pamplona the
title of " muy noble, muy leal, y muy heroica," and
which are said to have been originally founded by the
sons of Pompey, who called the place Pompeiopolis, —
till we emerged upon the Taconera, close to the church

6 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
of S. Lorenzo, which contains a statue of the tutelar
saint of the city, St. Fermin, who was born at Pamplona,
but afterwards went to preach at Amiens, where his
miracles are carved around the choir, and where the
delicious scent of his dead body revealed its resting-place
to the bishop, — his disinterment in mid-winter being
celebrated by an entire resurrection of nature, and the
recovery of all the sick.
Near this is the citadel which was besieged in 1521 by
the army of Francis I., while Charles V. was absent in
Germany. A handsome young knight, Ignatius Loyola,
had been left to guard it, and defended it bravely, but
was wounded and disabled, and the garrison surrendered
upon seeing him fall. A cannon-ball had struck Loyola
on both legs, and such was his personal vanity that he
insisted, after the wounds were healed, upon having his
legs twice opened and a projecting bone sawn off, lest
their appearance should be injured ; all, however, was of
no avail, and he was lame for life. During his detention
in the castle of Loyola, he asked for romances to amuse
his convalescence, and none being forthcoming, lives of
our Saviour and the saints were brought to him, which
made him say to himself : " These men were of the same
frame as I am : why should I not do as they have done ? "
— and he rose from his sick-bed with a firm desire to
imitate them and to abandon the world and its vanities.
The fair lady, to whom he declared that he would
henceforth devote himself as champion, was the Virgin
Mother of God, and the wars he would wage were
those against the spiritual enemies of God's people. This
change in the life of the founder of the Jesuits is com
memorated at Pamplona by a small chapel near one of
the gates, which contains an interesting portrait of Loyola,
in his soldier's dress.
The Christmas mass in the cathedral of Pamplona was

NAVARRE AND A RRAGON. 7
magnificent. No service in Italy can compare with the
solemn bursts of music which follow the thrilling solos
sung in these old Spanish churches, where every possible
instrument is pressed into the service of the orchestra ;
and not less striking is the effect of the multitude of
figures who kneel in the dim light between the coro and
altar. At the table a'hdte, in honor of the day, we are
regaled with turrones, a kind of almond hard-bake, only
produced at Christmas.
A dreary journey, through a dismal, barren wilderness,
brought us to Tudela. On the way we passed Tafalla
and Olite, once called the" Flowers of Navarre," and
both of them royal residences, but now squalid villages
of miserable hovels. In Olite, however, are two fine
parish chujches, and considerable remains of the ancient
palace, which would be quite worth stopping at, and
sketching between two trains, in fine weather, though the
miserable town has no accommodation for travelers.
It was late and quite dark on Christmas day when we
reached Tudela and took a boy to guide us through the
frozen streets to the Fonda della Caravaca. The cold
was pitiless, and in our barely furnished rooms above a
stable, without fire-places or even a brasero, it was
impossible to obtain any warmth at all. Tudela does
not, we think, deserve the praise Street bestows upon it,
as containing " a church which is to be classed among
the very best in any part of Europe," though the round-
arched doors of the transepts are very grand, and that at
the west end, of enormous span, incrusted all over with
sculpture, is absolutely magnificent. I say round-arched
advisedly, this style in Spain being more properly known
as Gothic, while Pointed is spoken of as the German
style." One descends a flight of steps from the west door
into the church, which is greatly bedaubed all over and
spoiled by gray and white paint. Similarly injured and

WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.

much built up are the cloisters, which were exhibited to
us, with some pride, by the priests of the church, from
whom here, as everywhere in Spain, we experienced the'
greatest kindness and civility. A tower near the church,
— which is a parroquia, not a cathedral, — has the pic
turesque Moorish decoration of colored tiles inlaid in
patterns. In the evening we crossed the long, narrow bridge of
seventeen arches, and found a pleasant sunny walk by
the banks of the Ebro, which is as yellow as the Tiber.
But the fierce cold prevented our making the interesting
excursion by diligence to Tarragona, and riding from
thence on mules up the mountains to the abbey of Veru-
ela, the oldest Cistercian house in Spain. Those who
read as we have done the beautiful letters of Gustavo
Becquer, written ' Desde mi Celda,' in this convent, and
filled with the most lovely pictures of nature amid its
surrounding scenery, will long to visit the spot whence
they were drawn.
To do justice to the ugliness of the scenery between
Tudela and Zaragoza would be impossible — to the utter
desolation of the treeless, stony, uninhabited wastes,
across which the ice-laden north-west winds whistle unin
terruptedly. But at length the railway skirts the Ebro,
and almost immediately passes the grand old bridge built
in 1437, beyond which, on either side of the principal
thoroughfare,, rise the two cathedrals of Zaragoza, in
which the chapter does duty for six months alternately.
Through narrow, squalid streets an omnibus takes you to
the broad open Plaza de la Constitucion, where the
comfortable Fonda de Europa is situated. In this, as in
other Spanish hotels, a fixed price exists, which includes
apartments, food — at the regular meals provided by the
hotel — service, and lights. No extra charges are made.
The cost of living in these hotels varies from the equiva-

NA VARRE AND ARRAGON. 9
lent of five to eight shillings, generally in proportion to
the importance of the place where you may be.
In the older Spanish towns it is useless to take a guide,
and it is almost equally so to ask your way, as the natives
are wholly unacquainted with their own antiquities, and
uninstructed in their own history. It is only to those
who wander indefatigably through the winding streets,
that all the interesting objects gradually reveal them
selves, though the process is often assisted by the ascent,
in the first instance, of some lofty tower, whence the town
is seen as in a map.
At Zaragoza the sights naturally begin with the bridge,
to the left of which rises the older cathedral of El Seo.
Its front, modernized in the seventeenth century, occu
pies one side of a square, which also contains the archi-
episcopal palace and the Lonja, or exchange, a fine but
decaying building of 1551, with a richly carved projecting
soffit, beneath which many heads of kings and knights
are inserted in medallion frames. The north-east wall
and apse of the church are splendid specimens of
mauresque diaper-work, inlaid with colored tiles.
On entering the cathedral from the sunlit square, one
finds one's self in absolute darkness until one's eyes become
accustomed to the change, so intense is the gloom which
reigns amid its solemn Gothic arches, where even the
faint light from the small round windows high up in the
walls is tempered by crimson curtains Besides these
there are no other windows in the body of the church,
the whole face of the lower walls being filled up with a
mass of Churriguerresque sculpture (so called from the
much-abused architect, Jose Churriguerra, who died
1725), which, though paltry and tasteless in detail, is
inexpressibly rich and gorgeous in its general effect. The
center of the five aisles is occupied by the coro, sur
rounded by a magnificent screen, incrusted with statues

io WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
and bas-reliefs, which tell the stories of San Lorenzo and
San Vicente. At its western extremity, or trascoro, a
statue of Canon Funes kneels in a niche, on the selfsame
spot where he is supposed to have kneeled in his lifetime,
when conversing with the Virgin. No low rejas, as at
Pamplona, lead from the coro to the high altar, which
only slightly recedes from beneath the beautiful lanthorn-
tower, or Cimborio, of 1520. Over the altar is a vast
retablo, around which are grouped the tombs of several
sixteenth century archbishops, and that of the heart of
Don Balthazar, son of Philip IV., the well-known Infante
of Velasquez, who died here of the small-pox, at the age
of seventeen. On the right of the altar is a grand
plateresque door leading to the sacristy, and near it a
chapel commemorating the so-called martyrdom of the
fierce inquisitor San Pedro Arbues, who shared the fate of
Thomas a Becket, being murdered in this cathedral by
Vidal Duranso, September 15, 1495. He well deserved
this end for his cruelties, and it has been of the utmost
service to art, in giving rise to one of the finest pictures
of Murillo, a pendant to the St. Peter Martyr of Titian.
Tradition says that, on his assassination, the grand bell of
Velilla was heard to strike, being the fourth time since
the Moorish occupation ; its miraculous tolling always
announcing some disaster to the monarchy. At the west
end of the church is a chapel containing the tombs of
Archbishop Fernando, grandson of Ferdinand the
Catholic, and his mother, Ana Gurrea, by the admirable
sculptor Diego Morlanes.
Leaving the Seo, the traveler should cross to the other
cathedral of El Pilar, than which it is impossible to
imagine a more complete contrast. Outside, it resembles
a mosque, or Sant' Antonio of Padua, in its endless
towers and domes, covered with bright orange, green and
blue tiles, which glitter in the sunshine, Though much

NA VARRE AND ARRA GON. 1 1
modernized in the last century, the exterior of the build
ing, five hundred feet in length, is imposing from its vast
size. Within, it is a monument of folly and bad taste,
painted and gilded like a Parisian cafe\ Towards its
western extremity, in the center of the nave, is the
sanctum sanctorum, a semi-circular temple, surrounded by
granite columns, where the Virgin, descending upon a
pillar, part of which may be seen through a hole — it is
too sacred to be gazed upon in its entirety — appeared to
Santiago. This famous shrine, which had its origin in Arra-
gonese jealousy of the pilgrimages to the Castilian Com-
postella, is one of the greatest loadstars of Spanish devo
tion. Hundreds of pilgrims are always kneeling in front
of the black image, or pressing to kiss its feet. The
wardrobe of La Virgen del Pilar is inexhaustible, and she
is constantly changing her gorgeous apparel, the priests
who perform her toilet averting their eyes at the time,
lest they should be struck with blindness by the contem
plation of her charms. Fifty thousand pilgrims some
times flock hither on the twelfth of October alone, which
is the festival of Pilar ; and no wonder, for " God alone,"
said Pope Innocent III., " can count the miracles which
are then performed here ; " while Cardinal Retz, who
was here in 1649, affirms in his memoirs, that he saw
with his own eyes a leg which had been cut off grow
again upon being rubbed with oil from one of the Virgin's
lamps. In the Calle Santiago, near El Pilar, is one of the best
specimens of an old Zaragozan house, inclosing a patio,
or court-yard, surrounded with sculptured pillars, but
now decaying, like every thing here (except idol-worship),
and turned into a coach-maker's yard. Hence, as well as
the inexhaustible and interminable beggars would allow,
we followed the narrow streets to the Plaza San Felipe,

I2 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
which contains the leaning tower of Spain — the grand
octangular Torre Nueva, diapered all over with lace-like
patterns from Moorish designs.
A neighboring church, San Pablo, is a most picturesque
relic of the thirteenth century, with a fine retablo by
Damian Forment of Valencia, a coro of 1500, and another
splendid octagonal brick tower. Hard by is the site of
the Portillo, where Agostina, the maid of Zaragoza,
snatched the match from the hand of her slaughtered
lover and worked the gun in his place. Inclosed in a
barrack near this are some decaying remains of the
Moorish palace, Aljaferia.
We re-entered the town by the handsome promenade
called Paseo de Santa Engracia, from a fine church which
was completed by Charles V. All except the west front
was destroyed by the French in 1808, but this, with its
portal in the form of a retablo, is well worth examination,
being filled with delicate sculpture of 1505 by Juan
Morlanes. Geronimo Zurita, the famous historian of
Arragon, died and was buried in this convent, 1580. A
little further than this, on the line of the city wall, is
San Miguel,, perhaps the richest, as it is the most pictur
esque, of all the fifteenth century buildings of Zaragoza,
covered with delicate Moorish tracery. All these would
be most delightful and interesting, but in these fierce, ice-
laden winds it is almost impossible to look at them
without feeling cut to pieces. Blocks of ice line the
streets, and the miserable plants on the public walks are
shriveled up and blackened in their vases. People are
walking about wrapped in huge mantas like blankets,
which cover their heads and bodies at the same time ;
and now, in front of the hotel, a poor woman shivering
with cold, though enveloped in a manta of gorgeous
colors, is trying to earn a few cuartos by singing snatches
from the song of the season, the strange but wonder-

NA VARRE AND ARRAGON. 13
fully picturesque " Noche Buena." Here are some of
them : — " La Virgen se rue k lavar
Sus manos blancas al rio ;
El sol se quedo parado,
La mar perdio su ruido.
" Los pastores de Belen
Todos juntos van por lefia,
Para calentar al nifio.
Que nacio la noche buena.
* * *
" San Jose era carpintero,
Y la Virgen costurera
Y el nifio labra la Cruz
Por que ha de morir en ella" —
which may be rendered thus : —
" To the stream the Virgin Mother
Hied, her fair white hands to lave :
The wand'ring sun stood still in heaven ;
And ocean hushed his rolling wave.
" One and all came Bethlehem's shepherds.
Fuel-laden from the height,
Warmth to bring the Blessed Nursling
Who was born that happy night.
» * * * *
' ' A carpenter was good St. Joseph,
A seamstress poor the mother maid ;
The Child it toiled the cross to fashion,
On which our ransom should be paid."

CHAPTER II.
IN CATALONIA.
Convent of Monserrat, January 4, 1872.
HIDEOUS as was the country we had passed through
before reaching Zaragoza, it paled before the
frightfulness of that which we had to traverse on the way
to Lerida — six hours without a tree or shrub or symptom
of vegetation, but barren, malaria-stricken swamps, riven
here and there into deep crevasses by the action of some
extinct volcano, seemingalike forsaken by God and man.
From Tardienta a branch railway leads to Huesca,
which is exceedingly worth visiting, as well for the sake
of the relics it contains of the old palace of the Arragon-
ese kings, as for the number of curious churches and
convents scattered over the surrounding hills, which have
never been sufficiently explored by English travelers.
But the cold was still so severe, and the rain falling in
such torrents, that we thought it safer to proceed at once
to Lerida, where we knew we should find better accom
modation, and where we had been told that the climate
would begin to be milder.
It was not until we reached our destination that the
scenery began to improve ; but Lerida looks down upon
an olive-clad plain, and in itself is gloriously picturesque,
a huge mass of purple rock, three hundred feet high,
being crowned by fortifications containing the old cathe
dral, with its tall tower and long line of cloister arches
rising from the very edge of the precipice. The narrow
space between the cliff and the river is occupied by the

IN CATALONIA. 15
town — tall houses with arches and balconies facing a
quay of heavy masonry, beneath which runs the Segre,
and whence there is one of those views which artists love,
of a still reach of river, with an old mill, and delicate
gradations of pink and blue-green distance. A long
bridge of yellow stone is broken midway, and across the
ruined piers a wooden causeway on huge beams leads to
the old brown gateway of the town. Just at one of the
most charming bends of this view is the Fonda San Luiz,
a thoroughly Spanish hotel, but clean and comfortable,
and possessing a delightful terrace overhanging the
river. Through the driving fog, and up streets which were
almost like cascades from the heavy rain which had fallen,
we made our way to the old cathedral, which is now
abandoned by the canons on account of the steepness of
the ascent, but a visit to which Street declares to be alone
worth all the journey from England. This visit is, how
ever, difficult to accomplish, as, from its position inside
the fortifications, a special order has to be obtained and
countersigned by the governor and military authorities.
The main edifice dates from 1230, and the cloisters are
among the most beautiful in Europe, but cut up for bar
rack purposes. The fog prevented our seeing the grand
view of the Pyrenees, but Lerida, the Roman Ilerda, lay
stretched beneath, and the winding Segre, which is said
to have proved fatal to the daughter of Herodias, who
gallivanted upon its frozen waters till she fell through the
ice, and it cut off her head, which continued to dance by
itself. Another hideous journey brought us to Manresa, where
we arrived in the dark, and took a guide, to lead the way
through the ankle-deep mud and up the steep, tortuous
streets, quite impervious to carriages, to the Posada del
Sol. The first aspect of our inn was not encouraging,

1 6 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
when the boy who carried our bags opened a door into a
stable, where a number of rough-looking men were drink
ing, and whence a filthy stair led to some bare brick-
floored rooms, with pallet beds and scanty furniture. As
in all smaller posadas, looking-glasses are unknown here,
so a small hand-glass may be conveniently carried. There
was no washing-stand in our rooms, and when we remon
strated, a pie-dish was found for the ladies, but the land
lady protested that for " los senores " such things were
both unknown and unnecessary, as they could wash them
selves at a public stone trough, of which there was one at
the end of the passage, and another in the comedor [salle
a manger) ; and at the latter, in fact, a Spanish traveler,
in his shirt, coolly came to perform his ablutions while we
were breakfasting. However, the willing kindness of our
young hostess made up for much that was wanting ; and
a supper of broth, vegetables, and some rough scraps of
boiled meat was supplied to us. In the evening we were
amused by her sang-froid in receiving a visit from her
lover in the room where we were, the one common room.
When the time' came for him to go, he looked round at
us, and asked if he should kiss her as usual. " Cer
tainly," she said ; " why not ? "Upon which he did kiss
her — not once only.
But oh ! how entirely Manresa itself makes up for any
amount of suffering, when, having followed the filthy
streets — not paved, but cut out of the living rock — for
some distance, and having descended a rugged way
between two walls, which looks as if it led to a stone
quarry, the view from the esplanade before the church of
St. Ignatius suddenly bursts upon your sight ! In front
rises the grand colegiata of El Seo, built of yellow-gray
stone, perched on the summit of the dark rocks, broken
into a thousand picturesque hollows, which are filled
Wi't'.i little gardens, where Indian corn, and vines, and

IN CA TA L ONI A . 1 7
cypresses flourish. On the right rises range above range
of gayly-painted houses of the most varied and irregular
forms, — arches, balconies, overhanging galleries, little
ledges of roof supporting tiny hanging gardens with ivy
and jessamine tangling over their edge. Deep down in
the abyss flows the Llobregat, crossed by its tall bridge
of pointed arches, and ending at a richly carved stone
cross on a high pedestal. Beyond the river are ranges of
olive-clad hills, above which, as we were drawing in the
afternoon, uprose in mid-air a glorious vision, lifted high
into the sky : pinnacles, spires, turrets, sugar-loaves,
pyramids of faint-gray rocks, so wonderful that it was
almost impossible to believe them a reality and not a
phantasmagoria — the mountains of Monserrat.
We seem to be following in the footsteps of Ignatius
Loyola, who remained here, after his conversion, for a
whole year in a cave, unknown by any, except his confes
sors. He fasted the whole week on water and bread
(which he begged), and on Sunday indulged in a few
boiled herbs strewn with ashes. He wore an iron girdle
and a hair-shirt, scourged himself twice a day, slept little,
and lay on the ground. Every day he spent seven hours
on his knees in prayer, and he received the sacraments
every Sunday. To mortify his former personal vanity,
he went about begging with his face covered with dirt, his
hair long and unkempt, and his beard and nails of appall
ing length. The children pelted him with stones. For a
long time " he found no comfort in prayer, no relief in
fasting, no remedy in disciplines, no consolation from the
sacraments, and his soul was overwhelmed with bitter
sadness. But eventually his tranquillity of mind was per
fectly restored, and his soul overflowed with spiritual
joy, and he afterwards assured F. Lainez that he had
learned more of divine mysteries by prayer in one hour at
Manresa, than all the doctors of the schools could ever

] 8 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN
have taught him." * He was consoled by the belief that
the Virgin smiled constantly upon him from her sanctu
ary at Monserrat during the year of his penance.
The vast convent which contains the famous cave is
jammed into the narrow space between the terrace and the
precipice. Externally it is covered with sculpture, not in
the best style, but very effective. Within, from the large
church, a passage lined with pictures relating to the
history of the Jesuits, leads to the " Santa Cueva," left in
its rugged rock nature, only the lower part being incrusted
with b*as-reliefs, which can be examined by the light of
the swinging lamps. On the altar is the crucifix of Loyola,
from whose .wounds blood is supposed to have streamed
forth. From the Cueva we mounted the opposite hill to El
Seo, an interesting church, with a rich canopied entrance;
within, dark and gloomy, with a small but effective coro,
and some brilliant remains of the stained glass, of which
the greater part was destroyed by the French. Here, at
mass, the women all appear in white flannel hoods, and
in the half light look like the dead in their shrouds, but
the men wear mantas of the most gorgeous colors.
La Cueva and El Seo are the only two regular sights of
Manresa, but inexhaustible is the ever varying beauty of
the views from the lovely walks on the heights above the
Llobregat, in one of which, a stone cross, near the con
vent of Sta. Clara, marks a spot where Loyola used to
preach. The vision of Monserrat made us long for the nearer
reality, but it was two days ere we could tear ourselves
away from the beauties of Manresa. Then we took the
train to Monistrol, which faces the great purple amphi
theater of mountains, and where, at the station, we found
a tartana waiting — a round covered cart lined with carpet
* See Butler's "Lives of the Saints," vol. vii.

IN CA TALUNIA. 19
— in which we jolted up the hills for two hours and a
half, the views becoming finer at every turn, till on a
ledge of rock we suddenly came upon a tall cross, in
scribed — " Aqui se hizo la Santa Imagen en 880," and
immediately found ourselves under the convent walls.
A gateway, beside a wide-arched Gothic fountain, leads
to the upper courts, on one side of which rise the con
ventual buildings themselves, with their half-ruined
cloisters, and, on the other three, the immense suites of
rooms destined for the reception of the pilgrims (of whom
no less than 200,000 often come here in the month of
September alone), and inscribed with the names of the
different saints to whom they are dedicated— Santa Ger-
trudis, Santa Scholastica, Santa Teresa, San Alphonso,
San Ignacio, etc.
We were assigned rooms in one of these : not uncom
fortable, if their cold brick floors had had any fire-places
to warm them. A man was sent to bring us some water,
sheets, and towels, a little wood and charcoal were placed
in the tiny kitchen which belonged to our apartment, and
we were then left to shift for ourselves. Soon the bell
warned us that the New Year's evening service was about
to begin, and we hurried to the church, where, groping
our way through the dark pillars, we took our seats close
to the reja. There, so many candles were lighted around
the altar, that the famous image — a black doll in a robe
of silver tissue — shone forth resplendently. The priest
who lighted the lamps, when he went up to her, kissed her
on the cheeks. When all was ready a long procession
of boys in surplices filed in and grouped themselves
around the image. Then the strangest service began:
singing, sweet and sqft at first, but suddenly breaking off
into the most discordant yells and shrieks, accompanied
by a blowing of whistles and horns, beating of tin clap
pers, with fiddles, trumpets and cymbals. There were

20 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
about sixty performers, and a congregation of eight.
Altogether it was most extraordinary, but we heard after
wards that this most unmelodious music was intended as
typical of the rude worship of the shepherds at Bethlehem.
The image, like most of its kind, "black but comely,"
is attributed to St. Luke as a sculptor, and is said to have
been brought to Barcelona by St. Peter in a. d. 30. Dur
ing the Moorish invasion it lay hidden for sixty years in
a cave, where its delicious scent discovered it to Bishop
Gondemar, who attempted to remove it to Manresa, but
when it reached an especial ledge of the mountain side it
refused to move further. Hence an oratory arose on the
spot, which was enlarged into a nunnery, converted in
976 into a Benedictine convent. The present church is
due to Philip II. , and was opened in 1599. It is of small
interest. Some remnants of an earlier church, with the
tomb of a young warrior, are preserved in the museum of
the convent.
By lighting one match after another in the dark pas
sages, we found our way back to our apartments, where
we passed the night as the sole inhabitants of our vast
wing of the convent. Only the hooting of an owl broke
the silence, the bird which Spanish legend relates to have
been present at the crucifixion, and ever since to have
repeated in a terror and woe-stricken voice, " Cruz !
cruz ! "
Next morning we set off early up the mountains. It
had frozen all night, and nothing could be lovelier than
the effect of the thick hoar frost — every delicate leaf and
blade of grass being incrusted with ice, and standing out
like glistening diamonds against the gray fog. Without
having seen a fog, no one should leave Monserrat, for,
glorious as it is at all times, this natural veil lends an in
describable softness and mystery to the views, and the
moment when the curtain draws up, and the sun bursts

IN CATALONIA. 21
forth victoriously, is so intensely splendid. We were then
in one of the high rock terraces, several miles above the
convent, where no sound except the occasional cry of an
eagle broke the entire stillness, for not a breath of air
stirred the frost-laden boughs. Suddenly the mist rolled
away, and in the distance was revealed on one side the
long expanse of the Mediterranean, from Barcelona to
Tarragona, with the shining threads of rivers leading up
to it through numberless towns and villages, and on the
other the vast range of the Pyrenees, quite covered with
snow, against the softest of blue skies. Deep below were
the most tremendous abysses of rock, often perpendicular
precipices of two and three thousand feet, but, wherever
any soil could lodge, filled with the wealth of innumer
able lovely shrubs — box, alaternus, laurestinus, phillyrea,
lentisck, euphorbia, and flowering heath, — all ever
greens, which, according to the old Spanish tradition,
are permitted to bear their leaves all the year round, be
cause they sheltered the weariness of the Virgin Mother
and the Holy Child during their flight into Egypt. Where
these could not find foothold, the sides of the rock are
clothed with cascades of honeysuckle, smilax and jes
samine. High in the rugged crags, remains of ruined
hermitages seemed as if suspended over the face of the
abyss, so utterly inaccessible that one would have thought
the inmates could only have reached them by a miracle,
and that it was quite impossible that the troops under
Suchet should have climbed up thither to rob and murder
when " they hunted the hermits like chamois along the
cliffs." The afternoon was occupied in visiting the different
buildings of the convent and the relics they contain.
Here again the chief historical interest comes from Igna
tius Loyola, who came hither from Pamplona, as soon as
he was cured of his wounds, and made a confession

22 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
which lasted three days, to a saintly French monk who
was then residing here. On his way up to the convent he
bought in the village a long coat of coarse cloth, a girdle,
sandals, a wallet and a pilgrim's staff. In the church he
took a vow of perpetual chastity, and dedicated himself
with the greatest fervor to the divine service. Then giving
his horse to the monks, and hanging up his sword before
the altar of the Virgin, in sign of renunciation of his tem
poral warfare, he walked away, barefoot and bareheaded,
to his penance at Manresa.
On the second day of our stay we took provisions, and
followed the winding paths, sometimes overhanging the
perpendicular edge of the precipice, sometimes descend
ing and burying themselves in deep ravines of box and
ilex, till we reached the highest peak of the mountain
group. Hence, the view is surpassingly magnificent.
The whole of Catalonia, tossed and riven into myriad
fantastic forms of hill and cleft, lies beneath, bounded
only by the snowy ranges and the sea. So tremendous
are the gorges into which you look down, that the eye
can scarcely fathom their awful depths, and the birds
descending into them vanish away in the distance.
Just beneath the summit is the ruined hermitage of S.
Geronimo, the furthest, but one of the easiest of access,
of the many now desolated retreats which were so eagerly
sought after by the devotional feeling of the middle ages,
and where many of the proudest and noblest Spaniards
passed their latter years in absolute solitude, attending to
their own humble wants, and in a life of constant penance
and prayer. Two little rooms remain here, with the
paved terrace and the stone seat of the hermit, and cer
tainly it would have been hard for him to find a more
heaven -in spiring place than this silent mountain peak,
looking down through all the glories of nature upon the
world he had renounced.

IN CATALONIA. 2%
The ascent to S. Geronimo occupies about three hours,
but we were away nine hours altogether. As we were
returning, just as the bell of the convent, from its green
invisible depths, gave notice, amid mountain echoes, of
the Ave Maria, an enchanter's wand seemed to smite the
heavens, which above the sea burst into a crimson flush,
melting into the most delicate emerald, while every crag
of the valley glowed as if tipped with burnished gold, ris
ing from its purple chasms ; and then, silently, the blue
veil arose and shrouded peak after peak, gorgeous in
color at first, but solemnly fading till all Nature was
asleep beneath a gray mantle.
On the third day we set off in quite another direction,
taking a precipitous path which winds around the gorge
beneath the convent to the Cave of the Virgin, where the
famous image was concealed during the Moorish occupa
tion, angels guiding the priests who bore it, over rift and
chasm, to a place of safety. We had taken the key from
the convent, which admitted us to the cave, now a chapel,
perched eyrie-like on the edge of the ravine, where a series
of bas-reliefs tell the story of the shrine, and behind
which a convent contains a pretty Gothic cloister with a
well. Another path afterwards led us to the Cueva de
Garin, where a painted stone figure commemorates a her
mit, who long lived there on his hands and knees, and
where his basket, pitcher, etc., are still preserved. Behind
the convent, a narrow strip of fiat ground is occupied by
a garden full of roses — roses which were white once, say
the monks, and which owe their present purple color to
a drop of the Saviour's blood, which fell upon their
leaves from the cross, as they bloomed on Mount Cal
vary. These are only a few out of a thousand subjects
for the pencil, each more enchanting than the last ; the
enormous pinnacles of rock, the rugged pathways with
their stone crosses and hermitages, and the ancient ever-

24 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
green shrubs, combining at every step into fresh and
better composition with the delicate pinks and blues of
the mountain distance. Monserrat besides has the advan
tage of being a most comfortable place to stay at, as,
though only lodging is given by the monks (for a volun
tary payment, none. is asked), there is an excellent Fonda
in the courtyard of the convent, which provides as good
food as can be found at Barcelona itself. The air is the
purest and most reviving imaginable, and even in the first
days of January the cold was not greater than in the val
leys, as the monastery is so sheltered, while the rich
growth of aloes attests the dryness of the soil ; and on
the higher terraces, in the brilliant sunshine, it was almost
too hot. Altogether it is wonderful that Monserrat, surely
far more beautiful than any single spot in France, Switz
erland, Germany or Italy, and so easily accessible in two
days from the south of France {via Gerona and Barcelo
na), should be almost unknown to English tourists.

CHAPTER III.
BARCELONA AND GERONA.
Fonda del Orient, Barcelona, January 14, 1872.
THE life and animation of Barcelona are charming.
As we drove into the town, after leaving the soli
tudes of Monserrat, it seemed as if the whole of the gay,
pleasure-loving population must be in the streets. So
crowded were they with people on foot that a carriage
could scarcely pass. The shops, brilliantly lighted, were
full of dolls innumerable ; for it was the eve of the Befa-
na — every possible phase of doll-hood finding its represen
tative, from old men and women down to babies in cra
dles. The children themselves were rushing about, blow
ing tin trumpets and whistles, and beating little drums ;
organs were grinding, guitars were twanging, fans were
flashing through the soft air in the fingers of dark-veiled
senoras, and over all extended a cloudless, deep-blue
heaven, fretted with brilliant stars.
Through the center of the town runs for nearly a mile
the beautiful Rambla, formed by an avenue of arching
plane-trees, inclosing a broad walk for foot-passengers,
while the carriage-ways are on either side. The Rambla
is the center and axis of life in Barcelona. Here are all
the principal hotels, and hence all the best streets diverge.
The lower division is the fashionable walk of the aristoc
racy, and is full of smart people, but at the upper
extremity, where the peasants chiefly congregate, is the
bird and flower market, where multitudes of canaries are
sold daily amid the great bunches of heliotrope, and

26 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
where the most wonderful mantas are to be seen, of
scarlet, blue, and gold, flowing from the shoulders of
rough-looking men, who would be content with the com
mon dress of plowmen in England. At the lower end
of the Rambla begins the Muralla del Mar, a delightful
terrace, sheltered and sunny, overhanging the port and
shipping, though raised high above them, and with views
across the still reaches of water to the fortified hill of
Montjuich, which rises abruptly from the sea, like Shakes
peare's cliff at Dover. To ascend this hill towards sun
set is quite a duty with visitors to Barcelona, for from
thence, across a foreground of wild aloes, which are here
frequently formed into hedges, the whole white town is
seen like a map, lying in its brown, burned-up plain, sur
rounded by mountains, the flat tops of the houses giving
it a peculiarly Eastern appearance, for there are no slop
ing roofs in Barcelona.
The streets in the heart of the town are thoroughly
dull and unpicturesque ; and it is after following one of the
dingiest of all, bounded by high, drab-colored walls, that
suddenly a wide gothic arch admits one into a vast,
arcaded quadrangle, perfectly bathed in light and sun
shine. Here huge orange-trees, whose boughs are
weighed almost to the ground by their massive bunches of
golden fruit, rise amid plantations of tree-like geraniums,
and fountains splash gayly in the sunbeams. It is not
like one's ideal of a cathedral'cloister, yet such it is, and
wonderfully interesting is it to watch the ever-varying
representations of life here — the solemn canons, with
their breviaries, pacing up and down, and toiling through
their appointed task of psalm-saying ; the polite old beg
gars, the men in their bright mantas and scarlet barret-
tas, the women in their blue petticoats and white
handkerchiefs over their heads ; the children, who shout,
and feed the canons' geese with bread — for on the

BARCELONA AND GERONA. 27
largest of the fountains live the famous geese which have
been kept here from time immemorial to guard the
treasures of the cathedral, according to the old Catalon-
ian custom, which makes geese serve, and more effica
ciously too, the place of watch-dogs at the country houses.
In the center of the Fontana de las Ocas is a little bronze
figure of a knight on a horse, which spouts water from
its nostrils, while its tail is indicated by a long jet of
silvery spray. This is not St. George, but the brave
knight Vilardell, full of good works, who was permitted
to kill the famous dragon, but who forgot his humility in
the moment of triumph, and exclaimed, " Well done,
good sword ! Well done, brave arm of Vilardell ! " upon
which a drop of the dragon's poisonous blood fell upon
his arm from the sword which he brandished, and he
died. This is the first moral inculcated upon the child
ish mind of Barcelona, which is intimately familiar with
Vilardell, who is again represented, in his combat with
the dragon, over an archway in the street leading to the
cathedral. A grand round-headed arch leads from the cloister
into the church, begun in 1298, but chiefly built, from
designs by Jaques Fabra, in the beginning of the four
teenth century. It is beautiful and solemn beyond
description, only faintly lighted by the rich stained
windows at either end, whose colored lights are almost
lost amid the many chapels and tall reed-like pillars.
Beneath the altar lies Santa Eulalia, the " well-speaking "
virgin, martyred by Dacian in 309, and transferred hither
in 878 from Santa Maria del Mar, where she was pre
viously buried, two kings, three queens, and four
princesses attending, since which time all Spanish
sovereigns, down to Christina and Isabella, have been
wont to pass the night in prayer before her shrine.
There is another saint here also, Oldagar, invoked in

28 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
childbirth, who died 1137, and was discovered five hund
red years after " quite uncorrupted, except the tip of
his nose." His sleeping effigy is raised aloft over the
altar of the first chapel on the right of the nave. From
beneath the organ hangs a hideous Saracen's head, with
gaping mouth, starting eyes, and a vast flowing beard.
Such, it is said, were found useful in animating the
crusaders. A great deal is written in the various English
guidebooks about the peculiar lighting of this cathedral
by windows pierced through from the chapels of the nave
to the chapels back to back with them, which open upon
the cloisters ; but if such arrangement ever existed, there
is certainly no trace of it now.
Many of the other churches are worth visiting, and are
interesting specimens of the peculiar types of architecture
to which they belong : San Pablo del Campo and San
Pedro de las Puellas, of the very earliest Catalonian, with
heavy, low, round-headed arches ; Santa Maria del Mar,
built 1328 — 1483, a grand single nave of remarkable
simplicity, with enormous octagonal columns ; and, most
especially, the Colegiata of Santa Ana, of 1146, with a
lovely silent Gothic cloister, filled with grand old orange-
trees, more beautiful even than those of the cathedral.
Here authorized and highly respectable old beggars sit
all day long upon chairs, on the chance of a stray cuarto.
" Pardon me, my sister ; does not your worship see
that I am drawing ? " I said to one of them, who had
hobbled away from her throne to beg.
" Ah Dios ! " she answered. " Blind that I was ! worm
that I am ! so your worship draws. And I — I too am a
lover of the arts."
And ever after we were the best of friends, and as I
came to the cloister in the morning I received the friend
liest of nods from my art-loving sister, -who never dreamed
of begging again.

BARCELONA AND GERONA. 29
The remains of domestic architecture are scarcely less
interesting than the churches, and many of the older
houses retain their graceful patios, with cloistered exter
nal staircases, covered with arabesques. In the Casa
Consistorial is a fine Gothic hall, in which ancient
councils were held ; but the gem is the Casa de la Dis-
putacion, where a beautiful external stair leads to the
rich chapel of St. George, and a lovely Gothic court, full
of orange-trees and flowers. The old palace which con
tains the archives of the kings of Arragon is also well
worth visiting. The Archivio is reached by a staircase,
adorned with a statue of Vilardell, and with a fine
Moorish ceiling, and contains many thousand splendid
manuscript volumes and illuminated missals from sup
pressed convents, all arranged on low stands, that they
may be kept constantly dusted and free from worms, — an
arrangement rather to the detriment of their effect as a
library. The climate of Barcelona is delightful. During the
ten days of early January which we passed there, we
never once experienced the slightest sensation of cold ;
fires were unthought of, and we sat with windows wide
open at eight o'clock in the morning. Quite into the
middle of the night the Rambla was filled with gay
crowds ; ladies enjoying the starlight in their transparent
mantillas, without veils or shawls. The sturdy growth of
the lemons, which perish in three degrees of frost, is an
evidence of the warmth ; as well as the profusion of deli
cate Australian gum-trees, and the masses of heliotrope
still in bloom. This eastern vegetation is greatly assisted
by the dryness of the temperature, only sixty-five days on
the average being wet in the whole year ; so that Barce
lona is an admirable winter residence for invalids.
Many pleasant excursions may be made from hence,
especially that to the grand ruined abbey of Ripoll, and

3° WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
to San Culgat del Vallis near Serdanola. From the end
of the Rambla, a miniature railway carries passengers in a
few minutes to Sarria, a village at the foot of the hills,
famous for its so-called pepper-trees, which here attain
the most enormous size. Hence a deep lane, overhung
with huge aloes, leads in half an hour to the desolated
monastery of Pedralles, with its graceful tower and fine
stained glass. The hillside here is occupied by many
villas of rich Barcelonese merchants ; but these by no
means interfere with the wild grace of the view, especially
charming at sunset, when behind the dark monastery,
with its solemn tower and cypresses, Barcelona is seen
glowing in the golden haze, backed by the deep-blue sea.
Nothing can be more charming than the environs of
Barcelona in winter, which may be most pleasantly spent
in a villa near Sarria, but in summer the sun beats piti
lessly upon its sandy hillsides, and the ground is cracked
into a thousand widely opening rifts by its power. Liz
ards abound here and rejoice in the sunshine, and the
dangerous tarantula is not unfrequently met with.
Spanish legend tells us that the tarantula was once a
foolish and impudent woman who had such a passion for
dancing that she never ceased to dance even when
the Divine Master was passing by, but conducted herself
with appalling irreverence. Therefore the Saviour
rebuked her by converting her into a spider, with a guitar
stamped upon its back, and ordained that its bite should
cause all those bitten by it to dance, till they fell down
fainting and exhausted. Most picturesque is all such
Spanish folk-lore, and in no country is it more abundant.
Of the serpent it tells, that, after its triumph in the
Garden of Eden, it always went erect and swollen with
pride, till it met with the Holy Family during their flight
into Egypt, and audaciously attempted to bite the Infant
Jesus : then St. Joseph, indignantly rebuking it, bade it

BARCELONA AND GERONA. 31
lie down and never rise up again, and ever since it has
crawled on the ground.
No one should leave Barcelona without visiting the
street of the Plateria, entirely lined with jewelers' shops,
filled with ornaments which retain the antique patterns
derived from the Moors, or from old Greek designs.
The heavy joyas, set with amethysts and emeralds, are
especially remarkable. There is a small English church
at Barcelona — an upper chamber, in a central situation,
prettily fitted up.
We had always regretted having been prevented enter
ing Spain from Toulouse, as we should then have seen
Perpignan, so remarkable as exhibiting a transitional
town, semi-Spanish, semi-French ; and St. Elne, which is
a most curious link between the early medieval Spanish
and the early medieval French buildings. On this route
we should also have naturally visited Gerona, to which
we determined to retrace our steps from Barcelona.
Four hours ofrailroad, by the inland line which passes
the quaint old town of Hostalrich, gave us the strange
experience of leaving sunshine and warmth and blooming
heliotrope, and within two hours finding ourselves amidst
hoar-frost and ice and a nipped, frozen vegetation. At
Gerona, however, the sun had conquered winter, and the
old town, under the protection of its fortified hill, gleamed
forth with its white balconied houses, topped by the
cathedral. We walked from the station to the Fonda
Espana (once Estrella), in itself an interesting house,
with beautiful ajimez windows — i.e., Gothic windows —
divided by slender, round pillars, generally of marble ;
the Arabic name meaning " windows by which the sun
enters." The cathedral, reached by a lofty flight of steps,
is not interesting outside ; but within, the immense width
of its nave gives it a certain grandeur, and is of a size
which one scarcely realizes, except by comparing the

32 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
dimensions of this church of a fifth-rate Spanish town
with those of our finest English cathedrals ; the width of
Gerona being seventy-three feet, of Canterbury forty-
three, York fifty-two, Westminster thirty-eight. The
retablo is of silver, — the cloisters, on low, but richly-
carved Byzantine pillars, are well worth examination ;
also the Puerta de los Apostolos, with the statues of
the saints all standing inside a porch of immense width.
Behind the cathedral a rugged path winds up the hillside
beneath the fortifications, and gives perhaps the best
view which can be obtained of the town and its towers
standing out against the bright green vega, and delicate
distance of pink mountains.
Two other churches should be visited — S. Pedro de los
Gallegans, a grand specimen of tenth-century Roman
esque, — and S. Feliu (Felix), with a beautiful truncated
spire, dedicated to the missionary of Augsburg, and
remarkable as containing the image of S. Narcissus, a
patriotic doll, which, when its country was menaced with
invasion, had the power of immediately becoming puru
lent, and producing innumerable legions of flies, of so
poisonous a nature, that in 1285 they stung to death
40,000 Frenchmen and 24,000 horses, and, as late as 1684,
demolished an entire French army ; prodigies which not
unnaturally led the local junta to declare S. Feliu their
captain-general in 1808, and to lay the staff of command
upon his shrine !

CHAPTER IV.
TARRAGONA AND POBLET.
Fonda de Europa, Tarragona, January 24.
BETWEEN Barcelona and Tarragona we staid for a
few hours at Martorell to sketch the famous bridge,
which strides across the gulf of the Llobregat, between
the barest, most arid rocks imaginable. The original
bridge dates from 535 a.u.c, when it was erected
by Hannibal in honor of Hamilcar, and the triumphal
gate at its entrance is of this date ; but the high pointed
arch of the bridge itself is due to the Moors. It is gen
erally called " El Puerta del Diablo," like so many other
curious steep old bridges, ascribed to the Devil, in almost
every country of Europe. Hence, once more, we looked
upon the glorious peaks of Monserrat.
Tarragona is disappointing. So much has been said
about it lately, and so much that does not contain a
particle of truth ; for instance, a recent agreeable writer
describes the wanderer on its ramparts as looking down
upon a green plain, studded with palms, — whereas the
practical mind sees nothing but a stony wilderness, in
which not the vestige of a tree, much less of a palm-tree)
can be found. The so-called Rambla is a dingy, drab
avenue of poor whitewashed houses, between which some
meager plane-trees seem vainly struggling into existence,
and where the wretched population, promenading in rags,
follow you to beg, even up the staircase of your hotel.
Yet even Tarragona can offer much compensation for its
evil smells, evil meats, and mendicant neighbors. The

34 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
cathedral, built 1089 to 1131, is magnificent. The west
front rises above a steep flight of steps at the end of the
principal street, and, though unfinished, has a grand rose
window, and a portal surrounded, by statues of saints,
and some empty niches, to account for which it is said
that one of these holy ones, wearied with his stiff posi
tion, comes down from his pedestal every hundred years,
and goes his way. Within, all is gloriously in keeping,
the grand Romanesque arches being uninjured by paint
or whitewash, and their gloom relieved by the lower walls
being hung with faded tapestries, exceedingly effective,
bought in London at the sale of church furniture by
Henry VLTL, and said to have once decorated St. Paul's.
Santa Tecla, the tutelar of Tarragona, who heads the
peerage of virgin martyrs, has a fine marble chapel. But
here, as in so many Spanish churches, the gem of all is
the cloister, — a noble arcaded court of varied round-
headed arches, inclosing a most lovely garden, full of
summer beauty and sunshine, even in January.
We have walked from Tarragona to the so-called tomb
of the Scipios, about three miles distant on the sea-coast'.
It is a desolate, massive Roman tomb, like many of those
on the Appian Way, with two moldering figures dis
cernible on its front, and is well situated in a fragment
of ancient forest pines, with an undergrowth of palmito,
or dwarf shrubby palm — quite an oasis in this arid, stony
country. Another day we followed the Lerida road for
two miles, to a wild, rocky valley, full of palmito, which
is crossed by a grand Roman aqueduct with a double
tier of arches. The town itself abounds in Roman frag
ments, and some huge stones are shown as part of the
palace of Augustus, who passed the winter here in 26 f.
c. But, in spite of these attractions, travelers, especially
invalids, should beware of trusting to the guide-book
recommendations of Tarragona, especially that of Murray,

TARRAGONA AND POBLET. 35
who says — " As a winter residence for invalids few places
in Europe can equal this, whilst the walks are excellent
and varied, and the carriage-drives numerous, leading in
various directions through shady pine-woods and oak
plantations," etc. The fact being that the situation of the
town, high above the sea, on an isolated hill, is exceed
ingly exposed ; that there are three drives, but no decent
carriage wherewith to take them ; and that the pine-woods
are a fiction, while, as for oaks, there is not one in the
country. The most interesting thing to be attained here is the
excursion to Poblet, which no Spanish travelers should
on any account be induced to omit.
We took our tickets in the dark, by the 6.20 train, to
Montblanch, on the Lerida line, passing on the way Reus,
the birthplace of Prim, where the sword of his African
campaigns is preserved as a precious relic in the town-
hall. At eight we reached Montblanch, and from the
crowd of ragged people at the station disentangled a
man who said that he had a tartana at our service, and
followed him to it through the deep mire of the wretched
streets. It was the humblest of vehicles — a rude round
framework of unplaned open bars, nailed one to the
other, and covered with carpet ; and with no bottom but
ropes knotted together. A headstrong mule was found,
which with difficulty could be induced to move, but
which, when once it set off, put its head up in the air,
and galloped straight forward, regardless of obstacles,
sending us violently from side to side of the tartana, as it
pitched and jerked over a road which alternated between
bare rock and deep sloughs of mud. In vain did the
driver beseech us to sit forward ; we had no sooner
climbed to the front, and seized tight hold of its bars,
than a tremendous lurch sent us all rolling backward,
with our feet twisted through the open ropes beneath.

36 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
The driver, however, never ceased to shriek, yelp and
scold at the mule ; and though the road grew worse at
every bound we made, we got along somehow — till, when
the towers of Poblet were rising in view, we could bear it
no longer, and, begging to be let out, found we advanced
much more quickly on foot.
The sun was just breaking through the clouds, which
had obscured the earlier morning, and lit up the lonely
hollow of the hills in which the convent is situated.
Venerable olive trees, their trunks gnarled and twisted
into myriad strange forms, lined the rugged, rock-hewn
way ; and behind them stretched ranges of hills, — here,
rich and glowing with woody vegetation where the sun
caught their projecting buttresses, — there, lost in the
purple mists of their deep rifts. The approach to a
great 'religious house was indicated, first by a tall stone
cross rising on a lofty pedestal, stained with golden lichen
and with myrtle and lentisck growing in the hollows of its
gray stones ; then by a strange group of saintly figures in
stone, standing aloft amid a solitary grove of pillars at a
crossway, and marking, as we were afterwards told, the
afternoon walk of the friars. Hence an avenue, with
broken stone seats at intervals on either side, leads up to
the convent walls, — a clear, sparkling mountain torrent
singing by its side, in a basin overhung with fern and tall
water-plants. Then, after skirting the walls for some
distance, an ancient gateway admits one to the interior of
what, till within a few years ago, was the largest religious
house, and one of the largest buildings in Europe.
No remains elsewhere impress the beholder with the
same sense of melancholy as the convent of Poblet; An
English ruin, softened and mellowed by time, fading and
crumbling by a gentle, gradual decay, can give no idea of
it. Here, it is the very abomination of desolation. It is
all fresh ; it might be all perfect now, but it is the most

TARRAGONA AND POBLET. 37
utterly ruined ruin that can exist. Violence and vengeance
are written on every stone. The vast walls, the mighty
courts, the endless cloisters, look as if the shock of a
terrible earthquake had passed over them. There is no
soothing vegetation, no ivy, no flowers, and the very
intense beauty and delicacy of the fragments of sculpture
which remain in the riven and rifted walls, where they
were too high up for the spoiler's hand to reach them,
only make stronger contrast with the coarse gaps where
the outer coverings of the walls have been violently torn
away, and where the marble pillars and beautiful tracery
lie dashed to atoms upon the ground.
The convent was founded in 1 149 by Ramon Berenguer
IV., on the spot where mystic lights had revealed the
body of Poblet, a holy hermit, who had taken refuge here
during the Moorish occupation. Every succeeding monarch
increased its wealth, regarding it, not only in the light of a
famous religious shrine, but as his own future resting-
place ; for hither, over moor and mountain, all the earlier
kings of Arragon were brought to be buried. As the long
lines of royal tombs rose thicker on either side of the
choir, the living monarchs came hither too, for a retreat
of penitence and prayer, and lived for a time the convent
ual life. And thus, though no sovereign ever actually
assumed the cowl at Poblet, several left orders that their
effigy should be twice represented on their monuments,
once in royal robes, and again in the monastic habit.
Five hundred monks of St. Bernard occupied, but did not
fill, the magnificent buildings; their domains became
almost boundless, their jeweled chalices and gorgeous
church furniture could not be reckoned. The library of
Poblet became the most famous in Spain, so that it was
said that a set of wagons employed for a whole year
could not cart away the books. As Poblet became the
Westminster Abbey of Spain as regarded its kings and

38 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
queens, so it gradually also answered to Westminster in
becoming the resting-place of all other eminent persons,
who were brought hither to mingle theirs with the royal
dust. Dukes and grandees of the first class occupied
each his niche around the principal cloister, where their
tombs, less injured than any thing else, form a most curi
ous and almost perfect epitome of the history of Spanish
sepulchral decoration. Marquises and counts, less
honored, had a cemetery assigned to them in the strip
of ground surrounding the apse ; famous warriors were
buried in the nave and ante-chapel ; and the bishops of
Lerida and Tarragona, deserting their own cathedrals,
had each their appointed portion of the transept ; while
the abbots of Poblet, far mightier than bishops," occupied
the chapter-house, where numbers of their venerable
effigies, typical of dignity and repose, may still be seen,
having been hastily covered over at the time of the inva
sion. Gradually the monks of Poblet became more
exclusive ; their number was reduced to sixty-six, but into
that sacred circle no novice was introduced in whose
veins ran other than the purest blood of a Spanish grandee.
He who became a monk of Poblet had to prove his pedi
gree, and the chapter sat in solemn deliberation upon
his quarterings. Every monk had his two servants, and
rode upon a snow-white mule. The mules of the friars
were sought through the whole peninsula at an enormous
expense. Within the walls, every variety of trade was
represented ; no monk need seek for any thing beyond his
cloister ; the tailors,- the shoemakers, the apothecaries,
had each their wing or court. Hospitals were raised on
one side for sick and ailing pilgrims : on the other rose a
palace appropriated to the sovereigns who sought the cure
of their souls. The vast produce of the vineyards of the
mountainous region which depended upon Poblet, was
brought to the great convent wine-presses, and was

TARRAGONA AND POBLET. 39
stowed away in its avenue of wine-vats. "El Priorato''
became one of the most reputed wines in the country ;
the pipes, the presses and the vats where it was originally
prepared still remain almost entire.
Year by year the power of the convent increased, till,
like autocratic sovereigns, the friars of Poblet issued their
commands, and the surrounding country had only to hear
and obey. He who failed to attend the summons of
their mass-bell, had to answer to the monks for his
neglect. Strange rumors began to float of peasants who,
entering the convent gates, had never been known to
come forth. Gradually the monks became the bugbear
of neighboring children, and threats, which tampered
with their names, were whispered by the lace-making
mothers in the ears of their naughty little ones.' At last
came the wars of Don Carlos. Then political dissensions
arose within the mystic circle ; half the monks were
royalists, half were Carlists, and the latter considering
themselves oppressed, and muttering vengeance, whis
pered abroad tales of secret dungeons and of hidden
torture. The public curiosity became excited. Many
yet live who remember the scene when the convent doors
were broken in by night, and the townsfolk, streaming
through court and cloister, reached the room which had
been designated, where, against a wall, by which it may
still be traced, the dreaded rack was found, and beneath
it a dungeon filled with human bones, and with other
instruments of torture. Twenty-four hours were insisted
upon by the authorities to give the friars a chance of
safety : they escaped, but only with their lives. Poblet,
beautiful Poblet, was left in all its riches and perfection ;
nothing was taken away.
Then the avenging torrents streamed up the mountain
side and through the open portals. All gave way before
them ; nothing was spared. " Destroy, destroy ! " was

40 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
the universal outcry. Every weapon of destruction was
pressed into service. No fatigue, no labor was evaded.
Picture, and shrine, and tomb, and fresco, fell alike under
the destroying hammer ; till, wearied with devastation,
the frantic mob could work no more, and fire was set to
the glorious sacristy, while the inestimable manuscripts of
the library, piled heap upon heap, were consumed to ashes.
At the present time the story of that day of destruction
is engraved on every wall. At first, you are unprepared.
The little decorated chapel of St. George, on the right of
the second entrance, is so little injured, that it might be
taken for an ordinary ruin ; then, passing the gate, one
finds the remains of a series of frescoes, which tell the
story of the Moorish invasion. Only the figure of one
warrior and of the avenging angel are left, the rest is torn
away ; the lower pillars are gone, but their beautiful capi
tals, of monks seated amid rich foliage, are left.'
Hence one reaches the original front of the convent.
On the left is another chapel, windowless and grass-grown,
and behind it the remains of the hospital, which is
reduced to a mere shell. In front, rise on one side the
heavy machicolated towers which once flanked the main
entrance, now bricked up, — and on the other, between
statues of San Bernardo and San Benito, the entrance of
the church. Here, in the ante-chapel, donkeys have their
stalls around the tombs of kings, and the fragments of
the royal monuments lie piled one upon another. On the
right, in a dark niche, is the Easter Sepulcher, richly
wrought in marble : only the figure of the Saviour has
been spared ; the Virgin and saints, legless, armless and
noseless, s.tand weeping around. Below, a sleeping arch
bishop has escaped with less injury.
The coro retains its portals of lumachella marble, but
within it is utterly desolate, though overhead the grand
vaulting of the roof, and its supporting columns, are per-

TARRAGONA AND POBLET. 41
fectly entire. There is no partition now beyond this, and
through the pillared avenue the eye pierces to the high
altar, where the splendid retablo of white marble still
stands erect, though all its delicate reliefs are shat
tered to fragments, even the figure of the infant Saviour
being torn from the arms of the central Madonna.
Here, perhaps, is the climax of the destruction. On
either side were the royal tombs : Jaime El Conquistador ;
Alonzo II. ; Ferdinand I. and his two sons, Juan II. and
Alonzo V. ; Pe'dro IV. and his three queens ; Juan I. and
his two, with many princes and princesses of royal blood.
The monuments remain, but so altered, so battered
with chisel and hammer, that scarcely a fragment of their
beautiful ornaments is intact, and the effigies have
entirely disappeared. Caryatides without arms or faces,
floating angels wingless and headless, flowers without
stems, and leaves without branches, all dust-laden,
cracked, and crumbling, scarcely testify to what they
have been ; and thus it is throughout. From the sacristy
blackened with fire, where one portion of the gorgeous
Venetian framework still hangs in mockery, one is led to
the dormitory of the novices, where the divisions of the
cells may be traced, though none are left, and to the
refectory, in which the fountain may still be seen, where,
in this hot climate, the luxury of iced water always
played during dinner in a central marble basin, while,
from a stone pulpit, a reader refreshed the souls of the
banqueters. The great cloister remains comparatively
entire, surrounded with tombs, and inclosing, amid a
thicket of roses which have survived the fate of all else,
a portico, with a now dry fountain, once of many streams,
where the monks in summer afternoons were wont to be
regaled with chocolate. This was voluntary chocolate ;
but another room is shown in which is remembered that
obligatory chocolate was served every morning, for fear

42 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
any brother should faint during the celebration of mass.
Beyond the great cloister, which is of the richest pointed
architecture, — every capital varied in fresh varieties of
sculpture, — is an earlier cloister, formed by low, narrow,
round-headed, thick-set arches of the twelfth century.
Above one side of the great cloister, rich in the delicate
tracery of its still remaining windows, rises the shell of
the palace of Martino El Humilde. Space would not
suffice to describe in detail each court with its distinctive
features, through which the visitor is led in increasing
wonder and distress, to the terrible torture-chamber,
which is wisely shown last, as offering a clue and key to
the whole. But surely no picture that the world can
offer of the sudden destruction of human power can be
more appalling than fallen Poblet, beautiful still, but
most awful, in the agony of its unexpected destruction !
In the summer, the solitude is broken by a perfect
school of young architects, from Italy, Prussia and
America, who come hither to study ; but in England
Poblet is still little known. The time is so short since its
destruction, that of the sixty-six monks who occupied
the convent at the time, many are still living. At Poblet
they wore the white Bernardine habit, and at mass they
officiated in long trains of white ; but the feeling against
them is still so bitter, that if one of them reappeared in
his former costume he would be immediately assassi
nated. Each has retired to his family. We asked the
guide if none had ever revisited their former home.
" Yes, he said, " five of the friars came last summer ;
but they could not bear to look. They wept and sobbed
the whole time they were here ; it was piteous to see
them." From the ruins of their old home must have
come back to them with thrilling force an echo from
the hymn of their Founder so often chanted within its
walls ; —

TARRAGONA AND POBLET. 43
1 Hortus odoribus affluet omnibus, hic paradisus,
Plenaque gratia, plenaque gaudia, cantica, risus ;
Plena redemptio, plena refectio, gloria plena :
Vi, lue, luctibus aufugientibus, exule poenS.
Nil ibi debile, nil ibi flebile, nil ibi scissum ;
Res ibi publica pax erit unica, pax in idipsum.
Hic furor, hic mala, schismata, scandala, pax sine pace ;
Pax sine litibus, et sine luctibus in Syon arce."

CHAPTER V
VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE.
Hotel Peregrino, Murcia, February 2.
WE traveled all night from Tarragona to Valencia, a
most fatiguing journey of eleven hours, in a train
which rattled and shook beyond description, making
sleep quite impossible. We were obliged to console our
selves with the conversation of our fellow-travelers, and
many are the pleasant glimpses into the national life and
character one may gain at such times. One woman
remarked to another how sweetly her babe was smiling
in its sleep. " Yes," she said, " it is laughing at the
angels, which it only can see." " I have such a buzzing
in my ears," said an old woman to another. " It is the
sound of a leaf," she answered, " falling from the Tree of
Life." Day broke in time to show us the first vision of tall
palms, with their feathery foliage rising black against
one of Tennyson's " daffodil skies," which above, still
deep blue, was filled with stars. A truly southern mob
greeted our arrival, shrieking out the merits of the oppo
sition hotels, and trying to appropriate us and our pack
ages by force. Woe betide the traveler who on such
occasions has not chosen his resting-place ; but its name
had made us already decide upon the Fonda del Cid,
which well deserves recommendation, and was, in fact,
the first thoroughly comfortable hotel we had met with in
Spain. Opposite the windows rises the tall semi-Moorish
tower of the Miguelete, built by Juan Franck, 1381—

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 45
1418, which, with the magnificent gate called Puerta de
Serranos (1349), and the Gothic Lonja, or town-hall
(1482), are almost the only ancient buildings of import
ance which remain in Valencia, where, unlike other
Spanish towns, a perfect warfare against the antiquities
has been carried on for some years past, the ajimez
windows having been almost all modernized, and the
whole of the grand old walls having been pulled down
after King Amadeo's visit in 1871, "in order to give
employment to the poor " (!), though the condition of the
streets is disgraceful, and the roads are left in such a
state of neglect as to be utterly impassable ; the principal
one, leading to El Grao, the port of Valencia, being like
a plowed field, with the furrows a yard deep. For some
unaccountable reason the avenue of fine old trees which
lined this road was demolished at the same time as the
walls. The most interesting historical fragment in the
town was pulled down by its idiotic authorities in 1865,
and its site is now only marked by an inscription on a
wall. This was the tower of Albufat, upon which the
cross was first hoisted when the Cid took Valencia from
the Moors, after a twenty years' siege, in 1094, with the
famous gate adjoining, the Puerta del Cid, by which he
entered the town. From hence, in the moment of
triumph, he sent back a command that the enemy
should be permitted to bury their dead, and when the
Moorish chieftain, touched by the unexpected clemency, .
sent two beautiful slaves for his acceptance, replied that
to him, for whom the welcome of his own Ximena was
waiting, no other charms could offer any attraction.
Here, his first act was to take Ximena with her
daughters, Sol and Elvira, to the top of the tower, and
bid them look down upon the glories of the Huerta,
the garden of Spain, which his perseverance at length
had conquered. Here, in 1099, he lay down upon

46 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
his death-bed, surrounded by all his beloved ones,
even his famous war-steed, Bavieca, being brought into
the chamber, and " standing there like a lamb " to gaze
upon his dying master. From this gate also once more
the Cid rode forth upon Bavieca, upright in death, his
corpse arrayed in full armor, -with the face uncovered
and his white beard falling down over his breastplate,
supported by Gil Diaz and the Bishop Geronimo, and
followed by the faithful Ximena and his warriors ; a sight
so awful that the Moors — who, regaining courage at the
news of his death, had again encamped against the town
— fled in terror, leaving the strange funeral procession to
carry out the chieftain's last wish that he should be laid
in S. Pedro de Cerdena, and abandoning so great a booty
to the Christians that, in the words of the old ballad, the
Cid, even after death, won such riches from the heathen
that " the poorest became rich."
No breath from these heroic days now blows upon
Valencia, which is a very concentration of dullness, stag
nation and ugliness ; its cathedral, chiefly Corinthian, is
poor and featureless ; none of the churches are fine ; the
dusty gardens of Alameda and Glorietta are ill-kept and
rubbishy, and the handsome bridges, even in January,
cross only a dry bed, without the smallest streamlet of
water. In the market many picturesque costumes, how
ever, may be seen and admired ; swarthy laborers of the
¦ Huerta, with sandals, linen drawers, velvet jackets, flow
ing mantas of scarlet and blue, and their heads bound
tight with a gayly-covered handkerchief, knotted behind,
with the ends hanging down ; women of the lower classes,
in bright handkerchiefs also over their black hair, and of
the upper classes, invariably in the mantilla, which is so
much the rule here, that English ladies who do not wear
them are followed, much as an Indian in feathers would
be in Regent Street, and those of our partv who went to

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 47
see Ribera's pictures at the Colegio Patriarca, were for
cibly ejected from the church for venturing to enter it in
bonnets. We staid till Friday afternoon, in order to be present
at the morning ceremonies of that day in the chapel of
Corpus Christi in this college. At ten A. si. the congre
gation, all in black, take their places near the high-altar,
which on ordinary occasions is surmounted by a Last
Supper of Ribera ; around this many tapers are burning,
but the rest of the naturally gloomy church is addition
ally darkened. In front of the altar the priests kneel in
silence, while the penitential psalms are sung by a hid
den choir. Then, as the Miserere swells in thrilling notes
through the gloom, the picture over the altar descends by
an invisible machinery, and violet curtains are seen within.
Gradually, as the chant proceeds, one veil after another
is withdrawn ; lilac, gray, black, till, when the imagina
tion is fully aroused, appears, deeply recessed and dimly
shown by a quivering torchlight, the figure of the dying
Saviour upon the Cross, only the bent head fully lighted
up into a vividness of reality ; the rest of the figure rather
expressed than seen. The whole service is most impress
ive and touching, and can scarcely be witnessed without
emotion. The last veil is only drawn for a few minutes,
and as it is closed again, and the people rise from their
knees, the joyful notes of the organ, accompanied by a
chorus of voices, tell of the Resurrection and a new life.
The painters of Valencia form a separate school of
their own, and are largely represented in their native
town. The most remarkable were Juanes (1523 — 1597),
who answers in Spain to Raphael ; Francisco di Ribalta
(1551 — 1628), who is compared with Domenichino ;
Josef Ribera or Spagnuoletto (1588 — 1666) ; Espinoza
(1600 — 1680) ; and Orrente (1560 — 1644), who is chiefly
remarkable as a painter of cattle. The confiscated con-

48 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
vent of El Carmen is now the Museo, and contains, amid
a vast amount of trash, some pictures of Ribera and
Ribalta, powerful, but chiefly of the black-agony school,
excruciating representations of ecstasies, St. Francis,
Santa Teresa, etc. One specimen of Ribalta, however,
rises far above the rest, " The Nailing to the Cross," in
which the Saviour, seated upon the slightly-inclined
cross, on which He is being fastened, looks up to heaven
in rapt contemplation, while one of the thieves, standing
near, with his hands bound, watches with intense interest
the preparation of the cross to which He is to be fixed.
In striking contrast to these subjects, dark both in con
ception and execution, are some lovely works of Juanes,
especially the Saviour instituting the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper, which is quite sublime in its touching
solemnity of expression, and the picture called " La Pur-
isima," painted, after long fasting and prayer, to repre
sent the Virgin as she was described by the Jesuit, Mar-
tino de Alvaro, as having appeared to him in a vision.
Still more beautiful works of Juanes may be seen over
two altars in the Church of St. Nicolas, which contains a
perfect gallery of this flower of Spanish painters, its mas
terpiece being a Cenacolo of matchless beauty. Our
Saviour is standing in awful beauty and solemnity, and is
about to administer the sacramental wafer, which He
raises in one hand, while the other rests upon the be
loved St. John, who bends beneath Him in ecstatic ador
ation ; the other disciples lean breathlessly forward ; in
the foreground is the dark figure of Judas with his
money-bag. All around Valencia lies the Huerta, the most fertile
district in Europe, and in the highest state of cultivation.
Here lucerne is mown fifteen times in one year, and the
rest of the crops are in proportion. Peas (January 20)
were already in pod, and other vegetables in perfection.

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 49
But the miasma from the stagnant waters — the whole
course of the river being diverted for purposes of arti
ficial irrigation — is unwholesome, and combined with the
frequent sirocco, fresh from African deserts, renders the
climate very depressing. We delighted to escape for one
day by the railway to the more exhilarating air of Sagun-
tum, — the old, well-known Roman name being that
marked on our railway tickets, though the place is gene
rally known in modern times as Murviedro. It is a wild
and interesting place, a huge rock crowned with the
remains of a Moorish castle, and clothed with prickly
pear, and, on one of its sides, grand remains of a Roman
theater. While we were drawing, the simple, hospitable
people crowded round us, full of eager questions as to
England and other places of which they knew nothing,
and peeled for us the delicious juicy cactus fruit. " Sa-
guntuni," they said, " was, next to Rome, the most import
ant place in the world, and their Parroquia ranked only
next to St. Peter's, on which account it had been decided
that if the Holy Father should leave Rome, Saguntum
was to be his residence. The Moors, who lived before
the Romans, were the founders of Saguntum, and the
ruined theater was their Plaza de Toros."
We broke the long land journey to Alicante by sleep
ing at Jativa, which is just beyond the bounds of a lovely
garden about ten miles' wide, which separates the Huerta
from the stony deserts of inland Spain. Here the
boughs of the orange-trees swept the carriage windows
as we passed, and the vibrations of the train shook off
showers of the over-ripe golden fruit. Groves of palms,
often gathered around solitary, desolate cartujas, bent
and rustled in the breeze. Jativa itself is full of
fountains — a perfect city of clear rushing waters — and
its bright little Alameda is fragrant with fruit and
flowers. Behind the town, the mountain-side is full of

50 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
hermitages and chapels, built amid groves of old carouba-
trees and thickets of prickly pear. Altogether, it is a
place one would like to linger in ; but the extreme
wretchedness of the inn drove us across the dismal
plains, seven hours, to Alicante, where there is an excel
lent hotel (Bossio), one of the best in Spain.
This is, however, the best thing about the place — this
and the climate — for Alicante is one of the dryest places
in the world. Not a particle of vegetation is to be seen,
except the palm-trees on its Alameda. Every thing has
an Eastern look. The flat-roofed houses, the roads, the
tawny, desolate plains which stretch around for miles and
miles, are alike dust-colored. The huge castle-crowned '
mass which overhangs the town and port is scarcely a
rock, it is rather an immense dust-heap. Yet even here
sunshine and shadow can work their ever-changing mira
cles, and can send great purple shadows across the
mountains, which change their drab steeps, as by an
enchanter's wand, and clothe them with colors of sap
phire and amethyst. . A small English colony exists at
Alicante, with a consul, a chaplain, and a pleasant, hospi
table little society. They told us that if we staid long
we should learn to delight in the place, and even to think
it beautiful; but to us it appeared so miserably abject
and squalid, we could not believe it possible.
The drive from Alicante to Elche was our first expe
rience of a Spanish diligence. We thought its discom
forts greatly exaggerated, as the speed is far greater in
proportion than that of the railway, without the trial to
one's patience of perpetual unnecessary pottering at the
small stations, which occur every five minutes. On the
outside, the fresh air blowing over the vast plains was
delightful, and the old Arragonese coachman in his
quaintly decorated velveteen suit, with a large sombrero,
vied in civilities with the Valencian mayoral. " To the

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 51
right; to the left; go on, you creatures; Ave Maria Purisima,
more to the left, you first one ; go along with God, you out
sider; " thus they talked to their horses, in aloud, stormy
voice. There is very little guidance used, literally no
driving at all ; the horses hear and obey, or if the leader
takes advantage of his distance, far beyond the reach
of whip, to become willful, stones are thrown at his
tail, from a little hillock prepared all ready on the coach
box, — the object of which on setting out had greatly
puzzled us.
After two hours' drive a serrated line of palms rose
upon the horizon, and soon we entered their forests.
Far in the air, sometimes sixty feet high, rose the beauti
ful fans, with their enormous pendent bunches of dates,
the golden fruit hanging from stems so gorgeous an
orange, that no mere description of color can give the
faintest idea of their effect when they are lighted up by
the sun, and backed by the deep blue sky, as we first saw
them. Their variety also is most beautiful : some of the
older trees growing perfectly straight, others bending in
the most picturesque attitudes, some buttressed up with
little stone walls, and beside them younger palms rising
in full youthful vigor, tens upon tens of thousands, for
miles around.
Only the female trees bear fruit, and this only when
they are impregnated with dust from the males, which is
consequently done artificially. The male palms are often
tied up and blanched to be cut for the Palm-Sunday
festivals, arid they are also sold to be stuck up in bal
conies as a protection against lightning, being considered
quite as efficacious, and being certainly much cheaper
than an iron conductor. ^2,000 worth are sold annu
ally in Elche for this purpose, and ,£14,000 worth of
dates. The latter were being gathered during our visit
(January) by the clever little hortelanos who climb the

52 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
branchless trunk like cats, a rope being passed round it
and their waists, upon which they rest their whole weight
in a horizontal position, lowering their baskets when filled
and raising them by a pulley. The defective palm-leaves
are sent to the manufactories and used as cigarettes. By
the road-side, before every cottage-door, are quantities
of dates in baskets, no one watching them ; any passer-by
can eat as many as he likes, fill his pockets, and leave his
halfpenny in payment. It is generally left, for where
Spaniards are trusted they scarcely ever abuse a trust.
When we walked in the groves the hospitable peasants
were only too anxious to load us with branches of the
best fruit, and would accept no payment at all.
We spent three days in Elche, which, though the
Roman Illica, is completely Moorish in character. There
is a humble but decent posada. Ever-increasing was our
delight in the enchanting walks ; sometimes through the
thick groves of magnificent date-palms, where all is rich
ness and splendor of color ; sometimes in the deep brown
ravine of the dried-up Vinalapo, which reminded us of
Jehoshaphat, — Elche, entirely Moorish, rising above like
Jerusalem, with its flat-roofed houses, old walls and
crowning mosque ; sometimes by the banks of little
streams bordered with prickly pear and pomegranates ;
and sometimes out upon the desolate gravelly plain be
yond all these, which assumes a wonderful color towards
sunset, and where the extreme clearness of the air makes
the most distant objects, even to the violet mountains
on the horizon, appear supernaturally distinct.
It is across a mere track in this plain that you set forth
in the Murcia diligence, a track so ill-defined, so broken
by large stones and even rocks, that an overturn seems
inevitable every minute. Sometimes you reach the brink
of an abandoned stone-quarry ; further progress seems
impossible, but the mayoral shouts and cracks his whip,

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 53
down go the leaders by the merest semblance of a road,
the lumbering diligence tumbles after, and at the bottom
the horses just shake themselves and scramble on again
not a bit the worse. But the road improves as it reaches
Orihuela, an old cathedral city, where all the handsome
girls were walking about with fresh roses stuck jauntily
behind their ears, and where the country is so excessively
fertile that an old proverb says, whether it rains or not,
corn will grow in Orihuela — " Llueva or no llueva, trigo
in Orihuela." Merrily, with jangling bells, we drove on
through the starlight to Murcia (Hotel Peregrino), a
pleasant place with an interesting Gothic cathedral, and
one of the most especially Moorish places in Spain, said,
from the stagnation of its long existence, to be the only
place Adam would recognize if he returned to earth.
Here we have heard the bell ringing through the streets
and the people joining in singing the Rosario de la
Aurora, so called because it is sung at dawn for the
benefit of the souls in purgatory. This is a verse of it: —
" En el Cielo se reza un Rosario
Todas las mafxanas al amanecer,
Santiago lleva el estandarle,
San Pedro la luz, la cruz, San Miguel.
Pues vamos alia,
Que no hay cosa mas santa y mas dulce
Que el Santo Rosario que se va, a rezar."
In Murcia we take leave of the eastern coast (for
Cartagena is not worth visiting), with much gratitude for
the enjoyment it has afforded us. No one who has not
seen it can imagine the changes of scene it offers, the
pictures it enables one to store up in one's mental gallery.
The climate is delicious, not the burning sun by day with
the cold, frosty nights of a Roman winter, which send you
to shiver in the evening over a hopeless wood fire, but the
clear, equable, bracing warmth of a fine early English Sep-

54 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
tember. Since the New Year to the present date (Feb.
2), we have had no rain. But what has most surprised
us has been the exceeding facility of traveling and the
charm of the treatment we have met with. We have quite
laid aside now all thoughts of the mistrust which is a
necessary habit in Italy. The fixed prices of the different
hotels, which include board as well as lodging, prevent all
trouble and preclude all notion of bargaining, and, whether
in a first-rate fonda or a humble posada, you are received
and treated, not as mere customers, but like honored and
welcome guests at a country house; and, being so treated,
you learn to behave as such. The master of the house
is your friend, who considers himself as your equal, and
invariably expects to be shaken hands with on taking
leave ; the waiters and chamber-men (there are scarcely
ever any female servants in Spanish hotels) are also
your friends, but at a more respectful distance. Cheat
ing and extortion seem incompatible with the Spanish
character. Even the poorest peasant who has shown us
our way, and who has walked a considerable distance to
do so, has invariably refused to receive any thing for his
services ; yet all are most willing and anxious to help
strangers. The same liberal spirit seems to breathe
through every thing, and was equally shown at our little
posada at Elche — equivalent to a small English public-
house — where a number of maimed, blind and halt col
lected daily to receive the broken viands from the table-
d'hote, which the mistress distributed to them, and in the
house cf the delicate blacksmith's wife opposite, who
keeps two lamps burning nightly at her own expense,
before the little shrine of " Our Lady of the Unpro
tected " in her balcony. The temporal works of mercy
— to give bread to the hungry, and drink to the thirsty, to
take care of the sick, to visit the captives, and to bury the
dead, these are the common duties which none shrink from.

VALENCIA, ALICANTE, AND ELCHE. 55
As I write, a handsome dark-eyed brown boy in rags, who
looks as if he had stepped out of one of Murillo's pictures,
is leaning against the opposite wall in the moonlight,
watching a shrine of the Virgin. -V It is a picture typical of
Spain, ruined and superstitious, but still most beautiful —
and so is the cry of the watchman which is ringing
through the silent air, " Ave Maria Santisima, it is a quar
ter to twelve o'clock."

CHAPTER VI.
CORDOVA.
Fonda Rizzi, Cordova, February 8, 1872.
IT is a tremendous railway journey of twenty-two hours
from Murcia to Cordova, with many disagreeable
changes at miserably ordered stations, and no decent
stopping place along the way. At Albacete picturesquely-
dressed men step into the carriage out of the midnight
darkness, hung all round with knives with inlaid handles,
and the daggers which are so indispensable to the costume
of the majo or peasant dandy, and which are generally
worn sticking out of the breeches-pocket. They are fre
quently adorned with mottoes, generally indicative of the
savage service for which they are intended — the object of
a Spanish knife being to " chip bread and kill a man."
An immense nurnber of people are employed in their
manufacture at Albacete, which is bombastically called
the Sheffield of Spain, and they are always sold at the
station. In the morning the train plodded — for a Spanish train
never hurries — through La Mancha, the Don Quixote
country, still almost as wild and uncultivated as in the
days when the famous knight rode over its dull and des
olate plains. Towards mid-day these were exchanged for
green fields, and low hills clothed with cork trees, till at
length the welcome towers of Cordova appeared, and an
omnibus conveyed us along a bright Alameda garden, and
then through the narrow streets, in which it often touches
the houses on either side, till it could proceed no fur-

>o
oo
o

CORDOVA. 57
ther, and disgorged its contents at the mouth of a street
too narrow for any but foot passengers, leading to the
Hotel Rizzi.
The narrow streets, or rather alleys, so well adapted to
give a shade in the summer, when the heat here is almost
insupportable, are an unaltered relic of the Moorish
dominion, under which Cordova was the unsuccessful rival
of Bagdad and Damascus. Utterly devoid of picturesque-
ness, they have a more thoroughly African appearance
than those of any other town in Spain. One threads one's
way between interminable whitewashed walls, their scanty
windows guarded by heavy iron bars, over a pebbly pave
ment so rough that it is like the bed of a torrent, littered
with straw from the burdens of innumerable donkeys.
There are no shops apparent, no animation whatever, nor
any sign of life in the houses, and the few silent figures
you pass are only miserable beggars wrapped in their
mantas, generally lying on the steps in the sun, almost too
inert to extend their hands for charity, an occasional
veiled lady gliding by to mass, or a majo, who goes swiftly
along, erect upon his tall mure. Cordova is like a city of
the dead ; yet it looks modern and fresh, for every mark
of antiquity is effaced by the coating of whitewash which
clothes every thing, and which makes the building of a
thousand years ago undistinguishable from that of yester
day. The little life which remains all seems to converge to
the mosque, the one center of interest in the town, the
magnet which still attracts travelers to this whited sep-
ulcher from all parts of the world. Here, in the magnifi
cent court of oranges, troops of children play, a spectacle
for a perfect regiment of beggars, who sun themselves all
day long on the low stone seats around the walls, while
crowds of strong able-bodied men stand here for hours
gossiping and playing at cards — for at Cordova Spanish

58 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
idleness reaches its climax. If a man wants a few pesetas
he earns them ; but when he has earned them he does not
work again till they are spent, and as a Cordovan can live
luxuriously on an orange, a piece of dried fish, and an air
on the guitar, plenty of time is left to flaneur and amuse
themselves. And for this what can be more delightful
than the grand old court, surrounded by flame-shaped
battlements, entered by rich Moorish gateways, and
where the fountain erected by Abdur-r-rahman in 945
still sends forth its volume of crystal waters beneath huge
orange trees planted some three hundred years ago, and
above which feathery palms and tall cypresses shoot up
into the clear air ?
Oftentimes a group of the loiterers forms round one
who is singing in a loud shrill voice, not very suitable for
the consecrated precincts of a cathedral, some such
snatches, as this : —
" Los calzones del padre
De Catalina
Tienen cincuenta varas
Sin la pretina ; "
or,— " Mi marido se murio
Dios en el cielo le tenga ;
Y le tenga tan tenido
Que nunca por aca vuelva ; "
or, with a quaint look towards the stranger, —
" Los enemigos del alma
Todos dicen que son tres.
Y yo digo que son cuatro
Desde que conozco a, usted."
From the court you step with bewilderment into a
roofed-in forest of pillars, where you may truly lose your
way amid the thousand still remaining columns (there
were twelve hundred once) of varied color, thickness

CORDOVA. 59
and material, which divide the building into twenty-nine
naves one way and nineteen the other. Into the midst
of all a cathedral was engrafted in 1547, for which many
of the columns were destroyed, permission having been
extorted by the canons from Charles V., who was unaware
of the mischief they were doing, but who bitterly reproved
them when he visited their work for having thus injured
what was unique in the world. A tiny chapel, with a
roof like a shell, formed from a single block of marble,
is ornamented outside with mosaics sent from Constanti
nople by the Emperor Romanus II., the finest in the
world. This is the Ceca, where the Alcoran was kept,
as in a Holy of Holies ; and at the opposite chapel of
the Maksurah, also a beautiful remnant of Moorish times,
though its pavement of pure silver has disappeared, the
kalif performed his chotba or public prayer, at the Mihrab,
a window looking towards the shrine. Just outside their
sacred Ceca now stands, as if in mockery, the tomb of
the Conde de Oropesa, who defended Cordova against
the Moors in 1368. The only other especial object of
interest shown is a scratch of the Crucifixion on a wall,
attributed to the nails of a Christian captive ; but the
mosque may be visited in all hours and all lights with
increasing wonder and delight.
Close below the mosque flows the broad Guadalquiver,
here crossed by a fine old bridge, at the entrance of
which is one of the most beautiful artistic compositions
in Cordova, where a huge brown gateway forms the back
ground for the gaudy groups of country people, who
wait with their mules, while their burdens are being
examined at the barrier. It is a most animated scene,
the mules kicking, struggling and crowding on one
another, the drivers gesticulating, shouting and singing.
Close by, the picturesque ruins of some Moorish mills,
with open horse-shoe arches, stride out into the water.

60 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Behind, on a tall pillar, stands the statue of St. Raphael,
the archangel, the protector of Cordova, an office which
he swore to undertake when he appeared to the Cordovan
priest Andres Roelas, on the 7th of May, 1578, in the
words which we may still read beneath his column.
" Yo te juro por Jesu Cristo cruzificado
Que soy Rafael angel, & quien Dios tiene puesto
Por guarda de esta ciudad. "
An excursion should be made from Cordova to the
picturesquely situated hermitages of the Sierra-Morena,
a small Thebaid, about four miles distant, which may be
accomplished on mules. There, or near where the her
mitages now stand, was once situated the most magnifi
cent of the Moorish buildings of Cordova, the city-like
palace of Azzahra, built by the Khalif Annasir in honor
of his wife, who begged that he would build a city for
her which should be called by her name. It was begun
a.d. 936, and was constructed by architects from Bagdad
and Constantinople, 10,000 men, 2,400 mules and 100
camels being employed in the work. The palace con
tained 4,312 pillars of different kinds of precious marble ;
its hall, called the Khalafat, had eight doors overlaid with
gold and incrusted with precious stones, hung in arches
of ebony and ivory ; in the hall called Almunis was a
great fountain brought from Constantinople, decorated
with many figures of animals made of pure gold adorned
with precious stones, with the water streaming from their
mouths. When the palace was completed it was univer
sally allowed that the whole land of Islam contained
nothing to compare to it, that it passed the powers of
language to describe. During the twenty-five years in
which Annasir inhabited it, the annual expense was 300,-
000 dinars, and the number of its servants was 13,750
males, and 6,314 females, besides 3,750 Schlavonians.

CORDOVA. 6 1
The miracles of art at Azzahra were totally destroyed in
1009 ; even the exact site of the palace is unknown, but
the surrounding country still retains traces of the beauti
ful gardens of fruit trees by which it was surrounded by
its founder. The ride to the hermitages is a lonely one,
brigands are not absolutely unknown, and some little
dread may be experienced at the sight of armed figures
approaching down the narrow wooded paths. Generally,
however, you are passed with the friendly Spanish salu
tation : " Dios guarde a usted ! " " Va usted con Dios,
caballero ! " " God guard you, God be with you, sir."

CHAPTER VII.
SEVILLE.
Fonda Europa, Seville, February 21, 1872.
A PLEASANT railway journey of four hours brought
us from Cordova to Seville. Long before reaching
it, the famous Giralda tower appeared above the green
corn plains, divided by hedges of aloes, and as the rail
way runs close under the town, between it and the
Guadalquiver, all the principal buildings are seen before
you arrive at the station. The tiresome and useless
delay of the local custom-house, which worries travelers
at the entrance of almost all the large Spanish towns,
made it nearly dark when we reached the Fonda Europa,
a thoroughly national hotel, with a court of oranges and
a fountain, but exceedingly gloomy. Here, as elsewhere,
we have often amused ourselves by thinking what a false
idea people must entertain of places who only read of
them in books. It is so easy to give a glowing picture
of that which is dismal enough in reality, and from those
who see the original the impression of the picture vanishes
for ever. Thus O'Shea's really excellent guide-book^
quite the best, we think, practically, though Ford — the
original, unadulterated Ford — should on no account be
left behind, writes of Valencia : — " The sultana of the
Mediterranean cities, robed in the loose and sparkling
white of her straggling houses, lies softly embosomed
amid high palms and deep-green oranges, with her feet
lazily bathing in the blue waves of the sea. The magic
Huerta which surrounds her is but a large orchard," etc.

w
>

SE VILLE. 63
How delightful an impression of dust-laden, wind-stricken,
dead-alive Valencia, three miles from the sea, with its
three or four unhealthy palms, and its surrounding
marshes and nursery gardens, which Murray further
glorifies by describing their mud huts {quintas) as "pearls
set in emeralds ! " Even the truest picture is often mis
leading ; for in writing from Seville I might say with
perfect truth that I look down from my window through
marble colonnades, bathed and glittering in the bright
moonlight, perfumed with the scent of ancient orange
and citron trees, which bend, fruit-laden, over a richly-
sculptured fountain, while many birds of strange plumage
flit amid their boughs, and golden fish float beneath the
waters. Yet I should only be describing an ordinary
Sevillian house, in which the bird-fancying landlord has
clipped the wings of a number of hawks and owls, who
live amid his orange-trees, and frighten his inmates by
unexpectedly hopping in through their bedroom win
dows. From the deathlike stillness of Cordova it is a strange
transition to the animation and bustle of the central part
of Seville, with its brilliant shops and crowded streets, in
which you would think that the whole population amused
themselves all day long. Of all the inhabitants of Spain,
the Sevillians have the greatest reputation for liveliness
of character and enjoyment of all the pleasures which
the world can afford them. The past and the future
seem to have no part' in their existence ; the present is
every thing. The churches here are deserted by com
parison with other towns ; the theaters and promenades
are crowded. When we arrived the whole population
was throwing itself rapturously into the delights of the
carnival. The streets were filled every evening with
masquers in every description of ridiculous dress, from
Chinese mandarins and Indians in feathers to old English

64 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
ladies with poke bonnets, reticule and spectacles, and
old English gentlemen with high collars, tail coats and
umbrellas, very admirably imitated. Reverence to the
Church was also little evinced in the number of would-be
nuns, mumbling over their breviaries, while their eyes,
sparkling through their masques, sought a new object for
a joke ; and even the Pope himself had his representa
tive, dragged woefully along by a horrible green devil
with a long tail, which he lashed in glee over each con
tortion of the wretched potentate. In the carriages were
many lovely little children of the nobles, beautifully
dressed in blue, green and yellow satin, a la Louis XIV.,
with their hair powdered, the little boys of three and
four years old having silk stockings and buckles in their
shoes. " Me conoces " resounded on all sides in the
shrill voice of disguise which is universally adopted. All
classes mingled together, and amused one another ; yet
at such times the high breeding and courtesy of every
rank of Spaniard never desert them, and no coarseness
or breach of decorum can be discovered. At the same
time, the unusual collision into which all persons are
thrown is often productive of bloodshed, and the utter
insouciance about life which prevails in Spain was evi
denced by the fact that six persons were killed and eight
wounded during the course of the first masqued ball, the
long Albacete knife being used, and the murderers easily
escaping in their masquerade dress, without its producing
any effect upon the gayety of the rest of the revelers.
With more than slightly sarcastic reference to the
Italian king, who is much disliked here, the whole people
of Seville, with banners flying, bands of music, and
mounted troops of imaginary cavalry, went out to the
gates at the beginning of carnival to meet the King of
Nonsense, and solemnly escort him into the city, which
he, a puppet, entered in a coach-and-four, bowing and

SEVILLE. 65
nodding on either side from the windows, as real kings
do. On the last day this figure was publicly deposed and
executed — strangled as criminals are, on a scaffold in the
great square, amid universal acclamations ; and on the
first Sunday in Lent (for the Sevillians, if robbed of
some of their fun by the wet weather, use the Sundays in
Lent for more carnival) tens of thousands of country
people came into the town to see him lie in state, and
attend his funeral with a procession of mock penitents,
torches and chanting. On other days of carnival los
gigantes — huge figures of the Moorish sovereigns — were
paraded round the town.
The people of Seville all seem proud now of its
Moorish history, and aware of the advantages which that
period has bequeathed to them. All the best Moorish
houses are preserved, and the hot season of " the oven
of Spain " is rendered endurable by the forethought
which made the streets so narrow that it is generally
impossible for two carriages to pass one another, while
the houses which line them have large gardens, or are
built round open courts, which, in summer, are covered
with an awning or velo ; while the windows ars defended
by the thick matted blinds called esteras. The names
which are written up at the entrance of the streets in
Seville are in themselves always picturesque and interest
ing, and have reference to events which occurred in
them, or persons who have lived there. The word
" calle," or street, is always omitted. The name stands
alone — " Murillo," "Juande Mena," " Abades," " Da
dos," etc. All are whitewashed, as at Cordova, and the
clear shadows of the passers-by fall blue upon the daz
zling walls. In the streets where most business is carried
on, barriers are placed at each end of the broad flagged
pavement to prevent a carriage from attempting to enter,
so that only mules and donkeys jostle the foot-passengers

66 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
with their heavy burdens. Here the chief shops have no
doors or windows, but are open porticos, supported on
pillars, like oriental bazars. Conspicuous among these
are the shops of the gayly-colored Mantas, generally kept
by solemn-looking old Moors, who insist upon their cus
tomers being seated, and regale them with dates and
sweetmeats, while they exhibit their wares ; and those of
the common earthenware, with their picturesque forms
and bright green and red enamel. In the engravers'
windows strangers will notice that some of the visiting-
cards are black, with the name in white — these are the
cards of the doctors, and, rather ominously, signify their
calling. If, i'n the evening, leaving the busier streets, filled far
into the night with a moving crowd — amid which water-
carriers are constantly circulating, with their shrill cry of
" Agua, agua ! " — you turn into the quieter lanes flanked
by private houses, you may generally see, not one, but
many scenes, which look as if they were taken out of the
play of Romeo and Juliet, of young men wrapped in their
cloaks, clinging to the iron bars of one of the lower win
dows, making love, with the ripple of the fountain in the
neighboring patio as an accompaniment ; only, at Seville,
there is nothing surreptitious in this ; it is the approved
fashion of love-making, admitted by parents and guard
ians, and to neglect it on the part of the inamorata,
would be to forfeit his lady's good graces. Fatal frays
frequently occur in the streets, in consequence of the
lover arriving and finding his place occupied by another.
Often the love-making is no whispered confidence, but a
serenade on the guitar. The verses sung are seldom
original, and have a savor of Moorish times and imagery.
Here are some of them : —
" Tus colchones son jazmines
Y tus sabanas mosauetas.

SEVILLE. 67
Azucenas tu almohada,
Y tu, rosa que te acuestas. "
" Los cipreses de tu casa
Estan vestidos de luto,
Y es porque no tienen flores
Que ofrecerte por tribute "
" El naranjo de tu patio
Cuando te acercas a el,
Se desprende de sus flores
Y te las echa S los pies. "
' ' Son tus labios dos cortinas
De color de carmesi,
Y entre cortina y cortina
Estoy esperando el si."
Looking into the patios of Sevillian houses is like look
ing into the private life of their inhabitants, for the adorn
ment of each may be considered to reflect the taste of its
owner ; in one brilliant flowers, in another a marble fount
ain, or a beautiful statue, or drooping bananas, or tall
palms, or cypresses clipped into strange forms of temples
and pagodas. Here the tertulias are given, the pleasant,
informal receptions which are the only kind of evening
parties in common use in Spain. When properly pre
sented at any Spanish house, its master says to you on
taking leave, after your first visit, " Henceforth this house
is yours," and from that time you may come and go unre
strained, and feel sure that you are always welcome,
though you are offered no refreshment, or only a cup of
chocolate, which it is not usual to accept, and though the
master of the house himself is seldom at home, being at
some other tertulia. In the course of the evening one of
the gentlemen present often takes a guitar, then the
younger guests dance, while their elders play at cards or
gossip round the fountain. If a sudden silence falls upon
the company it is attributed to the passing of an angel,

68 WANDERINGS' IN SPAIN.
who imposes upon the air, which is wafted by his wings,
the respect of silence, without any definite cause or com
prehension. With Spaniards dinner-parties are almost
unknown ; though invitations are sometimes given, it is a
mere matter of form, which all well-bred persons are
expected to refuse, unless pressed repeatedly. Great
stress is laid upon all the formalities of Spanish courtesy,
and a stranger is measured by his observation of them.
It is absolutely necessary that a first visit at a Spanish
house should be paid in complete black, though morning
dress may be worn. The visitor's hat is then seized, the
utmost consideration is paid to it, and it is solemnly
placed on a cushioned chair by itself, and this attention
must be carefully observed when the visit is returned.
No attempt must be made to shut the doors, for to be
alone with a lady with closed doors would be considered
indecorous, and it must be remembered that Spanish
ladies never either shake hands or take a gentleman's
arm ; but when the visitor rises, he must say, " Beso los
pies de usted, senora " — ( " Lady, I kiss your feet ; " ) to
which the lady responds, " Beso i. usted la mano, cabal-
lero" — (" Sir, I kiss your hand.") Religious topics can
seldom be touched upon with impunity, for the mass of
Spaniards consider Protestants little better than heathen,
a belief which is very naturally fostered by the extremely
irreverent behavior of our countrymen in Roman Cath
olic churches, and by their habit of walking about looking
at the pictures and statues, and talking aloud, even at the
most solemn moments of the services. Here, though the
spirit may be overlooked, scrupulous attention is paid to
the letter of the national religion, which is nowhere more
perceptible than in the universal impulse with which all
classes alike fall at once on their knees when the tinkling
of a little bell announces that the Sacrament is being car
ried past. An old proverb says, with regard to genuflec-

SEVILLE. 69
ture — " Al Rey, en viendole ; a Diosen oyendole." Even
at a theater, in the midst of a performance, if this bell is
heard, actors and audience alike fall upon their knees
till it ceases. The Sacrament, like the king, is spoken of
as " Su Majestad." Thus when, after prayer, the conse
crated wafer is placed in the mouth of a dying person, a
priest, after a few minutes, approaches with a napkin, and
asks, " Ha pasado su Majestad ? " (" Has his Majesty gone
down ? ") ' ' Quien no ha visto Sevilla,
No ha vista maravilla,"
is a proverb which its inhabitants delight in, but which
may equally be applied to many of the other towns of
Spain. To the seeker after the picturesque, Seville must
unavoidably be a disappointment. The first view even
of the famous cathedral is a shock. It has no external
beauty, and cannot compare with any of the great French
cathedrals, or even with many of the English ones. It
stands on a high platform, girdled with pillars, partly
brought from Italica, and partly relics of the mosques, of
which two existed on this site. The last, built by the
Emir Yusuf in 1 184, was pulled down 1401, when the
cathedral was begun, only the Giralda, the Court of
Oranges, and some of the outer walls being preserved.
The Chapter, when convened for the building of the cathe
dral, determined, like religious Titans, to build one "of
such size and beauty that coming ages should proclaim
them mad for having undertaken it." To their efforts
the main portion of the edifice is due, paid for chiefly out
of their own incomes, but so many chapels and dependent
offices have been added, that even on the exterior every
phase of architecture is represented — Gothic, Moorish,
Grsco-Roman, Revival, and Plateresque ; while in the
interior every century has erected a chapel or retablo in
its own peculiar style.

70 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Far above houses and palaces, far above the huge cathe
dral itself, soars the beautiful Giralda, its color a pale
pink, incrusted all over with delicate Moorish ornament ;
so high that its detail is quite lost as you gaze upward ;
so large that you may easily ride on horseback to the
summit, up the broad roadway in the interior. The lower
part of the tower alone is really Moorish ; the upper tier,
with the bells and the surmounting cupolas, was added
by Francesco Ruiz in 1568, who inscribed the work with
the large letters, " Turris f ortissima nomen Dei." At the
summit is a figure of Faith, inappropriately chosen to
turn with every wind of heaven, executed by Bartolom6
Morel. Nothing can be more enchanting than to spend
a morning at the top of this tower, where, from the broad
embrasures, you overlook the whole city, the soft bends
of the Guadalquiver, and the sunny green plains melting
into an amethystine distance. Subdued by the height,
the hum of the great city scarcely reaches you ; but the
,chime .of many bells ascends into the clear air, and min
gles with the song of the birds, which are ever circling
round the tower in the aerial space, and perching on the
great lilies which adorn it. Just below are children,
always playing in the Court of Oranges, where the old
fountain, used in the Moorish ablutions, still sparkles in
the sunshine.
It is perhaps best to enter the mighty cathedral from
this courtyard, where you find the Puerta del Lagarto, so
called from the crocodile which hangs above it, which
was sent by the Sultan as a present when he asked for the
daughter of Alonzo el Sabio as his wife. The king kept
the gift, but declined the young lady, who thought that
her lover's first present was scarcely indicative of the ten
der regard she expected.
The effect of the interior of the cathedral is terribly
marred by the huge mass of the choir and the retablo of

s&viLLJb. 71
the high altar, which block up the view in every direc
tion. In the former is an inscription, saying that " Nufro
Sanchez, a sculptor, whom God held in his keeping, made
this choir in 1475." Every thing is vast, down to the pas
chal-candle, placed in a candlestick, twenty-five feet high,
and weighing 2,500 lbs. of wax, while the expenditure of
the chapter maybe estimated by the fact that 18,750 liters
of wine are consumed annually in the sacrament. Of the
ninety-three stained windows, many are old and splendid.
Their light is undimmed by curtains, for there is an Anda-
lusian proverb that the ray of the sun has no power to
injure within the bounds in which the voice of prayer can
be heard. In the center of the nave, near the west door,
surrounded by sculptured caravelas, the primitive ships
by which the New World was discovered, is the tomb of
Ferdinand Columbus, the son of the great navigator (who
himself rests in Havannah), inscribed —
' ' A Castilla y a Leon
Mundo nuevo dio Colon."
At the opposite end of the church is the royal chapel,
where St. Ferdinand, who was canonized in 1627,
"because he carried fagots with his own hands for the
burning of heretics," rests beneath the altar in a silver
sarcophagus. Here also are his Queen Beatrix, his son
Alonzo el Sabio, father of our Queen Eleanor, and Maria
de Padilla, the beautiful morganatic wife of Pedro the
Cruel. Every chapel is a museum of painting and sculpture ;
but amid such a maze of beauty three pictures stand
forth beyond all others. The first is the " Angel de la
Guarda" of Murillo, in which a glorious seraph with
spreading wings leads a little trustful child by the hand,
and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly
light. The second is the S. Antonio of Murillo, in the

72 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
baptistery. The'saint is represented kneeling in a cell, of
which all the poor details are faithfully given, while the
long arcade of a cloister can be seen through the half-
open door. Above, in a transparent light, which flows
from himself, the child Jesus appears, and descends,
floating through wreaths of angels, drawn down by the
power of prayer. The third is in the great sacristy ; it is
the solemn, awful " Deposition from the Cross," by Pedro
de Campana, before which, by his own desire, Murillo was
buried. In his lifetime he would remain for hours before
this picture. The sacristan once asked him why he thus
stood gazing there. " I am waiting," he said, " till those
holy men have finished their work."
Many of the services in this church reach a degree of
splendor which is only equaled by those of St. Peter's ;
and the two organs, whose gigantic pipes have been com
pared to the columns of Fingal's cave, peal forth magnifi
cently. But one ceremony, at least, is far more fantas
tic than any thing at Rome, when at Corpus Christi
and the octave of the Immaculate Conception, the
choristers dance before the altar with castanets, wearing
plumed hats and a dress of the time of Philip III., red
and white for Corpus Christi, and blue and white for the
Virgin. Sermons are still occasionally preached in the open
cloister, from the stone pulpit, whence S. Vicente Ferrer
declaimed the horrors of the Inquisition, and most pic
turesque is the scene, of the vast congregation seated
round the fountain, and under the shade of the old orange-
trees. The gift of preaching has by no means perished
out of Spain, and is still well represented in Seville.
Perhaps the most celebrated preacher of late years in the
Peninsula has been Don Cayetano Fernandez, a monk of
the Oratory here, seme of whose teachings have been
published under the title of " Fabulas Asceticas." Their

SEVILLE. 73
pictorial eloquence and imagery is well suited to the
Spanish mind : see this fragment : —
" ' O suffering ! O cruelty ! ' thus cried an olive-tree, which an active
hand was despoiling of its branches.
" ' Why , by the edge of your bill-hook, do you thus cause my ruin ?
Is this your love for me, O gardener ?
" ' Already my shorn and injured head has ceased to offer either shade
or beauty, in the midst of the pain which overwhelms me. '
"' Be silent ! cease your importunate lamentations,' answered the
man. ' That which is required of you is not beauty, or shade : it is
olives. '*- ' You will see, in April, with how many flowers your poverty will
be clothed, and the abundant harvest which you will give in October.
" ' Until that time, O olive, have patience.'
" Do you also, O Christian, adore the chastisement of a severe and
inflexible Providence ; it does but prepare through suffering the fruits
of autumn. "
Or this :—
" ' Penelope, many persons call me a Penelope ; it enrages me to
hear it. Why do they treat me so ill ? ' — ' Because your life is spent
in spinning and unspinning. '
" Do you not know that the Lady Penelope passed her days in
spinning her web, and that, in the night, she unraveled it ? This is
why the name is given to all women who imitate her — who spin and
unspin. " The young girl who thinks herself religious, who goes to mass and
sermon, and who at night, at parties, dances the fango and gavotta, is
occupied, in my opinion, in spinning and unspinning.
"If she reads A Kempis and the Christian Year, and then has
Dumas and Victor Hugo in her hands, it is (who cannot see it ?) to
spin and unspin.
" And if, a model daughter, she is like a slave in her obedience, yet
gives rendezvous at the grille of her window and the crevice of her
door, it is but the old story of spinning and unspinning.
" She who humbly kisses the earth, and, at the least insult, rises to
become a fury ; she who throws herself upon her enemy and tears
her hair, has made terrible progress in the art of spinning and un
spinning. " She who rises early to go to confession, as I see more than one of

74 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
you do, and who, in the evening, thinks of nothing but amusing her
self at the theater ; what do you call that ? — spinning and unspinning.
' ' And what when she welcomes the poor, because she loves to do
good ; if, at Tertulias, she backbites her neighbors, it is so much
good lost. She has spun and unspun .
"And if, at a religious meeting, she recites the Short Litany and
immediately goes to gallivant upon the Alameda at the expense of her
modesty, she runs the risk of losing every thing in spinning and
unspinning. ' ' For to be an angel by day and a little devil by night, is to go with
four horses to hell, is foolish and absurd, is to sow and not to reap.
is  to spin and unspin."
The grass-grown squares to the north of the cathedral
are surrounded by an interesting group of buildings of
various dates. First comes the vast Lonja or Exchange,
built 1582-98, inclosing a grand staircase of brown and
red marble, and containing, on its upper floor, the pre
cious correspondence of Columbus, Pizarro, and Fernando
Cortes. Opposite this is the huge Archiepiscopal Palace
of 1697.
Between these two buildings we approach the serrated
wall of the famous Alcazar (Al Kasr — the house of
Caesar), which was begun in 1 181, but in great part rebuilt
by Pedro the Cruel (1353-64), and again altered by Charles
V., who displayed here the same passion for building
one palace inside another which has disfigured the Alham
bra. Pedro, however, strictly imitated the Moorish
sovereigns in his buildings, as he tried to resemble them
by administering open-air justice in the Patio de las Ban-
deras. The history of this strange monarch gives the
Alcazar its chief interest. Hither he fled with his mother
as a child from his father Alonzo XI. and his mistress,
Leonora de Guzman. They were protected by the min
ister, Albuquerque, at whose house he met . and loved
Maria de Padilla, a Castillian beauty of noble birth, whom
he secretly married. Albuquerque was furious, and, aided

SEVILLE. 75
by the queen-mother, forced him into a political mar
riage with the French princess, Blanche de Bourbon. He
met her at Valladolid, but, three days after his nuptials,
fled from the wife he disliked to the one he loved, who
ever after held royal court at Seville, while Queen
Blanche, a sort of Spanish Mary Stuart, after being
cruelly persecuted and imprisoned for many years, was
finally put to death at Medina-Sidonia. In this Alcazar
also Pedro received the Red King of Granada, with a
promise of safe conduct, and then murdered him for the
sake of his jewels, one of which, a large ruby, which he
gave to the Black Prince after Navarete, and which is
" the fair ruby, great like a racket-ball," which Elizabeth
showed to the ambassador of Mary of Scotland, now
adorns the royal crown of England. Of his nocturnal
adventures many strange stories are told. One is still
quaintly commemorated in Seville. The king, cloaked
and disguised, used to serenade his various loves, Seville-
fashion, beneath their window-bars. One day, on arriv
ing at a rendezvous, he found his place already oc
cupied, and in a fit of jealousy he killed his rival.
The only person who saw the deed was an old woman
who was sitting up baking. In the murderer she recog
nized the king, but, fearing one whom all dreaded, she
kept silence. The next day the news of the tragedy
resounded through Seville. Pedro, imagining that no
eye had seen the deed, sat upon his judgment-seat in the
Banderas, sent for the alcalde of the town, and declared
that his own head should answer for that of the murderer
unless he produced him in three days. The terrified
alcalde inquired of all people in the neighborhood of the
fatal spot, and at length found the old woman, who
revealed the truth. But there was still the difficulty of
accusing the awful king to his face. To meet it he made
a puppet, which he painted and dressed exactly, like the

76 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
king, and when the three days expired- he presented him
self before Pedro, saying that he had found the murderer
and captured him, and when Pedro declared his incredu
lity he produced the image. Then the king went through a
mock form of trial, and condemned the image to death, and
it was hung in chains at the entrance of the street ever
since called Justicia, where the bust of Pedro may still
be seen on the spot on which the murder was committed,
as well as the Moorish house, unaltered, whence it was
seen by the old woman. It was in the Alcazar also that
Pedro murdered his illegitimate brother, the master of
Santiago, who had caused him much trouble by a rebel
lion. Maria de Padilla knew his coming fate, but did
not dare to tell him, though from the beautiful ajimez
window over the gate, she watched for his arrival and
tried to warn him by her tears. Six years after, this mur
der was avenged by Henry of Trastamare, the brother of
the slain, who stabbed Pedro to the heart ; but Maria de
Padilla was already dead, and buried with queens in the
royal chapel, when Pedro publicly acknowledged her as
his lawful wife, and the marriage received the sanction of
the Spanish Church.
Over the door of the Alcazar is the device of El Nodo,
in reference to the fidelity of Seville to Alonzo el Sabio.
Within all is still fresh and brilliant with light and color.
It is like a scene from the Arabian Nights, or the won
derful creation of a kaleidoscope. The first court is
called Las Donzellas, because there it is said the Moorish
sovereign used to choose his wives, fifty rich and fifty
poor, all the young ladies of Seville passing in review for
the purpose. The Hall of Ambassadors is perfectly glo
rious in its delicate lacelike ornaments and the rich color
of its exquisite azulejos. It has a " Naranja ceiling "
like the inside of an orange. In one corner there are
dark stains upon the floor. " Ah, blood ! " said the old

SEVILLE. 77
guide, " I know that word of English ; it means sangre.
All the English ladies who come here look for that stain,
and then they say ' Blood ! ' " It is said to be that of the
victim of Don Pedro, who called out, " Slay the master
of Santiago ! " from the upper gallery, beneath which his
portrait and those of his two wives, opposite to one
another, are let into the wall. Beyond this are shown
the sleeping rooms of the Moorish king, where his four
hundred wives and his three hundred children were
accommodated — a number which seems less incredible
when one learns that the present Emperor of Morocco
has had eighty children born in one month !
On the upper floor is the bedchamber of Don Pedro,
outside which still hang the skulls of some unjust judges
which he caused to be placed there, that he might look
upon them whenever he went in or out. Here also is a
beautiful little chapel built by Isabella the Catholic, in
which her grandson, Charles V., was married to Isabella
of Portugal. The arms of the great Isabella are seen
bound by a yoke to those of Ferdinand, whose jealousy
added the motto, " Tanto monta," " One is as good as
the other."
Behind the Alcazar, approached by a separate entrance,
are its lovely gardens, laid out by Charles V., an absolute
blaze of sunshine and beauty, where, between myrtle hedges
and terraces lined with brilliant tulips and ranunculuses,
fountains spring up on either side the path, and gradually
rising higher and higher, unite and dance together through
the flowers. Beyond the more formal gardens are ancient
orange-groves covered with fruit. The ground is littered
with their golden balls. " There are so many," the gar
dener said, " it is not worth while to pick them up." We
gathered as many as we liked, and felt that no one knew
what an orange was who had not tasted the sunny fruit of
Seville. One old tree is shown as having been planted

78 ¦ WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
by Don Pedro. It stands near the pleasant summer-
house of Charles V., covered with purple azulejos. His
bath is also shown beneath the orange bowers, and that
of Maria de Padilla, an arched crypt, delightful in sum
mer, with a hole through which Pedro could look down
at her. In another part of the garden are twenty-nine
hideous camels, pets of poor Queen Isabella, which the
new government tried to sell, and, when they failed, sent
here to do what work they could.
Just behind the Alcazar is the Plaza S. Tomas, where
Figaro, " the Barber of Seville," had his shop. It is
strange that no enterprising barber should set up a shop
there now.
Facing the pretty Botanical Garden near this is an
enormous and stately building, which we at first imag
ined to be a royal palace, but afterwards found to be
the Government tobacco manufactory, where six thousand
women are employed daily. As they are paid according
to the amount of work they do, all is activity and dili
gence, and it is astonishing to see the deftness with which
the cigars are rolled up. Here the best types of Anda-
lusian beauty may be seen. One part of the building is
entirely devoted to the Gipsies, who carry on their sepa
rate dialect and sing their own songs here among them
selves. Morality is at a low ebb : —
" El hombre 6 fuego, la muger estopa
Viene el diablo y sopla. "
Infants produce small scandal in Seville ; they may be
only the result of having eaten of the lily, which is sacred
to the Virgin !
On the other side of the same garden rises another
palace, really inhabited by royalty. It is that of S. Elmo,
originally founded as a naval school by the companions
of Columbus, in gratitude for having been saved during

SE VILLE. 79
a tempest by the mariners' saint. His statue stands
above the handsome portal, but his reputation is at a low
ebb now, even at Naples, for he is always said to appear
after the storm is over ! Queen Isabella gave the build
ing to her sister, the Duchesse de Montpensier, and since
the revolution of 1848 she and her husband have made it
their principal residence. They are exceedingly popular
at Seville, where they do a great deal of good by careful
and discriminating charity, to which they give much per
sonal attention, and in encouragement of art and skill of
every description. S. Elmo is a charming ideal of a
happy family home. Its beautiful marble courts and
halls, where a fountain often plays in the center of each
chamber, and in which are no fire-places, present too cold
an aspect for our northern notions of comfort in winter ;
but in summer they must be delightful ; and the walls are
completely covered with family relics and souvenirs, evi
dently greatly prized and cared for. These include por
traits of Louis Philippe, Marie Amelie and Madame
Adelaide, frequently repeated, with those of all the
brothers and sisters of the Duke ; pictures also of
various family events — the baptism and marriage of the
Comte de Paris, Louis Philippe and his five sons on
horseback, etc. Among a number of sketches, evidently
framed rather for the sake of the artists than for any
intrinsic value of their own, is one " par la Princesse Alex
andrine Victoire, fille du Due de Kent; en 1835," repre
senting an angel of mercy visiting a starving family. In
the Duchess's room are many portraits of her own family
— her sister, Queen Isabella, represented over and over
again, the first time as a baby of a few months old ; her
mother, and Don Francisco d'Assisi, the queen's husband.
The first hall is surrounded by glass-cases filled with little
memorials of family tours — pottery from Etruria, glass
and lamps from the Catacombs, coins,- medals and dried

80 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
plants. In one of the rooms are the Madonna della Faja
of Murillo and Ary Scheffer's beautiful picture of " Mon
ica and Augustine." In a patio are copies of the tombs
of two infants who have died. When the first child died,
it was buried in the royal chapel of the cathedral, but
when the second died, and the parents wished to lay it
there also, it was not allowed : " They were no longer
royal ; the royal chapel was not for them." It was the
greatest insult which the Revolution offered them.
In front of S. Elmo rises the Torre del Oro, a river
bastion of the Alcazar, once united to it by walls which
were destroyed to make way for the promenade called
the Christina. It was used as a prison for the disgraced
mistresses of Don Pedro. Its name is said to be derived
from the gilt tiles which once roofed it. These have now
been taken away, but are amply compensated for, as far
as the name goes, by the bright yellow wash with which
the walls are covered.
Hence, along the bank of the muddy Guadalquiver,
extends the pleasant promenade of Las Delicias, crowded
in the afternoon with Sevillian beauties. On the prome
nade ladies often wear low dresses and their hair dressed
with flowers, while even at a large evening party high
dress is the rule. Every possible form and size of fan is
to be seen — often with a handle, and so large that it is
used as a parasol. There are fans for every season and
for every occasion. A friend of ours asked a Spanish
lady how many she had. " Only thirty dozen," she said,
and thought it very few. In church, where there are no
chairs or seats of any kind, and where all the ladies sit
picturesquely upon the floor, the flapping of fans in the
hot weather is prodigious. Many writers have dilated
upon the beautiful feet of the Spanish ladies, but their
dresses are worn so very long, that it is difficult to imag
ine how this knowledge can have been arrived at. Nor

SEVILLE. 8 1
is this hiding of feet merely the result of modern fashion;
the feet of Spanish ladies have always been concealed.
Medieval artists were always forbidden to paint the feet
of the Virgin, and to mention them was as sacrilegious as
it was disloyal to allude to the possibility of the queens of
Spain having legs.
The hospital of the Caridad was founded by Don
Miguel de Mafiana, or Tenorio, a Don Juan of the sev
enteenth century. His story relates that when he was
coming out from a midnight orgy he encountered a
funeral procession, with mutes and torches, and inquiring
whose it was, was told that it was that of Don Miguel de
Mariana, and in the corpse they bore beheld with horror
his own image. The bearers said they were about to cel
ebrate the funeral mass, and bade him accompany them,
and join them in praying for the soul of Don Miguel.
He did so, and the following morning was found sense
less upon the floor of the church. From that time his
career was changed, he sought only works of charity and
mercy, and at his death endowed this hospital with ten
thousand pounds a year, commanding that he should be
buried at the church-door, so that all who passed by
might trample on his grave, which by his own direction
bears the epitaph, " Here lies the worst man in the
world." When we went to see the pictures we asked for the
sacristan, and were told, " Here the sacristan is una
Madre de Caridad." These sisters manage the whole,
and take care of a hundred and forty old men in a well-
organized hospital, the wards consisting of two long gal
leries, divided by pillars.
The small church contains a wonderful collection of
pictures. The six Murillos include his two famous large
representations of Moses striking the rock and the miracle
of the loaves and fishes. The grand and affecting altar-

82 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
piece of the Deposition is by Pedro Roldan, with a back
ground painted by Valdes Leal. Near the door, by the
same artist, is the too truthful picture of "Los Dos
Cadaveres," before which Murillo used to hold his
nose. The picture-gallery in the Convento de la Merced is
almost filled with the works of Murillo. Eight of his
finest pictures were painted for the glorious retablo of
the Capuchin convent, closed in 1835, and of these seven
are now here. Perhaps the gem of the whole collection
is the St. Thomas of Villanueva, Murillo's own favorite
picture, which he called "Mi Cuadro." St. Thomas was
the favorite preacher of Charles V., and was created
Archbishop of Valencia, where he seemed to spend the
whole of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted
any debt; so that his people used to believe that angels
must minister to his temporal wants. He is represented
at his cathedral door, distributing alms, robed in black,
with a white miter. A poor cripple kneels at his feet,
and other mendicants are grouped around. Near this
hangs the grand picture of the Vision of St. Francis of
Assisi, to whom the Saviour visibly descends from the
crucifix. St. Francis turns to receive his Lord with awe
and love unspeakable, and, as he turns, the world, repre
sented by a globe, rolls away from beneath his feet. " La
Virgen de la Servilleta " is a lovely small picture, which
derives its name from having been painted on a napkin.
When Murillo was working at the convent, the cook-
entreated to have something as a memorial, and presented
a napkin as the canvas, on which this brilliant, glowing
Madonna was painted, with a Child which seems quite to
bound forward out of the picture.
One other building in Seville deserves especial men
tion. It is the Casa de Pilatos, the palace of the Dukes
of Medina Celi, built by a Marquis of Tarifa on his return

SEVILLE. 83
from Palestine in 1520, in professed imitation of the house
of Pilate at Jerusalem. To render this resemblance
complete nothing has been omitted, the Praetorium,
the pillar of the scourging, the basin in which the hands
were washed, the table where the thirty pieces of silver
were counted, while at the top of the stairs the cock
which crowed is seen, stuffed, in a niche, with entire
disregard of the fact that this famous bird lived in the
house, not of Pilate, but Caiaphas. But the real interest
of the house is derived from its splendid azulejos, like
those of the Alcazar, the gorgeous purple color of its
tiled staircase, and its little garden of enormous bananas.
One lovely evening we drove out to Italica, passing
through the gipsy quarter of Triana, where Murillo
studied his ragged boys, and where pots are still sold like
those which Santa Rufina and Santa Justina were mak
ing on this spot, where they were stoned to death for
refusing to bow down to the image of Venus. Murillo,
when he painted his famous picture of the sainted
tutelars, took as his models two peasant-girls of Triana.
Here is a church with the strange name of " Sant' O."
Beyond Triana, a dreadfully bad road leads across the
green-covered plain to the foot of a low line of hills,
where are to be found the few vestiges which mark the site
of the city where the emperors Trajan, Hadrian and
Theodosius were born. Even the " ruins of the ruins "
were destroyed by the earthquake of 1755. Enough of
the amphitheater alone remains to show the former import
ance of the place. When we saw it, the broad area was
filled with water, in which the ruined seats were reflected
as in a mirror. We sat to sketch the lovely effect as sun
set bathed the whole with gold, and introduced the figure
of the old guide, seated on a rocky fragment ; " thus he
would live on after he was dead," he said. His cottage
clings to the ruins like a parasite, shaded by a huge fig-

84 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
tree, and in all the rugged interstices around he has
planted roses, mignonette and coronilla, so that it is a
perfect bower of sweets. The only other inhabitants of
Italica are vast bands of black pigs, which live in its
vaulted passages.
On a neighboring hillock is the fine old neglected con
vent of S. Isidoro, gutted by Soult. Its church contains
a beautiful statue of the patron saint, by Montanes, and
the tombs of Guzman el Bueno and his family. This
Guzman received his surname from King Sancho el Bravo,
after the defense of Tarifa against the Moors. He had
intrusted his eldest son, of nine years old, to the care of
the Infante Juan, who leagued with the Infidels, and who
brought the child under the walls, threatening to kill him
if the fortress was not surrendered. Guzman replied, " I
prefer honor without a son, to a son with dishonor ; " and
the boy was killed. When, called by the cry of horror to
the battlements, Guzman saw his child's dead body, he
turned to its mother, saying calmly, " I feared that the
infidel had taken the city." The daughter-in-law of Guz
man, Dona Uriaca Osorio, who is also buried here, was
burned alive by Pedro the Cruel, for refusing to become his
mistress. Her epitaph also records the fate of her faith
ful fnaid Leonora Davalos, who insisted upon dying with
her beloved mistress. As we emerged from the dark con
vent courts we came upon one of those striking views so
completely Spanish in character, and which derive all
their charm from the climate. In the distance, against
faint blue mountains, the cathedral and town rose through
a violet mist ; then came the rich green plains, intersected
by long fiords of water ; and on the rich dark Siena fore
ground groups of gayly-dressed peasants, with their hund
reds of pigs, stood out in the strongest relief of shadow
against the brilliant sunset-color. Fernando Cortes died
hard by (December 9, 1597), at Castillejo de la Cuesta

SEVILLE. 85
(now a country house of the Montpensiers), where Bernal
Diaz says that he sought retirement for the purpose of
making his will and preparing his soul for death ; " and
when he had settled his worldly affairs, our Lord Jesus
Christ was pleased to take him from this troublesome
world." He was first buried at S. Isidoro, but his remains
were afterwards removed to Tezcuco, in New Spain.
Our last visit at Seville was to the site of the Quemadero,
on the plain called Prado San Sebastian, outside the walls ;
where, in the Plaza San Francisco, beneath the pictur
esque old Casa del Ayuntamiento, the autos da fi took
place. The bricks of the long-used scaffold, where so ,
many suffered, can only just be seen peeping through the
grass beneath which time has so long been burying them.
But here, that which Bossuet describes as " the holy
severity of the Church of Rome, which will not tolerate
error," burned 34,601 persons alive, and 18,043 persons in
effigy, between 1481 and 1700, besides imprisoning and
sending to the galleys many thousands of others. In all
cases the property of the sufferers was confiscated and
their families left destitute. It can scarcely be wondered
at that Seville is now foremost among Spanish cities in
her search after a reformed faith. Many Protestant
schools are opened, in which about four hundred children
are being educated ; and though they are preached
against in the cathedral, and denounced from the pulpit
of St. Vincent Ferrer, their teachers are gladly welcomed
and universally treated with respect by the people. The
church of S. Basilio has been bought from the Roman
Catholics, and services are performed and sermons
preached there in Spanish. When the building was being
repaired by its new possessors, its roof was found to be
full of bones of children. Even at the English services
Spaniards of the lower classes often appear, and behave
reverently.

CHAPTER VIII.
CADIZ AND GIBRALTAR.
King's Arms Hotel, Gibraltar, March n.
ON February 22 we left Seville for Cadiz. For more
than an hour before reaching it the town rises over
the flats, but the railway has to make a long circuit, fol
lowing all the windings of the bay. Here are productive
saltpans, called by religious titles, such as " II dulce
nombre de Jesus," which seems profane ; yet, as Ford
observes, is perhaps not more so than the familiar use in
Oxford of such names of colleges t as Corpus, Jesus,
Trinity, and Christ Church. The distant effect of the
white town rising above the deep blue waters is most
brilliant and dazzling, and within its narrow streets it is
impossible to get away from the glare of the whitewash,
of which every building receives a fresh coating annually.
The high sea-wall is the only pleasant walk, with its little
gardens full of bright scarlet geraniums and hedged with
heliotrope and ixias. Here we may spend a hot after
noon very agreeably, and study Spanish life and manners,
or listen to the numerous nursery maids who are singing
to their children such verses as : —
" A la nana le cantaba
La Virgen a sus amores !
Dulce hijo de mi vida,
Perdona a los peccadores.
A la puerta del cielo
Venden zapatos
Para los angelitos
Que estan descalzos.

GIBRALTAR, FRO.M ALGECIRAS.

CADIZ AND GIBRALTAR. 87
Todo lo chiquitito
Me hace & mi gracia
Hasta los pucheritos
De media cuarta.
El nifio de Maria
No tiene cuna
Su padre es carpintero
Y le hara una.
Nifio chiquirrito
De pecho y cuna
Donde estara tu madre
Que no te arrulla. "
In one of the convents of Cadiz is the picture of the
marriage of St. Catherine, in painting which Murillo fell
from his scaffold, and received the injuries of which he
died. But there is literally nothing else to see in Cadiz,
and as the land road, which we had intended taking, was
rendered quite impracticable by the recent rains, we were
glad to find a steamer leaving next morning for Algeciras,
opposite Gibraltar.
It was a lovely day, and a calm sea, which was a great
subject of rejoicing, for even as it was the rickety
Spanish vessel rolled disagreeably. Owing to the miser
able slowness of every thing, we were eleven hours on
board. There was little interest till we reached the
yellow headland of Trafalgar. Then the rugged outlines
of the African coast rose before us, and we entered the
straits, between Tarifa sleeping amid its orange groves on
the Spanish coast, and the fine African peak above Ceuta.
Soon, on the left, the great rock of Gibraltar rose from
the sea like an island, though not the most precipitous
side, which turns inwards towards the Mediterranean.
But it was already gun-fire, and too late to join another
steamer and land at the town, so we waited for a shoal of
small boats which put out from Algeciras, and sur
rounded our steamer to carry us on shore.

88 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Here we found in the Fonda Inglesa (kept by an
English landlady), one of the most primitive but charm
ing little hotels we ever entered. The view from our
rooms alone decided us to stay there some days. Hence,
framed by the balcony, Gibraltar rose before us in all the
glory of its rugged sharp-edged cliffs, gray in the morn
ing, pink in the evening light, with the town at its foot,
whence, at night, thousands of lights were reflected in the
still water. In the foreground were groups of fishing-
boats at anchor, and, here and there, a lateen sail flitted,
like a white albatross, across the bay. On the little pier
beneath us was endless life and movement, knots of
fishermen, in their blue shirts and scarlet caps and sashes,
mingling with solemn-looking Moors, in turbans, yellow
slippers, and flowing burnouses, who were watching the
arrival or embarkation of their wares ; and an endless
variety of travelers from all parts of Europe, waiting for
different steamers, or come over to see the place. Here
an invalid might stay, imbibing health from the fine air
and sunshine, and never be weary of the ever-changing
diorama. In every direction delightful walks wind along
the cliffs through groves of aloes and prickly-pear, or
descend into little sandy coves full of beautiful shells.
Behind the town, a fine old aqueduct strides across the
valley, and beyond it the _ wild moors begin at once
sweeping backwards to a rugged chain of mountains.
Into the gorges of these mountains we rode one day, and
most delightful they are, clothed in parts with magnifi
cent old cork-trees, while in the depths of a ravine,
overhung with oleander and rhododendron, is a beautiful
waterfall. It was with real regret that we left Algeciras and made
the short voyage across the bay to Gibraltar, where we
instantly found ourselves in a place as unlike Spain as it
is possible to imagine. Upon the wharf you are assailed

CADIZ AND GIBRALTAR. 89
by a clamor of English-speaking porters and boatmen.
Passing the gates, you come upon a barrack-yard swarm
ing with tall British soldiers, looking wonderfully bright
and handsome, after the insignificant figures and soiled,
shabby uniforms of the Spanish army. Hence the Water-
port Street opens, the principal thoroughfare of the town,
though, from its insignificant shops, with English names,
and its low public-houses, you have to look up at the
strip of bright blue sky above, to be reminded that you
are not in an English seaport.
Just outside the principal town, between it and the
suburb of Europa, is the truly beautiful Alameda, an
immense artificial garden, where endless gravel paths
wind through labyrinths of geranium and coronella and
banks of flame-colored ixia, which are all in their full
blaze of beauty under the March sun, though the heat
causes them to wither and droop before May. During
our stay at Gibraltar, it has never ceased to surprise us
that this Alameda, the shadiest and pleasantest place
open to the public upon the Rock, should be almost
deserted ; but so it is. Even when the band playing
affords an additional attraction, there are not a dozen
persons to listen to it ; whereas at Rome on such occa
sions the Pincio, exceedingly inferior as a public garden,
would be crowded to suffocation, and always presents a
lively and animated scene.
One succession of gardens occupies the western base
of the Rock, and most luxuriant and gigantic are the
flowers that bloom in them. Castor-oil plants, daturas
and daphnes here attain the dignity of timber, while gera
niums and heliotropes many years old, are so large as to
destroy all the sense of floral proportions which has
hitherto existed in your mind. It is a curious character
istic, and typical of Gibraltar, that the mouth of a cannon
is frequently found protruding from a thicket of flowers.

90 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
The eastern side of the Rock, in great part a perpen
dicular precipice, is elsewhere left uncultivated, and is
wild and striking in the highest degree. Here, beyond
the quaint Jewish cemetery of closely set gravestones,
bearing Hebrew inscriptions on the open hillside, a rug
ged path winds through rocks and tangled masses of
flowers and palmito, to a curious stalactitic cavern called
Martin's Cave. On this side of the cliff a remnant of the
famous " apes of Tarshish " is suffered to remain wild
and unmolested, though their numbers, always very
small, have lately been reduced by the ignorant folly of a
young officer, who shot one and wounded nine others,
for which he has been very properly impounded.
On the northern side of the Rock are the famous gal
leries, tunneled in the face of the precipice, with cannon
pointing towards Spain from their embrasures. Through
these, or, better, by delightful paths, fringed with palmitos
and asphodel, you may reach El Hacho, the signal station,
whence the view is truly magnificent over the sea, and
the mountain chains of the two continents, and down into
the blue abysses beneath the tremendous precipice upon
which it is placed.
The greatest drawback to the charms of Gibraltar has
seemed to us to be the difficulty of leaving it. It is a
beautiful prison. We came fully intending to ride over
the mountain passes by Ronda, but on arriving we heard
that the whole of that district was in the hands of the
brigands under the famous chief Don Diego, and the
governor positively refused to permit us to go that way.
Our lamentations at this have since been cut short by the
news of a double murder at the hands of the brigands on
the way we wished to have taken, and at the very time
we should have taken it. So we must go to Malaga by
sea, and wait for the happy combination of . a good
steamer and calm weather falling on the same day.

CHAPTER IX.
GRANADA.
Hotel de los Siete Suelos, Aprils
LATE in the afternoon of the 15 th of March we
embarked on board the Lisbon in the dockyard of
Gibraltar. It had been a lovely day, and the grand Rock
had looked its best, its every cleft filled with flowers and
foliage. The sun set before we had rounded Europa
Point, and the precipitous cliffs of the eastern bay rose
utterly black against the yellow sky. Then all was night,
and in the warm starlight the different groups of passen
gers made themselves comfortable on deck with cushions
and mattresses.
At two a.m. a long line of lamps sparkling through the
darkness showed that we had reached Malaga ; but we
had still many hours to wait before the health officers
would visit us, without which we were not allowed to land,
and daylight gradually broke, and gilded first the mount
ain tops, and then the massive cathedral, the shipping
and the town. At seven our examiners came, and, stand
ing in a boat beneath the steamer, demanded that all the
crew should come up to the side of the vessel. " Show
them all your tongues," said the captain, but apparently
the inspection was not satisfactory, for they came on board
afterwards, and examined each separately. Then the pas
sengers were all called out, and great difficulty made
because their number was one less than that entered in
the books. "Being cannibals, we have eaten him since
we left Gibraltar," explained the captain jocosely. At

92 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
last we were allowed to bestow ourselves and our pack
ages in the fleet of little boats whose owners were fighting
to take us to the pier ; a tiresome custom-house was
ready to prove the Spanish rule that though custom-house
duties need not be paid, custom-house officers must — and
the proverb, " No hay tan ciegos que los que no quieren
ver." Then the watermen, having done their best to
extort twenty francs for doing almost nothing, and hav
ing, after a battle, been beaten down to ten, at last left us
in peace at our hotel.
Malaga is the dearest place in Spain, being the most
Anglicized. The prices there are nearly the double of
those in the northern towns. We wondered thatit should
be so much resorted to by invalids, as, when we were
there, a fierce east wind was blowing, and the whole air
was clouded with the thin white dust, which is almost a
permanent misery, and prevents any enjoyment from
walking. There is very little to see. The long Alameda
is a dusty walk between insignificant trees, with a very
pretty fountain at the end, which was brought by Charles
V. from Genoa, and intended for his palace at Granada.
The Grseco-Roman cathedral was built in the sixteenth
century, and is little worth visiting. It occupies the site
of a mosque, and stands at the entrance of the Moorish
quarter of the town, which straggles up one side of a cac
tus-clothed hill, crowned by the Arabic castle of Gibral-
faro. The surrounding country consists of plowed lands
over which the dust-storms sweep uninterruptedly, or yel
low hills covered with the productive vines of Malaga.
The journey from Malaga to Granada is a difficult one.
The only train leaves at half-past three in the afternoon,
and takes passengers to Las Salinas. The railway runs
through a gorge of most Salvator Rosa-like scenery, where
the Xenil tosses wildly through a great rift in the rocky
precipices, sometimes lost altogether beneath the cliffs,

GRANADA. 93
and then emerging more boisterous than ever. At Las
Salinas two diligences were waiting for us, not nearly
enough for the great number of passengers, so the crowd
ing was dreadful. The road from hence was a mere track,
broken in some places into deep quagmires and pools of
water, mended in others by great lumps of rock thrown
loosely down anyhow. Through and over these we floun
dered, thumped, jolted and crashed, in a way which was
absolutely frightful, especially when a precipice at the
side, dimly seen through the night, added to the dangers.
Every one was occupied in holding on as they best could.
No one had time to think of the robbers, though many
were known to be about, and we had an armed escort
hanging on behind. As we reached Loja the road im
proved, and our sixteen mules swung us skillfully round
the sharp corners of its narrow streets. In the valley
below the town the railway began again, and in two hours
more, at half-past two a.m., we were at Granada, and
climbing, in an omnibus, the ascent to the Hotel Siete
Suelos, which is within the hallowed precincts of the Al
hambra. There is nothing more interesting than the awakening
in a place new, and yet so old, so well known from stories
and pictures of earliest childhood, as Granada. And it
was like an awakening in Paradise. Far below our win
dows a deep green gorge descends towards the town and
vega, filled with tall elm-trees and carpeted with violets.
Broad, well-kept paths run in different directions through
this beautiful wood, skirted by rushing brooks of crystal
water. In the different openings of the green glades' are
lofty stone basins, in which fountains splash and play, not
sending forth a narrow jet such as one's recollection of an
English fountain conveys, but bursting forth in a foam
ing mass of abundant waters. Here nightingales sing
incessantly in their season, and the whole wood is always

94 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
alive with a chorus of singing birds. The trees, the only
elms in Spain, except those in the garden of Aranjuez,
indeed almost the only trees of any size which are not
fruit trees, were planted by the Duke of Wellington.
¦They have never been thinned, and though no individual
tree can ever be a fine one, a change can scarcely be ,
wished for, there is such a picturesqueness in the immense
ly tall, narrow, interlacing stems, in the arching foliage
which bends and meets in mid-air over the roadways, and
in the swinging garlands of ivory which drop here and
there from the high branches. On, the right, the red
towers of the Alhambra guard the heights ; to the left
glimpses of the snowy Sierra-Nevada may be caught here
and there through the trees. Almost adjoining the house is
the famous tower of the Siete Suelos, from whose postern
gate Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings, passed out
with his family after the conquest of Granada. Alto
gether a more enchanting dwelling-place can scarcely be
imagined than the Hotel of Los Siete Suelos.
It is scarcely five minutes' walk through the wood to
the entrance of the Alhambra, the grand " Gate of Jus
tice," beneath which the Moorish kings dispensed judg
ment. Over the first arch is seen a hand with the fingers
uplifted as in a Neapolitan talisman. Over the second
arch is a key. Only when the hand grasped the key,
said the Moors, could the Alhambra be taken. Above
the gate runs the inscription placed there by its founder
Yusuf, in 1348, " May the Almighty make this a bulwark
of protection, and inscribe its erection amongst the
imperishable actions of the just." No artist will fail to
sketch this gate — either its glowing orange walls, seen
through the deep shadows of the wood, or combined with
the picturesque Berruguete fountain, of the time of
Charles V., which stands beneath its terrace walls.
Hence, by a winding vaulted passage, we arrive at the

GATE OF JUSTICE, ALHAMBRA.

GRANADA. 95
upper platform of the Alhambra. That part which we
reach first, gay with fountains and myrtle-fringed gardens,
is called the Plaza de los Algibes — the place of Moorish
cisterns. On its left are the rugged range of yellow
towers which inclose the Alcazaba-Kassabah, or citadel ;
on the right is the grand palace of Charles V., built of
bright yellow stone, reminding one in its color of the
Coliseum, and in its forms of the Otto Heinrichs Bau at
Heidelberg. Its windows, which have never been glazed,
frame broad strips of deep blue sky, but its caryatides
and bas-reliefs are still fresh as if from the workman's
chisel. The arrangement is curious, as the interior is an
immense circular court-yard, though the exterior is quad
rangular. Beyond the palace are more trees and gardens,
a church, a convent, a mosque, a little town, all within
the castellated precincts of the hill, which is pointed at
both ends,, and girdled with towers.
From the terraced wall you look down upon the great
town, which is still one of the largest in Spain, though its
population, 400,000 under the Moors, is now reduced to
75,000. Above the vast expanse of white-washed houses,
the churches, towers and cypresses, rises conspicuously
the Graeco-Roman cathedral, where the first Christian
sovereigns of Granada rest side by side. The nearest hill
is covered all over with prickly pear, intersected by nar
row paths leading to caves, in which a part of the gipsy
population burrow and live. Between this and the plat
form on which we stand, rushes the rapid gold-producing
Darro, emerging from a rocky gorge in the mountains,
and, as it enters the town, becoming lined with the
quaintest old houses, leaning, bracketed, over its stream,
and looking as if they would topple over every moment.
Each wall is full of balconies, upon which bright-colored
clothes are hanging out to dry in the sun, while the para
pets are lined with large red vases filled with hyacinths

96 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
and yellow gladiolus, and pinks and nasturtiums stream
downwards luxuriantly from the boxes beneath. Here a
gothic bridge, there a broken Moorish arch, spans the
narrow river. As your eye follows the Darro to its junc
tion with the Xenil, the houses become thinner, till at
length they are lost altogether in the bright green of the
vega, shut in on two sides by chains of beautiful mount
ains, and backed by the Sierra-Nevada, one sheet of
untarnished snow, which under this deep blue sky, is
almost too dazzling to look upon.
If we turn away from the view to the hill-garden itself,
what a scene of life and sunshine it is ! how fresh its
rich foliage and flowers, how abundant its fountains ! It
is as if all the natural beauties of Spain were concen
trated on this one spot, which seems to belong to a differ
ent country altogether to the desolated treeless plains of
the rest of the peninsula. What picturesque figures are
constantly passing backwards and forwards ! — copper-
colored gipsies with blue-black hair, the men in
embroidered jackets with hanging silver buttons, scarlet
fajas round their waists, and broad-brimmed sombreros ;
the women in bright pink and yellow petticoats, and with
large bunches of flowers, generally yellow by way of
strongest contrast, pinned behind their black locks.
Each scene at the doors of the encircling towers, which
are mostly let out to poor families, is a study. What
combinations of color ! what picturesqueness in the nat
ural grouping of the figures, with their pigs, their goats,
and their dogs, the latter generally called Malampo, Cubi-
lon, or Lubina, because such are said to have been the
names of the three favored animals who accompanied
the shepherds to look upon the newly-born Infant at
Bethlehem, and dogs called by those names never go mad.
Much of the Moorish palace was destroyed by Charles
V. when he erected his own building. That which

GRANADA. 97
remains occupies so very small a portion of the Alhambra
precincts, and is so concealed behind the later edifice,
that at first a stranger will wonder where it can be, and if
he goes round to the back, and is told that some low
pointed shed-like roofs inclose the most beautiful build
ing in the world, will think it quite impossible. This
excessively plain exterior was adopted to avert the evil
eye, which scowls upon that which is too prosperous. It
is by a narrow alley, ending in a low door-way behind
the palace of Charles, that you enter the building.
But, as you pass that door-way, you are translated
out of fact-land into fairy-land. You never think again
about the size, all the proportions are so perfect. Court
succeeds court, and hall follows hall with a bewildering
loveliness of sculpture quite indescribable, and which,
though endlessly varied, is perfectly harmonious. A
petrified veil of the most delicate lace covers every wall,
formed partly by flowers and geometrical patterns, but in
the main intention of its fretwork, as strictly religious as
the sculpture of a gothic cathedral, and filled with sen
tences and maxims from the Koran, which it is intended
to bring constantly before the eyes and hearts of the
beholder. Over and over again also occurs the motto,
" Wa la glaliba — ilia — allah. " There is no conqueror but
God " — the words which Ibn-1-Ahmar answered to his
subjects, when they came forth to meet him as he returned
victorious to Granada, greeting him at the same time as
" Galib " — the conqueror. The delicate creamy pink of
the stucco adds to the magical effect of the whole. The
only inmates are the martlets, which build under the over
hanging eaves, and are forever flying in and out of their
nests, — the only birds sacred and unmolested in Spain,
because they are believed to have plucked off the thorns
from the crown of our Saviour as He hung upon the cross.
In a few places fragments of color remain, the primary

98 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
colors, blue, red and yellow having been the only ones
used by the Moors in their upper decorations, though the
secondary colors, purple, green and orange, are
employed in the Azulejo dados, which are nearer the eye.
In the Hall of Justice, where Ferdinand and Isabella
heard high mass on taking possession of the Alhambra,
are some curious paintings upon leather, nailed to the
wooden dome. They represent bearded Moors, sitting
cross-legged upon cushions, with their heads covered,
and two-edged swords in their hands ; and as the Moors
were prohibited from making the exact representation of
any living creature, are supposed to have been the work
of a Christian captive ; others imagine that they were
painted after the conquest, and that they only date from
the end of the fifteenth century.
The whole Alhambra teems with reminiscences of the
romantic history of the two last Moorish sovereigns.
King Abu-1-hasan took prisoner the Christian maiden
Isabel de Solis, daughter of the governor of Martos, and
falling passionately in love with her, made her his wife
under the Moorish title of Zoraya, or " the morning star."
The former sultana, Ayeshah, imprisoned in the tower of
Comares (so called from its Moorish architect), fearing
for the safety of her son Abu-Abdillah, or Boabdil, under
the hands of her rival, let him down, with the help of her
ladies, from a window overhanging the Darro ravine, and
he escaped by night. Thenceforward the palace was filled
with dissensions, the powerful clan of the Abencerrages,
who were the mainstay of the kingdom, espousing the
cause of Zoraya, the Zegris that of Ayeshah. In 1482
Boabdil dethroned his father, and became known as " El
Rey Chico." Ayeshah at once urged upon him the
importance of conciliating so powerful a family as the
Abencerrages, but his spirit of vengeance was too strong,
and, inviting the chiefs of the family to a banquet as if to

COURT OF BLESSING, ALHAMBRA.

GRANADA. 99
make peace, he had them beheaded one after another in
the hall which is called by their name, and where their
blood-stains are still shown on the marble pavement.
Thirty-three warriors fell thus, and their ghosts may still
be heard nightly moaning in the hall where they died.
The rest of the family were warned by a page, and forth
with joined the Christian army, under Ferdinand and
Isabella, which was already encamped against Granada.
In the Hall of the Ambassadors Ayeshah girded her son
with a sacred sword, with which he was to repel the
invaders. But the young sultana Morayna wept over his
departure, when she heard that he had struck his lance
' against the gateway and broken it — an omen which
gave him the name of "El Zogoybi," "the unlucky
one." The city fell January 2, 1492, when Boabdil, having
presented the keys and done homage to the Catholic
sovereigns, departed forever by the gate of the Siete
Suelos, which, in accordance with his last request to Isa
bella, was walled up, so that no one might ever use it
again. From the spur of the Alpuxarras, still called
" El ultimo sospiro del Moro," he looked his last upon
the town, and wept as he beheld it. " It is well," said the
stern Ayeshah, " that you should weep as a woman for
what you could not defend as a man."
Several of the towers round the walls are well worth
visiting, especially those of Las Infantas and La Cautiva,
which are filled with exquisite Moorish tracery, though
much defaced by the French. The latter tower derives
its name from a Christian captive who the then Moorish
king wished to add to his harem, and who, when she
found no other means of protection, flung herself from its
window, beneath which her lifeless form was found by her
knightly lover, who came that day to her rescue. In the
same neighborhood, in a charming garden, is the beautiful

loo WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
little mosque, in which Yusuf I., the principal builder of
the Alhambra, was murdered at his prayers. .
Issuing from the walls near this by the Torre del Pico,
whose battlements were added by Ferdinand and Isa
bella, one may cross the glen to the Generalife,* a sum
mer villa of the Moorish sovereigns. Its gardens are so
lovely, with their wide views over the town and vega, that
Anderson and. many other travelers have even preferred
this palace to the Alhambra. Through its cloistered
courtyard rushes, fresh from its source, an impetuous life-
diffusing branch of the Darro. Its decorations, much in
jured by whitewash, are still full of grace and beauty ;
its faded pictures of the Spanish kings and queens, unim-'
portant as works of art, are yet interesting here from their
historic association ; and its venerable cypresses, beneath
one of which the Sultana Zoraya is said to have met her
Abencerrage lover, are the most magnificent in Spain.
It requires many visits to understand the Alhambra,
and for this purpose all who stay any length of time at
Granada should arm themselves with an order, " per
estudiare," from the governor, Senor Contreras, who lives
in the house near the entrance, which contains the beauti
ful arch called the " Puerta del Nina." Unsupplied with
this, the traveler will be incessantly persecuted by the
troop of officious and greedy guides who lurk in the
entrance. Each light in each hour of the day has its
own special charm,, and lends its own peculiar effect to
some part of the building ; but no one should miss a visit
by moonlight, when the Court of Lions, strangely ex
panded in size, looks as if it were wrought in bur
nished silver, and when all modern changes are lost in
* An order for the Generalife, now belonging to the great Genoese
family of Grimaldi, must be obtained in the town from the Italian
Consul, who will at the same time exhibit Boabdil's beautiful inlaid
' sword.

GRANADA. 101
shadow, and only the beautiful ideal of the Arabian palace
remains in its splendor. At sunset, crossing the kitchen
garden which occupies the interior of the Alcazaba, the
Torre de la Vela should be ascended for the sake of the
view, the last tower on the southern point of the promon
tory, where, even from Moorish times, a loud bell, begin
ning at "Las Animas" (8)4 p. m.), and continuing till day
light, has announced to the farmers of the plain that they
might turn aside the waters of the river for the irrigation
of their meadows. It was upon this tower that the
Christian standard and cross were first raised after the
conquest, and a cross in the wall still marks the exact
spot. Hence the fiery orb of the sun will be seen grandly
disappearing behind the purple mountains, and the snowy
ranges of the Sierra-Nevada bathed with rose-color in the
after-glow. The whole scene will call to mind the lines
of George Eliot in the "Spanish Gipsy": —
" The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes
Of shadow-broken gray ; the rounded hills
Reddened with blood of Titans, who huge limbs
Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh
Of cactus green and blue.sworded aloes ;
The cypress soaring black above the lines
Of white court-walls ; the pointed sugar-canes,
Pale-golden with their feathers motionless
In the warm quiet ; all thought-teaching form
Utters itself in firm unshimmering lines.'-
While our minds were still full of sympathy for the ex
iled Moors, and while every detail relating to their con
quest was of interest to us, we drove out to Zubia, whither
the great Isabella came during the siege, to look upon
Granada, and where she narrowly escaped being taken
prisoner. After her victory, she erected a hermitage
there, to commemorate her escape, which still stands
amid some tall cypresses, and contains faded portraits of

102 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Ferdinana and Isabella. A thicket of bay is shown as
that in which the queen hid herself with her children, and
was concealed by the closely entwined branches, like
Charles in the oak, until the enemy had passed by.
Another short excursion may be made to Santa ¥6, the
town "which rose during the siege, built in eighty days by
the indomitable Isabella, after her troops had been ren
dered shelterless from the accidental destruction of the
camp by fire. Here, the crucifix which the Queen car
ried with her is preserved in a small chapel. Not far off
is the old bridge of Pinos, the spot which Columbus had
reached when, wearied by five years' waiting and petition
ing at the Spanish court, he was about to offer his services
to Henry VII. of England. Hither the messengers of
the queen pursued him, and brought him back to arrange
at Santa F€ the expedition which ended in the discovery
of America.
The story of the conquest is told in a series -of curious
bas-reliefs in the " Capilla de los Reyes," which joins the
cathedral. Isabella is seen riding into Granada on her
white palfry, with Ferdinand on one side and Cardinal
Mendoza on the other. Boabdil presents the keys, and
numbers of despondent Moors are pouring out of the
gates of the town. Again, the Moors are represented as
being baptized en masse, their costume exactly the same
as that which may still be seen at Tangiers. In front of
the retablo which contains these sculptures are the mag
nificent tombs of the Catholic sovereigns. Ferdinand and
Isabella lie side by side upon a lofty sarcophagus. Both
figures are beautiful, but that of Isabella (Elizabetha in
Latin) is indeed worthy of her whom Shakespeare called
"the queen of earthly queens," and Lord Bacon describes
as "an honor to her sex and the corner-stone of the
greatness of Spain." The effect of her character upon
those she lived amongst is touchingly portrayed in a let-

GRANADA. 103
ter written by- Peter Martyr from beside her death-bed : —
" You ask me of the state of the queen's health. We all
sit in the palace all day sorrowing, and tremblingly await
the hour when religion and virtue shall quit the earth
with her. Let us pray that we may be permitted to fol
low whither she is now going. She so far exceeds all
human excellence, that there is scarcely any thing mortal
left in her. Hers can hardly be called death, it is rather
the passing into a nobler and higher existence, which
should excite our envy instead of our sorrow. She leaves
a world filled with her renown, and goes to enjoy a life
everlasting with her God in heaven. I write in the altern
ation of hope and fear, while her breath is still fluttering
within her."
Close to that of her parents, is the tomb (a beautiful
work of the Genoese Peralta) of Joanna and her hand
some husband Philip of Burgundy. In the vault beneath,
the four coffins may be seen. That of Philip is most
interesting, as being the same which Joanna carried about
with her everywhere, often passionately embracing it, and
watching it constantly for forty-seven years, in the tearless
madness of her long widowhood. A magnificent reja by
Bartolome' of Jaen (1533) screens off the tombs from the
rest of the chapel. Round the cornice is inscribed : —
" This chapel was founded by the most catholic Don Fer
nando and Dona Isabel, King and Queen of Las Espanas,
Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, who conquered this king
dom and restored it to our faith ; who acquired the Can
ary Isles and the Indies, as well as the cities of Oran,
Tripoli and Bugia ; who crushed heresy, expelled the
Moors and Jews from these, realms, and reformed religion.
The Queen died Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1504. The King died
Jan. 23, 15 16. The building was completed in 15 17." In
the sacristy are portraits of Philip and Joanna, and in one
of the chapels of the cathedral are fine pictures of Ferdi-

104 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
nand and Isabella, copies of the originals by Rincon,
which were destroyed by fire.
The plan of the cathedral (which is the work of Diego
de Siloe, son of the sculptor of the tombs at Miraflores)
is a very noble and peculiar one. The central aisle, forty
feet in width, instead of ending in an apse, expands into
a dome seventy feet in diameter, beneath which is the
high altar. The side aisles also end in altars ; an ambu
latory surrounds the whole. In the side chapels are very
fine works of Alonzo Cano, especially one of that pictur
esque subject often treated by Spanish painters — " the
Solitude of the Virgin."
There is a great deal more to be seen in Granada.
The principal Moorish street, " El Zacatin," remains,
and, adjoining it, the " Alcaiceria," or silk bazar, consist
ing of two narrow alleys, beautifully adorned with stucco
and sculpture in the style of the Alhambra. Of the same
character is the old Moorish gateway on the other side
of the Darro, built in 1070, but now called " Puerta del
Carbon," from the Carboneros who frequent it. Near
the Darro, opposite the ruin of a horse-shoe bridge, is a
Moorish bath, having a covered roof supported on low
pillars, with richly carved capitals. The church of San
Geronimo was built in 1497 by Talavera, confessor of the
Catholic sovereigns, and first Archbishop of Granada.
He was anxious to convert the Moors by kindness, and
translated the church services into Arabic for their use.
He afterwards wished to translate the Bible likewise, but
was prevented by Cardinal Ximenes, who declared that
" Hebrew, Greek and Latin were the only languages in
which the Word of God ought to be used — the three
languages plainly pointed out to mankind by the inscrip
tion on the cross itself." San Geronimo contains the
empty tomb of the great Captain Fernando Gonsalez of
Cordova, who lived at Granada during the latter years of

GRANADA. 105
his life, being driven to a life of complete retirement by
the jealousy of Ferdinand and the animosity of his second
queen, Germaine. At the very time of his death Ferdi
nand had given orders for his arrest, fearing that he was
about to embark for Flanders, yet the king and the whole
court went into mourning for him, and a hundred banners
waved above his tomb till the year 1600. His painted
statue remains in the church, with that of his wife, Dona
Maria Manrique, who survived him only a few days, but
their bodies are no longer here ; they were actually
exhumed by the revolutionary Government in 1870, and
carried in a tin box to Madrid, where a kind of Pantheon
has been made in the church of San Francisco el Grande
with labeled pigeon-holes for all the great men of Spain.
Some English travelers, wishing to take seats in the dili
gence that day, were told that they could not have them,
because the places were bespoken for El Gran Capitan !
Tha neighboring hospital of San Juan de Dios is very
interesting, as having been founded by the saint himself
in the early part of the sixteenth century. He preached
the necessity of hospitals on this spot with such ardor
that he was considered mad and shut up in an iron cage,
which is shown. His teaching, however, still brings forth
fruit here, and the hospital, whose wards all open upon a
spacious cloistered quadrangle, is admirably arranged and
attended to.
Hence a short walk into the country brings one to a
spot bearing the Moorish name of Hinadamar, where
stands the Cartuja, a Carthusian convent and church,
decorated somewhat in the style of the Certosa of Pavia.
The jaspers, marbles and inlaid work of ebony and tor
toise-shell are very gorgeous, though their taste may be
questioned. The most real treasure preserved here is a
small statuette of San Bruno by Alonzo Cano, one of the
most expressive representations of touching humility and

106 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
suffering that can be imagined. The old guide delights to
point out the quaint images formed by the vagaries of
the veins in the alabaster and agate decorations — an
" Ecce Homo," a " Mater Dolorosa," a " Grenadina in
her Mantilla," etc. The cloisters are surrounded by a
horrible series of paintings, representing the history of
the order, especially the awful sufferings of the English
Carthusians under Thomas Cromwell, which, if true, may
weigh heavily in the scale against the martyrdoms under
Catholic Mary. These pictures are the work of Juan
Sanchez Cotan, a brother of the order, who was of such
eminent piety and purity of life, that the Virgin herself
is believed to have descended from heaven in order to
give him a sitting for her likeness, upon which he was
engaged. As he returns to the town the pedestrian should pause,
for here, at the entrance of Granada, occurred one of the
most striking scenes of history. The body of the beauti
ful and beloved Isabella of Portugal, wife of Charles V.,
had been brought hither by slow stages, attended by all
the young knights who had faithfully served her in life.
Among these was Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia. At
the entrance of Granada the corpse was uncovered, and
the attendants pressed forward to gaze upon the honored
features of their mistress for the last time. But under the
terrible hand of death all her beauty had disappeared,
and Borgia was so overwhelmed by the change of decay,
that he abandoned forever the vanities of the world to
become an ascetic, a priest, and eventually a saint of the
Catholic Church.
Wearied by much sight-seeing, a tourist may refresh
his eyes and mind in the beautiful Alameda near the
junction of the Xenil and Darro, where the aristocratic
part of the population, always conscientiously employed
in doing nothing, unite every summer evening and winter

GRANADA. 107
afternoon. The ladies universally wear mantillas and
carry fans ; the gentlemen are so well dressed that Mr.
Poole himself might take a lesson from the crack tailor
of Granada. The older Alameda, lined with fine old
trees, and ending in fountains, is not inappropriately
called "El Salon," for there society meets and does its chief
business. It is a regular evening party in public and in
the open air, a Vanity Fair in miniature, — the unmarried
daughters, followed by their admirers, being paraded up
and down by their parents, not unmindful perhaps of the
old Spanish proverb, " Three daughters and a mother are
four devils for a father." On festas the assembly extends
to all classes, and numbers of majas may be seen in gaudy
dresses with flowers in their haif, attended by their majos
in velvet jackets and bright sashes, and with the stick —
" vara" — in their hands, without which no well-bred majo
ever appears in public. More, probably, is spent upon
dress, taking all the classes together, in Spain, than in
any other country of Europe ; only, in the provinces, the
soldiers often appear shabby and ragged, for they are not
only irregularly paid, but are sometimes unsupplied with
even the most necessary articles of clothing. Thus the
following placard appeared upon the walls of the Anda-
lusian towns proposing a reward for the defenders of
Algeciras and Tarifa : — " El brigadier Cordoba ha abierto
una suscricion, poniendose & la cabeza de ella, para
regalar un par de pantalones de pano a los valientes
soldados de Asturias."
In the week preceding Passion Week large placards
appeared, headed by a picture of the Crucifixion, and the
words, "Jesu Redemptor" in large letters. They
announced a " Passion Play" to be acted in the theater.
The whole story of the last days of our Saviour was
enacted, as at Ober-Ammergau — the Last Supper and the
Crucifixion itself being represented upon the stage. A

108 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
burlesque was by no means intended, yet some parts bor
dered upon the ludicrous. One scene was rapturously
encored by the audience ; it was when Judas descended
to the infernal regions amid a crash of thunder and a
blaze of blue lights ! It is due to the venerable Arch
bishop of Granada to say that he strongly deprecated
this exhibition, and did all he could to oppose it.
All the ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome are repro
duced on a minor scale here, and on Holy Thursday the
Archbishop washes the feet of twelve pilgrims in the
cathedral. On Good Friday the whole population wear
black. Easter Sunday is a great day in Granada, not because
the resurrection of our Saviour is commemorated on that
day, but because then at five p.m. the famous " Virgen de
las Angustias" goes forth from her church to visit a sister-
image in the cathedral. That afternoon the streets
assumed the most festal appearance ; the windows were
hung with red, yellow and blue draperies, and the bal
conies were filled with gayly dressed ladies. Long before
the hour arrived the whole of the Alameda was filled
from end to end with a dense multitude of expectant
people, and hundreds of boys were rushing about in front
of the sanctuary waving long branches of green elder,
which they threw down under the feet of the bearers as
they carried the image down the steps, of the church ;
literally they " cut down branches from the trees and
strewed them in the way." This image of the Virgin of
Sorrows is one of the most famous in the south of Spain,
and half the women in Granada are christened Angustia,
to place them under her protection ; indeed the name is
so common as to cause inextricable confusion amongst
the number of Angustias. The figure is of the size of
life, and is better as a work of art than most worshiped
images of saints. It is dressed in black velvet robes

GRANADA. 109
spangled with golden stars, wears a crown on its head
filled with precious stones, and has a sad, pensive expres
sion in its countenance, which is bent over the dead body
of the Saviour — for it is, in fact, a Pieta. Its jewels are
most magnificent, and such is the enthusiasm and courage
it is known to inspire, that when the French came to
Granada they never ventured to plunder or even enter
this church, though the people, in defiance, had decorated
the Virgin with all her jewels, lighted the church by night
and day, and left the doors always open.
As the image left the church, carried by the principal
citizens of Granada in full dress, a blare of trumpets and
crash of drums greeted its appearance. Guns were fired
and rockets sent up ; the noise was deafening. As the
procession entered the Alameda with one impulse the
whole people fell upon their knees. Many women wept
and sobbed as they stretched out their hands in eager
supplication. At each step of the procession fresh fire
works rose from the houses on either side of the way ; it
was like a march of fire, and the appearance of the tall
black figure slowly advancing up the green avenue between
the throng of kneeling people was certainly most striking.
A very different scene was enacted upon the evening
of Holy Thursday, when, in an upper chamber, seventy
earnest Protestant converts met to receive the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper at the hands of a Protestant Pres
byterian minister. The liturgy used was almost entirely
that of the English Prayer-Book, which is translated into
Spanish. The elements were received seated, according
to the Presbyterian custom. In spite of the power of
the Virgin of Las Angustias, Protestantism is making
strong advances in the town where Matamoros suffered.
Nothing has a greater effect upon the Spaniards than our
burial service ; its reverence, its encouragement of
Christian hope, contrasting so strongly with the indecent

no WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
indifference with which the Romish funerals of the lower
classes are conducted at Granada, where no ceremony
whatever takes place at the cemetery, and where the
bodies, carried unattended to the grave, are buried like
dogs, generally ejected from their coffins (which are used
again !), and with only a little earth scraped over them.
The hollow way between the red towers of the Alhambra
and the green slopes of the Generalife, torn by a torrent,
and filled with hundreds of pigs which are herded there,
is called " The Way of the Dead," because by that rough
path the bodies are generally carried from the town to
the cemetery. We witnessed several of these saddest of
funerals. Once it was a beautiful little girl who was to
be buried. She was borne upon an open bier, her waxen
features, smiling in the sleep of death, were crowned
with white roses and jessamine, her little hands were
folded, she was dressed in white, and other white flowers
were sprinkled over her. All had evidently been done
by the tender care of loving friends. Yet no one fol
lowed but the grave-digger smoking a cigar, and the
little bier was jerked jauntily along by six rough boys of
thirteen or fourteen years old, some of whom were
smoking, the rest whistling and singing. We could
hardly bear to think of the fate which awaited that little
child at the cemetery, where, when these uncoffined
funerals take place, the gipsies, by an ancient custom,
fall upon the body upon its arrival, and tearing off its
dress and decorations, fight and scramble for them
amongst themselves, leaving the poor corpse to be
tossed, naked and desecrated, into its grave amongst the
docks and nettles.
The savage insolence of the gipsy population, their
coarse language and manners, and their brutal immorali
ties, are the great objection to a lengthened residence in
Granada. They are. absolutely uncontrolled either by

GRANADA. Ill
the laws or the police. Their swarms of children are
brought up systematically to beg without ceasing, and to
steal whenever they can. They are utterly without
shame. If an English lady ventures into the gipsy
quarter alone, a troop of young women and children
will not scruple to fall upon her, and while some carry
off her shawl, parasol, etc., others will force their hands
into her pockets and seize all it contains. Gipsy beggars
never ask, they always demand, in the most violent and
imperious tones, and wherever a number of gipsy chil
dren are encountered together, the shouts of " ochavito,
ochavito," are more than deafening. Unfortunately the
view from San Nicolao, one of the grandest in Granada,
is in a stronghold of the gipsies, who must be encount
ered to visit it. Their chief residence, however, is in
the hillside of the Albaycin, leading to the Monte Sacro,
where innumerable caves are perforated in the living
rock, beneath immense prickly pears, which serve at once
as food, shade and protection. The mouths of these
caves are whitewashed, and the entrances generally
guarded by a piece of old carpet. There the savage
families bask all day in the sun, and make the air
resound with their harsh guttural cries and songs. The
women who do not steal, earn money by telling fortunes
and selling amulets ; the children who are not busy beg
ging, roll in the dust in front of their caves, often quite
naked, and without any distinction of sex.
It is impossible not to be struck by the originality and
cleverness of the gipsies even in their vices. A gipsy-
man was at confession one day, and, whilst he was con
fessing, he spied in the pocket of the monk's habit a
silver snuff-box, and stole it. " Father," he said, imme
diately, " I accuse myself of having stolen a silver snuff
box." " Then, my son, you must certainly restore it."
'•¦ Will vou have it vourself. mv Father ? " " I ? Certainlv

1 1 2 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
not," answered the confessor. " The fact is," proceeded
the gipsy, " that I have offered it to its owner, and he has
refused it." " Then you can keep it with a good con
science," answered the Father.
At Seville a stranger, wishing to see the manners and
customs of the gipsies, may, on paying one real (2}4d.),
be present where they dance their national dances and
sing their national songs in their own picturesque costume.
At Granada a few women in tawdry white muslin gowns
extort five francs from every individual of the large
assemblies who have the folly to meet to see them. Their
principal dances are the Malagena and the Romalis. A
woman generally dances alone at first, in slow motion,
more with her arms than her feet, and her attitudes are
often very picturesque and graceful. Gradually, by her
gestures, she invites a partner to join her ; thenceforth
the dance becomes more animated. They chase one
another, they circle round one another, they throw a
whole story of passionate eloquence into their gestures,
and all is accompanied, in the way of music, by the clap
ping of hands of all the other gitanos and gitanas sitting
round in a circle, who keep excellent time together,
occasionally bursting into loud outcries, which reach a
pitch almost of frenzy when any especially complicated
figure is successfully executed.
For the last few days of March it was very wet and
stormy. They say it is always so in Spain, and concern
ing this there is an old Spanish story. A shepherd once
said to March that if he would behave well he would
make him a present of a lamb. March promised to
deserve it, and conducted himself admirably. When he
was going out, he asked the shepherd for the promised
lamb, but the sheep and the lambs were so very beautiful
that the shepherd, considering that only three days of
restraint remained to March, answered that he would not

GRANADA. 1 13
give it to him. " You will not give it to me," said March,
" then you do not recollect that in the three days which
remain to me, and three which my comrade April will
lend me, your sheep will have to bring forth their young ;"
and for six days the rain and cold were so terrible that all
the sheep and all the lambs died.
With the beginning of April we were persuaded, by
glowing accounts of its scenery, to make from Granada
the long excursion to Llanjaron, a mountain citadel, the
last stronghold of the Moors in Spain. But the distance
is so great and the long diligence journey so fatiguing,
that this expedition is not worth while, except in summer,
for the sake of ascending the Veleta, one of the highest
peaks of the Sierra-Nevada. The road runs along the
high bleak uplands beneath the chain of the Alpuxarras,
which are by no means the rich, verdant, smiling hills
they are generally represented, but volcanic, bare and
arid in the highest degree. The name Alpuxarras is an
Arabic word, meaning " Land of Warriors." Amid these
fastnesses, according to the ballad, fell the famous Chris
tian knight Alonzo de Aguilar, as he was endeavoring to
accept the challenge of Ferdinand to his bravest warriors
that they should plant his banner on the highest peaks of
the mountains :— " Qual de vosotros, amigos,
Ira S, la Sierra manana,
A poner mi real pendon
Encima de la Alpuxarra."
Here Alonzo's brave boy Don Pedro de Cordova fought
by his side covered with wounds, and refused to attend
to his entreaty — " Let not the hopes of our house be
crushed at one blow ; go live as a Christian knight, go
comfort your desolate mother"— till he was forcibly
carried out of the battle by the attendants.
We reached Llanjaron by a terrible road along precipi-

1 1 4 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
ces and through torrent-beds, but it is an oasis in a
hideous desert, and its orange gardens, hanging on the
edge of the mountain-side over a dismal ravine, are
amongst the most productive in Spain. On a high out
lying spur of the hills is a ruined Moorish castle ; but
the village, chiefly frequented for the sake of its medicinal
waters, contains few traces of its former occupants ; the
population is savage, the posadas miserable, and beyond
bread, eggs and oranges, there is no food to be had.

CHAPTER X.
ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO.
IT is almost a blur upon the entire pleasure of a visit to
Granada, that all arrivals and departures by train are
necessarily in the middle of the night, and that the hotels
are consequently in a chronic state of disturbance from
one to four in the morning. Even though we decided
upon taking the diligence to evade the long railway
detour by Cordova, we had to leave at four a.m., when
our last drive to the town through the dark woods of the
Alhambra seemed a solemn farewell to one of the most
beautiful places upon earth.
In a whirlwind of white dust, ten horses carried us
quickly along through a sterile, treeless, hideous country.
At one p.m. the scenery improved a little, and the great
white cathedral of Jaen rose before us at the foot of its
jagged mountains. The diligence waited for an hour in
the market-place, which gave time for its driver and
mayoral to dine, and for us to see the inside of the
cathedral, a Grseco-Romano building of 1532, but very
handsome of its kind. Behind the coro is a silver Custo-
dia with seven keys, only opened three times in the year,
and containing one of the many pieces of linen, honored by
the Roman Catholic Church as the authentic handkerchief
with which Santa Veronica wiped the face of our Saviour
on His way to Calvary, and upon which His image
remained impressed. This especial relic, however, is of
historic interest, as having been carried by St. Ferdinand
at the head of his troops.

116 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
At four in the afternoon we reached the quiet station
of Mengibar, a lonely shed on a bank above the Guadal-
quiver, seeming a strange termination for a long diligence
journey, but a very convenient spot for joining the train
from Cordova to Madrid. We passed our waiting time
in a tea-garden, surrounded by a hedge of oleanders,
which grow wild in profusion all over this neighborhood.
Before daybreak we had reached Aranjuez, and were
walking across its white dusty squares and through the
long corridors of its deserted palace, something like a
very miniature Versailles, to the pleasant little quiet hotel
of Los Infantes, which may be strongly recommended to
travelers as both clean and economical. The host, too,
is a pleasant, kindly person, who, in the evening, sat in
his open wooden gallery, playing on his guitar, with his
men and maid-servants singing around him, in happy
patriarchal fashion. It is desirable to know of this rest
ing-place, because the Hotel de Paris at Aranjuez is one
of the worst man-traps in Spain ; and an English lady
with her two servants, lately captured to wait there
between two trains, found themselves locked in till they
had consented to pay 230 reals for their luncheon and
waiting-room. Another place to be avoided is the
wretched and only posada at Manzanares, which extorts
fifteen francs for a single egg. Such thieves are rare in
Spain, but there is no redress from them.
We spent a day in seeing the sights of Aranjuez, which
is the first place where we have been persuaded to take
one of the guides, who are generally the greatest bane of
a traveler's comfort, but who are, perhaps, desirable here,
as saving time where many silver keys and permessos are
required. For, strangely enough, in this place, which
the railway renders almost a suburb of Madrid, and
where the miles upon miles of parks and gardens would
be most grateful to its parched citizens, as well as to the

PUERTA DEL SOL, TOLEDO.

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 1 17
residents of Aranjuez itself, the government, though the
present court never visits the place, is sufficiently care
less of popularity to keep every thing closely shut up ; so
that gardens, such as at Carlsruhe or Stuttgard form the
delight of the whole population, are here entirely unused
except by the thrushes and nightingales.
The larger of the two palaces, a rambling French
chateau, is little worth seeing, except for china-fanciers,
who will be delighted with a wonderful room entirely
walled and ceiled with beautiful Capo di Monte. This
was one of the extravaganzas of Charles III., who did not
scruple, to waste ^3,000 of gold by mixing it with the
brass rails of a back staircase in his other Aranjuez palace.
This, which is most inappropriately called the Casa del
Labrador (the Workman's Cottage), is about a mile
distant from the town. Its rooms, though low, are most
gorgeously fitted up with exquisite silk embroidery and
hangings. Both palaces are filled with reminiscences of
curious court scandals and crimes, but especially those
connected with Charles III., Maria Louisa, and her
lover Godoy, the Prince of Peace, whose position was
so easily accepted by the dissolute court, that his being
represented, with the king, in a fresco which still re
mains in one of the principal rooms, was no matter
for offense. The extraordinary trio had a passion for
clocks, and no less than forty-eight clocks adorn their
small apartments in the Casa del Labrador, five or six in
each room. All the royal residences of Spain are deco
rated in this way. The mania which Ferdinand VII.
had for clocks is amply shown in the palace at Madrid,
and even Charles V. made a collection of them, and
remarked how absurd it was to try to make two men's
heads think the same, when he could not make two of
his clocks go alike.
Aranjuez is an oasis in the wilderness. The Tagus

118 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
and Xarama, meeting almost beneath the palace walls,
keep its island garden fresh and verdant, even through a
burning Spanish summer. The fine old English oaks
and elms were brought over by Philip II. , and were,
perhaps, the only good which accrued to his native land
from his marriage with our Mary. They still attract as
much notice in Spain as a wood of palms and prickly
pears would do at Hampton Court. The beauties of
Aranjuez have been a constant theme with the poets of
Castile : Calderon and Garcilasso have written in their
praise, and even Fray Juan de Tolosa, the Augustine
prior of Zaragoza, when he published a religious treatise
in 1589 for the benefit of the young knights of the period,
called it " The Aranjuez of the Soul," in order the better
to entice them to read it. The gardens remain as we see
them portrayed in the faithful pictures of Velazquez in
the Museo at Madrid, and as they are described by Lady
Fanshaw, English ambassadress in Spain during the
reign of Philip IV. Long shadowy avenues of elms and
plane-trees lead through closely-planted woods, and have
been the scene of countless intrigues, both of politics and
love. Even down to the late revolution, all old customs
of the place were kept up, even to the breed of camels,
introduced here by Philip II. , to perform the garden
work, and their oriental forms, slowly parading through
the shady groves, were a well-known characteristic of the
place. Isabella II. never failed to spend the spring
months at Aranjuez, but now it is the picture of desola
tion ; fountains without water, beds without flowers,
promenades without people : truly one may say with
Schiller, " Die schonen Tage in Aranjuez sind nun zu
ende." A short journey by rail, and a long wait in the wretched
junction station of Castillejo — where the only accommo
dation is a miserable room, open at both ends, and a

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 1 19
prey to beggars and dirt of every description — brought
us to imperial Toledo. At a distance the town rises
grandly, not distinguished by any one marked feature or
building, except its great Alcazar, which is chiefly of the
last century ; but an irregular line of towers, battlemented
walls, and ancient houses, crowning the black precipitous
rocks, which rise abruptly from the yellow Tagus, and
backed by rugged hills, scorched and parched into every
shade of orange and brown by the tropical sunshine.
The general views of Toledo have no beauty, but are
solemn and affecting beyond those of all other places, so
huge and historical does it stand, without any vegetation
whatever, girdled in from the living world by the inde
scribable solitude of its utterly desolate hills.
Guarding the entrance of the town stands the ruined
castle of Cervantes, on a projecting spur of the mount
ain. At its foot is the bridge of Alcantara, " the Bridge
of the Bridge," closed at both ends by gate towers, and
striding with high arches across the Tagus, as it rushes
through the deep chasm in the rock upon which it is
built. Hence one ascends to the town by a terraced
road, from which there is a glorious view over the Vega.
The atmosphere is so clear that every fissure in the dis
tant hills can be counted, and each building on the line of
the horizon stands out against the transparent turquoise
sky as if seen through a microscope. Where the terrace
makes a zigzag to a higher level is the grand Moorish
gateway called Puerta del Sol, richly embossed with
tracery, and of a splendid orange-red color. Now we
reach the Zocodover, a Moorish square overhung by
many ranges of balconies, whence a tolerably wide street,
the only one in Toledo, winds along the irregularities of
the hill to the cathedral, which unfortunately stands so
low that its fine spire can never become a conspicuous
feature. Diving thus into the heart of the town, the

120 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
quaintness of every thing is increasingly striking. Here
a beautiful Moorish or Gothic fragment breaking the line
of white-washed walls, there balconies adorned with clus
tering vines and jessamine, hung with bird-cages, and
with handsome dark-eyed women in lace mantillas lean
ing over their railings. Near the cathedral, at 16, Calle
Santa Isabel, is a house of this kind — the pleasant Casa
de Huespedes (boarding-house) of the three excellent
sisters Figuerroa — where we spent five days very com
fortably. Our sitting-room had the pleasantest of bal
conies, filled with birds, and common but luxuriant
flowers, and looked across a quiet little garden, with a
tree — a valuable possession in Spain — to the cliffs on the
other side of the river.
Of course our first visit was to the cathedral, and our
first sensation was certainly one of disappointment, but
perhaps partly because we had heard so much, and
expected so much, and because the beggars are so tire
some, and their perpetual whine, with their mischievous,
even malicious tricks, such a constant irritant to the
temper. Much also of the building has been white
washed, and the fact is commemorated in a triumphant
inscription on one of its walls !
Still, the beauties of the cathedral at Toledo are such
as grow upon one at each sight of it, and surely no
church interior was ever more entirely picturesque than
this, where the coro, filled with wonderful carved stall-
work, divided by jasper pillars, breaks, but does not
block, the view of the five naves and their eighty-eight
columns, through which the ancient glass sparkles with
colors of sapphire, ruby and emerald, and where the
painted and gilt retablo, toned but uninjured by age,
rises from pavement to ceiling in an indescribable
labyrinth of niches, statues and sculptured tracery.
Around the altar are glorious tombs of some of the

ARANJUEZ- AND TOLEDO. I 21
earlier kings, Alonzo VII., Sancho del Deseado, Sancho
el Bravo, and the Infante Don Pedro. Here also is
buried Cardinal Mendoza (ob. 1495) who obtained the
name of Tertius Rex, from the degree in which he
shared the sovereignty with Ferdinand and Isabella.
Behind the high altar, in a large chapel of their own,
are magnificent tombs of a knight and a lady. He is
Alvero de Luna, Master of Santiago, Constable of Castile,
and Prime Minister of John II. , whose mind and coun
sels he completely ruled for five-and-thirty years. He
lived with royal state, and when he rode out was fol
lowed by thirty knights, and he held three thousand
lances in his pay. His interference brought about a
marriage between his king and Isabella of Portugal, who
became his bitterest enemy, and whose ascendency over
her husband was the cause of his ruin. He was executed
on a charge of high treason in the square at Valladolid,
his last words being, " And this is the reward of faithful
devoted service to my king." In his lifetime he had pre
pared beautiful bronze tombs for himself and his wife,
but when he was disgraced his relentless master had them
broken up, and they were made into the two pulpits
which stand at the entrance of the Capilla Mayor. The
existing tombs, of alabaster, are due to the filial piety of
his daughter Maria.
Close by is the entrance of the Capilla de los Reyes
Nueves, built by order of Juan II. , and containing a
statue of its founder (buried at Miraflores), and the
tombs of Henrique II. (1379), and his queen Juana
(1380); their son Juan I. (1390), with his wife Leonora
(1382); Henrique III. (1407), and his wife Catalina de
Lancastre (1419), daughter of John of Gaunt.
The Sacristia Mayor, entered near this, is surrounded
by beautiful pictures of Juan de Borgona, in the style of
Perugino. Below these hang a most interesting- series of

12 2 WA NDERINGS IN SPA IN.
authentic portraits of the archbishops. They include
Mendoza and Ximenes, by Borgona ; Carranza, the con
fessor of Charles V., who urged the dying emperor to
faith in the Crucified as the only Saviour, and was conse
quently imprisoned — as "infected with Lutheran opinions"
— for eleven years in the castle of St. Angelo, where he
died in a dungeon ; and Sandoval (by Luiz Tristan), who
urged Philip IV. to the expulsion of the Moors from
Spain. At the western end of the church is a gothic taber
nacle with a beautiful relief of San Ildefonso receiving a
chasuble from the Virgin, who is supposed to have pre
sented it in person as he was praying on the spot. An
inscription formerly attested the miracle in these words: —
" Quando la Reina del cielo
Puso los pies en el suelo
En esta piedra los puso
De besarla tened uso
Para mas vuestro consuelo."
The Virgin is also said to have attended mass in this
cathedral, occupying the seat of San Ildefonso (never
used since), who had written a treatise in defense of her
perpetual virginity ; and it is to this story of an honor
paid to one of its archbishops that Toledo owes the
primacy of Spain.
The image which now occupies the place of honor in
the shrine so delighted the Virgin when she came to
inspect the likeness, that she declared it her very image,
embraced it tenderly, and conferred upon it the gift of
miracles. Yet, after all, this is not the most important
idol in the place. " Maestro Sefiora de Toledo," herself
one of the most hideous of all the black dolls poor St.
Luke is held responsible for, resides in the sacristy, and
possesses a wardrobe and collection of jewels of unparal
leled richness. When we saw her, she was dressed in

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 123
silver tissue, entirely covered with small pearls ; but
her clothes are changed at each great feast-day.
No one should leave the cathedral without visiting the
Mosarabic chapel, a large separate building entered near
the great western door. Its history is this. At the Moor
ish invasion, the Toledan s defended themselves gallantly,
and, when they yielded, obtained the best conditions they
could. Chief among the terms they insisted upon was
that they should preserve five churches, in which there
should be free liberty of worship for those who remained
faithful to Christianity. Thus, through the four hundred
years of the Moorish rule, the faith was kept alive in
Toledo, and the faithful bore the name of Mos-Arabes —
" mixed with the Arabs." In the reign of Alonzo VI.,
when Toledo returned to the Christian rule, the papal
legate, Richard, desired that the Mosarabic should be laid
aside for the Gregorian ritual, and his wishes were upheld
by the king, and the queen, Dona Costanza, who pre
ferred the rites of Rome. The Toledan clergy were
furious, and the people became so excited that a revolu
tion was imminent. Alarmed at this turn of affairs, and
fearing to push matters to an extremity, the king then
proposed as a compromise, after the fashion of the day,
that the dispute should be decided by a single combat,
each party choosing a champion, and that so God should
show which ritual was most acceptable to Him. The
fight took place in the vega, and the Mosarabic cham
pion, Don Ruiz de la Matanza, was the victor. The
populace rent the air with their applause, and believed
that all was settled. But the court was enraged, and
some little time after, Alonzo, conveniently discovering that
the means of proof chosen had been impious and cruel,
proposed another trial. This time, after a general fast, and
prayers in all the churches, copies of the Roman and of
the Toledan rituals were to be placed together in a

124 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
lighted bonfire, and that which escaped unscathed would
be the one approved by God.
A pile of fagots was lighted in the Zocodover, in the
presence of an immense concourse, and the two brevia
ries were placed upon it, each party praying fervently for
the liturgy they preferred. But it was a stormy day, and
before the flames could reach it the Roman prayer-book
was taken up by the wind and blown intact and unsinged
out of the fire, while the Mosarabic breviary still remained
unconsumed in the midst of the flames. Both parties
shouted that the victory was theirs, but the Mosarabians
carried the day, and their liturgy, described by Dr. Neale
as " the connecting link of the eastern and western rites,"
was preserved in Toledo. When Ximenes became bishop,
it was beginning to fall into desuetude, and to preserve so
interesting a relic of faith in troublous times he insti
tuted, in 15 1 2, an order of priests especially charged with
the performance of the Mosarabic office, and built the
chapel which we see. Its walls are covered with frescoes
by Juan de Borgona of victories over the infidels and of
the taking of Oran.
The splendid collection of church vestments is well
worth examining. Nothing can describe their magnifi
cence, or the degree of high-art to which they show that
needlework can be carried.
The grand time to visit the cathedral is the festival of
Corpus, when the whole of its exterior is hung with
glorious tapestries of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The existing remains in Toledo are of three kinds, viz.,
first, the Moorish mosque, the Moorish houses and the
fragments of Moorish work embedded in the cathedral
and churches ; second, the Jewish synagogues ; third,
the Christian art.
The Moorish mosque, now called the Church of El
Christo de la Luz, is of intense interest. It stands behind

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 125
the Puerta del Sol, and might easily be overlooked,
as its walls, covered with beautiful Moorish arches, are
inclosed in a court-yard. It was in existence when
Alonzo VI. entered Toledo, May 25, 1083. Built into
this and other Arabian buildings of Toledo are fragments
of gothic constructions, such as capitals and portions of
columns, showing that they belonged to Christian edi
fices anterior to the Moorish conquest. The plan adopted
by the Moors is almost analogous to that of the Christian
basilicas, their mosques being divided into naves, and
generally ending in an apse. The arches which support
the roof of the naves are either round or horseshoe, and
double arches are employed in the ornamentation of the
walls. The shafts of the columns which sustain the
arcades of these buildings are either of marble or of
brick and mortar, but always thick and heavy. The
octagonal form observed in some of them is a feature of
the period. The arabesques and carvings with which the
Moors ornamented their work in Toledo are almost
always coarse adaptations from the ornaments which they
had seen in passing through places which had submitted
to their yoke. Their capitals follow the Greek forms,
more or less modified, according to the caprice of the
builders, but Byzantine ornament is the kind which was
most popular with them.
There is something especially striking in the low
vaulted nave of El Christo de la Luz, which is like a
miniature fragment from the mosque at Cordova. Over
the altar hangs a ghastly crucifix with long real hair,
which recalls a curious Spanish legend, telling that as
the Cid rode by after the conquest at the head of his
troops, his faithful steed Bavieca dropped upon its knees
before this mosque. Bavieca needed no guidance and
never did wrong, so when she kneeled all knew that some
holy relic must be concealed upon that spot, The wall

126 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
was pulled down, and, as the stones fell, a stream of light
poured forth, and a crucifix was disclosed, where it had
been immured for safety before the invasion, the lamp
which was then lighted still miraculously burning — El
Christo de-la Luz.
Near this church is the splendid hospital of Santa
Cruz, now a military school. Cardinal Mendoza left his
fortune to Isabella to be employed for charitable pur
poses, and this is one of the noble foundations she raised
in fulfillment of what she felt would be his wishes. Its
patios and staircase are as beautiful in detail as in
design. Quite on the other side of the town are the two marvel
ous old Jewish synagogues, now called El Transito and
Santa Maria Blanca. Both are of the greatest interest,
as having been built by the Jews during the dominion of
the Moors, under whose tolerant rule they enjoyed per
fect freedom and liberty of conscience. Both buildings
are almost like mosques, and it is supposed that Moorish
workmen were employed in them. Santa Maria Blanca,
which stands back in a little court, and is newly white
washed, was indeed a Jewish sanctuary, being ceiled with
cedar of Lebanon, and the ground on which it stood
covered with the sacred dust of Palestine.
El Transito is much more magnificent. It was built by
Samuel Levi, a Jew who was the treasurer and faithful
servant of Pedro the Cruel, but whose master, coveting
his wealth, tortured him and put him to death, and then
confiscated all his possessions.
When the Christians recovered Toledo, the star of the
Jews set, and each Jewish head was taxed at thirty pieces
of silver — " the price of Him whom they of the children
of Israel did value." But they were allowed to retain
their synagogues through a curious plea. The Jews of
Toledo affirmed that they had not consented to the death

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 127
of the Saviour ! When Jesus Christ was brought to
judgment, they said, the council of Jews, of which
Caiaphas was the president, sent to take the votes of the
tribes as to whether He should be released or put to
death. One tribe voted for his acquittal, and from them
the Jews of Toledo were descended. This tribe, then,
was guiltless of the blood of Jesus, and did not merit
the execrations poured upon their brethren. The original
answer of the Toledan Jews, with a Latin translation
of the Hebrew text, is preserved in the archives of the
Vatican. In 1389 the oppression of the Jews began by their
being bereaved of their market, which was near the
cathedral, by Archbishop Tenorio, who built the present
cloister on its site. In 1454 Santa Maria Blanca was
taken away from the Jews, on the instigation of San
Vicente Ferrer. This saint was a great mixture. Cruel
and vindictive beyond words in his persecution of
heretics, he was saint-like in the practice of his own life.
He refused all Church dignities ; daily he read and
meditated upon the Scriptures, especially upon the
Passion of our Lord. In his treatise on the " Spiritual
Life," he exhorted men to turn to God constantly in
prayer, for " study would drain the heart and intellect
unless men constantly turned to place themselves at the
foot of the cross of Christ, when the thought of his sacred
wounds would give fresh power and new light to their
souls." In 1490, the Toledans, in order to have a plea for a
further spoliation of the Jews, gave out that they had
stolen Juan Passamonte, a boy of Guardia, and crucified
him, putting his heart into a hostia, as a charm against
the Inquisition. This story is commemorated in a fresco
near the beautiful cloister gate called "El Nino Perdido,"
and is, like the similar story of St. Hugh of Lincoln, a

128 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
favorite theme with poets and painters. In 1492 every
unbaptized Jew was forced to quit Spain by Ferdinand
and Isabella, and 170,000 were cruelly expelled, prefer-
ing banishment and the loss of every thing to abandon-
ring their faith. The expulsion of the Jews was the ruin
of Toledo. It is strange how, throughout these persecu
tions, the teaching of St. Bernard was overlooked, who
said, " Take heed what you do to the Jews, for whosoever
touches them is like one who touches the apple of the
eye of Jesus, for they are His flesh and blood."
Not far from the synagogues is the church of San
Tome, containing a picture by the rare artist El Greco
(Domenico Theotocupuli — 1577-1625). It represents the
burial of the Conde de Orgaz, in 1392, by St. Stephen
and St. Augustine, who are believed to have come in person
to bury him, because he had spent all his wealth in adorn
ing their churches. Near this, almost on the edge of the
6teep cliff which overhangs the Tagus, is the Franciscan
convent of San Juan de los Reyes, with its beautiful
church, built by Ferdinand and Isabella in memory of
their victory at Toro. It will at once attract attention,
not only from its gothic architecture, but from its being
hung all over with the links of the chains of Christian
captives rescued at the conquest of the Moofs. " The
entrance, built by Alonzo de Covarrubias for Philip IL,
is surmounted by an exquisitely-sculptured cross. The
cloisters, though of late gothic, are amongst the most
beautiful in Europe. Latterly nature has added much to
their charm, and jessamine and honeysuckle form natural
crowns around its saint-statues. Here Cardinal Ximenes
entered upon his novitiate as a Franciscan monk, and
hoped to flee from the- world in which he was destined to
play so conspicuous a part.
Close to the church are the Cyclopean ruins of the
palace built by King Wamba in 674, and inhabited by

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 129
Roderick. From its window he is said to have beheld
the beautiful daughter of Count Julian, who had been
intrusted to his care, while she was bathing in the river ;
and to have become possessed with the fatal passion
which led to the invasion of the Moors and the destruc
tion of his kingdom.
In the hollow is the grand gate-defended bridge of San
Martino, connected with which is a curious anecdote of
wifely devotion. The architect of the original bridge on
this site discovered too late that his work was not strong
enough, and would give way when the scaffolds were
removed. To his wife alone he communicated his misery ;
she set fire to the scaffolds, burned down the whole
work, and saved her husband's reputation.
Beyond the bridge the river leaves its rocky gorge and
winds through the plain. Here is the small ancient basil
ica called El Christo de la Vega, with its richly-deco
rated apse and solemn Rembrandt-like interior, in which
the principal ray of light falls upon the figure on the
crucifix which gives a name to the sanctuary. The
figure, which is of life size, has its head bent, its hair
falling over the shoulders, one hand only nailed to the
cross, and the other extended as if in the act of taking an
oath. Its story tells that a young country girl made her
lover promise to marry her and sign a paper swearing
that he would do so before this crucifix, — that afterwards
the lover was faithless and denied his troth, when the
maiden, deserted and weeping, betook herself to the
chapel, and prayed, and laid the paper he had signed
before the altar, imploring help from her Redeemer ; —
then, in the solemn stillness, the Crucified detached one
hand from the cross, and stretching it out, exclaimed, " lo
soy testigo," — I am the witness !
A recent Spanish author, Gustavo Becquer, says truly :
" Outside _the place which guards their memory, far from

130 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
the precincts which preserve their traces, and where it
appears as if we still breathed the atmosphere of old
tales told in the evening, traditions lose their poetic mys
tery, their inexplicable hold upon the soul. Far off one
questions, one analyses, one doubts ; but here, faith, like
a secret revelation, illuminates the spirit, and makes one
believe." Good walkers should ascend, to the left, beyond the
bridge of St. Martino. Passing the rude stone cross on
the edge of the hill, they will find themselves at once in
one of the wildest scenes imaginable, and may follow a
path which winds through a gorge, and then along declivi
ties so arid that scarcely any thing grows there except
asphodel and cistus, flowers which are careless about
water and love a dry sandy soil. Rosemary, too, flourishes
in the clefts, a herb which Spanish peasants think it
impossible to estimate too highly. Once, they say, it was
a poor, common plant of the field, but upon it the Virgin,
on a washing-day, hung out to dry the baby-clothes of
the infant Jesus, and thenceforth it became forever green
and fragrant and full of virtues. The fact is commemo
rated in one of the popular songs which are so endless
in themselves and so endlessly in -the mouths of the peo
ple as they work : —
" Lavando estaba la Virgen,
Y tendiendo en el romero ;
Los parajitos cantaban ;
Adoremus el misterio."
Since the death of the Saviour, too, it is believed that
the rosemary has put forth fresh flowers every Friday, the
day of his suffering, "as if to embalm his holy body."
As the path winds higher amongst the rocks, we come
in sight of a hermitage and its little chapel of the Virgin.
Hither, on the night of her great festival on the first of

ARANJUEZ AND TOLEDO. 13 1
May, long processions toil up, chanting as they go, and
all the little ways are lit up by blazing branches, making
a winding path of fire in the darkness. Beyond the
chapel is the ghastly and desolate gorge called the Degol-
lada, from a woman who had her throat cut there, and
truly it seems a fitting place for such a deed, which might
easily be concealed here ; and as the environs of Toledo
are a stronghold of brigands, it requires something of an
effort to mount the last and most desolate ascent which
ends at the Castle of Cervantes. Yet no views give one
such an idea of the solemn desolation of Toledo as these,
whence the tawny river is seen winding for miles between
jagged cliffs, crowned on the other side with buildings so
weird, so uniformly old, and so hopelessly decayed, that
it is impossible to believe that one is still walking in the
nineteenth century. So, in spite of brigands, it is well
to linger here till sunset, when all the poor and pitiful
detail is lost, and only the stupendous outline remains,
engraven upon a flaming sky. " Then," to quote Becquer
again, " the lofty and black needles of the Towers of
Toledo, between whose arched windows fall some last
rays of light, stand out against the floating groups of
golden clouds, like a legion of phantoms, who, from the
height of their seven hills, look down upon the plain with
their eyes of fire."
In the valley beyond the bridge of Alcantara is another
,ruin, called the "Palace of Galiana." This legendary
princess is supposed to have been the daughter of King
Golafre, who loved her passionately and built her a palace,
compared with which all the glories of the Arabian Nights
paled into insignificance. Hither endless lovers came
courting, and annoyed the princess dreadfully, but the
most hjdeous and wearisome was Bradamant, a gigantic
Moorish chieftain, who made an underground passage
from his stronghold at Guadalajara to Toledo, that he

132 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
might visit her every day. At length Charlemagne the
Great came hither to assisf Golafre against Abderrhaman,
the sultan of Cordova, and being lodged in the palace and
falling in love with Galiana, he slew Bradamant and pre
sented her with his head. The princess was so charmed
with the gift that she become enamored of the giver,
accepted his hand, accompanied him to France, and was
crowned triumphantly. Such is the legend. The palace
which never was a palace, and which certainly never was
inhabited by Galiana, is reduced to a few crumbling walls.
Near it, in strange contrast, runs the railway, and it is the
last building seen on leaving Toledo.

CHAPTER XI.
MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL.
IT is because Charles V. suffered so much from the gout
that Madrid was chosen as the capital of Spain. He
found relief from its sharp air, and it was thenceforth
adopted as the home of royalty. No situation can possi
bly be more odious to ordinary mortals. Though situated
2,400 feet above the sea, it has none of the advantages
and all the disadvantages of a high position. The climate
is burningly hot in summer and piercingly cold in winter.
"El aire de Madrid e tan sotil
Que mata a un hombre, y no apaga a un candil. "*
All around the country is utterly barren and hideous.
Not a tree, not a drop of water, not a green plant, not
even a blade of grass, not a vestige of color of any kind,
but only roads deep in dust, and a district covered with
brown sand, or dull gray rock. After the time of Philip
II., the kings of Spain found out how great a mistake had
led to the desertion of the old royal cities of Valladolid,
Toledo, Seville and Granada for this desert, and Philip
III. wished to move back the capital to Valladolid,
Charles III. to Seville, but it was then too late, partly
because the building of the Escorial had added such a
heavy link to the chain which bound the capital to Madrid
— which is neither a "ciudad" nor a cathedral-town, but
"the largest village in Spain."
* " The air of Madrid is so subtle. It kills a man, and does not
put out a candle."

134 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
"-Quien te quiere, no te sabe ;
Quien te sabe, no te quiere," *
is a very true proverb regarding the present royal city,
yet the self-glorious Spaniards still call theirs " the only
court," and believe that the world is silent in awe before
its splendor " Donde esta Madrid calle el Mundo?"
and another proverb says that it is but one step from
Madrid to heaven : —
" Desde Madrid al cielo."
There was a small town on this site before the time of
Charles V., and its narrow streets are interesting and
abound in historical recollections. The Plazo San Do
mingo marks the site of a conventual church where Pedro
the Cruel was buried, and his tomb, removed when the
church was pulled down, may be seen in the architectural
museum. In the tower of the Casa de Lujanes and in
the adjoining house which has a curious doorway, Fran
cis I. was imprisoned. The house called Las Vistillas
was that where Ferdinand and Isabella resided when at
Madrid, and from its balcony Cardinal Ximenes answered
the nobles who demanded by what authority he had
assumed the regency, by showing them his soldiers in
the court beneath. The Plaza Mayor, still antiquated
and picturesque, was the scene of many autos da fi.
" Many Jews are burned here," wrote Madame de Villars,
ambassadress in the reign of Charles II. , to Madame de
Coulanges, " and there are other tortures for heretics and
atheists, which are horrible to think of." The Court
looked down upon these scenes from the windows of a
* " He who wishes for you, does not know you ;
He who knows you, does not wish for you."

STATUE OF PHILIP IV., -MADRID.

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 135
house still remaining, and worth visiting on account
of its fine staircase lined with rich blue azulejos.
From these windows also Charles I. of England
saw a bull-fight, given in his honor by Philip IV., when
he was courting the Infanta Maria. At that time there
was no regular Plaza de Toros, and bull-fights were always
given here, and were the cause of far greater loss of
human life than those which exist at present, as the
greater proportion of the bull-fighters were not profes
sional, but young noblemen of the court, who hoped to
make themselves more acceptable by exhibiting wild feats
of rash daring under the eyes of their mistresses. Vivid
descriptions of these bull-fights are given in the exceed
ingly rare but important letters of the Comtesse d'Aulnois,
a French lady of rank, who visited the court of Spain
during the reign of Philip IV. " The Plaza Mayor," says
Madame d'Aulnois, " is larger, I think, than the Place
Royale at Paris. It is rather long than wide, surrounded
by porticos, upon which the houses are built, and are
always alike, five stories high, with a range of balconies
in each, upon which you enter by large glass doors. The
balcony of the king stands more forward than the others,
is larger, and covered with gilding. It occupies the center
of one side, and is surmounted by a canopy. Opposite
are the balconies of the ambassadors, the Councils of Cas
tile and Arragon, the Inquisition, Italy, Flanders and the
Indies. The offices of War, the Crusades, and Finance
are to the right of the king ; one may recognize them by
the arms which are displayed on their crimson velvet
hangings, embroidered with gold. Lastly, the town coun
cil, the judges, the grands and other nobles, are placed
according to their rank, and at the expense of the king or
of the town, who hire the balconies from different private
persons who live there.
" There is give" nn hehnlf nf the king, to all those I

136 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
have mentioned, a collation in appropriate baskets, and
with this collation, which consists of fruits, sweetmeats,
and iced-waters, — gloves, ribbons, fans, pastils, silk stock
ings and garters are offered to the ladies ; so that these
festivals always cost more than a hundred thousand
crowns, an expense which is defrayed from the fines
appropriated to the king or to the town. This is a fund
which no one would venture to touch, even to save the
kingdom from the greatest danger ; if they did so, a sedi
tion would be the result : so great is the delight which
the people take in pleasures of this kind.
"I assure you that the countless crowd of people (for
every place is filled, the roofs of the houses like the rest),
the balconies with their gay hangings, the number of beau
tiful ladies, the magnificent Court, the guards, and in
short, the whole square, present one of the most beautiful
sights I have ever seen.
¦P "S *P TT *n V
" When there are in the town horses which have served
and are skillful in a bull-fight, even without any knowledge
of their owner, they are borrowed from him, equally if he
does not wish to sell them, or if there are no means to buy
them with, and they are never refused. If the horse is
unfortunately killed, and a proposal is made to pay for
it, it is not allowed, and it would be showing a want of
Spanish generosity to receive money in such a case. It
is nevertheless sufficiently disagreeable to have a horse,
which you may have taken great pains to bring up, and
which any adventurer may kill in the most unconcerned
way. This kind of combat is considered so perilous that
indulgences are open in many of the churches on those
days, on account of the slaughter which takes place.
Many popes have wished entirely to do away with such
barbarous spectacles, but the Spaniards have been so
urgent with the court of Rome to leave them untouched

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 1 37
that it has given in to their wishes, and up to this time
they have been tolerated.
******
" The fetes are beautiful, great and magnificent ; it is
a very noble and costly spectacle ; it is impossible to
depict them fairly, and one cannot imagine them without
seeing them. But I confess that all this gives me no
pleasure, when I think that a man whose safety may be
dear to you, has the rashness to expose himself to a furi
ous bull, and that for love of you (for this is generally the
motive), you may see him return bleeding and half-dead.
Can one approve any of these customs ? And suppose
even that one has no special interest in them, can one
wish to be present at these fetes, which nearly always
cost the lives of many persons ? For my part I am aston
ished that in a kingdom, whose kings bear the name of
Catholic, such a barbarous amusement should be allowed.
I know it is of great antiquity, as it dates from the Moors,
but it seems to me that it ought to be quite abolished, as
well as many other customs derived from these Infidels.
******
" A cavalier of merit was in love with a fair young
girl, who was only a jeweler's daughter ; but she was
perfectly beautiful and a great heiress. This young
nobleman having learned that some of the fiercest bulls
of the mountains had been taken, and thinking that he
would derive great honor from their conquest, resolved
to fight with them, and asked his mistress's permission.
She, horrified at the very idea of such a proposition,
fainted away, and forbade him, using the whole force of
her influence over him to prevent his risking his life. In
spite of this prohibition, he thought he could not give her
a higher proof of his love, and secretly prepared every
thing which he required. But notwithstanding the care
which he took to conceal his design from his mistress, she

138 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
discovered it, and left no stone unturned to change his
resolution. At last the day of the fete arrived, and he
conjured her to be there ; assuring her that her very
presence would be sufficient to make him a conqueror,
and to acquire for him a glory which would render him
more worthy of her. ' Your love,' she said to him, ' is
more ambitious than tender, and mine is more tender than
ambitious. Go where glory calls you. You wish that I
should be present, you wish to fight before me ; yes, I
will accede to your wish, and perhaps my presence will
cause you more trouble than encouragement.'
" At last he quitted her, and went to the Plaza Mayor,
where all the world was already assembled. But he had
scarcely begun to defend himself against a fierce bull
that had attacked him, when a young peasant threw a dart
at the terrible beast, which pierced it, causing great
agony. It instantly left the young nobleman who was
engaged with it, and rushed bellowing against the person
who had struck it. The young man, aghast, tried to
escape, when the cap which covered his head fell off, and
the most beautiful long hair in the world floated over his
shoulders, and revealed that it was a girl of sixteen. So
petrified was she with terror, that she was unable either
to run or escape the bull, which gave her a terrible
wound in the side, at the very moment when her lover,
who was the trocador, and who recognized her, came to
her assistance. O God ! what was his anguish, at seeing
his dear mistress in this terrible state ! He became
beside himself, life was valueless to him, and more frantic
than the bull itself, he performed incredible feats. He
was mortally wounded in several places. . . . That was
indeed a day when people considered the fete delightful."
The Plaza Mayor, now no longer used for bull-fights,
is occupied by an open garden, through which, in pleas
ant contrast to London squares, people are allowed to

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 139
circulate freely. In its center is the grand equestrian
statue of Philip III., cast by John of Bologna from a
drawing by Pantoja. A still grander statue is that of
Philip IV., where the bronze mane and scarf literally
float on the air, and which is historically interesting from
'the important persons employed in its design ; Velazquez
supplied the drawings, it was cast in Florence by Pedro
Tacca, and Galileo showed how the great weight of the
horse could be sustained in its prancing position. This
statue, moved from the gardens of the Buen Retiro, now
ornaments the center of the Plaza del Oriente, one side
of which is occupied by the palace. This is certainly one
of the most magnificent royal residences in the world,
imposing in itself, and striking from its position at the
end of the finest part of the town, on the edge of a steep
bank. The nearer detail of the surroundings is wretched,
rugged slopes and ragged shrubberies, walks and gardens
alike hopelessly neglected, but, beyond these, it looks
upon the snow-capped range of the icy Guadarrama.
Below, in the hollow, dribbles the Manzanares, which can
scarcely be called a river, and which has been compared
by Tirso de Molina to that dreariest of things, a univer
sity town during the long vacation.
" Como Alcala y Salamanca,
Teneis y no sois Colegio,
Vacaciones en Verano
Y curso solo en Invierno."
In the reign of Charles IL, the Court used to amuse
themselves by driving up and down in the dry bed of the
river, and Madame de Villars gives Madame de Coulanges
an amusing account of the scenes which took place there.
She also mentions, apropos of the enormous bridge which
there crosses nothing at all, that a wit of the time sug
gested to Philip IV. that he had better buy a river, or
sell his bridge,

r4o WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
The royal family of Spain of the house of Austria, of
which we read so much in memoirs of the period, which
was such a strange chaos of beauty and ugliness both
mental and physical, need not remain even personally
strangers to any one. In the Royal Gallery, where many
delightful and profitable mornings may be spent, Titian,
Pantojo, Coello and Velazquez have handed down to
us their living forms so vividly that we may still walk and
live amongst them. The family procession begins
with Charles V., first standing with his favorite
dog ; again, as an old man, with a grizzled beard, upon
his war-horse. Here also (hung too high) is the portrait
of his beautiful queen Isabella of Portugal, which he car
ried with him to San Yuste ; and near it is Titian's
strange picture of the Apotheosis of Charles V. and Philip
II. , in which they, kings on earth, kneel as suppliants
before the throne of the Redeemer. This was the last
object which met the dying eyes of the Emperor ; and,
by his own desire, was long hung over his grave. In con
nection with his portraits we should look at those of his
daughter, Juana of Austria, who, as widow of a Prince of
Portugal, was Regent of Spain during the absence of
Philip II. in England ; of Catherine, Queen of Portugal,
sister of the Emperor ; and of Mary of Portugal, the
unnatural daughter of his other sister, Queen Eleanor.
Philip II. is portrayed for us, in several distinct stages
of his life ; and it is most interesting to trace from youth
to age the progress of the handsome features that never
smiled except when he heard of the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, when he laughed outright. Three of his
four wives may be seen with him : Mary of Portugal,
Mary of England and Isabella of France, the daughter
of Catherine de Medici. The grand portrait of the ugly
Mary Tudor, by Antonio More, is especially valuable, as
being that sent over to show her bridegroom what she was

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 141
like before their marriage, and it is wonderful that, after
gazing upon her sour features, he should have decisively
thrown over a charming princess of Portugal to marry
her. Near the queen is the portrait of Antonio Perez,
the cruelly persecuted minister of Philip II. Then
come his children, — Don Carlos, whose birth cost the
first Mary her life, and whose own sad life is supposed to
have been closed by his father's cruelty ; and Clara
Eugenia Isabella, the beautiful daughter of his third wife,
whom her father spoke of as his "mirror," and "the
light of his soul," and to whom he bequeathed the Neth
erlands. Then Philip III. and his wife Isabella ride by
on their magnificent horses. Then begin the endless
portraits of Philip IV., with those of his first wife Isabella,
daughter of Henry IV. of France, and their little son
Balthazar, who died before he was grown up, represented
with a gun at six years old, and again riding splendidly on
his little pony ; of the minister Duke of Olivares ; of
Don Ferdinand of Austria, the king's handsome brother,
with his beautiful dog ; of the second Queen Mariana,
who never could help laughing, in spite of the stiff sol
emnity of the Spanish court, and who looks as if she
must herself have provoked laughter by her extraordinary
coiffure and costume as a bride ; of her little daughter
Maria Margherita, a charming child, in the most enor
mous of hooped petticoats, repeated again and again, at
prayers, in full costume, and playing with " Las Meninas,"
her maids of honor, while her father and mother, looking
in at the door, are reflected in the opposite mirror. Here
also is Charles IL, the last lineal descendant of Charles
V., and his charming wife Marie Louise d'Orleans, of
whom he was so enamored that he exclaimed on seeing
her dance, " My queen, my queen, thou art the most per
fect in all creation."
Upon the other treasures of the Madrid gallery it is

142 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
impossible to dwell here. They cannot be studied
enough, from the rich coloring of Raphael, Titian and
Pordenone, to the cold skies and almost too truth-telling
figures of Velazquez. Never was there a more delightful
collection, though there never was one worse arranged, or
in which it is more difficult, almost impossible, to find
what you want.
The interest in the royal portraits must be carried on
to the Armeria at the other side of the town, where, in a
great hall, stand, as if marshaled in battle array, a grand
troop of suits of armor, which include many of those in
which the kings were painted. Perhaps the most interest
ing armor here is the suit worn by Isabella at the siege of
Granada ; the most interesting individual specimen, the
weird Norse-like helmet of Jaime el Conquistador.
Charles V. is again brought home to us in his camp bed,
and his portantina, brought from San Yuste. In the
suits of armor which belonged to him, the figure of the
Virgin is always engraved upon the breast, that of St.
Barbara, his patron saint, upon the back.
In the Academia are preserved three splendid Murillos
taken from the Caridad at Seville by the French, and
never sent back there when Waterloo restored them to
Spain. The finest represents St. Elizabeth of Hungary
(Santa Isabel in Spanish) caring for her lepers, the others
tell the story of the fall of snow which led to the founda
tion of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome. Here also may
be studied the extraordinary pictures of Goya (ob. 1828)
king's painter to Charles IV., and justly called the Rabe
lais of painting ; they are wonderful representations of
Spanish life, or of wild dreams of witchcraft, effected by
scratches, plunges, lunges of pen and pencil, with dabs,
splashes and blots of color.
Modern Madrid has deserted the gardens of the Buen
Retiro, in which the Austrian court sq delighted, and.

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 143
goes to amuse itself on the promenade of El Prado,
which is something like the Champs Elys^es, though a
bad imitation. Here the dusty road between the avenues
is rendered supportable by perfect volumes of water
being squirted over it, and the trees are enabled to grow
by having little ponds dug round their stems. It is quite
worth while to go there late in the afternoon. The cos
tumes of the nurses are really gorgeous, brilliant scarlet,
orange and purple, slashed with broad stripes of black
velvet, and forming perfect rays of color as they dart in
and out after their children under the acacia trees.
.Here groups sit on the stone seats discussing the last
pictures in La Carcajada, a capital newspaper of political
caricatures ; and young legislators of from eighteen to
twenty, got up excessively smart, consider that they are
the only power which has a right to direct the affairs of
the world. At the gay little wooden stalls all varieties
of cooling drinks — "bebidas" — are sold, the prince of
which is " Horchata de Chufas," a kind of snow-milk
flavored with the juice of a little nut which comes from
Valencia. " Confituras " are also sold here — a great
favorite being that known as " Cabello de Angel," or
" Angel's Hair." Picturesque groups of peasants gather
around these stalls, not Mayos and Mayas here, but
"Manolos" and " Manolas," a corruption from Manuel
and Manuela. Up and down, between the passers-by, flit
the water-carriers, and make the air resound with their
sharp cry of " agua, agua, quien quiere agua ? Agua hel-
ado, fresquita como la nieve."
The upper end of the Prado is lined on one side by
little gardens. This is the aristocratic part of the prome
nade, where society must always go de rigueur as far as a
certain fountain, and where the " language of fans " is
talked to an amazing extent. Descending the other way,
one comes to Atocha, a monastery with a church, raised

144 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
into a basilica by the present Pope to please Queen
Isabella and Don Francesco d'Assis. These " Catholic
sovereigns " always came once a week to worship a hide
ous idol-Madonna (another of poor St. Luke's) ; and on
'March 22, 1854, solemnly decorated it with the collar of
the Golden Fleece. For centuries the image has been
celebrated. In 1562, when the whole kingdom was in
suspense during the alarming illness of Don Carlos, heir
of Philip II., it was carried to his sick-room at Alcala,
and shares the honor of his cure with the dead body of
the monk Fray Diego, which was dug up and laid upon
his bed. Ferdinand VII. came hither especially to '
invoke the assistance of the Virgin of Atocha, when he
conspired against his father; and, when he was carried
off by the French, he transferred the ribbon of the
Immaculate Conception to its breast from his own. To
this church also came the Italian king Amadeo, straight
from the station, to look upon the dead face of the
murdered Prim.
The other churches of Madrid are all modern and
little worth seeing. San Isidro Real, however, may
be visited, as containing the relics of the plowman's
saint, invoked in wet weather by the peasant, in the
popular couplet —
" San Isidro Labrador
Quita el agua y pon el sol."
San Isidro was a common laborer who neglected his work
to make meditations upon the virtues of San Isidoro,
which is supposed to have been considered so meritorious
above that angels were sent down to do his work for him,
and wolves were unable to devour his oxen. He died in
993, and was canonized because Philip III. was cured of
some trifling illness upon touching his body. When
Queen Isabel came to pray by it, one of her maids of

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 145
honor, pretending to kiss his toes, bit one of them off,
feeling sure that her health would be benefited by swal
lowing so great a relic ; but she instantly became dumb,
and did not recover her speech till she was able to vomit
forth the delicious morsel. The festa of San Isidro is
greatly observed on May 25, at Madrid, and the pil
grimage on that day to San Isidro del Campo is a very
pretty sight. But, on the whole, saint-worship has been
on the wane here for some years past, and Protestantism
making great ground. Large shops full of Bibles are no
uncommon sight now in the streets of Madrid, and have
a great sale. It is interesting to remember that when the
first Spanish translation of the Bible was made in Spain
by Francisco de Enzinas in 1543, Charles V. did not
oppose it, and even promised to accept its dedication to
himself, if only the Church would approve it. The
Church, however, was furious, and it was condemned to
be burne'd, and its author was cast into prison.
For the last few years " society," in the generally
accepted sense, has almost ceased to exist at Madrid,
having been so divided by political estrangements. Don
Carlos has many friends, the Prince of Asturias ten times
as many, "the inoffensive Italian," as the aristocratic
Spaniards contemptuously but pityingly call him, scarcely
any ; indeed, the Italian queen, Vittoria, has only found
two ladies willing to take office in her court. Many, rules
of ancient etiquette are preserved which are curious.
Every thing in Madrid counts by nine days. For instance,
after a death in a family, the Novenario must take place :
the widow and daughters, or whoever the nearest surviv
ing relations may be, are expected to hold the Due'lo, that
is to close their windows, and remain solemnly seated for
nine days in their reception rooms to receive the condo
lence of all their friends, who visit them in mourning; and
as it is the correct thing for all the friends to repeat their

146 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
visit during every one of the nine days, though the first
two or three times they are all very solemn and sad, it is
impossible to keep up the strain, and the party naturally
glide into a degree of gossip and chatter which is a
desecration alike of the occasion and of the feelings of
those who have to go through the ordeal. Widows, how
ever, may be thankful to escape all they had to go through
at Madrid in the last century, when they were compelled
to pass the whole first year of their mourning in a cham
ber entirely hung with black, where not a single ray of
the sun could penetrate, seated on a little mattress with
their legs always crossed. When this year was over they
retired to pass the second year in a chamber hung with
gray. They could have neither pictures, nor mirrors, nor
cabinets, nor any ornamental furniture during the whole
of their widowhood. They were never allowed to wear
jewels, and still less colors. However modest they might
be, they must live so retired that " it seemed as if their
souls were already in the other world ;" and, according
to a writer of the time, this great constraint was partly
occasioned " because some ladies who were very rich
and especially in beautiful furniture, were often induced
to take another husband, in order to have the pleasure of
using it again ! "
In the Royal Gallery, poor Mariana, wife of Philip IV.,
the laughing queen, whom we have seen tricked out in
all her bridal bravery, is introduced to us for a second
time in her widow's dress. It consists of thick black stuff,
with a tunic of fine muslin made like a surplice, descend
ing below the knees and following all the lines of the
figure. The head and throat are covered with a coif of
white muslin, concealing all the hair like the dress of a
nun. Over all is a great mantle of black taffetas falling
to the feet.
A visit to Madrid finds its natural close in the Escorial,

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 147
where the kings and queens of whom we have seen so
much have found a ghastly sepulcher. It is so profoundly
curious that it must of necessity be visited, though it is
so utterly dreary and so hopelessly fatiguing a sight, that
it requires the utmost Christian patience to endure it.
Well may Theophile Gautier exclaim that whatever the
other ills and trials of life may be, one may console one's
self by thinking that one might be at the Escorial, and
that one is not.
The Escorial may be undergone upon the road north
ward, or may form a separate excursion from Madrid.
The station of the name lands you at the foot of the hill
on which this colossus of granite is placed. It is gen
erally described as standing in a mountain wilderness,
but this is not quite true. You ascend through woods
which are pleasant enough, and where Charles IV., wisely
declining to inhabit the " architectural nightmare," built a
pretty little toy palace of his own. But behind the Esco
rial all is a bleak solitude, blue-black peaks, capped with
snow, and furrowed by dry torrent-beds, or sandy deserts
sprinkled over with bowlders of granite. There is no
softening feature. The dismal streets of granite houses
which surround the huge granite palace and church have
the same lines of narrow, prison-like windows, the same
harsh angular forms everywhere. The main edifice was
thirty-one years in building, and is three-quarters of a
mile round, but each wall is just like the other: they have
no distinguishing features whatever. It has thirty-six
courts, and eleven thousand windows, in compliment to
the virgins of St. Ursula, but they are all the same size,
and all exactly alike. The architect, Herrera, was tied
down to the most hideous of plans, that of a gridiron,
because it was the emblem of St. Laurence, upon whose
day, the 10th of August, the building was vowed after the
successful siege of St. Quentin. The whole is justly looked

148 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
upon as a stone image of the mind of its founder, Philip II.
And the interest which encircles this cruel yet religious,
this superstitious yet brave character, lends a charm even
to the Escorial. Except the extirpation of heretics, it was
the one object of his earthly ambition. The seat is shown —
Silla delRey — high among the gray bowlders of the hillside,
whence he used to watch the progress of the huge fantastic
plan, as court after court was added, each fresh wing
forming another bar of the gridiron. When it was fin
ished, he deserted his capital, and made it his principal
residence, devoting himself to an eternal penance of
fasting and flagellation, but at the same time boasting
that he governed two worlds from the heights of his
mountain solitude. Hither, when he felt the approach
of death, during an absence' at Madrid, he insisted upon
being brought, borne for six days in a litter upon men's
shoulders, and here, during his last hours, he was carried
round all the halls, to take a final survey of the work of
his life.
The main entrance is so featureless as almost to pass
unnoticed. It leads into a vast gloomy court-yard, at the
end of which are huge statues of the kings of Judah.
These decorate the facade of the church. Its interior is
bare and dismal, but the proportions are magnificent, and
though the effect is cold and oppressive, it is not without
a certain solemnity of its own. In high open chapels on
either side of the altar kneel two groups of figures in gilt
robes. On the left are Charles V., his queen, his daughter,
and his two sisters ; on the right are Philip II. , three
of his wives (the unloved Mary of England being omitted),
and Don Carlos. Down a long flight of steps you are led
by torchlight to the Panteon, an octagonal chamber sur
rounded by twenty-six sepulchers of kings or mothers of
kings, arranged one above the other like berths in a ship.
Charles V. occupies a place in the upper story. Bran-

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 149
tdme declares that the Inquisition proposed that his body
be burned for having given ear to heretical opinions. It
remains, though curiosity, not heresy, has twice caused
the coffin to be opened ; the last time in 1871, during the
visit of the Emperor of Brazil, when hundreds of people
flocked forth from Madrid to look upon the awful face of
the dead, which was entire even to the hair and eyebrows,
though perfectly black. Philip II. fills the niche below,
lying in the coffin of gilt bronze which he ordered to be
brought to him that he might inspect it in his last
moments, and for which he ordered a white satin lining
and a larger supply of gilt nails with his last breath.
Each of the Austrian kings seems to have loved to pass
hours here in meditation over his future resting-place,
Philip IV. used to sit in his niche in his life-time to hear
mass ; Maria Louisa scratched her name upon her future
urn with a pair of scissors. The last funeral here was
that of Ferdinand VII., whose coffin was too big for
the royal hearse, and had to be brought hither in a com
mon cache de colleras, its end projecting from the front
windows, the attendan.t monks riding round it on
mules and the empty hearse following, for the sake of
decency. His widow, Christina, though the mother of a
sovereign, will never be buried here, even if the Bour
bons return to power, as Spanish aristocratic feeling
would not allow the honor to a queen who has formed a
mesalliance in her second marriage. Isabella II. heard
midnight mass in the Panteon whenever she visited the
Escorial. A separate chamber has the dreadful name of El
Pudridero. Here lie sixty members of the royal family,
including Don Carlos, Don John of Austria, and the
many queens-consort who were not mothers of kings.
Through the bare, cold passage of the convent one may
reach the coro, which, contains a celebrated crucifix by

15° WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Benvenuto Cellini. The stall is still shown which Philip
II. occupied, and where he was kneeling when the mes
senger arrived breathless with eager haste from Don John
of Austria to announce the victory of Lepanto, but could
obtain no audience till the monarch had finished his
devotions. From hence it is but a few steps to the low,
bare rooms which the bigot king occupied as a dwelling.
They are full of interest. The furniture is the same, the
pictures, the table, the chairs, the high stool to support
his gouty leg. At the bureau which still exists he was
sitting writing when Don Christoval de Moura came in to
announce the total destruction of the Spanish Armada, the
scheme on which he had wasted a hundred million ducats
and eighteen years of his life. Not a muscle of his face
moved. He only said, " I thank God for having given
me the means of bearing such a loss without embarrass
ment, and power to fit out another fleet of equal size.
A stream can afford to waste some water, when its source
is not dried up."
The inner room opens into the church by a shutter.
At this opening the ghastly figure of the king was seen at
the public mass during his illness, following the prayers
with an agonized fervor of devotion. Here also he sat
on the morning of the 13th of September, 1598, and
having summoned his children, Philip and Clara Eugenia
Isabella (so well known to us from their pictures) to
embrace him, received extreme unction, and, even after
the power of speech had departed, remained with his
hands grasping the crucifix which his father, Charles V.,
held when he was dying, and with his eyes fixed upon the
altar of the church, till those eyes were closed in death.
All the other sights of the Escorial are of little import
ance compared with those which are connected with
Philip II. One set of apartments was prettily decorated
with inlaid woodwork by Charles IV. The endless corri-

MADRID AND THE ESCORIAL. 15 1
dors were once filled with fine pictures, now removed to
Madrid. Only three of any consequence remain. In the
chapter-house is a Velazquez of Jacob receiving from his
elder sons the coat of Joseph ; in the refectory is a grand
Last Supper of Titian ; and in the ante-sacristia is a fine
historical scene by Coello, representing the half-witted
Charles II. , with his court, upon their knees before the
miraculous wafer, which bled at Gorcum, when trampled
upon by Zwinglian heretics. Every Spanish sovereign is
expected to make some offering to St. Laurence and the
Escorial ; that of Isabella II. was a gorgeous golden
shrine for this very wafer, preserved behind the picture.
The library contains several interesting pictures of kings,
and some fine illuminated manuscripts. All the books
are arranged with their backs to the wall.
Upon the south and east sides of the building are
so called gardens — broad terraces with trim box edges,
but on the whole possessing more architecture than vege
tation. Here, from the angle of the terrace wall, one may
best examine one of the external curiosities of the build
ing, a glittering plaque of gold an inch thick and a yard
square, which Philip II. built into the wall when the
building was nearly complete, as a bravado to the world
which expected it to become his ruin. Fortunately for
its preservation it is near the top of the pyramid above
the dome, where it glitters inaccessible, and reflects all the
rays of the sun.

CHAPTER XII.
SEGOVIA AND AVILA.

IN a central situation in all the principal Spanish towns
is an office (" Administracion ") where you can not
only take your railway ticket, but also tickets for a dili
gence to any town off the main line, from the station
with which it is connected ; and at the same time you can
register your luggage through to your final destination.
Here, in spite of many warnings from Madrid friends that
we should either be blocked out by the snow or carried
off by the Carlists, we took our tickets for Segovia, and
joined its diligence at the Vilalba station, an hour's jour
ney from Madrid on the Northern Railway.
We had been quite unprepared for the magnificence of
the Guadarrama mountains which we had to cross, and
which are certainly more striking than even the Sierra
Nevada. The ascent begins soon after leaving Vilalba,
and is truly Alpine, the road passing from the region of
pines into that of snow, through which it had been cut,
but which rose on either side in high walls, for above the
top of the diligence, and, near the summit, to a height of
fifteen feet. The descent was somewhat perilous, espe
cially when we had tq meet some heavily-laden timber
wagons in the narrow passage ; but we reached the plains
in safety, and, after traversing many miles of dismal coun
try, saw Segovia rising against a faint pink sky, crowning
a hill steep in itself, but from a distance scarcely seeming
to rise above the level of the high surrounding uplands,

SEGOVIA AND A VILA. 153
from which it is separated by deep ravines. It is an
especially Spanish scene, as you look upon the crowded
town with its churches, towers, red-roofed houses,
piled one upon another, from a foreground of desolate
moorland, where foaming mountain brooks dance and
sparkle, through the pale gray rocks and burned grass.
Some old Romanesque churches occupy a rising ground
to the right, and, as you turn the corner below them, you
see the huge Roman aqueduct of Trajan striding across
the hollow, and uniting the town with a populous suburb
by its two tiers of arches. Beneath these you enter the
main street of the city, — which winds up the hill beneath
double gateways, and is full of interest from the beautiful
ajimez windows which vary the surface of its medieval
houses, — into the principal square, all aflame with color
and costume, upon which the cathedral and the dark brown
balconies of the wonderful old houses look grimly down.
If the reader will share our first walk in Segovia, he will
descend with us to the aqueduct, which, like so many high
bridges, the poor cheated Devil is said to have built in
exchange for the soul of a fair Segoviana who outwitted
him by finding one stone missing in the work when she
came to examine it. Turning .to the left from hence we
are in the gorge, not bare, like that of Toledo, but bright
with the fresh foliage of April. Here, nestling under the
turfy slopes, are the Dominican convent and beautiful
church of Santa Cruz, whose simple gothic nave is entered
by a rich flamboyant portal well-deserving of attention ;
while the " Tanto-Monta " of Ferdinand and Isabella,
with all their badges and devices, is formed into a grace
ful frieze under the roof.
Descending a steep path below the convent and cross
ing a bridge, we enter a pretty alameda filled with willows
and poplars, where the rushing river Eresma is perfectly
lined by washerwomen, whose red and yellow dresses, gay

154 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
as so many tulips, are reflected in its waters. While we
are looking at them one begins to sing, and the strain is
taken up the whole way down the river bank, till the air
rings with their choruses. It is now a verse from the
Noche Buena, which tells how when the Virgin rested
under an olive-tree during her flight into Egypt, the very
leaves turned around to look at the newly-born one : —
" La Virgen quiso sentarse
A la sombra de un olivo
Y las hojas se volvieron
A ver al recien nacido."
Now a song more poetical in idea than in rhythm, which
narrates how the Virgin laid aside her blue robe to wear
mourning for her son : —
" La Virgen se subio al cielo
Y dejo su manto azul,
Que cambio por uno negro
Para el luto de Jesus."
At the end of the alameda rises the great Geronymite
monastery of El Parral, built in 1494 by the Mar
quis de Villena, in commemoration of a duel on its
site, in which he overcame three antagonists at once.
The building was gutted in the early Carlist wars,
and has been closed since, but Don Ramon, the kindly
old president of the Archaeological Society, who spends
much of his time there, invited us to pass the after
noon with him, and under his guidance we saw its
numerous cloisters, its refectory with a richly wrought
pulpit for the reader, its beautiful plateresque halls and
staircase, its sacristia full of color and picturesqueness,
and, above all, its glorious church, abandoned and neg
lected, but still one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical
buildings in Spain. It is entered from the west under ^ae
coro of 1494, which is like a wide gallery, with a beautiful

SEGOVIA AND A VILA. IS5
gothic rail of black marble. The carved stalls have been
pulled down and carried off to San Francisco at Madrid,
and many of the altars are removed, but the principal
retablo remains, and is a grand work of Diego de Urbian
in 1526. On either side of it stand the lofty plateresque
monuments of the founder and his wife, and near the side
door is the exquisite gothic tomb of Dona Juana, daugh
ter of King Ramiro of Leon. All this Don Ram6n
exhibited with the most kindly Spanish courtesy, illustrat
ing it with a picturesque detail of legendary lore. The
only part we could not admire was the room opening out
of the cloister, which he had fitted up as a Pantheon,
removing to it all the monuments of great citizens of
Segovia from their rightful resting-places in the parish
churches. From El Parral, Don Ramon took us by a charming
field walk to the Vera Cruz, built in 1204, by Honorius
IL, in imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulcher,
which he had seen at Jerusalem. Around it rose the
little town of Miraflores, but now all the houses have
disappeared, and the old brown octagonal church, with
its threefold apse and tall tower, stands forlorn and
desolate on the barren rocks. In the interior is a raised
chapel, occupying the upper story of what seems like a
huge central pillar, and is supposed to indicate the site
of the sepulcher. Two varieties of crosses mark its walls,
for from " Messieurs les Templiers," said Don Ram6n, it
passed to " les Messieurs de S. Jean." A beautiful
reliquary remains, which once contained a fragment of
the true Cross brought by the founder.
Deeper in the valley, beyond Vera Cruz, is the great
convent which contains the tutelar of Segovia, Nuestra
Sefiora de Fuencisla. From the abrupt cliff above it
criminals were thrown down, and a chapel and cypress
park the spot whence Santo Maria del Salto, a converted

156 WA NDE RINGS IN SPA IN.
Jewess, took the fatal leap uninjured, when pushed over
by her former co-religionists. Close by, the Eresma is
joined by the mountain-brook Clamores, and from the
narrow path which overhangs the river is the most striking
view of the Alcazar, the magnificent castle in which the
great Isabella took refuge, and whence she went forth to
be proclaimed Queen of Castile. Here, in a great cave
in the rock, live many poor homeless old men and women,
who club together for their miserable subsistence, and
sleep like wild beasts in this open-mouthed den. The
smallest charity draws forth a shower of blessings, such
as " God will pay your worship," " May God keep you
and all your brothers," " May the Blessed Virgin walk
with you in all your ways ;" and, from a blind man, "May
Santa Lucia " (the patroness of eyes — she plucked out her
own to preserve her virginity) " watch over the eyes of
your worship."
We may ascend the hill by the Alcazar, but, alas ! it
now no longer contains any thing to visit, for it was turned
into a military college, and the students set fire to it and
burned it utterly in 1862, in the hope that they would
thereby be moved to Madrid, and, what is worst of all,
got off unpunished, being for the most part sons of high
personages, and, in Spain, the poor only suffer the penalty
of their misdeeds. It is now a mere shell of crumbling
wall, but most picturesque. Constantly repeated in its
decorations is the " Tanto Monta" of Ferdinand and
Isabella, which is sometimes ascribed to the jealousy of
Ferdinand, sometimes to their mutual affection. Not
only the coin, but all their furniture and books were
stamped with their devices, his being a yoke and hers a
sheaf of arrows. It was common in married life, says
Oviedo, for each party to take a device whose initial cor
responded with that of the name of the other, as was the
case with the " jugo " and " flechas."

SEGO VIA AND A VILA. 1 5 7
From the Alcazar, glancing at the noble tower of San
Esteban, a few steps bring us to the cathedral, which,
begun in 1525, is the last of the fine gothic cathedrals of
Spain, and was built by the architects of Salamanca, of
which it is partly a copy. In simplicity and general
effect the interior is perhaps unequaled in the Peninsula.
Two cathedrals existed before this, and from the last of
these, which stood close to the Alcazar, the present
cloisters, which are amazingly lofty, were moved stone for
stone. It was before the altar of the cathedral of Segovia,
that Isabella the Catholic (Dec. 13, 1474) prostrated her
self, after she had been declared Queen of Castile, and
returning thanks to the Almighty for the protection
hitherto afforded her, implored Him to enlighten her
future counsels, that she might discharge the high trust
reposed in her with equity and wisdom.
The last day of our all too short week at Segovia, we
drove out six miles to San Ildefonso, where Philip V., in
the last century, was charmed with a mountain grange
while hunting, and built the palace of La Granja at a
height of 3,840 feet, just under the snowy Guadarrama.
In spite of the abuse in Ford and other guide-books, it is
a most truly charming place, and the Alpine freshness,
which lasts throughout the summer, and an excellent inn
("Europeo") with a French cuisine (oh, the relief from
the oil and garlic of Spain !), render it additionally
attractive. Long avenues lead up to a grille like that of
the Place du Carrousel, whence you look down between
lines of buildings appropriated to the ministers, the
canons and the offices of the court, to the palace itself,
which is an old French chateau, in the style of Rambouillet,
transported into the mountain-scenery of Spain. In the
center is the church where Philip V. and his queen are
buried. Their apartments contain little of importance,
but are hung with the beautiful silk embroidery which is

158 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
to be seen in all the Spanish palaces, and are comfortable
and attractive. Among the strange historical scenes
which they have witnessed are the abdication of the
founder in favor of his son Louis I., and his resumption
of the crown, to which he was forced by his ambitious
wife, on that son's death. Also they contain the little
table at which Christina the Queen Regent was sitting
when the three Serjeants climbed in at the window, and
forced her to sign her abdication.
There is an odd but picturesque contrast between the
old chateau, with its pointed roofs and girouettes, stand
ing in trim parterres of clipped yew and box, and the
grand mountain-ranges behind, where the snow, perfectly
pure and unbroken towards the summits, gradually meets
and blends with the dark fir-woods. The intervening
space is occupied by the so-called gardens, no cultivated
flowers, but exquisite soft sylvan scenery, long avenues
edged with holm-beech and shaded by tall oaks and elms,
and endless little walks winding. through woods carpeted
with violets and periwinkles — " Las Lagrimas de Jesu
Christo," as the Spaniards poetically call them. In all
the openings of the woods are statues, and fountains sup
plied by the ' fresh crystal streams which are seen in the
distance falling in natural cascades from the high mount
ains ; and, in front of the palace, is a great artificial
waterfall, one sheet of silver, tumbling through the green
woods over a series of marble declivities, which perhaps
will not bear detailed criticism, but whose general effect
is one of great sylvan loveliness, of a mixture of art and
nature which recalls the mythical ages of faUns and
dryads, and the backgrounds of many old Italian pictures.
Altogether, La Granja should on no account be unvisited,
and the idler may be most happily idle there.
It is necessary to return to Vilalba to take tickets for

SEGOVIA AND A VILA. »59
Avila, which is a place far less known than it deserves,
though it is on the central line of railway. As Spanish
hotels go, the little inn of the "Dos de Majo" is excellent,
and is kept by an Englishman and his daughter. On all
sides the town is surrounded by a tawny desert, over
whose arid plains numbers of gray bowlders are scattered,
like flocks of sheep. The circuit of the walls is complete,
and so small, that most, even of the medieval buildings,
are outside it. These comprise a wonderful collection of
churches of the greatest interest to the archaeologist. San
Vicente, founded 313, contains a thirteenth century
shrine of that saint, who was not the famous deacon of
Zaragoza, but another of the same name, also martyred
under Dacian, because he stamped upon an altar of
Jupiter and left the marks of his feet there. His body
was guarded by a serpent, which attacked a rich Jew who
came to mock at it, and made him vow to build this
church if he escaped with his life. Like the Bocca della
Verita at Rome, the hole out of which the snake came
was long a spot for adjuration, he who took the oath
putting his hand into it, so that the snake (which did
attack Bishop Vilches under these circumstances in 1458)
might bite him if he swore falsely.
Following the outside of the walls from hence, we
reach a tiny Romanesque church on the river side,
standing in a little weedy inclosure with three stone
crosses. It is always closed now, and in spite of the dis
agreeable extortionate Cerberus who guards it, the keys
must be obtained, for the sake of seeing the beautiful
touching monument of its patron, the bishop San Segundo.
He is said to have pushed a Moor over the battlements of
the" neighboring tower with his own hands, a deed of prow
ess which will always render him popular as a Spanish saint,
but which does not seem consistent with the expression of
his penitent kneeling figure rapt in an ecstasy of prayer,

160 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Another glorious monument is that, in San Tomas, of
Prince Juan, only son of Ferdinand and Isabella. The
church in which he is buried was one of the favorite
foundations of the Catholic sovereigns, who frequently
resided in the palace-convent which is attached to it. It
was in one of the rooms which may still be seen in this
building that Isabella was induced to give her written
sanction of the proceedings of the Inquisition. Here
also she devoted herself to the education of Prince Juan,
heir of the united Spanish monarchies. Ten youths,
selected from the sons of the chief nobles, were brought
to reside with him in the palace, five of his own age and
five older, that emulation might stimulate him to greater
diligence in his studies ; and a mimic council was formed
to deliberate on matters of government and public policy,
over which the prince presided, in order that he might be
early initiated into his important future duties. A brill
iant scholar, an accomplished linguist and musician,
beautiful in person, and endowed with the most amiable,
generous and winning of characters, he grew up the
delight of his parents and the idol of their people. In
March, 1497, being then in his twentieth year, he was
married at Burgos to Margaret, daughter of the Emperor
Maximilian, with whom he had every prospect of happi
ness. As soon as his marriage festivities were concluded
he retired with his bride to Salamanca, while his parents
proceeded to be present at another marriage, that of their
daughter Isabella to the king of Portugal, at Valencia de
Alcantara. While there they received the news of the
alarming illness of their son. Ferdinand hastened with
all possible speed to his side, leaving Isabella to follow by
slower stages. When he arrived the Prince was dying.
At first the unhappy father strove to cheer him with hopes
he could not himself feel, but Juan checked him, telling
him that he could not be deceived, that he was prepared

SEGO VIA AND A VILA . 1 6 1
to leave a world which at the best was filled with vanity
and trouble, and that his only prayer was that his parents
might be able to feel the same resignation which he him
self experienced. He died October 4, 1497, before
Isabella could arrive. Great alarm was felt as to the
effect which the terrible tidings might have upon her, but
she evinced the same fortitude which sustained her in
every other adversity, and the young Prince's tutor, Peter
Martyr, records that she only replied to the fatal intelli
gence in the words of Scripture — " The Lord hath given,
the Lord hath taken away, blessed be His name ! "
The exquisite sleeping figure of Prince Juan, the most
touching of sepulchral effigies, lies with folded hands,
and features smiling in death, upon a marble altar-tomb.
The coro, which is placed above an elliptical arch at the
western entrance, still retains the two splendidly carved
stalls, which his parents ever afterwards occupied at
mass, close to the gallery rail, that they might look down
meanwhile upon the image of their child. They were
dressed in sackcloth, which was substituted in this great
calamity for the white serge hitherto worn as royal
mourning ; and Peter Martyr vividly describes how, as
they sat, the eyes of one would seek those of the other,
and cause a fresh outburst of grief — though, he adds,
they would " cease to be human, and would have been
harder than adamant, had they not felt what they had
lost." With , the extraordinary disregard of historical relics
which prevails in Spain, the rough boys of the town were
allowed, till a few years ago, to come into this deserted
church at will, and amuse themselves by breaking off and
selling the delicate ornaments of the tomb. It is won
derful that the figure itself should remain uninjured.
Now it is protected by a coarse deal railing. Near that
of their master, in a side chapel, is the beautiful tomb of

162 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
his favorite attendants, Juan Davila and Juana Velazquez.
The cloisters, courts and staircases, rich with ball-flower
ornament, remain, though unused and neglected, the
same as when they witnessed the heart-broken grief of
their founders.
The other churches of Avila are so interesting that one
seems to have no enthusiasm left for the cathedral. Yet
it is exceedingly curious, being more than half a fortress,
built by Garcia de Estrella in 1107. Its eastern apse,
projecting over the city wall, is machicolated and fortified
like a castle. In its high tower storks build, and stand
undisturbed for hours on the top of its pinnacles, as if
they were petrified there, their beautiful white plumage
glittering against the deep blue sky. The interior is very
impressive, with tall dark gothic arches, and glorious
stained windows. The retablo, of the time of Ferdinand
and Isabella, has pictures by Berreguete and Borgona.
The streets of Avila are full of very curious old houses,
perfectly unchanged from medieval times. In the court
yard of one of them are several of the extraordinary
stone pigs, called Toros de Guisando, which are believed
to have been idols of the primitive inhabitants. A few
houses are richly decorated and very magnificent. . But
the greater part, even the oldest and noblest families, are
of most simple character. The general arrangement is
the same. Over the entrance is a huge sculptured shield
of arms, generally much stained by weather and gilded
by lichen. Above it projects a stone balcony almost
always occupied by some of the pet quails, which make
the air resound with their strange cry, and which are
great favorites all over the north of Spain, where they"
are called reclamos, being taken out by sportsmen, when'
their cry, almost incessant, attracts others of the same
breed. The principal entrance leads into a vast hall, on either

SEGOVIA AND AVILA. 163
side of which are large doors opening into chambers
which are never used except in the great events of a
human life, a birth, a marriage or a burial. On the
opposite side of the hall is another door which communi
cates with the body of the house (cuerpo de casa), and
facing it a door leading to a gallery which opens upon a
spacious yard, in which are the bakehouse, the oven, the
hay-lofts, in short, all the domestic offices, with a separate
entrance. On either side of this door, in the " cuerpo
di casa," are two great chambers, one being the kitchen
of the masters, the other that of the servants. In the
first, in which no cooking takes place, and which might
more properly be called a dining-hall, is an enormous
chimney, whose opening occupies the whole face of one
wall. Here in winter a huge fire is perpetually burning,
in which whole trees are consumed. On either side low
benches covered with wooden cushions are fixed against
the walls. In holes made in the walls, called vasares,
are symmetrically arranged large vases full of water ;
besides these are displayed on shelves a collection of
bucares (a peculiar drinking jug) of different sizes and
shapes. In the tiled kitchen of the servants all the work
of the house is done. On either side of the" cuerpo di
casa " are the doors of the dwelling-rooms, which gener
ally look upon a garden supplied with a few flowers, a
great many medicinal herbs, and some vegetables. These
inner chambers generally have glass windows, whilst the
rooms which look upon the streets have only shutters.
In a house of this kind, in one of the fashionable
streets in Avila, was born, March 28, 15 15, Dona Teresa,
de Cepede, who was destined to be the most extraor
dinary woman of her age and country, and who is
not unnaturally regarded by the Roman Catholics as
having been raised up, together with St. Ignatius Loyola,
to give new life to their religion, in the sixteenth century,

164 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
when it was suffering so much from the inroads of
Protestantism. Her father, Don Alphonso Sanchez de
Cepede, was a man of most virtuous and holy life, her
mother, Dona Beatrix Ahumada, was also pious, but,
quaintly adds her historian, " was too much given to
reading romances." The tendencies of both were
repeated in their daughter Teresa, who was one of
twelve children. In her earliest childhood she was
devoted to reading the lives of the saints and martyrs,
and at eight years old escaped from home, and was cap
tured by her uncle, setting off with her little brother
Rodrigo to the land of the Moors, in the hope of being
martyred by them. What affected these children most
in their reading was that the happiness of the blessed
was forever, the punishment of the damned forever. —
" Forever ;" they used to exclaim, clasping each other's
little hands, and looking in each other's faces, "for
ever/" Their great desire was to become hermits, and
they tried to build for themselves little hermitages in the
garden, which they never were able to finish.
Upon her mother's death, when she was twelve years
old, Teresa got possession of her library of novels, which
are said greatly to have perverted her mind, and filled
her with the desire of admiration and thought of her
personal appearance. Her father became so alarmed at
the change in her, that he placed her for a time in the
Augustinian convent at Avila, where she was at first per
fectly miserable, but became reconciled by the kindness
and protection of a devout nun, who never ceased to
bring before her, with meaning views, the text, " Many
are called, but few chosen." This so worked upon her
vanity that she determined to become a nun, and,
though her father absolutely refused his consent, took
the veil in the Carmelite convent of Avila in her
twentieth year.

SEGOVIA AND AVILA. 165
Here for twenty years her mind was never at rest.
" On one side," she writes, " I was called as it were by
God, on the other I was tempted by regrets for the world.
I wished to combine my aspirations towards heaven with
my earthly sympathies, and I found that this was impos
sible ; I fell — I rose, only to fall again ; I had neither
the peaceful satisfaction of a soul reconciled with God,
nor could I taste the pleasures which the world offered
me. ... At length God had pity upon me. I read in
the temptations of St. Augustine how he was tried and
tempted, and how at length he conquered." The diffi
culties of Teresa in a religious life were increased, partly
by her ill-health, and partly by the lax rules of the con
vent, which allowed her to receive constant visits from
secular and worldly persons. Thus, after she had been
persuaded by her confessor no longer to be content with
vocal devotion, but constantly to converse with God in
mental prayer, and when through the force of prayer
her character became changed, it was the first object of
her heart to save others from the dangers to which she
had been herself exposed in a religious life, and to bring
about a reform of the Carmelite order. Assisted by the
inhabitants of her native place she founded a new con
vent at Avila, which she dedicated to St. Joseph, and,
upon its success, proceeded to found in turn seventeen
convents for women and fifteen for men in different towns
of Spain. These she usually began to build with scarcely
any funds whatever. It is narrated of her that she
arrived at Toledo to found a convent with only four
ducats, and that, when people remonstrated, she said,
"Teresa and four ducats can do nothing, but God,
Teresa, and four ducats can do any thing." Unhappily
the mortifications she imposed upon herself, the constant
state of self-meditation in which she lived, and the
flatteries of the priests who surrounded her, worked her

1 66 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
mind into a state of religious enthusiasm which bordered
upon insanity. At one time she affirmed that. an angel,
in corporeal form, had pierced her through the bowels
with a tangible dart tipped with fire to inflame them with
the love of God. At another time, while repeating the
hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus," she believed that she
heard a voice from heaven announcing to her. that she
should no more hold conversation with men but with
angels. She was frequently in a state of ecstasy, in which
her body is believed to have been lifted from the ground,
while her voice held communion with invisible spirits.
Gradually, however, as years grew upon her, these
mystic fancies seem to have cleared away, leaving her
with the simplicity and truth of a mind purified by
prayer. She used to say that " Our Lord is a great lover
of humility because He is the great lover of truth, and
humility is a certain truth, by which we know how little
we are, and that we have no good of ourselves." Speak
ing of the succors she received from the world in her
various undertakings, she said, " I perceive clearly that
they are all no better than so many twigs of dried rose
mary, and that there is no leaning upon them ; for upon
the least weight of contradiction pressing upon them,
they are presently broken. I have learned this by experi
ence, that the true remedy against our falling is to lean
on the Cross, and to trust only in Him who was fastened
to it."
Teresa lived till her sixty-eighth year. As her health
became feebler she wrote, " It seems to me there is no
reason why I should live except to suffer, and accord
ingly this is what I ask with most earnestness from my
God. Sometimes I say to Him with my whole heart,
' Lord, either to die or to suffer, I ask nothing else for
myself.' It comforts me also to hear the clock strike ;
for so methinks I draw a little nearer to the seeing of

SEGOVIA AND A VILA. 167
God, since one hour more of my life is passed." She
was seized with her last illness in the house of the
Duchess of Alva, but was moved to her own convent at
Avila, where she died October 4, 1582, her last words
being those of the Miserere, " A broken and a contrite
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."
She has left many written works — some for the guid
ance of her nuns, others addressed to the whole Catholic
Church. The great object of them all is to enforce
the importance and power of prayer, both active and
passive. Love — the love of God — was the mainspring
of her every idea. Hell, she only thought of as " the
place where there is no love." Of Satan she said, "poor
wretch, he cannot love." Among her many passionate
outpourings is one " To Jesus Christ, Crucified.
" That which makes me love Thee, my God, is not the heaven
which Thou hast promised me ; nor is it the hell full of terrors which
makes me desire not to offend Thee.
" That which influences me is Thine own self, O God ; that which
influences me is the sight of Thee upon the cross, nailed and insulted !
That which influences me is the sight of the wounds in Thy body, of
the pangs of Thy death.
" Thy love, in fact, is what influences me ; and to such a degree
that I could love Thee all the same if there were no heaven ; and if
there were no hell I would fear Thee no less.
" Give me nothing in return for this my love for Thee ; for were I
not to hope what I am longing for I should love Thee as well as I do
now. "
Mrs. Jameson truly observes that " what was strong,
beautiful, true and earnest, was in Teresa herself ; what
was morbid, miserable and mistaken, was the result of
the influences around her."
In her convent at Avila the nuns never now sit in the
stalls during mass, but only upon the steps, because they
believe that when Teresa was present the stalls were

1 68 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
occupied by angels. In the adjoining chapel is her
shrine, occupying the spot where Bishop Yepez relates
that as she was about to receive the communion from
Bishop Mendoza, she was lifted from the ground in a
rapture, higher than the gates, through which (according
to the custom in nunneries) the Sacrament was to be
given to her, and clinging to the rails, prayed, " Lord,
suffer not, for such a favor, a wicked woman to pass for
virtuous," after which she was permitted to descend. In
the garden is an apple tree, planted by Teresa, whose
fruit is supposed to be good for every species of female
disorder.

CHAPTER XIII.
SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS.
IT is a long, tedious journey by diligence from Avila to
Salamanca. We left Avila at midnight, guided by
lanterns down the tortuous streets from the hotel to the
place where the diligence was waiting to be packed, amid
much vociferation of greedy porters and whining of the
innumerable beggars, who are quite as alert by night as
by day, if there is a chance of a stranger falling a prey to
them. It was a bitterly cold night (May 5), and the
wind poured cruelly in through the many cracks in the
rackety old berlina as we traversed the hideous, arid,
treeless plains, which even the pale moonlight failed to
beautify. Day broke, and hour after hour passed wearily
on, till about ten a.m. came the welcome sight of a bright
yellow cathedral and town rising on the horizon, and we
soon began to skirt the blue river Tormes which flows
beneath its walls.
Salamanca once possessed twenty-five colleges, twenty-
five churches, twenty-five convents, twenty-five professors,
and twenty-five arches of its bridge ; but the last alone
remain intact, — colleges, churches, convents and profes
sorships have alike fallen ; their destruction, begun by
the French, having been finished by the law, which was
made for the sake of plunder under Queen Isabella II. ,
that no corporate body could hold any property. The
university, which boasted above ten thousand students in
the fourteenth century, has now little more than one
thousand, and the splendid collegiate buildings, palace?

17° WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
worthy of the Corso of Rome or the Grand Canal of
Venice, are either in ruins or let out to poor families, with
the exception of San Bartolome, which is turned into the
house of the civil governor, and El Arzobisbo, whose
beautiful cinque-cento buildings are now given up to the
Irish college. This formerly was situated in another
part of the town ; it contains only nine students now, but
the original foundation was magnificent, and bore witness
to the anxiety of its founder, Philip II., to spite his sister-
in-law Elizabeth of England. Day by day Salamanca
becomes more entirely a city of ruins, and presents much
the same appearance which Oxford would do were its
revenues all stolen by the Government, and Christ-
Church, Merton, Magdalen, University,, etc., abandoned
to the rats and owls. The few students who remain are
lodged in private houses in the town, and go up for their
" classes " to the building of the University proper, which
answers to that called " the Schools " at Oxford, and has
a gorgeous plateresque front and a curious Convocation
House. The little square behind it, surrounded by col
legiate buildings, is much like one of our college " quads."
In its center is a statue of the ecclesiastical poet Fra
Luiz de Leon, who is numbered with Cervantes, Saarve-
dra, and Cardinal Ximenes amongst the eminent students
of the University. The library contains many original
letters of his, together with a splendid collection of MSS.,
chiefly brought from confiscated monasteries, and a large
number of printed books of the fifteenth century. A
volume of the Lord's Prayer in one hundred and fifty-
seven languages, ordered by the first Napoleon, is exhib
ited with great pride by the librarian. The reading-
room is used by natives of Salamanca to a degree which
shames the mor-e populous Oxford ; a day seldom passes
without as many as ninety students availing themselves
Of it,

SALAMANCA.

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 171
The university buildings face the cathedral which was
begun in 15 13. Its florid gothic is excessively rich in
detail, but wanting in general effect, and the brilliant yel
low color of its stone annuls all appearance of antiquity :
the interior, however, would be exceedingly magnificent
if it were not so badly blocked up by the coro. In one
of the chapels the Mosarabic ritual has been continued, as
at Toledo. A few pictures deserve notice, especially
those by Luiz de Morales, who here merits his epithet of
" the Spanish Perugino," and those by the rare master
Fernando Gallegos, who was a native of Salamanca, where
he died in 1550. From the north aisle one passes into a
second and older cathedral, built in 1102 by the famous
Bishop Geronimo, the confessor of the Cid, who fought
by his side in all his battles, and supported his dead body
on its final ride from Valencia to San Pedro de Cerdefia.
He is buried here, and above his tomb hung for five
hundred years " El Christo de las Batallas," the famous
bronze crucifix of the Cid, which he always carried with
him. This has now disappeared, and is not to be found
even in the Relicario, but the canons know of the hiding-
place, where, in this age of church robbery, it has been
secreted. The tomb of Geronimo was opened in 1606,
when it is affirmed that the body of the holy warrior
smelled truly delicious. The retablo, which follows the
curved form of the apse in the old cathedral, contains a
number of paintings interesting from the poetical charac
ter of their subjects. In that on — " Angels came and
ministered to him" — a table-cloth spread with food is
held by several angels before the Saviour in the wilderness,
while others kneeling present fruit and a cup of wine.
The exterior of this church is half a fortress, and gave it
the epithet of " Fortis Salamantina : " the vaulted
lantern has a low crocketed spire and a scalloped stone
roof.

172 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
From the cathedral, San Esteban is approached by the
Calle del Colon, a memorial of Christopher Columbus
and his residence in the neighboring Dominican convent,
whose friars under Deza the Inquisitor upheld him and
his scheme, when the doctors of the university found it
to be " vain, impracticable, and resting on grounds too
weak to merit the support of the government." In grati
tude for the hospitalities he received from the Domini
cans, Columbus used the first virgin gold imported
from the New World in gilding the retablo of their
church, and most gorgeous is still its appearance, as seen
from under the dark elliptical arch of the coro, through
which the church is entered with such effect, leaving the
view unbroken towards the high-altar — as at El Parral,
and San Tomas of Avila. The western exterior is a
labyrinth of plateresque gothic decoration, like that of
the university.
In the little convent of Las Duenas close by, Santa
Teresa had one of her famous visions, when she came
hither to found the convent of her own order outside the
gates. In this and all the other convents of Sala
manca, the nuns are now reduced to a state of absolute
starvation. The principal of their dowries, which accord
ing to rule was given by their parents in the same way in
which a marriage portion is bestowed, was confiscated by
the government of Isabella, and the interest, which they
were promised during their lives, has never been paid by
that of Amadeo. It has been necessary to make collec
tions at the church doors in order to supply these unfor
tunate ladies with bread. While the nuns have been left
to starve, the conventual buildings of the monks have for
the most part been pulled down, to the destruction of
many precious architectural memorials. Even the splen
did decorations of the windows and staircases have been
§old for the value of the material, aristocratic families refus-

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 173
ing to purchase them, from the fear of being supposed to
recognize, even in the most distant way, these acts of
vandalism. Great indeed is the fall of religious bodies
in Spain ! — only forty years ago the Dominicans of Sala
manca had relays of mules constantly running between
their town and Santander, in order that they might have
their fish constantly fresh from the sea.
The Plaza Mayor, surrounded by arcaded galleries,
has the reputation of being the finest square in Spain,
but is surrounded by shops such as the back streets
of Bermondsey and Whitechapel would be ashamed of,
and by day wears a most forlorn and deserted appear
ance. In the evening all the few remaining students
congregate there and enliven it a little, marching up and
down proudly in their ragged cloaks, arm-in-arm, and
puffing their eternal cigarritos. There is no place where
pride in rags is so splendidly exhibited as at Salamanca.
Madame d'Aulnois narrates that one day looking out of
a window, she saw a woman selling small pieces of fresh
salmon and calling upon all the passers-by to buy of her. A
poor shoemaker came and asked for a pound of her salmon.
"You do not hesitate about the price," she said, "because
you think it is cheap, but you are mistaken, it costs a
crown the pound." The shoemaker, insulted at her
doubting him, said in an angry tone, " If it had been
cheap, one pound would have been enough for me, but,
since it is dear, I wish for three " — and he immediately
gave her three crowns and walked away twirling his
mustache and glowering at the spectators, though the
three crowns were all that he had in the world, the earn
ings of his whole week, and the next day he, his wife,
and his little children would fast on something less than
bread and water. This was in 1643 ; but Spain never
changes, and scenes of the same character might be wit
nessed any day in Salamanca. It is the want of regard

174 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
for this Spanish amour-propre which makes the generality
of English travelers so unpopular in_ Spain. Theophile
Gautier narrates that an" Englishman traveling from
Seville to Xeres, not understanding that a distinction of
classes was unknown at such times, sent his driver to
dine in the kitchen of the inn where they halted. The
driver, who in his heart thought that he would have been
doing great honor to a heretic by sitting at the same
table with him, concealed his indignation at the' time, but
in the middle of the road, three or four leagues from
Xeres, in a horrible desert full of bogs and brambles,
pushed the Englishman out of the carriage, and cried out,
as he whipped on his horse, " My lord, you did not find
me worthy to sit at your table ; and I, Don Jos6 Balbino
Bustamente y Orozco, find you too bad company to
occupy a seat in my carriage. Good night."
Travelers in early spring will observe the quantities of
pet lambs in the streets of Salamanca, generally decorated
with bunches of red worsted. By a curious custom a
general slaughter of these takes place on Good Friday
upon the doorsteps — the little creatures being executed
by their own mistresses, who stab them in the throat.
The inn at Salamanca, La Burgalesca, is quite excellent,
and is kept by very honest, deserving people, so that in
the dearth of good inns in the Peninsula, it forms a great
attraction to the place.
A woeful drive of six hours across a barren wilderness
brought us from Salamanca to Zamora. No single object
of interest varied the monotony of the way, except a
stork's nest on a low campanile in a village we passed
through, on which the mother stood imperturbably feed
ing her young while the heavy diligence rolled by almost
within reach. At length, beyond the Douro, rose, on a
steep though low hillside, the houses and churches of
Zamora, ending on the left in the cathedral, which is of

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 175
most mosque-like appearance, and we entered the town
by a long, low, gate-defended bridge of seventeen pointed
arches. There is no inn in Zamora, and it is almost impossible
to obtain any food there. Nothing could we find except
bon-bons and some very aged sponge-cakes, so that
before evening hunger fairly drove us away. There is not
much to see. One long narrow street winds along the
heights — passing on the way the interesting little Roman
esque church of La Magdalena, and a dusty alameda
planted with coronilla — to the cathedral, which is of the
twelfth century, with a curious dome, much like that of
the old cathedral at Salamanca. The coro contains a
beautiful carved lectern, and is surrounded with magnifi
cent stallwork decorated by figures of Old Testament
saints, bearing scrolls with legends referring to our Lord.
There are some interesting tombs. From the little plat
form below the cathedral is a striking view upon the
Douro rushing immediately beneath the rocks upon
which it is built, and then over the wide desolate Africa
like plains broken only by bowlders of gray rock. We
sat down to draw upon the steep bank above the river,
but our doing so in time of Carlist alarms excited quite a
commotion in the city, and we were soon pounced upon
by a policeman and carried off, followed by a mob of
people, for examination, but our passports proving satis
factory, we were speedily released.
The Carlist troubles were now at their climax, and as
the railway to the Asturias was cut in twenty-five places,
we were reluctantly compelled to give up for the time
visiting that most interesting corner of Spain, and also
the cathedral of Leon. We were not even able to linger
at Toro and its curious colegiata, but hastened on to the
safer Valladolid. We joined the main-line of railway at
Medina del Campo, but it was too dark to see its curious

176 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
walls. Here the great Isabella died, November 26,
i5°4- Hence, on the day of her death, Peter Martyr wrote to
the Archbishop of Granada, "My hand falls powerless
by my side for very sorrow. The world has lost its
noblest ornament ; a loss to be deplored not only by
Spain, which she has so long carried forward in the career
of glory, but by every nation in Christendom ; for she was
the mirror of every virtue, the shield of the innocent, and
an avenging sword to the wicked. I know none of her
sex, in ancient or modern times, who, in my judgment, is
at all to be named with this incomparable woman."
It was midnight when we reached Valladolid and were
guided by a boy through the long, dark alameda of the
Campo Grande, and up the wide streets to our inn.
Valladolid, which was the capital of Castile under Juan
II. , and one of the most flourishing cities of Spain under
Charles V. and Philip II. , has been a mere wreck of its
former self since the French invasion, in which many of
its most important buildings were destroyer!. Its situation
is dreary in the extreme, in a barren, dusty plain quite
devoid of natural beauty. Two small rivers, the Pisuerga
and the Esqueva, meet under its walls and water its flat,
ugly gardens. The great Plaza is vast and imposing ;
the cathedral, the work of Herrera (1585), is imposing
too, and grand in its outlines, but intensely bare and cold.
Near it stands the beautiful church of Santa Maria l'An-
tigua, with a picturesque western steeple of the twelfth
century and a ruined cloister, and there are several other
churches where the architect will find interesting bits. All
travelers, however, should visit San Pablo, a Dominican
convent rebuilt in 1463 by Cardinal Torquemada, who
had been one of its monks and was the ferocious confessor
of Isabella the Catholic, from whom he extorted a prom
ise that she would devote herself " to the extirpation of

ARCO DE SANTA MARIA, BURGOS.

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 1 77
heresy for the glory of God and the exaltation of the
Catholic faith." Under his influence autos da fe" fre
quently took place in the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid,
attended by the Court then, as bull-fights have been in
late years, and in which the victims were arrayed in yel
low shirts painted with flames and figures of devils. Tor-
quemada, however, was also a great patron of art and
literature, and the inscription "operibus credite," in ref
erence to the splendor of the buildings which he founded
here, was repeated round his tomb. This monument was
destroyed by the French, but the facade of San Pablo is
still a miracle of labyrinthine gothic. tracery quite splen
did of its kind, and so is the neighboring facade of San
Gregorio, founded in 1488 by Bishop Alonzo of Burgos.
Close by is the curious old house in which Philip II. was
born. The Museo must be visited, for, though its upper story
is filled with atrocious rubbish, pictorial art in wood is
nowhere so well represented as in the collection of figures
which occupies the ground floor. The best of these are
from the hands of the violent Juan de Juni, remarkable
for his knowledge of anatomy when it was generally
unknown in Spain, or from those of the gentle Gregorio
Hernandez (1566-1636), who, like Fra Angelico and
Juanes, devoted himself to religious subjects, and never
began to work without preparing his mind by prayer. At
the end of the principal gallery, which is surrounded by
the beautiful choir stalls of San Benito, are the splendid
bronze effigies of the Duke and Duchess of Lerma, by
Pompeio Leoni, removed from San Pablo.
We were at Valladolid on Ascension Day, upon which,
at the hour of mass, all the leaves upon the trees are
supposed to fold themselves one upon the other in the
form of the Cross, out of very devotion and reverence.
Terribly hot in the height of summer, we found Valla-

178 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
dolid insupportably cold in the middle of May, and were
glad to hurry on to Burgos, where, however, the climate
was even more Siberian. -'
From being the first place generally visited in Spain,
Burgos has been greatly overrated by travelers. It is not
a picturesque place, and its new houses and white quays
along the banks of the Arlanzon have the look of a very
inferior Bordeaux. A fine old gateway is jammed in
between insignificant modern buildings, and even the
cathedral is so hemmed in that it is difficult to obtain any
good near view of the exterior. As Burgos is on the
high-road, and almost all foreigners halt there, the inn
keepers are more extortionate than elsewhere, and it is
necessary to make a very strict bargain on entering the
hotels. We spent the whole of our first day at Burgos in an
excursion to the tomb of the Cid, from which travelers
are strangely dissuaded by Murray's hand-book, but which
is exceedingly curious and interesting. The road follows
a long alameda by the banks of the Arlanzon for about
two miles, and then ascends a hill to the convent of Mira-
flores, which looks at a distance as Eton chapel would
look if placed on a bare, wind-stricken height. The
church and convent were completed in 1488 by Isa
bella the Catholic in memory of her father, Juan
II., and her beloved mother, Isabella, to whom she
was so tenderly attached that she insisted on
making it a condition of her marriage settlement that her
husband should always treat her mother with proper
respect. Their gorgeous alabaster monument by Gil de
Siloe stands before the high altar, and is perhaps the
most perfectly glorious tomb in the world. On one side
is another beautiful monument to their son Alonzo, whose
early death conferred the crown upon Isabella. The
convent is almost deserted now, only three monks remain,

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 179
tottering with old age, and so poor that they with diffi
culty find any soup to give to the still more wretched beg
gars who hover round their gates.
It is a most desolate drive from hence to San Pedro de
Cerdena, the beloved home of the Cid, whither he desired
that he might be taken with his last breath. There is no
road, but a mere track marked by stones across the sweep
ing platforms of the hill-tops, covered with burned yellow
turf which took fine effects of color in the shifting lights
and shadows of a showery day. More and more deso
late does the country become : not a tree, not even the
smallest shrub is to be seen, till you reach the edge of a
hollow in the hills, where the vast monastery of San Pedro
rises in a grim solitude, backed by jagged purple mount
ains with snow-covered tops. As a first or a last view in
Spain, nothing can be more characteristic of the fallen
grandeur of the country in its splendid ruin.
Over the gate of the palace convent stands the muti
lated figure of the Cid on horseback riding over the pros
trate Moors. The building is massive and solemn to a
degree, but almost entirely deserted. A woman and a
filthy priest are its only inhabitants. The priest herds his
pigs through the greater part of the day, and in the early
morning he says mass in the grand conventual church.
" Have you any congregation ? " we asked. " Only the
woman," he replied.
Across a courtyard overgrown with nettles, the priest
led us to the tomb of the Cid, which was erected by
Alonzo el Sabio in 1272. It occupies the center of a
chapel, surrounded by the shields of his friends and fol
lowers. On the high altar tomb are the effigies of the Cid
and his faithful wife Ximena, whom on his death-bed he
commended to the care of One mightier than himself,
with the oft-repeated words, " God has promised." Around
his tomb rest in peace his son, his two daughters, Elvira,

180 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
Queen of Navarre, and Maria Sol, Queen of Arragon,
with their husbands, and his principal chieftains ; but the
Cid's own body has been carried off to Burgos, where it
is preserved in a wooden box in the town-hall ! Around
the tomb is the epitaph, —
" Belliger, invictus, famosus marte triumphis,
Clauditur hoc tumulo magnus Didaci Rodericus. "
The Cid is so well known by his appellation of the
sheikh or chieftain, that his own name, Rodrigo Ruy
Diaz, is scarcely remembered. His story is, however,
better preserved than that of any other person of his time,
his deeds of war which made him so terrible to his ene
mies, and his many deeds of generosity and kindness to
his friends, the poor and the Church, having been handed
down in a hundred ballads and medieval romances. With
him almost all the chroniclers mention his faithful steed
Bavieca, which was present at his death-bed and wept
great tears over his dying master. Upon it the dead body
of the Cid was borne hither from Valencia, held upright
in his armor and with his good sword Tisona fixed firmly
in his hand, with which, says the legend, he, though dead,
knocked down a Jew who audaciously plucked him by
the beard. Here, near his master, Bavieca is buried,
under a mound shaded by two elm-trees, according to the
will of the Cid, who wrote, " When ye bury Bavieca, dig
deep, for shameful thing it were, that he should be eaten
by curs, who hath trampled down so much currish flesh
of Moors."
It was his hatred of the Moors which first attracted the
Cid to the convent of San Pedro, where, in 872, two hund
red monks were massacred by the Moor Zephe, monks
from whose holy bodies blood always issued afresh on the
anniversary of their execution. This miracle was con
firmed as authentic by Pope Sixtus IV. in 1473, and

SALAMANCA, VALLADOLID, AND BURGOS. 181
though some heretics affirm that it afterwards ceased, the
priest who shows the convent evidently believes that it is
still in full force, and marvels that his visitors should find
the tomb of a warrior more interesting than the gaudy
shrine of such sanguineous martyrs.
There is nothing to be told of the vast cathedral of
Burgos which has not been already narrated by O'Shea
and by the original Ford. It is tremendous in size, beau
tiful in parts, but never, I think, very striking as a whole.
Some distance out of Burgos, in an opposite direction
from Miraflores, near the green avenues of the Arlanzon,
is the beautiful convent of Las Huelgas, founded for the
Cistercians by the wife of Alonzo VIII., Eleanor of En
gland, daughter of Henry II. , and sister of Richard Cceur
de Lion. Through the grille which divides its splendid
church you look upon the choir, whose stalls, during serv
ice-time, are occupied by picturesque white robed Cister
cian nuns — a beautiful picture which remains stamped
upon the mind long after that of the arches and pillars
has faded away.
The railway from Burgos to the Bidassoa passes through
Vittoria and St. Sebastian, but except the latter, which
generally forms an excursion from Biarritz, offers nothing
which need arrest a traveler, beyond the manners and
proverbs of the Basque population, and their language,
which an old Basque woman assured one of our old
friends was not only the best but by far the oldest lan
guage in the world — in fact it was that which Adam and
Eve spoke in Paradise. As we sped along the banks of
the railway were constantly occupied by the picturesque
Carlist troops, and at many of the principal stations.
Carlist regiments were drawn up, in their scarlet Basque
caps and sashes, but offered us no annoyance. We arrived
safely at Irun, and there took leave of Spain, with the
feeling that great and frequent as had been the discom-

182 WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
forts of our travels there, in the afterglow only the rosy
tints would predominate and the annoyances fade into
shadow. Here also I will take leave of my reader, with
the expression which a Spanish traveler knows better than
any other — with which every passer-by salutes him, with
which every beggar wishes him farewell — " Vaya Usted
con Dios."

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to impart any thing like the keen enjoyment and large knowledge of what
De Quincey aptly called the nation of London, as may be got from a perusal
of Mr. Hare's recent ' Walks in London.' "—New York Sun.
" It is, indeed, a most delightful reproduction of the London of the past
which appears in Mr. Hare's pages. He givps the cream of whole libraries
of antiquarian research in a single walk, and. not only as a guide, but also
as a storehouse of information as to all that is worth seeing and knowing of
the great city, his book is inimitable. We know nothing to compare with
it."— Buffalo Courier.
" It would be difficult to find in any encyclopaedia an ampler or more
fully digested collection of all the important facts relating to the ancient
capital ; yet the work is quite as entertaining as an ordinary novel, and a
tithe of the ' good stories ' which it contains would set up a professional
diner-out for life. ... It possesses all the merits of a guide-book, with
one additional merit which no guide-book ever possessed yet — that of being
readable throughout."— New York Times.

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited, NEW YORK.

igijJ <g,unusius j. «t. J§ar.e.
WALKS IN PARIS.
With 50 illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $3.00.
DAYS NEAR PARIS.
With 42 illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $2.50.
The numerous citations from French authorities illustrative of the historical ossa
dations of the various buildings, streets and localities in Paris and its
vicinity have in these editions been translated into English, thus
greatly facilitating; their use by A merican readers.

"One ['Walks in Paris*] of the most delightful and most attractive of books in its
kind, chatty, instructive, brimming over with anecdote, historical and otherwise, and
providing an account of the French capital equally vivid and entertaining." — faATUR*
day Evening Gazette, Boston.
"Mr. Hare's books upon London, Rome, Florence, and Venice have given him an
enviable reputation among travellers. Ot guide-books there are many, but Mr. Hare
adds to the ordinary information to be found in such works, the knowledge of a
scholar of liberal culture and the taste of a man of refinement, qualities which give his
books a distinctive literary character. His last two volumes treat of Paris and its
suburbs, both having the %une value that their predecessors have, and both being
planned upon similar lines." — Book Buyer.
" The opinions and comments of others with which he has interspersed his descrip
tions are chosen with good taste andjudgment, and the illustrations, from the author's
own sketches, engraved on wood by T. Sulman, are a rare treat when the common
run of even steel cuts of the rich and rare architecture of Paris is borne in mind.
.... The book is written in an elegant and pleasing style and abounds not only
in things which will be new to most people who think they have seen Paris and in
kindly reflections thereon but in incident, allusion and anecdote as pertinent as inter
esting." — Brooklyn Eagle.
" Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare has walked about London and Rome and other places
to the great profit and advantage of travellers, and his ' Walks in Paris ' (Routledge)
are of the kind that will be welcomed by tourists and sojourners in a foreign land.
His method is perfectly well known and stands approved by the great success that has
attended his books. . . . The aim is to furnish a guide book of a quality superior
to the mere lists of sights that hurried travellers must put up with — a guide book that
is worth study itself and induces further reading and study. ... Mr. Hare's
books are read to most advantage in the presence of the object described, or as an
immediate preparation foi a visit to the places enumerated. His taste andjudgment
are as trustworthy as his skill is unusual. Under his leadership the least observant
traveller will have his eyes open to beauties and charms that he would otherwise pass
unheeded by." — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.
" Good Americans see Paris and live, but to those who can not see Paris an admira
ble substitute is offered in this book by the accomplished traveller and writer, Augus
tus J. C. Hare, entitled 'Walks in Paris.' . . . Mainly the book takes us through
art galleries and old palaces; through historic quarters where old scenes live again in
Mr. Hare's vivid narrations and admirable citations from history, poetry, or criticism.
The enchantment of Paris is in its pages." — Boston Traveller.
"It can be safely said that in these two volumes the traveller will find more inform*
Son about Paris than in whole libraries ofreference." — Publishing World.
*' Indispensable to the traveller in Paris."— New York Tribune.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited, NEW YORK.

§5jr l^ijpshts $. <&. J|ar*.
FLORENCK. One volume.
VENICE. Onevolnme.
With maps and illustrations. 12mo, cloth, each $1.00.
" Florence " and " Venice," by Augustus J. C. Hare, from the aesthetic point
of view, are models. The contents are divided in the usual way according to
localities or " excursions," and include all of note that a man of taste would
need to know in regard to the historic and artistic treasures of these cities.
The volumes are illustrated and are furnished with maps and indexes.''—
The Nation.
"Those who have found in Mr. Hare's "Walks in Rome" and his other
manuals so refreshing a relief from the monotonous matter-of-fact of the guide
book, will welcome the two attractive volumes on Venice and Florence, which
have just been added to the author's topographical series. Mr. Hare takes hia
reader through the streets, palaces, galleries, wherever, in fact, there is any
thing to reveal what has made these cities great, and what still renders them the
most attractive spots in Europe." — Boston Advertiser.
" Charming is the word to be used in characterizing these books. The plan
is in general that of the earlier " Walks in Rome,"^nd the cities are described
in a series of excursions whose details not only give a vast deal of information
as to things and places, but are enriched by a store of historical, literary, critical
and anecdotal knowledge. Bach of the volumes is furnished with a map com
prehensive enough for the uses of the traveler."— Springfield Republican.
" Those who have read "Walks in London " will need no commendation to
Venice— Florence. It is a rare delight to read a book written by a man of broad
and ripe culture. Mr. Hare's "Walks about London "has long had the deserved
reputation of being incomparably the best guide to that world's metropolis ;
his guide-'books to Italy, though less known on this side of the water, are hardly
inferior ; and these two volumes are worthy companions to their predecessors."
—Christian Union.
"These two books, by a competent author, well printed, and with a
good index, should be popular among all who deBire to visit intelligently the
two cities whose names they hear. They are compact and brief, but they omit
nothing which the traveler needs to see, and they give an intelligent criticism
upon many of the chief objects of antiquity and art that come under his obser
vation. There are colored plans of the two cities, and occasional illustrations.
The author's "Walks in Rome" and "Days near Rome "had proven his
qualifications to treat of the Queen of the Adriatic and the City of the Arno."
—Churchman. "Mr. Hare has entered into the themes of these volumes, Venice and
Florence, with the enthusiasm which they suggest, and with an uncommon
degree of knowledge. The reading of these books is a pleasure, for if they were
undertaken as a task the writing of them must have soon become a delight to
Mr. Hare. There is a world of charming reading in them, drawn from the pages
of those who have written about these romantic old cities — poets, travelers, his
torians, critics— and the next best thing to being in their noble halls and
palaces, hallowed with the memory of a thousand years, is to be there in spirit,
as one cannot but be with such an accomplished gentleman and learned scholar
as Mr. Hare for his guide."— N. Y. Mail and Express.

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited, NEW YORK.

§» Augustus J. €. Par*.
CITIES OF SOUTHERN
ITALY AND SICILY.
With illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $2.50.

*' Mr. Hare's name will be a sufficient passport for the popularity of his new work.
His books on the Cities of Italy are fast becoming as indispensable to the traveler in
that part of the country as the guide-books of Murray or of Baedeker. . . His
book is one which we should advise all future travelers in Southern Italy and Sicily to
find room for in their portmanteaus." — Academy.
* ' We regard the volume as a necessary part of the equipment of a traveler in South
ern Italy; if he goes without it he will miss the most thorough and most helpful book
that has treated it The part devoted to Sicily is especially full of interest; and we
should not omit to make mention of the exquisite little woodcuts done from Mr. Hare's
water-colors executed on the spot." — British Quarterly Review.
"Of all the volumes published for the instruction and delight of travelers, those of
Augustus J. C. Hare are the best on many accounts. They are not mere directories
or catalogues. They are full of human life and interest. Mr. Hare is the ideal tour
ist, who is interested in art, architecture, literature, natural history and all the scien
ces, to the extent of not being wearisome, but of gilding whatever he touches with the
tight of his own knowledge and enthusiasm. . . . Wherever he has gone with
note-book in hand, he has not failed to jot down those objects which repay the trouble
of inspection, and to tell about them all that is worth knowing. His ' Studies in
Russia/his ' Wanderings in Spain,' his 'Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia, 'and
his ' Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily,' show him as much at home in those widely
separated countries as in his own London." — New York Journal of Commerce.

§g %>KQnatm $. <£. Jf ar*.
SKETCHES IN HOLLAND
AND SCANDINAVIA.
With 33 illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

1 ' This litde work is the best companion a visitor to these countries can have, while
those who stay at home can also read it with pleasure and profit" — Glasgow Her*
D. ''Will be popular for its handy size and light manner. Without being strikingly
amusing, it is yet never wearisome. . . . His notes of travel in Norway are very
tempting to tourists attracted to the north." — London Art Journal.
*' These sketches are made agreeable by the same observation and love for history
which is found in 'Walks in London' and ' Walks in Rome.' " — Springfield Re.
publican.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited, NEW YORK.

§n ^urritsins $. €. par*.

WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.
With illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

'¦ Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare, whose 'Walks in Rome' is a most delightful itinerary
which one finds in the hands of every visitor to the Eternal City, writes in ' Wander
ings in Spain' a no less charming account of travels in that seldom visited country.
Mr. Hare is no ordinary traveler, who tricks out his page with cheap incident and
clap-trap description ; his book is alike charming to the ordinary reader, and worth
the attention of the earnest student of the new Republic, its people, its customs, its
cities, and its art." — N. Y. Evening Mail.
"It is rarely that we have met a more delightful book of travels, or one more in
structive. The literary style is unusually excellent, and the descriptions graphic, and
marked by a thorough appreciation of Spanish life and character. ... . The
illustrations interspersed in this volume are of such unusual excellence as to deserve
especial mention. Such pictures really help out the letter-press, which is more than
can be said of nine out of ten of the woodcuts with which modern books are so pro
fusely illustrated." — Springfield Republican.
" It is worth a score of ordinary books of travel. He gives us not only facts, but
the impression of facts. As depicted by him, Spain becomes a living reality. We
seem to see its mountains, plains, and valleys; to breathe its air, to walk its streets,
to behold its majestic architectural monuments. We are brought in contact with its
people; we visit them in their homes, we jostle them in the streets, we hear their
voices. We know of no picture of Spain so vivid, yet so truthful, and can heartily
commend the volume as one of the rare works of the day." — California Press.
" We recollect no book that so vividly recalls the country to those who have visited
it, and we should recommend intending tourists to carry it with them as a companion)
of travel." — London Times.
"Mr. Hare's book is admirable. We are sure no one will regret making it the
companion of a Spanish journey. It will bear reading repeatedly when one is moving
among the scenes it describes — no small advantage when the traveling library is
scanty." — Saturday Review.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited, NEW YORK.

3 9002 03222 5774

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
ANNIE BURR JENNINGS
the gift of
ANNIE BURR LEWIS