CONTENTS.
GRANADA.
Page
Lodgings at the Alhambra.—Restoration.—Webs of Falsehood.—The Sierra Nevada Mountains.—Fruits.—Progress of the Peasantry.—The Moors.—Adam’s Visit to Spain.—Expulsion of the Moors.—Decline of the Empire.—Railroads.—Mines.—Early Settlers.—Iberians.—Phœnicians.—Goths.—Moors.—Waning of the Crescent.—Capture of Cordova.—Flight of the last Moorish King
1
OUT OF FRANCE INTO SPAIN.—THE BASQUE PROVINCES.
Biarritz.—Chateau Eugenie.—Dangerous Coast.—Breakwater.—The Virgin’s Partiality.—Bathing Grounds.—Couriers.—Antanazio.—His Honesty and Zeal.—Crossing the Boundary.—Island of Conference.—Spanish Courtesy.—The Basque Provinces.—Peculiar Customs.—Ancestry.—The Language.—Spanish Stupidity.—La Fayette.—St. Sebastian.—Duke of Wellington’s Sack of the City.—Bull-ring.—Likeness of the Country to Switzerland.—Physique of the Inhabitants.—Productions.—Industries.—Primogeniture.—Tolasa.—Vittoria.—Wellington’s Victory.—Miranda.—Roderick, the last King of the Goths
6
BURGOS.—THE ESCORIAL.
A sleepy Town.—Origin of the Name.—Fusion of the Crowns of Leon and Castile.—The Coffer of the Cid.—Swindling a Jew.—Moorish Lies.—Hotels.—A Change of Base.—The Cathedral.—Statues.—Carvings.—Verdict of Charles V. and Philip II.—Devil beating the Railroad.—Carving by Nicodemus.—Miracles.—Castle.—Engineer hoisted by his own Petard.—Burgos Taverns.—Philip II. His Character.—Conception of a Palace, Monastery, and Tomb.—The Escorial.—Dimensions.—St. Lawrence.—Turning-point of his Life.—Description of the Palace.—Death of Philip II.—Mausoleum.—The Sagrario.—A toe-tal Loss.—Cellini Crucifix.—Library
15
MADRID.—A SABBATH AND A CARNIVAL.
A polyglot Valet.—Missionary Schools.—Foreign Chaplains.—The Church Militant.—Upper Chamber.—Religious Intolerance.—Inquisition.—Persecution.—Spanish Sabbath.—Devotion.—Infidelity.—The Prado.—Bull-ring.—Wine Shops.—Frolicking.—Dancing.—Cheap Wines.—Carnival.—Costumes.—Politeness.—Maskers.—Ancient Belle.—Hobbling Monk.—Pope.—Natural Goose.—Devil.—Orang-outang.—General Abandon.—Religion and Folly.—Good Humor
29
MADRID.—PALACE.—BANK.—PICTURE-GALLERY.
Napoleon’s Epigram.—Royal Palace.—Cavalry.—Military Parade.—Plains of Castile.—Armory.—Swords of Gonzalo de Cordova, Ferdinand, and Charles V.—Armor of Boabdil.—Revolvers.—Mighty Men of War.—Toledo Blade.—Stables.—Spanish Horses.—Merino Sheep.—Royal Equipage.—Crazy Jane’s Carriage.—Her Effigy.—Mischievous Display.—French Language and Influence.—Slow Coaches.—Cheap Labor.—Architecture.—Banking-house.—Bank of Spain.—Repose of Manner.—Gold at last.—Railroads.—Post-office.—Personal Identity.—Rebel General.—Lost Letters.—Telegraphs.—Progress.—Picture-gallery.—The Immaculate Conception.—Vision of St. Bernard.—Christ sinking under his Cross.—Equestrian Portrait of Charles V.—Titian.—Correggio.—Mary in the Garden.—Blas del Prado.—Hidden Gems.—Murillo.—Material and Ideal Art
39
TOLEDO.—ITS FLEAS, LANDLORDS, ANTIQUITIES, AND LUNATICS.
Progress.—Hotel Lino.—The wicked Flea.—Easy Manners.—Breakfast.—Model Landlord and Waiters.—Toledo Butter.—City set on a Hill.—Monuments of departed Peoples.—Romance.—Architecture.—Oldest City in the World.—Mythic Founders.—Perfidy of Roderick.—Reign of the Archbishops.—Decline of Power and Glory.—Cathedral.—Descent of the Virgin.—A fair Penitent.—Orthodoxy of the Priesthood.—Burning of the Missals.—The Muzarabe.—The dead Lion better than a living Dog.—Eloquent Epitaph.—Honors paid the Virgin.—The Alcazar.—Derivation of Mango.—Spanish Pride.—Peacocks.—Foreign Impressions.—Moorish Gates.—San Juan de los Reyes.—Thank-offerings.—St. Florinde.—Cave of Hercules.—Legend of the Cid.—Café.—Toledo Blades.—Virtues of the Tagus.—Sword of Boabdil.—Lunatic Asylum.—Don Quixote.—Crazy Editors.—Statistics.—Causes of Insanity.—Spanish Slowness and Temperance.—Sophomores
53
LA MANCHA.—ANDALUSIA.
Smoking.—Cigarettes at Dinner.—Taking Sanctuary.—Retort.—Tobacco Culture.—Cuban Monopoly.—Chewing tabooed.—Early Smoking.—Children and Ladies.—Tobacco Factory.—Cigareras.—Flavored Cigars.—Potash.—Soda.—Opium.—Intemperate Clergyman.—La Mancha.—Don Quixote.—Treeless Landscape.—Sheep.—Corn.—Primitive Ploughing.—Husbandry.—Primogeniture.—Lands of Church and Crown.—Agricultural Schools.—Periodicals.—Sierra Morena Mountains.—Cautious Engineer.—Manjibar.—Pickled Chicken.—Moving on.—Perfumes of Arabia.—Resting-place.—Transatlantic Indigestion.—Andalusia.—Ignorance and Crime.—Government Education.—Statistics.—Salamanca.—Influence of Climate.—Population.—The Aloe and Olive.—Oranges and Lemons.—Hills of Andalusia.—Sheep
69
CORDOVA.
Cleanliness.—Paved Streets.—Bridge over the Guadalquiver.—Age of the City.—Wholesale Butchery.—Government.—Mosques.—Baths.—Inns.—Schools.—Library.—Rural Fête.—Departed Glory.—Palace of Abdurhama.—Beautiful Evergreens.—Fruits.—Interior of an Ancient House.—Moorish Style.—Cathedral.—Converted Mosque.—Gate of Pardon.—Court-yard.—Orange Grove.—Fountains.—Gold Fish.—Elders in the Gate.—The Mecca of Europe.—Holy Shrine.—Symbolism.—Indulgences.—Bronze Ornaments.—Inscription in Gothic and Arabic.—Dimensions.—Precious Stones.—The Mihrab.—The Kalif’s Oratory.—Mosaics.—Devout Mussulmans.—Chapels.—Etching on Stone.—Impressive Monuments
83
SEVILLE, ITS CATHEDRAL AND BULL-FIGHTS.
Delicious Climate.—Customs.—Exile of the Moors.—Consequent Decay.—The Alcazar.—Barbaric Splendor.—A Christian Kingdom.—Cathedral.—A House of God.—Giant Columns.—High Mass.—Unconscious Worshipper.—Beautiful Women.—Venus-worship.—Port of Seville.—Fruits.—Don Juan.—Barber of Seville.—Murillo’s House.—Mosaics.—Moorish Castle.—Auto-da-fé.—The Quemadaro.—Field of St. Sebastian.—Circulation of the Bible.—Tower of Gold.—Treasure House.—Prison.—Bins of Gold.—Decline and Fall of Spain.—Demoralizing Influences.—Corruption and Robbery.—Yellow Fever.—Guadalquiver.—Amphitheatre.—A Delicate Lady.—Warlike Husband.—Her Description of a Bull-fight.—The Ring.—Spectators.—Trumpet-blast.—Picadors.—Entrance of the Bull.—Charge.—Horseman.—Terrible Sight.—Chulos.—Banderilleros.—Squibs.—Matador.—Applause.—The Ladies.—Different Tastes.—Squeamish Husband
92
SEVILLE.
La Caridad.—Art Treasures.—St. John.—Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.—Moses striking the Rock.—Recovery of Pictures at Waterloo.—French Thieves.—Venus de Medici.—Thoughtful Amateur.—Museum Fees.—Guardian Angels of Seville.—Martyrdom.—Murillo’s Pages of the Gospel.—Old Masters.—Decay of Art.—Bull-fighting.—The Season.—Exaggeration.—Curious Development.—Effect on the National Character.—Street-plays.—Feats.—Demoralization.—Spanish Pride.—Morality.—Contrast between the North and South of Europe.—Costume of Andalusia.—Fashion.—Life of the People.—Price of Labor.—Food.—Climate.—Beer.—Wine cheaper than Water.—Sack.—Intemperance.—Physical Circumstances.—Social Burdens.—Beautiful Trait.—Obedience.—Veneration of the Aged
107
MALAGA.
An ill Wind that blows no Good.—Curious Excuse for Crime.—Old World like the New.—Resort for Invalids.—Genial Clime.—Range of Thermometer.—Mineral Waters.—Sunshine.—Rainfall.—Heavenly Skies.—Advice to Consumptives.—Grapes.—Raisins.—Wine and Oil.—A Sabbath.—Service at the British Consulate.—Mrs. Partington.—English Chaplain.—Sermon.—Narrow Streets.—Sweet Memories of Cologne.—Picturesque Moors.—Cathedral.—High Mass.—Florid Architecture.—Fruits.—Prayer of a Dying Moor.—Florinde.—Chronicles of Washington Irving.—Luxuries of Travel.—Diligences.—Out of Malaga.—Obstinate Mules.—Night.—Mountains.—Setting Sun.—Lovely Scenery.—Orchards.—Armed Guards.—Gentlemen of the Road.—Loja.—Inn.—Flock of Fleas.—A Stimulant.—Setting out for Granada.—Santa Fé.—Its History.—Granada at Last.—In the Grounds of the Alhambra
118
THE ALHAMBRA.
The Paradise of the West.—Rivers of Eden.—New Damascus.—Granada.—Origin of the Name.—Fruits.—Mountains.—Skies.—Moorish Empire broken.—Zawi Ibu Zeyri.—Alhambra.—Meaning of the Name.—Extension of the Castle.—Original Grandeur.—Its first Prince.—His Improvements.—Roads.—Colleges.—Hospitals.—Canals.—Arts.—Sciences.—Degeneracy.—Intrigues and Murders.—Ruin.—Final Overthrow of Moorish Power.—Ferdinand and Isabella.—Columbus.—Fleas and Cake.—Blessing and Gold.—New World in the West.—Bookstore.—Irving’s Tales.—Gate of Judgment.—Plateau.—Desolation.—Court of Myrtles.—Court of Lions.—Boabdil.—Abencerrages.—Treachery.—Hall of Ambassadors.—Bensaken.—Walking Cyclopedia.—Prudence.—Washington Irving.—Dolores.—Queen’s Garden.—Hall of Two Sisters.—Harem.—Linderaka Gardens.—Queen’s Dressing-room.—Gypsies.—Perfume Bath.—Water Bath.—Governor’s Court.—Bowed Slab.—The Morning Star
129
THE ALHAMBRA (continued).
The poor Cobbler of Granada.—Spanish Rule of Living.—Xantippe.—Search for Gold.—Messenger Dove.—Dreams.—Landslip.—Fever cured.—Conversion.—The Watch Tower.—Magic Bell.—Parapanda Mountains.—Reign of Law.—Gift to the Duke of Wellington.—Bloody Pass.—Vega.—Water Gates.—The Last Sigh of the Moor.—His Mother’s Reproof.—Moorish Race.—Political Prisoners.—Birthplace of Eugenie.—The Generaliffe.—Ancient Tree.—Suspected Queen.—Women of Spain.—Sins of Climate
144
GRANADA.
Troubadour and Gypsy Life.—Dwarf.—Horse.—Fair.—Physique of the gitanos.—Habits.—Habitations.—Moral Principle.—Chastity.—Swindling.—Superstition.—Fortune-tellers.—Credulity.—Trickery.—Parisian Spiritualist.—Gypsy Creed.—Musings.—Causes of Astonishment.—Paintings and Cathedrals.—Unworthy Ambition.—Silence in Church.—Cathedral of Granada.—Chapel Royal.—Tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella.—Tomb of Philip and Crazy Jane.—Obliging Priest.—Fees.—Leaving Granada.—Disguised Thief.—Seizure and Imprisonment.—Out of Granada
155
GENEVA.—FREYBURG.—BERNE.
Geneva.—Color of the Rhone.—Cæsar’s Wall.—Cathedral.—Calvin.—Lady Jane Grey.—Rousseau.—Voltaire.—Madame de Stael.—Byron.—Jura.—Mont Blanc.—Celebrities.—Coppet.—Ninon.—St. Protais.—Lisus.—Morges.—Grand Muveran.—Diablerets.—Mont Rosa.—Mont Blanc.—Lausanne.—St. Anne.—Sacred Rat.—Cathedral.—Convention of Reformers.—Gibbon.—Classic Ground.—Chillon.—Bonnivard.—Torture Chamber.—Hotel Byron.—Railroad.—Ice.—Swiss Valleys.—Freyburg.—Suspension Bridge.—Great Organ.—Cathedral.—Wonderful Music: its Power and Sweetness.—Berne.—Morat.—Burgundian Custom.—Public Bears.—Unfortunate Englishman.—Curious Clock.—Market Women.—Federal Palace.—Swiss Cantons.—Bernese Alps.—Thun.—Jungfrau
165
THE BRUNIG PASS.—LUCERNE.
Pleasant Ride.—Interlaken.—Lakes Thun and Brienz.—Abendberg.—Faulhorn.—Giesback.—Illumination.—Ascent of the Brunig.—Vale of Meyringen.—Falls of Reichenbach.—Lungern.—Splendid Courage.—Cheap Suffering.—Modern Reformers.—Mount Pilatus.—Myths.—Lucerne.—Population.—St. Leger.—Service.—Crucifix.—A Devotee.—Mass.—Organ.—Cloisters.—Lake Lucerne.—Lion of Lucerne.—Dance of Death.—Striking Scenery.—Gersau.—Brunnen.—Bay of Uri.—Sir James Mackintosh.—Swiss Patriots.—Chapel of Tell.—Cascades.—Fluellen.—Altorf.—Captain Lott
186
THE BLACK VIRGIN OF EINSIEDELN.—LIFE IN SWITZERLAND, ETC.
The Hermit Meinrad.—His Black Virgin.—Murder.—Detective Ravens.—Monastery.—Miracle.—Shrine.—Pilgrims.—Revenue.—A Barefooted Penitent.—Village Church.—Fountain.—Gallery.—Abbot.—Hospitality.—Library.—College.—Monastic Life.—Adieu.—Pleasant Quarters.—Meals.—Hotel Life.—John Bull.—A Charming Couple.—Americans.—A National Feature.—Slang.—Language.—Manners.—An Elegant Lady.—Selfishness.—French and Swiss Railroads.—Improvements.—Accidents.—Accommodations
200
CANTON APPENZELL.—SWISS CUSTOMS.
Trogen.—Convent.—Memento mori.—Scenery.—Religion.—German Service.—Curious Custom.—Constance.—Martyrs.—Dividing Line.—Remarkable Change.—Cause.—Pillory.—Evening Bell.—Watchman’s Song.—Bridal Custom.—Athletic Sports.—Democracy.—Assembly.—Office Seekers.—Council.—Roads.—Taxation.—Schools.—Foreign Pupils.—Pedestrians.—Moral Culture.—Treatment of Women.—Cows.—Farm Work.—Manufactures.—Mechanics.—God’s Acre.—Graves.—Funeral Ceremonies.—Simplicity.—Lonely Burial.—Unpleasing Custom.—Costumes.—The Upper Classes.—Refinement and Culture.—Manners.—Patriotism.—A Challenge
212
GERMAN WATERING-PLACES.—BINGEN ON THE RHINE.
A German Watering-place.—Land of Salt.—Salt Works.—Last of the Barons.—Homburg.—Kursaal.—Palace.—Gaming.—Kreusnach.—Spas.—Salt Springs.—Cure-house.—Kissingen.—Baths.—Cures.—Long Sledge-ride.—Princess of Mecklenburg.—Clerical Postman.—Whey-cure.—Grape-cure.—Rest.—Rheingraffenstein.—Ebernburg.—Relics of Reformers.—French Cannon Balls.—The Bingen of Poetry.—The Real Bingen.—Bishop Hatto’s Tower.—Maüse-thurme.—Southey.—Ehrenfels.—Rudesheimer Vineyards.—Wine-making.—Shallow Soil.—Johannisberg Vineyard.—The Rhine.—Mayence.—Printing.—Guttenberg’s Statue.—Cathedral
232
PILGRIMAGE TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.
Tomb of Charlemagne.—The Dead Emperor.—Cathedral.—Consecration.—Holy Shrine.—Healing Waters.—Palace.—Holy Relics.—Remarkable List.—Septennial Exhibition.—Sultan of Turkey.—Crowd.—Order and Devotion.—Sultan and Suite.—Stolidity.—Priests and Women.—A Crush.—Pageant opened.—Procession.—The Relics.—Puseyite Priest.—On the Road to Rome.—Superstition.—Pictures.—Virgin’s Garment.—Modern Style.—Holy Shirt.—Other Relics.—Pilgrims.—Revenue.—Waters.—Fountain.—Music.—Invalids.—Kurhaus.—Social Ease.—Baths.—Sulphur Water.—Antiquities.—Tower of Granus.—Statue of Charlemagne.—Bust and Skull
245
FRANKFORT.
Graveyard.—Childish Plays.—Cheerful Graves.—Grave of Goethe’s Mother.—Inscription.—Lovely Sentiment.—Coffin of Goethe.—Wealthy Jew.—Humiliation.—Ancient Glory.—Ariadne.—Elegant Cars.—Smokers.—Pine Forests.—Women’s Rights.—Beer Drinking.—A Good Arrangement.—Frankfort-on-the-Oder.—Krewz.—Dinner.—Gardens.—Scenery.—Nakal.—Bromberg.—Wedges.—Attentive Servant.—Frontier.—Passports.—The Vistula.—Poland.—Warsaw
264
WARSAW.
Historic Legend.—The Jesuits.—Partition.—Last Insurrection.—Nationality crushed out.—Attempted Insurrection.—Defeat.—Warsaw.—Armed Despotism.—Discontent.—Precarious Prosperity.—Russian Rule and Language.—Fate of a Spy.—Consequence.—Russian Soldiery.—Ill-manners.—Botanical Gardens.—Observatory.—Palace.—Sobieski’s Monument.—Grave Error.—Illumination.—Streets.—Drunkenness.—Climate.—Lutheran Church.—Relics of Romanism.—Mendicants.—Jewish Quarter.—Hospital.—War of Religions.—Statue of the Virgin.—Little Russia.—Funeral.—English Cock
273
FROM WARSAW TO ST. PETERSBURG.
Pretentious Hotel.—Splendid Bridge.—Polite Ticket-seller.—Cars.—Prairie.—Wretched Peasantry.—Jews.—Railroad Employes.—Lapy.—Mother and Son.—Bialystok.—Grodno.—Diet of Poland.—Last King of Poland.—Jewish Holiday.—Lithuania.—Plains.—Napoleon’s Hill.—Monument.—Wilna.—Ruins.—Insurrection.—Babel.—Dunaberg.—Captive.—Short Night.—Serfs.—Reform.—Board of Arbitrators.—Emancipation.—Pskof.—Lady Smoker.—St. Petersburg
284
ST. PETERSBURG.
Searching Process.—Peculiar Costumes.—Rough Streets.—Russian Bath.—Dinner.—Model Guide.—Elegant Diction.—Peter the Great.—Catharine I.—Striking Contrasts.—Accommodating Weather.—Palace of the Emperor.—Column of Alexander.—Statue of Peter the Great.—Boy Czars.—Peter’s Lawyers.—Devotion.—Cathedral.—Trophies.—Isaac’s Cathedral.—Amazing Splendor.—Worship.—Offerings.—Holy of Holies.—Behind the Scenes.—Careful Husbands.—Greek and Romish Churches.—Lent.—Sabbath.—Exorcism.—Honors paid the Virgin
293
RUSSIAN ART, CUSTOMS, AND MANNERS.
Winter Palace.—Ways of Royalty.—Crown Jewels.—Orloff Diamond.—Hermitage.—Art Galleries.—Curious Code of Laws.—Royal Museum.—Peter’s Walking-stick.—Art Culture.—Condition of the Masses.—Laborers.—Mechanics.—Prices.—Rent.—Food.—Dress.—Peculiar Custom.—Polite Bankers.—Despot.—Justice.—Verdicts.—Story of Labanoff.—Siberia.—Abuses.—Academy of Science.—Zoological Museum.—Sunset on the Neva.—Boatman.—Light at Evening-tide
310
FROM ST. PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW.
American Engineers.—Sleeping Arrangements.—Newspapers.—Drama.—Courtesy.—Lubanskaia.—Dinner.—Villages.—The Volga.—Murdered Bishop.—Sleeping Car.—Ladder.—Russian Jargon.—Pathetic Appeal.—Board.—Refreshments.—Greek Ecclesiastic.—Patriarch Nicon.—New Jerusalem.—Profanity.—Tyranny.—Revolt.—Pope of the North.—Emperor’s Slight.—Nicon’s Humility.—Banishment.—Patriarchates.—Dead Level.—Flight of Freedom
322
THE KREMLIN AND THE BELLS OF MOSCOW.
A Swiss Landlord.—Fleas.—Shrines.—Palaces, Cottages, and Churches.—The Moskva.—Circular City.—Kremlin Walls.—Gates.—Chief Entrance.—Picture of the Redeemer.—Respect.—Cannon.—Miracle.—Splendid Scene.—Tower of Ivan.—Bells.—Medium of Worship.—Holy City.—Pilgrims.—Bell-making.—Precious Metals.—Silver Bells.—Chapel of the Betrothed.—Music of the Bells
330
THE CHURCHES OF MOSCOW.
Cathedral of the Assumption.—Bones of the Patriarchs.—The Iconastasis.—Sanctuary.—Archbishop’s Throne.—Coronation Ceremony.—Tombs.—Cathedral of the Archangel Michael.—Religious Freedom.—Churches.—Cathedral of St. Basil.—Archangel Cathedral.—Pilgrims.—Golgotha.—Sacristy.—Religion.—Holy Oil.—Baptism.—Making of the Holy Chrism
340
PALACE AND INSTITUTIONS OF MOSCOW.
Royal Palace.—Empress’s Drawing-room.—Empress’s Cabinet.—Hall of St. George.—Hall of St. Andrew.—Gold Court.—Napoleon’s Descent.—Treasures.—Historical Curiosities.—Precious Orb.—Foundling Hospital.—Mortality of Foundlings.—Orphan Asylum.—Sheep’s Clothing.—Harvest Season.—Jews.—Peasants.—Riding School.—Wax-show.—Ethnological Society.—Travel.—Sydney Smith’s Stick
350
FROM MOSCOW TO ST. PETERSBURG.
Commercial Travellers.—Sparrow Hills.—Church of the Saviour.—Simonoff Monastery.—Novo-Devichi Convent.—The Moskva.—A Holiday.—Napoleon’s March.—Borodino.—Evacuation of Moscow.—French Enthusiasm.—Triumphal Entry.—Surprise.—Incendiarism.—Return of the French.—Horrors of the March.—Russian Barbarism.—Public Kissing.—From Moscow to St. Petersburg.—Fussy Ladies.—Klin.—Dinner.—Tver.—Beggars.—Night without Darkness.—The Fussy Ladies again.—Sunrise.—Marriage Customs
359
FINLAND.
Americans.—Cronstadt.—Fortifications.—Vessels.—Smoking.—Wyborg.—Saw-mills.—Channel.—Ruined Tower.—Submission of Finland.—Religion.—Government.—Harvests.—Famines.—Army.—Wages.—Fens.—Lakes and Islands.—Drosky.—Huge Stones.—Excursion.—Eden in the North.—Serpent in the Garden.—Long Bills.—Attentions paid Strangers.—A Finnish Lady.—Fishermen.—A Killing Man.—Gulf of Finland.—Fredericksham.—Sclava.—Hard Case.—Social Customs
371
Finland (continued).
Helsingfors.—Sweaborg.—Fortified Islands.—Society House.—Ducal Palace.—Finnish Gentlemen.—Senate House.—University.—Observatory.—Library.—Literature.—Kalewala.—Schiller and Shakespeare.—Language.—Congress.—Coats of Arms.—Botanical Garden.—House of Refreshment.—Health Establishment.—Mineral Fountain.—Rocky Islands.—Fishing.—Peasantry.—Abo.—Hotel.—Good Manners.—Castle.—Cathedral.—Tombs.—Conflagration.—Carriole.—Kibitka.—Bondkara.—Finns
383
SWEDEN.
Harbor of Abo.—Swedish Customs.—Eating and Drinking.—Climate.—The Baltic.—Stockholm.—Porters.—Hotel Rydburg.—Pleasant Quarters.—Scandinavia.—Odin.—Sagas.—Christianity.—Lutheran Religion.—King.—Congress.—Hospital.—Physicians.—Clergymen.—Education.—Religious Toleration.—The Press.—Cost of Living.—Vice.—The Riddarholm’s Kyrkan.—Tomb of Gustavus Adolphus.—Reformation.—Royal Palace.—Picture Gallery.—Library.—Codex Aureus.—King of Sweden.—Mimic War.—Standing Army.—Order.—Thieves
394
Sweden (continued).
Drottningholm.—Lake Malar.—Sigtuna.—Odin.—Superstition.—Pirates.—Rural Life.—Professor Olivecrona.—Islands.—Chateau.—Commercial Life.—Manuscripts.—University of Upsala.—Codex Argenteus.—Icelandic Literature.—Standard of Education.—Students.—Costume.—Cathedral.—Statue of Thor.—Old Upsala.—Mora Stone.—Mass Meetings.—Graves of Pagan Deities.—Temple of Odin.—Ancient Tower.—Battle-field of Faith.—Deer Park Restaurant.—Social Customs.—Swedish Homes.—Content.—Moral Progress
409
Sweden (continued).
Steam Canal.—The Oscar.—View of Stockholm.—Sodertelje.—St. Olaf.—The Gota Canal.—Castles and Legends.—Soderkoping.—Tavern Breakfast.—Sabbath in Sweden.—Church.—Costumes.—Service.—Snuffing and Nasal Singing.—Watering-place.—Physician.—College of Health.—Baths.—Mineral Waters.—Emigration.—Lodging and Board
423
Sweden (continued).
On the Gota Canal again.—Working-girl.—Lake Asplagen.—Swedish Professor.—Lake Roxen.—Berg.—The Vetra-Kloster.—Graveyard.—Tombs of the Douglases.—School-house.—Dinner on the Canal.—Crops.—Lock-keeper.—Lake Boren.—Motala.—Iron-works.—Lake Wetter.—Wadstena.—Pea-crop.—Peasantry.—Labor.—Cold.—Sunset.—Forsvik.—Russian Gentleman.—Lake Wenner.—Trout.—Falls of Trollhatten.—River.—Unfortunate Sailor.—Collection.—Hongfel Castle.—Gottenburg.—Cheap Lodgings.—Museum.—Daily News.—Training House for Servants.—Philanthropy
433
NORWAY.
Embarkation.—Breakfast.—Skager-rack and Cattegat.—Freidericksvern.—Christiania.—Hotel du Nord.—Flowers and Fountains.—Stove.—Norwegian Breakfast.—Museum.—Superstition.—Duel of the Girdle.—Bridal Ornaments.—Heathen Relics.—Learning and Letters.—Lake Mjosen.—English Commercial Traveller.—Boat Library.—Sportsmen.—Church.—Fat Pastor.—Remnants of Popery.—Costumes.—The Lord’s Supper.—Service.—Devotion and Reverence.—Oneness of the Church.—Lillehammer.—Cheap Living.—Cripple.—Christiania.—Carriole.—Post Horses and Boys.—Agershaus.—Robin Hood of Norway.—Benevolent Institutions.—Grave of Bradshaw
447
DENMARK.
Skager-rack and Cattegat.—Magnificent Sunset.—Elsinore.—Toll.—House of Tycho Brahe.—Kronborg.—Treaty of Vienna.—Danish Giant.—Fortifications.—Hamlet’s Grave.—True History.—Royal Castle.—Queen of Christian II.—Touching Prayer.—Royal Forest.—Castle of Peace.—Denmark.—Her History.—Valdemar II.—Schleswig-Holstein.—Christianity.—General Intelligence.—Education.—Copenhagen.—Thorvaldsen’s Museum.—Statues.—Vanity.—Hall of Christ.—Gems and Bronzes.—Vor Frue Kirke.—Religion and Art.—Church Service.—Baptism.—Love of Amusement.—Theatres.—Public Gardens.—Museum.—Ruins.—Monuments.—South American Gentleman.—Zealand.—Fleas.—Kiel.—Elmshorn.—Home Again
462
SPAIN.
CHAPTER I.
GRANADA.
IN the grounds of the Alhambra, the ancient palace of the Moorish kings of Granada, what time those conquerors of Spain here held their right regal court, I have come to sit down and to rest.
My lodgings are just under the walls of the old castle, in sight of its crumbling towers, in hearing of its many falling waters, and under the shadow of its English elms, which the Duke of Wellington gave to Spain. At any moment a few steps take me into the courts and halls and chambers of the Alhambra. In years past, while this pearl of Arab art and Oriental splendor was silently suffered to fall into ruin, with the lapse of centuries, it has been the habit of some travelled authors more addicted to romance than others, to get the easy privilege of sharing lodgings with the bats in some deserted chamber, and they doubtless fancied themselves inspired with the genius of the place, as they dreamed and wrote where fair sultanas with their charms eclipsed the splendors of the fairy place itself.
As it is no part of my purpose to indulge in romance while writing these sketches of the Alhambra and of Spain, and as the walls of a comfortable inn are much more to the taste of a weary traveller than the stone floors and open windows of a tumbling old castle, it is my preference to take up my abode for the present with the good people in the Alhambra Hotel, and not with the keepers of the palace itself. Besides, there is no choice left. The government has undertaken the work of restoring the Alhambra to its pristine beauty, and this process is now going onward under the direction of Sr. Contreras. He has already displayed so much skill in imitating the arabesque decorations of the walls, that only a practised eye perceives the difference when the ancient and the modern art appear in the same chamber.
Architects as well as amateur travellers from all parts of the civilized world, for centuries past, have made artistic and pleasure journeys hither to study and admire the style that has nothing like it except in Spain, and here only where the Moors held sway. And perhaps no work of art in the whole world has been more frequently and fully described than the Alhambra of Granada. History, poetry, and science have tried their several hands upon it. Romance has been so busy with it that it is not an easy task to disentangle the web of fiction, and get the only part of the tale worth knowing. So dear is truth, the simple, naked truth of history, to every true soul, that he is a great doer of evil who seizes upon history, and while professing to write it, weaves into his story the fancies of his own prolific genius, and that so deftly and so charmingly that the whole is accepted as veritable history, and the romance as the most credible and interesting of the whole. Early English history has thus been illustrated and inextricably confused. The spell of the magician’s wand has thus made the conquest of Mexico a poem rather than a reliable narrative. And Spain, more than any other land, is now hopelessly given up to legends and doubtful chronicles, modern and antique, so that one who reads must have either the credulity of a devotee, or the indifference of folly, to read with satisfaction the ancient history of the Peninsula.
But the Alhambra is here! Granada is where it was a thousand years ago! The same deep blue sky, the bluest sky that covers any land, hangs over its magnificent Vega or plain, through which the Darro and the Genil, united, flow! The hills, each one with a story that can be scarcely heard without a tear, stand where and as they did when the Moors were masters of this region, which they thought the terrestrial paradise of man, and immediately under the celestial mansions where the Prophet and the Houris await the coming of all true believers. The Sierra Nevada, covered with perpetual snow, seems close at hand, as it lies on the eastern horizon, and in this cloudless sky and brilliant atmosphere the long range shines like silver mountains in the noontide, as it did when fleet horsemen brought its ice in baskets to cool the drinks of Wali Zawi Ibu Zeyn, its first Moorish king. Those snowy summits reminded the Arabs when they came here of Mount Hermon, and this plain seemed to them to surpass in fertility and beauty the Vega around Damascus.
And to this day the palm-tree, the pomegranate, and the fig, the orange and lemon, the olive and vine, flourish under the genial sun. In these declining years of the nineteenth century, with a railroad running into the city across the heart of this paradise, and telegraphs linking it with Madrid and London and Washington, the peasants still scratch the ground with the root of a tree for a plough, and carry their produce to market on the back of a donkey.
The creations of the Moors in Spain form the most remarkable chapter in human art. To me, Spain has been a new discovery; a sudden revelation of a world within a world; the monuments of an extinct or departed race standing alone in a desert. The generation that now possesses the soil has nothing of the genius or taste or spirit of the barbaric tribes that were once their masters. And the Alhambra at Granada, the Mosque at Cordova, and the Alcazar at Seville, look like the wrecks of a stranded empire, whose people live only in their glorious ruins.
In the language of a brilliant historian, “Spain stands to-day a hideous skeleton among living nations.”
They have a legend here that Adam made a visit to the earth a few years ago, to see how his farm was getting on. He alighted in Germany, and found schools and colleges and books, and the people intent on learning. He soon left it for France, where the people dressed in fantastic styles, and were mad upon works of art and improvements unknown to our great ancestor. Disgusted with all he saw, he came down to Spain, and, with delight, exclaimed, “This is just as I left it.”
Adam was nearly right. Of all the countries in Europe this is more as it was than any other. The greatest calamity that ever happened to Spain was its expulsion of the Moors; and it will be a century, perhaps many centuries, before the arts and sciences will flourish on this soil as they did before that year, so memorable for the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and the overthrow of the kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. Both those events, forming the most momentous epoch in the history of Spain, occurred in the year 1492, from which period we may date the decline of an empire enriched by the untold wealth of a new world added to its possessions, and strengthened by the destruction of the last stronghold of its former conquerors and masters. Foreign capital and enterprise have forced railroads across her mountains and plains, but the capital and enterprise of the world cannot make them profitable, when the people have no industry and no ambition. The mines of Spain are so rich that she has no need of possessions in the gold fields of the western hemisphere; and they have been known and worked ever since the days of the Phœnicians, when Andalusia was the Tarshish of Holy Scripture. Yet Spain is more distinguished to-day, as being behind the world, than for aught it has done or is doing for itself or others. And it often seems to a traveller here in Spain that he is in the Orient, so many manners and customs, so many works, and, much more, such a want of things he is wont to meet with in the more civilized nations, remind him that he is among a people who have derived much of what they have and are from lands at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.
It has a mixed race of inhabitants. It would not be strange if it had a mixed government also. Successive tides of people have swept over it, and the vestiges of all are left on the surface of the nation. Very little, indeed, is known of the days when the Iberians from Caucasus, and the Celts from Gaul, were the rude settlers of Spain; but the traces are more plain of the Phœnicians, who came here 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, and founded Cadiz and Malaga, and Cordova and Seville. In the year 218 before Christ the Romans came, and, of course, conquered all Spain, and reigned here just six centuries. Then came the Goths, sweeping the Romans out of Spain as they crushed Rome in Italy. And the Goths ruled Spain precisely 300 years. Then came the Moors, and, in two pitched battles, smote the Gothic Christian power to the earth; and, like a hurricane from the African coast, rushed up from the south, and never stayed its destructive course till the crescent had supplanted the cross on every tower in Spain. The Moors were lords of Spain just seven centuries. Gradually the crescent waned, as the Catholic Christian kings recovered strength, until St. Ferdinand captured Cordova, in 1235, and Ferdinand and Isabella completed the work at Granada, on the third day of the year 1492, and the last of the Moorish kings fled from the Alhambra.
CHAPTER II.
OUT OF FRANCE INTO SPAIN—THE BASQUE PROVINCES.
AWAY down in the south-west corner of France, on the Bay of Biscay, was a hamlet on a rock-bound coast, which has of late years suddenly sprung into the notice of the world. The sunshine of imperial favor ripened the modest bud of a humble village into a flower of remarkable beauty. What was a short time since quite unknown, is now the fashionable watering-place of France. Selected by the late Emperor as his autumnal resort, he built a handsome chateau, and named it Eugénie, and thus made the fortune of Biarritz.
Here we spent a few days of rest after a long and wearying journey. The coast is dangerous. The bay is rough to a degree that has become a proverb. An attempt was making under government direction to construct a breakwater, so as to enclose a “harbor of refuge,” and one is greatly needed. A process, new to me, but perhaps common, was going on: that of building rocks, or blocks, to make the projecting pier. Thousands of square feet of rock are here in the hills, but, for some reason, it is preferred to form a concrete mass with stone and cement. These are made in cubes of six or eight feet, with two grooves underneath them, and when they have stood long enough to be proof against water, levers are thrust under them, a derrick hoists them upon a platform which is moved on a railway to the pier, where they are launched off into the deep. The fury of the waves at this point, especially in rough weather, is frightful. The new breakwater was recently swept away. Two or three workmen were caught by the waves rushing higher than was expected, and the poor fellows were carried off into a deeper ocean. This terrified the others, and they declined to expose themselves to such dangers. The priests came to the rescue. They set up an image of the Virgin on an overhanging rock. She looks down benignly on the work and the workmen. Not one has been swept away since she stood there!! Confidence is restored. The breakwater is gradually extending. It will cost an immense sum, and if the Virgin is so successful in saving the lives of the landsmen in building it, one would think she might just as easily save the sailors, and so render the harbor unnecessary.
On this stormy coast, where the surf breaks over huge rocks, and sometimes rushes curiously through them by passages worn in ages of incessant roll, there are several coves where the beach slopes gradually to the sea, and the smooth sand floor furnishes delightful bathing grounds. Here, in the season, the court used to disport itself in other robes than those of royalty, and among the crowds of fashionable people, who in fantastic deshabille indulge in the ocean bath, were daily seen the Emperor and Empress and the remarkable boy who astonished the mayor by being the son of an Emperor when only ten years of age!
A courier, or travelling servant, is usually more of a nuisance than assistance, but I had to have one. He had the Spanish name of Antanazio, was of course familiar with the language, and he spoke French also, but not a word of English. He was a half devout Catholic, and professed to be very discriminating in his faith, rejecting many of the notions of his countrymen, and swallowing others without a strain. He was a big fellow, so big that he could easily have taken me under one arm and my companion on the other, and marched into or out of Spain at any moment. He was the terror of the cabmen and porters and waiters, bullying, swearing, and pushing his way through the thickest of the fight, in those struggles that attend every arrival of a passenger in any part of the world. He was just about as honest as the race to which he belongs. Every traveller thinks his own courier a pattern of honesty. I have had them in a dozen different countries, and never yet was able to put the word honest into the certificate which they craved at the end of the journey. Some are better than others. Any one of them is worse than none, if you have a slight knowledge of the country. Antanazio was in league with every hotel man to get as much out of us as he could, and he made up for his frauds on a large scale by an excess of zeal to save a few coppers for us when a poor porter or sacristan was to be paid for service. The gnat and the camel were familiar to Antanazio. Yet he was one of the best couriers to be found, and he shall have the benefit of this notice.
Just before we leave France to go into Spain we pass a village, here mentioned only to cite an eloquent epigram inscribed around the dial of the clock on its tower: “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.” Even so; each flying moment wounds: the last slays. And after quitting the Hendaye station, we dash across the river Bidassoa, which divides the two kingdoms. It would take us the rest of the day merely to read the history that invests this crossing with interest for all time. A little dry spot is in the bed of the river. There kings and queens and generals have met to settle affairs of state as on neutral ground, and the petty patch has come to be called the Island of Conference. Here, in the middle of the dividing river, Louis XIV. of France had his first meeting with Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, and they were married in the cathedral of St. Jean de Luz on the French side of the river. On the same spot the kings of France and Spain met in 1463 to negotiate; and here too, in 1645, Isabella the daughter of Henry IV. was exchanged for Anna of Austria, the one to be the wife of the king of Spain, and the other of France. In 1526, Francis I., who was a prisoner of Charles V., was here given up, and his two sons accepted as hostages in his stead. We go thousands of miles to visit a spot that has thus been made sacred and famous, yet one can hardly tell why he looks with interest upon ground so sanctified. The grass and the weeds grow just as freely, and the birds are as careless in their songs, and the water flows on as it always flows; but still no thoughtful traveller can pass such landmarks in the march of great events, without pausing to observe the effect which those events have had on the history of the world. And this is one of the greatest objects before us as we enter and traverse Spain. It is a land of history: of romance too; and perhaps both are equally interesting. For every line we cross, and every city and province we visit, is rich in association, even if the land is now but a great sepulchre of great peoples.
And we were in Spain. On the northern frontier, and in instant contact with the people of France, is a race that is Spanish only in name, and hardly that; a race that has, through all the mutations of government in this unstable country, maintained a sort of independence, with rights and privileges, manners and customs so peculiar to themselves, that they may be said to be in Spain, but not of Spain.
On the anniversary of the death of one of their number, the friends gather at the grave, and offer to the departed gifts of bread and fruit, as if they required supplies of food for the endless journey in another world. On the holidays, which are many in a year, they are wild in the dance, with the tambourine and bagpipe and castanet, being far more demonstrative in the height of their excitement than the more southern inhabitants of Spain. They are a proud race, and more proud of their ancestry than any thing else, the poorest peasant among the hills displaying on the door of his hut a coat of arms, and claiming descent from some ancient and illustrious house. As a race they have no trouble in reckoning their pedigree back to Tubal and Noah, and unless your tree of genealogy has branches springing out of a trunk that bears the name of Adam, these people are far ahead of you in the line of their ancestry.
They occupy the Basque Provinces, three divisions, small in extent, lying among the Pyrenees and on the Bay of Biscay. They are probably lineal descendants of the first settlers of Spain, and may be correct in their boast that they are not tainted with Roman or Moorish or Gothic-German blood. They still speak a language so strange and so formidable to a foreigner that it is said no one has been able to master it. There is a tradition among them that the devil himself spent five years in studying it, and was able to learn three words only. But after much inquiry I could not trace this tradition to any reliable source. In fact, it is said that one or two bold and persevering scholars have actually made some inroads into the language, but the discoveries made were a very poor reward for the time and labor spent.
Into this new yet ancient country we enter at once, for it is the northern gateway of Spain. At the outset of our journey we must “change cars,” for the Spanish government, in granting license for a railroad to enter its domains, refused to allow it to be made of the same width with that of France, as it would in that case afford to the French facilities for invasion in case of war! The idea is very characteristic of Spain. And the same stupidity that dictates such an impediment to travel forgets that every train of passengers coming in from the north is an invasion that is just as fatal to the regime of Spain as would be another incursion of Goths or Gauls. Ideas, rather than arms, work revolutions now-a-days.
The mountains have stretched themselves across this frontier to the verge of the ocean, and on our right as we go south is a narrow pass between two precipitous hills, and thus a safe and easily defended path for ships is made. Within is a snug harbor, where the largest fleet may lie unseen, and unreached by the storms at sea. Out of this little port once sailed a man whose name is dear to the American heart; for in the days that tried the souls of our fathers La Fayette came here into Spain and took passage to the Western world, to give his sword and his fortune and his life to the cause of liberty. A little farther on, a high castle-crowned hill defends the city of St. Sebastian. It is the first place of any importance after entering Spain. Being so near to France, and so easy of access by rail, it is common for Englishmen and others to take a trip to St. Sebastian, from Biarritz, which is only two or three hours distant, and then they can say they have been to Spain. There is nothing of interest here to attract the traveller. The Duke of Wellington, after losing 5,000 men in storming it, drove out the French, and when his army got possession of the town, they sacked it, set it on fire, and enacted such scenes of wild debauchery as are not remembered without a blush of shame after the lapse of more than half a century. To please visitors from the north, and to make their town a fashionable resort in the season, the people of St. Sebastian have a bull-ring, and exhibit on a small scale the national entertainment of a weekly bull-fight. For it must not be supposed that Spanish blood only is delighted with this savage sport. The French love to see blood; and the English, whose highest national sport is the prize-fight; and Americans, who have been known to allow a prize-fighter to be sent to their national Congress,—all take great pleasure in seeing horses, bulls, and men, in one grand mêlée, wounded, bleeding, dying; and the fairest of some of the most delicate little women of these Christian countries clap their hands when the bull gets the advantage and tosses his bleeding victim into the air.
We are now in the midst of the mountains. The road gradually rises as we advance, and frequently makes its way through the heart of the hills. The valleys lie sweetly far below. If the road followed the line of the valleys it might be exposed to frequent injury by floods. And as this range must be crossed, it is better to make the ascent as easy as possible. We might be in Switzerland, so like it are these farms on the hill-sides and in the valleys; the sounds that break on the ear are the same: the houses scattered in cosy nooks, or clustered in little villages which the church crowns with a blessing as of heaven. The oxen have their head and necks covered with a sheepskin or a woollen blanket to protect them from the rain. They drag a cart of which the wheels are a solid block of wood secured with a tire. There has been a fair to-day in some one of the villages, and men and women are going home, leading cattle they have purchased. The men are well formed, athletic, straight, and good-looking. The women are a superior race, and even when leading a calf the peasant woman steps proudly along as if she were entering her drawing-room. Their hair is their glory, worn pendant on their backs. Of their moral and mental culture little is known, as they have slight intercourse with the outer world. From the beginning they have had a government of their own, sometimes being cut up into republics, and managing the most of matters in their own way. Even when they have claimed their own congress, and tariff, and army, the Spanish government has thought it the part of discretion to humor them. When emerging from these provinces into Castile, our luggage was searched to find any tobacco we might be smuggling: for this is one of the privileges of the Basque Provinces, that they may import tobacco free of duty, but it is under a tariff the moment we pass beyond. In this region the Indian corn of our own country is the principal production. Peaches, apples, and cherries are abundant. Iron mines are worked, and furnaces are frequently seen in full blast. Cloth and paper mills are in operation. The inhabitants have an energy and enterprise far superior to that of the people farther south. Many of them become seamen. Some have made discoveries in distant seas. One of the most peculiar of their ideas, and one that may account for the lofty bearing of their women, is, that the right of primogeniture exists among them, but it applies to the first-born child, whether son or daughter! This often places the woman at the head of the house, so that she can say, as few women elsewhere can say, “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is my own.”
Property is very widely diffused among the people; farms seldom comprise more than ten acres, so that there can be no great practical distinctions among them on account of wealth. They divide their farms with hedges instead of fences or walls, while in the more southern parts of Spain they put up no fences of any sort, but merely mark the bounds of land with a stone, which cannot be moved without incurring a curse.
In a charming valley, among hills clothed with chestnut-trees, and the meadows with orchards of apples and pears, lies the village of Tolosa, and farther on we rested at Vitoria, a famous city, the capital of the Province of Alava, and celebrated as the scene of a great battle between the English and the French in 1813. The Duke of Wellington led the British and beat the French under Joseph Buonaparte, who fled in such disorder and haste that all the pictures he had stolen in Spain, and five millions of dollars, fell into the hands of the Duke.
We are now leaving the Basque Provinces: Miranda is the first town in Castile at which we stop. An immense railroad station is in progress of erection, showing the expectation at least of a great amount of business. We hope the hope may be realized. Crossing the river Zadorra, and now the Ebro, and along the Oroncillo, we are again in the midst of the wildest and grandest mountain scenery, as we take our iron way through the frightful gorges of Pancorbo. And even here the legends of Spain begin to invest the crags and ruined castles with the interest of romance. For on these heights are the remnants of the castle where Roderick, the last king of the Goths, brought the beautiful Florinda, whom he saw as David saw Bathsheba, and seeing loved, not wisely but too well, and loving, lost his crown, his honor, his kingdom, and his life.
CHAPTER III.
BURGOS—THE ESCORIAL.
NOTHING purely Spanish comes in sight till we get to Burgos. This old city is half-way from the frontier to Madrid, and is just so slow, sleepy, and sluggish a town as one should see to get a correct impression of Spain at the start. About a thousand years ago, Diego Porcelos, a knight of Castile, had a beautiful daughter, Sulla Bella, who was loved and won by a German, and they founded this city, calling it from a German Burg, a fortified place, Burgos. For many long years it was independent, governed by a council. Afterwards, Gonzales was made the governor, as Count of Castile, who and his heirs reigned until, under Ferdinand I., in 1067, by a happy marriage, the crowns of Leon and Castile were fused into one.
BRIDGE, GATEWAY, AND CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS.
The legendary hero of Spain, whose exploits are only less than those of Hercules, was born in Burgos, and what is more and better, his bones are here in the Town Hall; and if any doubt is entertained of the fact that he actually lived and died and was a wonderful man, between the dates of his birth and death, such doubts ought to be dispelled by a sight which I had of an old brass-bound, mouldering chest, sacredly preserved in one of the inner and holy chambers of the cathedral, and called the coffer of the Cid. Once on a time the Cid had occasion to borrow a large sum of money of two Jewish bankers in Burgos, and he left with them as security this trunk, with, as he said, all his jewels and gold in it. He did not pay the money when it was due, and the chest being opened by the lenders was found full only of sand! It was thought in those days a merit to cheat a Jew, and the Romanists show their estimate of the trick to this day by keeping the swindling coffer among their precious relics. But it is hardly probable that a Jew ever lived who would lend money without first seeing the security, and the story therefore lacks probability. However this may be, we are now in the city of the Cid, and though a Christian knight, he had read the words of the Prophet of the Moor,—“There are three sorts of lies which will not be taken into account at the last judgment: 1st, One told to reconcile two persons at variance. 2d, That which a husband tells when he promises any thing to his wife; and 3d, A chieftain’s word in time of war.” Such is the morality of Mahomet, and there is not a little of the same Jesuitism under other names.
The Cid.
The city has 25,000 inhabitants, and one of the most splendid cathedrals of Europe; but not a hotel that is decent. We went to the best, and its entrance was strong with the smell of the stables. The first flight of steps inside was littered with dust and straw, and it looked as if we were to be led to a manger, which word is, indeed, the same with the French salle à manger, a dining-room. Yet this proved to be as fair a hotel as Spain at present offers to its friends from abroad. They are all inferior to second-rate hotels in France or Switzerland, and many that profess to be first-class are execrable. The charges are higher than in better houses in countries where living is dearer, so that the business of entertaining strangers in Spain is an organized imposition. The roads are now free from robbers who formerly infested them and made travelling dangerous. The robbers have evidently left the highway and gone to keeping the hotels. They still rob travellers, with less risk and trouble than in the olden time.
An Englishman by the name of Maurice, being high in the favor of Ferdinand, the saint and hero, laid the foundation, A. D. 1221, of the Burgos cathedral, which fairly challenges comparison with any or all of the finest specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in the world. Having been built in successive periods, and these at long distances from each other, there is a want of harmony in the parts, but this is observed only by the professional eye, while to others, and especially on one who enters this first of the great edifices of Spain, its interior bursts with a blaze of grandeur covered with beauty, that fairly dazzles while it awes and delights him. And after having visited and leisurely studied half a dozen others, including those of Toledo and Seville, I regard the cathedral of Burgos as exhibiting a degree of perfection in detail, an elaborate execution to adorn and embellish a sanctuary, not equalled by any of its rivals in Spain.
And it is to Spain that we must come to see what the art and consecrated wealth of princes and priests can do to build temples in honor of God. Italy has nothing like them. St. Peter’s is the largest Christian church in the world, and perhaps more labor and money have been expended upon it. But as a Christian church it is a failure, without and within. Not so with any of these magnificent monuments of human power and devotion. The towers of this, at Burgos, with their graceful, open-worked pinnacles, spring up as if seeking the sky. The gates are grand, and surrounded and crowned with bas reliefs. Around the towers are seventy statues, of prophets and apostles, and over the transept are twenty-four life-size statues of female saints, each covered with a canopy, as guardian angels on this house of prayer. Moses and Aaron, in stone, stand by one of the doors, with Peter and Paul, and in the vestibule is the Saviour, and around him the four evangelists are writing the holy gospels, while at least fifty statues, apostles, angels with candlesticks, seraphs, and cherubs, add to the ornament of this one gate.
It is quite impracticable to convey by words, and it is a fact that drawings or photographs of interiors fail to convey an idea of the view which one meets on entering a vast cathedral. The impression is on a devout mind, whether of the same faith with that professed by the ministers at these altars or not, the impression is one of solemnity and sublimity. When the enlightened stranger comes near to study the wretched additions which superstition has made to the simplicity of Christian worship as established by its founder, his taste and principles may be shocked and revolted by what he sees and hears in gorgeous and glorious cathedrals. But these are abuses that have crept in: fungi on the trunks of grand old forest trees, under whose branches it is a delight to sit and think of him who dwells in a nobler temple not made with hands. Three hundred feet long, and two hundred feet and more wide within, and chapels yet beyond, each one large enough for a church, and two hundred feet to the roof, which is supported by vast pillars of stone, and each one of them wrought elaborately with garlands, and fruits, and images of angels, and historic scenes and incidents in Scripture,—such is the first grand view that lies before us, as we enter the gates of this cathedral in Burgos. It is in the form of the Latin cross, and at the intersection, the crucero, as it is called in Spanish, the effect of the vaulted dome, and of the whole minute and elegant workmanship, is so exquisite that the Emperor Charles V. is reported to have said it should be placed under glass, and Philip II. pronounced it the work rather of angels than men. I could discern nothing worthy of such exaggerated eulogy, while admiring the harmonious proportions and the graceful combinations that enhance the effect of elaborate sculpture and ingenious decorations.
Four massive columns, embellished with allegorical sculptures, form the transept, and above them the main arches spring. Angels bear aloft a banner, inscribed, “I will praise thee in thy temple, and I will glorify thy name, thou whose works are miracles.”
Just here, for we were coming toward the high altar, Antanazio dropped upon his knees, on the marble floor. A little bell had been rung, and all the Catholics in the cathedral bent to the ground as the host was elevated for their adoration in the celebration of the mass. We stood before the high altar, resplendent above and about it with wrought silver and gold and rich carving and sculpture, in which the life and death of the blessed Saviour are inscribed in mute yet expressive symbols. In the choir are more than a hundred stalls or seats of carved walnut, each one of them an elaborate work of art, rich with figures of men and beasts, the virgin and saints in martyrdom and in glory; and one of these saints is astride of the devil, in memory of the fact that the devil did carry this saint from Spain to Rome in one night. That’s better time than any of the Spanish railroads can make.
We were led by a kind sacristan through the various chapels, all rich in tombs of costly workmanship, and some containing relics which, to the believer in their virtue, are of priceless value; one of these precious treasures being a statue of Christ on the cross, which we were expected to behold with deep reverence. It is asserted and believed to have been carved by Nicodemus just after he had buried the Saviour. It is, therefore, an authentic likeness; and if any doubt existed of its being a genuine work, it is removed by the facts that the hair, the beard, the eyelashes even, and the thorns, are all natural, real; that it sweats every Friday; that it sometimes actually bleeds; and that it has performed many miracles. It would have been more impressive on my unbelieving mind if it had not been girt about with a red petticoat!
THE ESCORIAL.
The castle has a history in which the names of all the great warriors of the last thousand years have a part; it has been the prison of some kings, and the bridal-chamber of queens, and the birth-place of more. In modern times Napoleon conquered it. And what is more remarkable, Wellington tried to drive out the French, and failed. It is now a heap of ruins; for when the French abandoned it they blew it up, but so bunglingly that some three hundred of them went up with it. The explosion destroyed the painted windows of the cathedral, an irreparable loss.
There is nothing in Burgos to see but the cathedral; and that is worth going to Spain to see, though you may have to put up at and with a Burgos tavern.
Philip II. came to the throne of Spain in 1556, less than twenty years before the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day in France, and in the same century with the Reformation led on by Luther. His history and his character are familiar to the world. Cold, cruel, bigoted, intolerant, morose, gloomy, superstitious, the grandson of a woman who was known by the name of Crazy Jane, and who earned the title, the son of the great Emperor of Germany, Charles V., who was also Charles I. of Spain, this Philip II., thus descended and thus endowed, was less a king than a monk, and in the cloister or the cell was more at home than on the throne. He was the husband of Bloody Mary of England, and, like her, verily thought to please God by persecuting the saints and mortifying himself. Perhaps his queer grandmother had put the idea of a palace and a monastery and a tomb into his head. Perhaps his father, in the gloomy hours when he meditated retirement and abdication of his sovereignty, inspired the son with this strange purpose. Or, more likely, the conception with him was original, and as no monarch, before him or since, had such a heart under the guide of such a head, it is only just to give him all the credit of devising and achieving one of the most stupendous follies and gigantic monuments that was ever executed by the hands of men.
The Spaniards reckon the Escorial as the eighth wonder of the world!
About twenty-five miles north of Madrid, in the midst of the dreariest wilderness of barren, rocky, all but uninhabitable hills, a region where no beauty of scenery cheers the eye, no silver river winds along through fertile vales, no verdant slopes are covered with grazing herds, and no forests with their cool shades invite the tired traveller or the weary citizen to seek repose,—here, in the last of all places for such an edifice, is placed the Escorial, the largest and grandest edifice in Spain, and the most remarkable building now standing on the earth. What Egypt had when Karnak and Thebes were in their prime, what Babylon and Nineveh knew in the days of their now buried glory, we have but faint knowledge. This house covers a square of five hundred thousand feet! It is about 750 feet long, and 600 feet wide. It is a royal palace. It is a monastery. It is the sepulchre of the royal family of Spain. It is a church; and in that church, the chapel of this strange house, there is more wealth lavished on the pulpits and altars than on any other that I have seen, in this or any other country. Yet all this is in a wilderness, far away from cities and the abodes of men who might be supposed to admire and enjoy such grandeur,—a temple in a desert, a palace and a sepulchre.
Passing on by the rail from Burgos, we might stop at Valladolid, once the most renowned of all the cities of Spain, now so utterly decayed as to be of interest only to antiquarians. Here Ferdinand and Isabella were married in 1469. Here Columbus, the worn and weary, died in his own house in 1506. Here he slept in death six years, and then his bones were removed to Seville, and again to Cuba, that they might rest in the New World he found. Philip II., whose Escorial we are going to see, was born here in Valladolid, and after he grew to manhood had the pleasure of seeing at one time fourteen Protestants, and thirteen at another, burnt alive, in the Grand Square of the city: a most edifying spectacle, which strengthened his faith so much that he afterwards dedicated his mighty structure to the good St. Lawrence, who was broiled to death on a gridiron, enduring his torments with so much fortitude that he said to his executioners, “I am done on this side, perhaps you had better turn me over,”—whence comes the expression, “done to a turn.”
Philip II. made Madrid the capital of his kingdom, holding his court there or at the Escorial, at his pleasure, for they were only a few hours apart.
It is a long but pleasant walk from the station to the palace, and it is better to stroll along the shaded avenues, resting at times on the solid stone seats, looking upward at the solitary pile ahead, and musing on the wonderful dead past; the pomp and pageantry, the vast processions of priests and kings and countless armies of Spain, of France, of England, that have marched up this same street, in triumph, in penitential grief, or in funeral array. Away from the world, the world has often come hither, under the many garbs the world wears, according as it is in glory or in shame. Entering the grand quadrangle by the chief gate, the colossal edifice presents its central front and the two lateral projections in one view; the main façade is adorned with statues of the principal personages in Old Testament history. Crossing the court, paved with great granite blocks, we enter, and the massive walls, the cold damp halls, gloomy in their naked, solid grandeur, make us feel that we are entering a fortress, and not a palace. It would be impossible to find your way without a guide. There are sixteen courts within, and out of each of them long passages lead to eighty staircases, and up these we may go, if we have time, to twelve thousand doors, and look out of two thousand six hundred windows, and worship at forty altars!! You wish to be excused from such climbing and kneeling. Come, then, with me at once into the church. It is more than 300 feet long, and 230 feet wide, and 320 feet high: of granite all; its columns are majestic in their proportions, severe in Doric simplicity, supporting twenty-four arches, so beautifully sprung that, wherever you stand, the eye takes in the whole at a glance. The pulpits surpass, in the splendor of their finish, any thing in Italy. The richest, variegated, and most precious marbles, used as freely as though they were common wood, are adorned with gold and silver, strangely in contrast with the severity of the church itself. The altar is reached by a flight of several steps, and on the right, as we stand in front of it, a window opens into a little chamber, which we sought with more interest than any other apartment of this remarkable structure. We went out of the church and into the room. It was scarcely ten feet by six in dimensions; but it was the favorite closet, the study and the bedchamber of the monarch who built the whole. This was all he wanted for himself. It was in sight and hearing of the service at the high altar. At midnight and before daybreak he could rise from his couch, and join in the service of the church. I sat down in the plain old chair, by the table, the same that he used, and put up my feet on the camp-stool that often held his diseased and agonized limbs, and looked down from the little window on the priests and people in the church below. And here in this room death came and called for Philip II. For long months he had suffered anguish not less than that he had inflicted on better men than he. Let us leave it for others to say if like Herod he was smitten for his sins, and destroyed with the same disease. But when he saw that his end was near, at his order his servants bore him on a couch through the palace, and the monastery and the church, that his poor dying eyes might rest once more on all that he had done, and then they brought him back to his lonely, comfortless cell, and left him to die. It was on a September Sabbath morning, in 1598, while listening to the service at this altar, and holding in his hand the same crucifix that fixed the dying eyes of the Emperor his father, that Philip yielded his spirit into the hands of a just as well as merciful God!
We left this sad chamber, and descending a flight of steps made of precious stones, the walls lined with beautiful, polished marbles, we stood in a subterranean chapel, a mausoleum, shelves on each of the eight sides, and on each shelf a bronze sarcophagus, and in each coffin a dead king or queen. The name of each occupant is inscribed on the outer shell. One of the queens scratched her name on her coffin with a pair of scissors before she was put in. She could not have well done it after. There is an altar in this dungeon, and here the late queen of Spain, who is very devout in her way, came once a year and had a service at midnight. It adds nothing to the solemnity to have mass here in the night, for at noonday we had to hold candles in our hands to see our way in and out.
The Sagrario was a more interesting apartment than this. It has some fine paintings. I valued them more than the 7,400 relics which are here preserved with pious care, including the entire bodies of eight or ten saints, twelve dozen whole heads, and three hundred legs and arms. It once had—but the fortunes of war have deprived the house of the treasure—one of the bars on which St. Lawrence was burnt, and one of his feet, with a piece of coal still sticking between its toes! but the coal and the toes are lost in toto.
One of the priests, who was leading a company of strangers visiting the place, overheard me asking for the Cellini crucifix, and immediately took us to the choir, and opened the door of a closet in which this remarkable work is carefully preserved. It is a Carrara marble statue of Christ on the cross, and marked by the great Benvenuto himself with his name and the date, 1562. He was the first who made a crucifix in marble, and the patient toil and great genius expended on this work have made it justly esteemed as his master-piece of sculpture.
Yet have I alluded to but one or two out of a thousand things that fix the attention, and impress one rather with astonishment than delight. I have not even mentioned the library, which is the crown of the whole, designed to be the repository of all learning, and in spite of all its sufferings by violence, it is still rich in rare and valuable books and manuscripts. The cases are of ebony and cedar. Jasper and porphyry tables stand through the hall, about 200 feet long, and allegorical paintings adorn the ceilings.
It was refreshing to get out of it, after walking through the palace and the cloisters, and to enjoy the warm sunshine beyond the gloomy walls. Two or three cottages have been built among the groves planted here, and it seems a mercy to children to provide a more cheery home for them than a sepulchral palace could be, though of wrought gold.
CHAPTER IV.
MADRID—A SABBATH AND A CARNIVAL.
A VALET-DE-PLACE who was leading us to church on Sunday morning in Madrid, spoke very fair English, and I asked him where he had learned it. He said, “At the missionary’s school in Constantinople.” He was quite a polyglot, professing to be able to speak seven languages fluently. It was interesting to meet a youth who knew our missionaries there, and entertained a great respect for his old teachers,—and it gave us an idea, too, of the indirect influence which such schools must be exerting, when youth are trained in them, and afterwards embark in other callings than those that are religious in their purpose.
He led us to the Prussian ambassador’s, where the chaplain preaches in the French language. No Protestant preaching was then allowed in Madrid,—none, indeed, in Spain,—except under the flag of another government. The ambassador, or the consul, had the right, of course, to regulate his own household as he pleases; and, under this necessary privilege, he has, if he is so disposed, a chaplain, and divine service on Sunday, when his doors are opened to all who choose to attend. The practical working of it is that a regular congregation comes to be established under each flag, if there are so many persons of that country and of a religious tendency as to make it important. In most of the great capitals of Europe there are people of other countries resident for business, health, or pleasure, and they find a place of worship in their own tongue.
The Germans resident in Madrid speak the French language, as well as their own, and the present chaplain preaches in French. He is an earnest, excellent man, and his pulpit abilities would make him greatly useful in a wider sphere than this. In an upper chamber, that would seat fifty persons, a little congregation, not more than twelve or fifteen, had come together to hear the Word. The desk, or pulpit, was habited after the fashion in Germany, with black hangings, embroidered neatly by the hands of the wife of the Prussian ambassador, and with the words in French, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” I was told that on Christmas and Easter festivals of the church some two or three hundreds of German Christians come to church and to the communion; but the rest of the year their spiritual wants do not require the weekly ordinances, and the congregation rarely exceeds thirty people.
We went after church to the old Palace of the Inquisition. It is now converted into dwellings. Over the main entrance was the inscription, common all over these foreign countries, as in some parts of our own, “Insured against Fire.” The poor victims who in former years were dragged under that portal would have been glad to read such words, if they could be interpreted into an assurance that they were to be safe from the fire of an auto da fe.
The Spanish Inquisition affords the saddest story in the annals of the human race. Whatever the name or creed of the persecutor,—Jew or Gentile, Roman, Greek, Protestant, or Mahometan,—the saddest of all possible facts is this, that man has put to torture and to death his fellow-man on account of his religious opinions. Let God be praised that in all the earth men now may worship him in their own way, with none to molest or make them afraid.
And it is very well to bear in mind that persecution has its spirit, and some of its power, even where the victims are by law insured against fire. In the press and in the pulpit the venom of bigotry and the bitterness of intolerance may be poured on the heads of those who are guilty of other opinions than ours, and in God’s sight such persecution may be as offensive as the rack and boot of the Inquisition. The spirit of the Master rebukes the use of the sword, even in the hands of Peter, to cut off a servant’s ear, and the same spirit forbids us to be uncharitable towards the meanest of those who have not the light of the grace to see as we see, or to defend Christ in our way.
They have no cathedral in Madrid, but their churches are many, and on Sunday morning they, women especially, go to church. The Spaniards are more devout than the Italians. There is a proverb that to go to Rome is to disbelieve. The people in Spain have not seen Romanism as it has been seen in Italy, until the popular mind is sick of it. But they make short work in Spain of their devotions.
The Prado is their park, on the skirts of the town. And this is not enough for them on Sundays. We saw the crowds pouring out towards one of the gates, some in carriages, but most of them on foot,—men, women, and children, hundreds, thousands, in holiday attire,—and we followed. Beyond the Alcala gate, near which is the bull-ring, half a mile into the country, we came to the meadows over which these pleasure-seeking Castillians had spread themselves to enjoy their national and favorite pastime. A little later in the season, when the weather is warmer, thousands of these people would stop at the bull-ring, and see the battle of men and beasts. It is too cool as yet, and the bulls do not fight well except in hot weather. But it is not too cool to dance out of doors, and for this divertisement these thousands have come. On the wide meadows there is not a house, not a shanty, not a shed or booth. We have passed on the way scores of wine-shops; and there the people can resort if they choose. But on the grounds there is nothing to be had but the pure and blessed air. The people are distributed in groups all over the plain. The grass is green. The sun, a winter sun, is kind and genial. The city lies in full view, with palaces and domes and pinnacles. And in the distance, but in this blazing sun and lucid atmosphere apparently very near, long ranges of mountains stand covered with snow, white, pure, glistening like silver in the sunlight, and forming a magnificent background to the gay picture at our feet. In the centre of each of these many groups a dozen, more or less, of young men and women are dancing to music. This is furnished by one, two, or three musicians, strolling bands, with guitars and violins. Often one is an old man, blind. His wife and daughter are with him, with their instruments. The airs are not wild, not even lively, as compared with those of Italy. But they are spirited, and sometimes familiar to a foreign ear; for the airs of music, like the airs of heaven, travel all around the world. The dances are pretty and modest, singularly tame, and far from being as full of frolic and abandon as one would expect to see in the out-of-door amusements of the common people. For these are the lower classes only. It is the pastime of the sons and daughters of toil, and perhaps want. They were not ill dressed, and most of them were well dressed. But they appeared to be the class of people who had but this day in the week for pleasure, and were now seeking and finding it in a way that cost them little or nothing. More were looking on than danced. Yet the sets changed frequently, and the circle widened as the numbers of dancers grew, and there was always room for more; for the meadows were wide, and the heaven was a roof large enough to cover them all.
And the strangest part of this performance is yet to be mentioned; more than half the men in this frolic of the fields were soldiers of the regular army, in their uniforms, without arms, enjoying a half holiday. They and all the rest, men and women, seemed to be as happy as happy could be. If we had thought the people of Spain, and especially of Madrid, where the government is felt and seen more severely and nearly than elsewhere, to be gloomy, sullen, discontented, miserable, and ready to rise in revolt, such a thought would be put to rout by seeing these soldiers and others, men and women, thousands and thousands, making themselves so easily happy of a Sunday afternoon.
In one of the circles of dancers two young men, better dressed than the rest, were either the worse for liquor, or were feigning to be tipsy. As the other dancers paid no attention to them, and let them amuse themselves in their own way, it is quite probable they were playing the fool. These were the only persons in that multitude, of the lower orders of the city, who gave any sign of having been drinking any thing that could intoxicate. There were scores of wine-shops on the street, within the easy walk of all who wished liquors. It was necessary to pass them going and coming to and from the city. And thousands doubtless “took something to drink,” both going and coming. The young men would treat the girls, and, of course, all would have as much wine as they wished. For it is almost as cheap as water,—cheaper than water in New York perhaps; for there the tax that somebody pays for the use of Croton is something, but here in Spain wine is so cheap that what was left of last year’s vintage has often been emptied on the ground, or used instead of water to mix mortar with! Yet drunkenness is not one of the common vices of Spain.
And so passed my first Sabbath in Spain, worshipping in French with a dozen Christians in the morning, and looking at thousands of the people dancing on the green in the afternoon.
Three days before Lent begins the people give themselves up to the wildest kind of frolic, with a looseness of manner that to a grave and thoughtful foreigner unused to such scenes at home is at first sight exceedingly foolish, and then very stupid. The Carnival is a carne-vale, a farewell to flesh; a grand celebration of the approach of Lent, or the season when lentiles, beans or vegetables only, are to be eaten for forty days. As the people see the time coming when for more than a month their religion requires them in a very special manner to abjure the world, the flesh, and the devil, it seems to be their idea to give the last three days of liberty to the enjoyment of these three forms of mammon-worship. If afterwards they served the Lord with half the zeal of these three days of devil-worship, they would be the most pious people on the earth. But to one whose religious prejudices are quite vivid against the nonsense of a Catholic carnival, it seems the queerest way in the world to get ready for serving God by plunging headlong into a scene of mad revelry that utterly abjures all sense and reason, and converts an entire city for three days into a pandemonium.
Yet it is all in such perfectly good humor, so free from riot and violence and drunkenness, that the only fault to be found with it is simply this, that the whole community make fools of themselves. The Romans had a proverb, “It is well to play the fool sometimes,” and perhaps it is. But when the whole town takes leave of its senses, and goes frolicking day after day, if it is a good thing, it is too much of a good thing, and that spoils it all.
Our windows look out upon the Puerta del Sol, the great square of the city. From it radiate the eight chief streets, and through it every moment the tide of life is flowing. Now it is the great centre of the carnival. Along the streets are seen parading small companies of men in masks and fantastic costumes, with all sorts of musical instruments, making harsh melodies as they march. Two or three of the set are constantly soliciting gifts from those they meet, or holding a cap to catch money thrown to them from the people in the windows and balconies, who are looking down to see the sport. Some of these rangers are women in men’s clothes; more are men in petticoats and crinoline, ill concealing their sex, which a close shaven chin and hard features too plainly reveal. In this disguise, great liberties are taken. A young woman stops a man on the sidewalk, claps him on the shoulder, asks him for money, perhaps chucks him under the chin, and sometimes more demonstrative still, she throws her arms around his neck and gives him an affectionate salute in the broad light of day on the most public and crowded thoroughfare. Even this boldness is taken in good part, and seldom or never leads to any quarrel. The men were polite to the women. In no case did I see any rudeness offered by a person in male attire to a female on the street. The maskers were only out in hundreds, while the others, looking on and enjoying, were thousands on thousands. These were in the usual dress of ladies and gentlemen. They expected to find walking somewhat rough, but they were prepared for it, and would have been disappointed had it been otherwise. The maskers wore costumes as various as the fancy of the wearers or the makers could invent them. Some were clothed in white from head to foot, with stripes of red or black; their faces painted white like ghosts, or with horns to look as much like devils as possible. Many were imitation negroes, and this seemed to be a fashionable attire, as if the African were popular among the Spaniards, who once had a great horror of the Moors. Some wore a fantastic head-gear that excited shouts of laughter as they passed. One man strode along with a false head five times the life size, so nicely fitted to his shoulders that it looked to be a sudden expansion of his head into that of a monster. Solemnly the bearer of this prodigious topknot walked the streets, apparently unconscious of the presence of the little-headed race of beings who were laughing at his swelled head.
Carriages, open, splendid barouches, and some with seated platforms prepared for the purpose, drawn by four or six horses, passed by, with six, eight, and even twelve maskers, all clad in the most inconceivably ludicrous robes, with queer hats and trimmings; and some of them with musical instruments, singing, gesticulating, bowing to the ladies in the windows, and exchanging salutations with the people in the way. The drivers and postilions and footmen were all rigged in livery to match the costumes of the company in the carriage, who thus aped the nobility and even royalty itself in its mockery of stately grandeur. And in the midst of these maskers, carriages with elegant ladies, in full dress for riding, go by, and among them, with his legs hanging over the side of the carriage, is one of the most fantastically got-up maskers, whose outlandish costume and ridiculous situation call out tremendous applause.
On the Prado, the great park of the city, thousands of elegant equipages are out in the afternoon, and the most fashionable people of Madrid are in the frolic. The ladies are loaded with sugar-plums to throw among the maskers, and these gay fellows will rush up to any carriage, leap on the steps, and demand a supply. On the walks, an old dowager in a splendid velvet cloak and dress, masked and representing an ancient belle, got up regardless of expense, attracts marked attention as she displays her fan and feathers, and struts as if in a drawing-room where she imagines herself admired. An old monk hobbles along, as if broken down with age and poverty. A procession of priests mocks at religion itself, in a country where we had thought it a capital crime to make fun of the priesthood.
And there goes the Pope himself; a man has actually mounted a hat like the Pope’s, and with white robes and gold lace has made a disguise that tells its story instantly. And the people laugh to see it. Nothing is too sacred nor too dignified to be travestied here. A company of mock soldiers pretend to keep order by making confusion more confounded. By some strange metamorphosis a man has turned himself into a very creditable goose, and waddles along most naturally, having some wires at his command with which he works his bill, his wings, and tail. A bear on horseback rides up, and Bruin is received with bravos. An ox is mounted also on a horse, and then a wolf; and even the devil is represented on horseback, and a woman rides astride behind him and her arms around him, a hideous, incongruous, but exceedingly ludicrous spectacle. Her hoops spread far behind, covering the horse’s hips and tail, so that the figure is half horse, half devil, and the other half woman. One man, as an orang-outang, leads and exhibits another dressed in the same way. Parties of dancers, all in these ridiculous costumes, form a ring and dance the fandango, with castanets and cymbals and guitars, executing the freest flings and giving themselves to the wildest abandon in the public streets. Others, men and women, disguised as if in their night-clothes and ready to go to bed, are wandering about, pretending to be lost, and their appearance is so comical that one almost forgets it is play, and pities the poor wanderers.
But the description is growing more wearisome than the scene itself. Nonsense all, but such nonsense as makes one laugh at first and then feel sad that grown-up men and women can find amusement, day after day, in such infinite folly. And where the religion comes in, it is hard to see. Yet we observe that our American and English friends who have leanings through their own church towards the Church of Rome, take a wonderful interest in the carnival. They have some associations with it, and the fast that follows, that give to all this sport some significance quite incomprehensible to the uncovenanted unbelievers in the outer courts.
CHAPTER V.
MADRID—PALACE—BANK—PICTURE-GALLERY.
WHEN Napoleon, as conqueror of Spain, entered the royal palace of Madrid (it was in 1808, his brother Joseph, the new-made king of Spain, being at his side), the great captain paused on the splendid marble staircase; and, as the magnificence of the mansion burst upon him, he turned to his brother, and said, in his epigrammatic way of putting his thoughts, “My brother, you will be better lodged than I.”
It is far more splendid than the Tuileries, or any palace in France, England, Germany, or Italy. It cost more than five millions of dollars a hundred years ago; and that was a much greater sum of money than now. It has been enlarged and embellished from year to year ever since. When we drove up to the grand court, it was so formidably filled with cavalry that we thought the predicted insurrection was imminent, and the army had been summoned to the defence of the palace. Not at all. These mounted soldiers are only the regular guard. In this inner court, or square, the cavalry, in long line and fierce array, are ready for a fight with the revolutionists, if they are brave enough, or mad enough, to try their hands in a tussle with the troops of government, trained and paid to defend the existing order of things. From the windows of the armory this martial parade was imposing, though there were but a few hundreds of mounted men. The officers were clad in polished steel back and breast plates, which flash brightly in the sun. The uniform is brilliant, and the riding splendid. Artillery companies, with cannon mounted, drawn by horses, manœuvre in the square, crossing and recrossing constantly, under the eye of the royal household. A long line of lounging people look on also; and, as they go and come all day, an impression is certainly insinuated by this military parade that the government is always ready to take care of itself.
THE ROYAL PALACE, MADRID.
The palace stands on the verge of a height that commands a wide and exciting view of the plains of Castile. The thought of what those plains have seen in the last two thousand years makes them of more than romantic interest to one who takes in the past with the present. What successive tides of conquest have there ebbed and flowed! To know that Charles V. and Napoleon and Wellington have followed one another up those shaded avenues to this summit, with their legions, is enough to invest them with grandeur.
And here in this armory is the very sword that Gonzalo, of Cordova, wore, and the sword with which Ferdinand, the saint and hero, smote the Moors; and the sword of Charles V., and the complete suit of armor which the great emperor often wore, and in which he was painted by Titian; and the suit of armor worn by Boabdil, the last Moorish king who sat on the throne in this Alhambra, and who left it behind, doubtless, when he delivered his sword into the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella, at the foot of the hill on which I am writing. We had thought revolvers a modern invention, but here are elegant pistols, on the same principle, used in the seventeenth century, and now as good as new. A crown, a sword, a helmet, or something else, illustrates the life of all the heroes of Spanish history; and the number of warlike memorials here displayed is about three thousand. How men managed to fight while clad from head to foot in these suits of steel armor is to me, a non-combatant, one of the mysteries of the art of war. We read of tournaments, and—more to be wondered at—of battle-fields, where all the knights are clothed from head to foot in the identical garments that are now before us, or in others made after the same pattern; and how, with such a weight of steel and so constrained in the freedom of action, they could manage to wield their swords and thrust their spears, I do not understand. They were not men of more physical power than our soldiers. Some of them were less than the present average size of men. But they were mighty men with the sword. The Toledo blade was quite equal to that of Damascus; and the helmet was often insufficient to save the brain, when the sword, in a strong hand, came down, cleaving through steel and skull.
Two or three hundred horses stood in the stables; and the grooms are only too happy, for a consideration to be paid at every door, to show these pampered and famous steeds. Each one of them has a name, in large letters, over his head, and on his blanket. Spain has some celebrated breeds of horses, but, like every thing else in Spain, they are run out, and the stock is only kept up by importation. It is so even with the Merino sheep, which belongs to Spain, but would have been extinct ere this, if it had not been perpetuated and improved abroad. You may see five hundred finer horses any pleasant afternoon in the Central Park, in New York, than any one of these pet horses of royalty. But you will never see, I hope, such a wealth and folly of equipage as the hundred carriages, and more sets of harness, and plumes, and liveries, and coachmen’s hats, and velvet saddles, and embroidered hammer-cloths, which fill long apartments, and are shown together with the gilded chairs of state in which the king or queen is borne by hand in processions, and the chariot on which the royal personage is enthroned, with a canopy overhead, trumpeters below, and herald angels above, for the coronation parade. The carriages used by successive monarchs are here preserved in long lines of antiquated grandeur, even to the one in which Crazy Jane, the widow, carried about with her the corpse of her handsome husband, Philip the First. Queer woman that she was, jealous to insanity, she would not let her husband be buried while she lived; and now she lies by his side, down here in Granada, in the cathedral, and her marble effigy gives her an expression so gentle and loving, you would not believe she was ever the victim of the fiercest and meanest passion that makes hell of a woman’s heart.
I have been taking you with me through the palace and armory and royal stables, to give you a type of Spain. The poorest of all the governments, compared with its population and resources, it has these contrasts of wealth and poverty that mark its want of judgment, principle, and power. In the stables is invested a capital of more than half a million of dollars! This prodigality is royal, but also absurd. The people see it, and the world has gone by the age, when gilt trappings and gorgeous pageants struck the multitudes dumb with the reverence of royal glory.
The city of Madrid is well built, and has the appearance of a modern French town. Indeed, it is more French than Spanish in its out-of-door look, and the French language is very largely spoken in the shops and private families of culture. The intercourse now so frequent and ready with France by means of the railway and telegraph, and the abolition of all passport regulations and annoyances, have given the Spanish capital a start, and it will undoubtedly make rapid advancement.
But there is nothing rapid in Spain just yet. Opposite the hotel in Madrid where I was staying, an old building had been torn down to make room for another. Workmen were engaged in removing the debris to renew the foundation. You would suppose that horses and carts, or wheelbarrows and shovels, would be in use. Such modern improvements had not reached the capital of Spain. One man with a broad hoe hauled the dirt into a basket made of grass, holding half a bushel; another man took the basket and carried it a rod to another man, who handed it to another a few feet above him, and he emptied it on a pile of dirt up there, and sent the basket back to be filled again. And so, day after day, a job that with our tools and appliances would be done in a few hours, was here spun out indefinitely. Yet the palaces and cathedrals and fortresses of the southern climes have all been erected at this snail’s pace, numbers and cheapness making up for enterprise and force. In Paris, in the street, a small steam-engine was at work to mix mortar, and the ease with which the process was put through revealed the secret of the wonderfully rapid transformations going on in that ever increasingly beautiful city. Here in Spain, to this day, where there are smooth, good roads for wheels, they still put a couple of baskets across the back of a donkey, and fill them with dirt or brick or stones, and so transport them, even when they are putting up the largest buildings. The architecture of Spain is more imposing than that of any other country in Europe. It is the climate that makes men differ so much in their physical as well as mental manifestations.
To see the mode of doing business in Spain, take the simple story of one day’s work of mine in getting some money in Madrid. Holding a “letter of credit” which is promptly honored in any part of the world, and is just as good for the gold in Cairo or Calcutta as it is in London, I went in search of a Spanish banker to draw a hundred pounds sterling, say five hundred dollars. Anastazio led the way, and soon brought us to the house where the man of money held his court. Being shown up stairs, through two or three passages and an ante-chamber, we were at length ushered into the presence. Señor Romero, the banker, was a man of fifty, dressed, or rather undressed, in a loose morning gown or wrapper, a red cap on his head, slippers on his feet, and a pipe in his mouth. A clerk was sitting near to do his bidding. I presented my letter. It was carefully read, first by the clerk, then by the principal. A long consultation followed, carried on in a low tone, and in Spanish, quite unintelligible to me, if it had been audible. It was finally determined to let me have the money, and after an amount of palaver sufficient for the negotiation of a government loan from the Rothschilds, and taking the necessary receipt and draft from me, I was presented with a check on the Bank of Spain. When I had fancied the delays were over, they had only just begun. The bank was in a distant part of the city, and thither we hastened, taking a cab, to save all the time we could. The bank is a large and imposing edifice of white stone. In the vestibule was a guard of soldiers. A porter stopped us as we were about to enter the inner door. We must await our turn as some one else was inside! One at a time was the rule. Benches were there, and we sat down, admiring silently the moderation of banking business in Spain. At length our turn came. We entered a room certainly a hundred feet long. Tables extended the whole length. Behind them sat clerks very busy doing nothing. We were told to pass on, and on, to the lower end of the room, where we entered another, the back parlor, or private room of the officers. They were closeted out of sight, smoking, of course, and giving their wisdom to the business in hand. I presented the check at a hole out of which a hand was put to take it. I saw nothing more. We sat down and waited. Waiting is a Spanish institution. Everybody waits. Nobody gets any thing without it. We waited, and waited, and waited, and at last the little hole opened again, the mysterious hand was thrust out with the——money, you suppose; not a bit, but with the check approved. We must present it at the table or counter for payment. Returning to the long room, we presented the check, and were directed to the proper bureau. And here, of course, we got the money. Not yet. Bills of the Bank of Spain were given us, and when I required the gold, I was told that gold was paid only at the bureau of the bank in another street. Thither we now pursued our weary way. It was a rear entrance of the same bank building. A long line of gold hunters was ahead of us. We stood in the cue, and at last were inside. In the ante-room we had to wait so long that we took to the bench again. At last, admission being granted, we were told that only one could be admitted with a single draft. We sent Antanazio in, and returned to the door. Here we were told that no exit, only entrance, was allowed at the rear! Explaining the case, we got out, and returning to the front, patiently as possible, we looked for the appearance of Antanazio loaded with gold. At last, for the longest delay has an end, the man emerged with the money in his hands. It had cost me from two to three hours in the middle of the day to draw this money, which in New York, London, Paris, or any city out of Spain, would have cost five minutes or less. And I have been so particular in the detail, because it lets you into the mode of doing business in the capital city, and the greatest bank of this country.
Until the French and English companies pushed railways into Spain, travel and mails were on the slow-coach system. When the royal person made a journey, it was like the march of an army, such was the retinue required for comfort and display. And as the railways are now completed only along a few great routes, the mails are largely carried in the diligences and coaches expressly made for the purpose. It is said, and there is no reason to disbelieve it, that down to the year 1840, when a Spaniard proposed to himself the danger and toil of a journey, it was his invariable custom to summon his lawyer and make his will; his physician, to learn if his health were adequate to the undertaking; and finally his priest, to confess his sins and get timely absolution. It is not regarded now so formidable an excursion to go across the kingdom, but the native travel is so little that the railroads are very unprofitable. If it were not for freight they would not be supported at all. They have, however, greatly increased the correspondence of the country, and the rate of postage has been reduced, so that it is about as low as in other European countries. But the government keeps a sharp look-out upon the letters that come and go. In times when conspiracies are snuffed in every breeze, it would be quite unsafe for any one to entrust a secret in a letter going by mail. A government spy would be sure to have his hand on it and his eye in it, before it reached its address. The letters in the post-office at Madrid are held four hours after the arrival of the mail, before they are ready for delivery. The mail from the north, the London and Paris mail, comes in at ten o’clock A.M. We must wait until two o’clock P.M. for our letters. Then a list of all letters not directed to some particular street and number, or to some post-office box, is posted up in the hall of the office,—an alphabetical list. You look over the list, and if you find a letter for yourself, you ask for it at the proper window. If you are a stranger, your passport is demanded. But you had been told before coming to Spain that no passports are required, and now you must have one merely to get your letters. In default of a passport, you must in some way establish your identity. This is not always easy in a foreign country, but then nothing is easy in Spain. I got no letter from the post-office addressed to me while I was in Spain! The noted rebel, General Prim, was a dreadful bugbear to the authorities, and all letters addressed to me were suspected by the local postmasters to be intended for the General. They were therefore sent to the government, or otherwise disposed of. No efforts to recover them were successful. Much good may they do the people who had to read them. Some of them had hard work, I know.
Telegraphs are spreading over Spain, as they are over the world, civilized or not. Spain is one of the last countries where they could become popular; but the business of any kingdom that has relations with the outside world must be armed with the telegraph, or it cannot hold its own. In traversing wild and secluded parts of the Peninsula, I have been surprised by finding the telegraph poles set up, and the wire stretching on, over hill and dale. Spain is slow, and the telegraph is not demanded here by the energy and enterprise of the people as it is elsewhere. Despatches of more than a hundred words are not sent. To or from any part of the Peninsula ten words may be sent for about twenty-five cents, twenty words for fifty cents, thirty words for seventy-five cents; but the count includes each word written by the sender, date, address, signature, and if a word is underscored it counts two. Great precautions are taken to insure accuracy in transmission, and a small extra charge is made for delivery.
Before coming to Spain I had been told that the picture-gallery in Madrid is the richest in the world. It seemed to me an idle tale, the boast of boasting Spaniards, repeated until perhaps somebody believed, as I certainly did not. But having seen it, day after day, for a week, I cheerfully cast a vote in its favor. It is superior to any other in Europe; and, of course, in the world. It is not complete in the series of art studies. There are gaps of time which the student may desire to see filled. But there are few who visit these great European galleries as learners. The world comes to see them for the momentary pleasure to be found in the contemplation of the pictures. And they will be astonished to find that so many and so splendid pictures have been gathered and preserved in the Spanish capital.
The gallery is open to the public only on Sundays, but the director allows it to be shown every day to strangers, who are expected to give a fee to the attendants. On rainy days it is always shut; an obvious reason is, that visitors will soil the floors with their shoes, but a better reason is that the gallery is so badly lighted that in gloomy weather some of the pictures are quite invisible.
Who would suppose that sixty pictures by Reubens are to be seen in one gallery in Spain! and fifty-three by Teniers; and ten grand pictures by Raphael; and forty-six by Murillo; and sixty-four by Velasquez, some of them very large and magnificent; and twenty-two by Van Dyck; and forty-three of Titian, who spent three years in Madrid, by invitation of Charles V.; ten of Claude Lorraine; and twenty-five by Paul Veronese; and twenty-three by Snyder; and more than thirty by Tintoretto!!! There are more than two thousand here. Among so many, of course, some are good for nothing, as in every large collection. But one gallery in the world has masterpieces only,—that is in the Vatican. And there you have less than a hundred pictures, all told. But they are all great. Here, as in Florence and Dresden, good, bad, and indifferent have been hung together; and perhaps the contrast makes the good appear better, and the bad worse.
Murillo, the greatest of Spanish painters, is here in his glory. We have associated his name with his “Immaculate Conceptions” more than with any other of his works. One copy was brought to America a few years ago, and is now in the gallery of W. H. Aspinwall, Esq. A duplicate is in the Louvre, at Paris. And still another is in Madrid. These are three originals, undoubtedly, and they have been copied in every style of human art, especially in Paris, until they are as common as heads of the Saviour, all the world over. Yet this is not the Murillo,—not his “Conception.” It is a grand conception by the artist, but it is not the great picture of that subject on which, more than any other, his fame is founded. This is in another attitude, with another expression; the Virgin is looking downward, and not gazing, in an ecstasy, heavenward. The artist, in this picture, imagines the Virgin Mary at the moment she becomes conscious of the fact that by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost she is to be the mother of the Son of God! The accessories of the painting are of no account, but into the countenance of the Virgin he would throw the expression such as a spotless maiden might be supposed to have when first alive to such a wondrous, awful, yet transporting and delightful thought, “I,—I,—of all the daughters of Israel, am the highly favored among women. Of me is to be the Messiah! I am the mother of the promised Saviour!”
Not far from this is a picture of the Vision of St. Bernard, exhibiting marvellous skill. The head is one of those prodigies of the painter’s art, that is to haunt the memory in after years. Like the “Communion of St. Jerome,” in the Vatican, to see it is to have it photographed in the mysterious chamber of the brain. Raphael painted one of his most remarkable pictures, “The Christ sinking under His Cross,” for a convent in Sicily. It is said by some to be a greater work than the “Transfiguration,” which is held to be the finest picture existing. To me, this in Madrid is the most impressive, the most nearly perfect. It is taken at the moment when Simon, the Cyrenian, attempts to lift the crushing cross, while the patient sufferer, with a face radiant with love and holy resignation, says to the weeping women near, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.”
Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V. is sublime,—like a majestic mountain, or a mighty rock in a desert. The solemn grandeur of the picture is indescribable. The man and his times, a whole volume of biography and history, on one grand tableau, seen and remembered. Perhaps it would be as well to forget the women that Titian seems to have been fond of painting. Two of them here are not less perfect, many think they are more perfect, than the Venus of the Tribune. In other times the zealous priesthood condemned these nudities to the flames, with heretics, as corrupters of the people; but some have been saved.
The picture that I desired more than any other to carry away and cherish as a life-long treasure, is one by Correggio. After his resurrection the Saviour appeared to Mary, and she supposed it was the gardener; but Jesus, turning, said to her, “Mary,”—and the truth burst upon her, it was her Lord! That moment of transport is the time the artist has seized for the representation of the kneeling and rejoicing Mary and Jesus. The love and tenderness in his look, the joy and reverence in hers! What beauty, too: how the yellow hair falls in living lustre on her fair shoulders, and her eyes speak the full expression of her yearning soul. “Jesus said unto her, ‘Mary.’”
In another hall I found a picture of great merit, unmentioned by the guide-book, and by a painter unknown to me even by name before. It is a Virgin and Child, with four venerable saints kneeling before them. The artist is Bias del Prado. Few pictures in any gallery deserve more admiration than this. The heads of the old men are done with great power, and the thoughtful feeling in the face of the Virgin shows that the artist had both the genius to conceive, and the skill to create, an idea on the canvas, quite equal to the best of many others who have won a world-wide fame. And scattered through these long apartments, in narrow halls and basement rooms, in bad lights, and some almost in the dark, are many gems of rare value, “blushing unseen,” and worth a better place, and deserving wider renown. It would be tedious to read even a brief mention of the celebrated pictures of the famous old masters here, and that form so large a part of the attractions of Europe.
There are very few minor galleries in Madrid. Probably there has been a lack both of private wealth and taste to make collections. In one of these we found Murillo’s “Queen Isabel of Hungary healing the Lepers,” a picture that would be admired as one of his greatest and best, if it were not so true to life as to make one almost sick to look at it. But this is the height of the highest art. Birds have been deceived by painted fruit. Bees have sought honey in flowers on the walls. And perhaps this cheating of the senses, even to disgust, is the perfection of human skill. But the imitation of the material is easy. If portrait painting were merely the reproduction of the form and features, it is the lowest department of the art. But to conceive the expression that belongs to the character of a saint, a prophet, a hero, a sibyl, a Madonna, and thus to create an ideal that will demonstrate its reality and truthfulness to an unbelieving or indifferent world, challenging admiration and asserting its own immortality, this is the attribute of genius only, and such is not the birth of every day or age.
CHAPTER VI.
TOLEDO—ITS FLEAS, LANDLORDS, ANTIQUITIES, AND LUNATICS.
Ignorant of the state of civilization in the ancient city of Toledo, the capital of Gothic Spain, the glory of the Jews and the Moors when they lived luxuriously on its airy heights, we had imagined it easy enough to find lodgings for a night. Unconscious of the fate awaiting us, we put up at the Hotel Lino, the largest and best in the city; and here we sought sleep. The search was vain. For the fleas are always going about seeking whom they may devour. We fell a prey to them and to the landlords too. Surviving the bloody night, we left a weary, wretched bed at eight in the morning, and ordered breakfast with coffee. At nine it was announced as ready. In the room where it was served three waiters attended us, each one smoking a cigar in our faces, as we sat and they stood around. The coffee was not on the table. On asking for it we were told there was none in the house.
“And is there none in Toledo?”
“Perhaps so.”
“Well, we will wait until you bring it. Give us some butter.”
“There is no butter in the house.”
“Is there none in Toledo?”
“None that is fit to eat; it is all rancid.”
TOLEDO.
After a time some wretched stuff for coffee was brought from a restaurant, and we made a breakfast, paid as much for it as if we had been in Paris, and left the house in disgust.
The city stands on a hill; it is up, up, up, in a succession of narrow, irregular, crooked, clean, and curious streets, showing at every step the vestiges of successive stages of civilization, and often suddenly revealing monuments of departed peoples that arrest the attention and excite wondering interest. The Goths succeeded the Romans. The Moors drove out the Goths, and, like eagles perched among these rocks, defied the storms of centuries. Here the master of empires, the great Charles V., reigned in grandeur, and gave laws to the world. It is a fitting place for such a history as it has; and no other city has a more romantic life. Indeed, romance has done so much to embellish the story of Toledo, it is difficult to be in it, and study it here on its own rocks, without asking for its enchanted towers, and haunted caves, and knights, with magic swords and spectre horses, and its 200,000 mighty men and beautiful women, that once made this castle-crowned crag the glory of Spain, and as famous in the earth as Babylon or Damascus.
It is more Oriental in its appearance than any city we have yet seen in Spain. But it is too far north, and too far up in the air, to be adapted to the life of Orientals. Its houses are usually low; and they have the court in the midst of them, out of which doors open into the several apartments. Many of them are very old, five hundred years, at least, and repetitions of those that stood on the same site before; for this reproduction of itself, from age to age, is a feature of the peoples and climes with which Scripture history has made us familiar. Many of these old houses are fine specimens of the Moorish manner of building; but with this, perhaps the predominant style, is blended more or less of the Roman, the Gothic, and the Saracenic, and every style except the modern; for Toledo is a city of the dead past, and no resurrection is before it. The Spanish chroniclers claim that Toledo was founded at the same time with the creation of the world, but who lived in it before the human race was made they do not help us to understand. Others less ambitious find that Nebuchadnezzar, and others that Hercules, laid the first stones.
The last of the Goths who sat on the throne of Toledo was Roderick. And when weighed down with the guilt of a seducer and a betrayer of his friend, he went forth from Toledo in his chariot of ivory, and, with his mailed legions, marched to the banks of the Guadalquiver, and at Guadalete encountered the flood of Moorish barbarism just then setting in upon Spain, he disappeared, the city began its downward career, and no emperors, no bishops, no kings, have since been able to purge it from the sin and the shame of the perfidious Roderick.
In after centuries, when the Moors were expelled and the cross again supplanted the crescent, the archbishops of Toledo were more than kings, and lived here in luxury, and wealth, and grandeur, without a parallel in the history of the church. Great patrons of art and science, they founded universities and cultivated the arts of peace, while they were often plunging the country into war, which they waged with valor and skill. Under them the city reached a degree of splendor unsurpassed in the dreamy reign of Oriental voluptuousness and taste. But when it succumbed, as it did to the great German Czar, and the court was removed to Valladolid, its sun went down, never to rise again.
The cathedral is a glory, even in Spain, which is richer in cathedrals than any other country. Toledo has always been favored by the Romish Church. It is believed by many that the Virgin Mary came down from heaven, in person, to attend the investiture of one of its archbishops, and there is not to be found a grander and more beautiful Gothic temple than this. As we entered it the dim light that was chasing away the shades from among the vast columns and the lofty arches gradually brightened as we became more accustomed to it, and a sense of majestic proportions and solemn grandeur took possession of the soul. A service was in progress, and we paused till it was concluded, for it matters not what the form of religious worship, and however much our views may differ from those engaged in it, it is unseemly to be gazing at the temple while its ministers are serving at its altar. In the midst of the service a priest was receiving a young woman’s confession. As she put up her lips to his ear to whisper her penitential words, she beat upon her breast with one hand, as if she were in agony of soul. Her tale of sin completed, she rose from her knees, bowed low again, kissed her confessor’s extended hand, and went away.
Toledo and its priesthood have been famous for their devotion to the strictest orders and dogmas of the church, till Rome itself scarcely stands higher for holiness and orthodoxy. In the disputes that have at different times agitated the Romish communion, they have not been afraid to appeal directly to the judgment of God, and to claim his verdict in their favor. In the great contest about the proper form of words in the mass, when the old missals were used in Spain, in spite of the orders to substitute the Gregorian mass, or the Roman improved form, the first appeal to the divine judgment was in favor of Toledo, and the early missals. Again the trial was demanded; and the old and newer missals were brought out, great folio volumes, into one of the public squares, and, in presence of the city, fire was applied to them. The older was burnt to ashes, and the newer survived the ordeal. Toledo was not willing to abide even by this very conclusive test, and finally it was settled by blending the two masses into one.
Their richest and most sacred chapel in the cathedral is the Muzarabe, or Mixed Arabic; so called because it was built to preserve the forms of the old Gothic service, such as was used when the Goths consented to live under the dominion of the Moors while allowed their own religious rites. In this cathedral lie the ashes, and over them are the tombs of some of the early kings of Spain, and several of those grand archbishops whose reign was not less kingly than that of kings. Cardinal Albornoz died in Italy, and the Pope sent his body home to be buried here. To save the expense of transportation, for there was no express company, not even a steamboat then (1364) to bring it,—Urban V. issued a decree granting a plenary indulgence to all who would lend a hand in carrying the dead cardinal on his long journey. Gladly did the poor peasantry bear the body on their shoulders from one town to another till it reached Toledo. In front of one of the chapels I was suddenly arrested by a strange Latin inscription in a brass plate in the pavement. It was in these words:—
“Hic jacet pulvis, cinis, nullus.”
Here lies dust, ashes, nothing else. Over the bones of one of the most powerful cardinals who ever reigned in Spain, and himself called a king maker, the epitaph is eloquent: perhaps an affectation, however, of humility, a virtue for which Fernandez de Portocarrero was not illustrious in his life.
The Virgin Mary has been pleased to come from heaven to this cathedral, as I have said, and if any one doubts it, he can see the very stone on which she first set foot as she alighted from her aerial excursion. And now the faithful kiss this precious stone, touching with their loving lips the very spot which her foot once pressed. Her image is clad with gold and precious stones and costly raiment, crowns and bracelets and chains, the gifts of royal hands, and the greatest ladies of the kingdom are her maids of honor. On gala-days she is borne in state through the streets, and honors are paid to her at every step, as the Queen of Queens.
A sleepy old porter let us into the Alcazar. Al-casa-czar is the house of Cæsar, or the czar’s house, the king’s house, the palace.
The Alcazar.
The palace, or what was once a palace, crowns the summit of the hill on which the old city of Toledo stands. Around the base of the rock below the Tagus rushes rapidly, and away in every direction stretches the wide plain, gloomy, desolate, and yet grand in its storied past. It is not certain that the Moorish, still less certain that the Gothic kings preceding them, had their royal residence on this bleak height. But the Catholic kings for centuries held their courts on this spot, and the prints of their hands are visible everywhere. The porter who opened the door for us is a model of a Spanish official. Too proud to be a door-keeper, and, with nothing else to do, he would impress even a stranger with the idea that he was born with a higher destiny than to tend a gate. It was a pleasure to him, evidently, to tell us we must not go here, nor there, nor anywhere, except where it was of no use to go; and the scanty information he was willing to impart was extracted with difficulty, and worth nothing then.
We stood in the midst of a spacious square, the patio, or court, and on its four sides rose the walls of the ancient palace. Charles V. and Philip II. rebuilt the most of it on the ruins holding some of the apartments that date as far back as Alonzo X.; and in modern times the hoof of the war demon has trodden the stairways and galleries and gorgeous halls, until what with English and French soldiery, and some of other nations more barbarous still, the Alcazar of Toledo is a more comfortable residence for bats and owls than kings and fair princesses. Two or three proud peacocks were strutting in the warm sunshine of the patio, displaying their gaudy plumes and arching their graceful necks, reminding us of other beauties who had often gone blazing through these doors, with radiant jewels and shining robes, yet, in all their glory, were not arrayed like one of these. This patio shows, on its four sides, two rows of galleries, one over the other, supported each of them by thirty arches, with columns crowned with Corinthian capitals, embellished with the arms of the many kingdoms that Charles V. had conquered. A staircase, designed by Philip II. while he was in England, and built under orders sent by him while there, leads up to the royal apartments, long since deserted, and now worth seeing only because they were once the home of men and women whose names are part of the history of the world.
An English gentleman said to me in the rail-car in Spain one day, “I should be glad to have you tell me what it is that impresses you the most in coming from America and travelling in Europe.” I answered that it required some time to make a fitting reply to so great an inquiry. “Well,” he said, “will you take fifteen minutes to think, and then give me the result?” I replied, “I am ready to answer now: what impresses me more than all else is, that these old countries, having been what they once were, are what I find them now.”
It is the law of the earth, I suppose, and what has been will be, and so on to the end of time.
We left the melancholy palace to its porter, its peacocks, and the bats, and wound our way down and around the corkscrew streets, narrow, close, and dirty, admiring the ancient Moorish gates and doors, studded with iron balls. The older doors have two knockers, one high for a horseman to use without dismounting; and, the gate being opened, he would ride right into the court. We were looking for the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, and soon found it, a church that dates back to the Moorish-Gothic period, or the time when the severity of Gothic grandeur was adorned with the more florid embellishments which Moorish art introduced into Spain. On the outer walls are suspended the massive iron chains which were found on the limbs of the Christian captives when Granada was conquered by Ferdinand and Isabella; and the rescued prisoners hung up their chains on this church as thank-offerings. And still farther down the hill we come to the Bridge of St. Martin, and here are plainly the ruins of the old Moorish castle and palace. A square tower on the water’s edge bears the name, to this day, Florinde, and tradition says it was here that Roderick unluckily saw her while she was bathing. The rest of the story we have hinted at already.
Irving, in his bewitching Spanish tales, gives a marvellous account of the Cave of Hercules, which is said to extend three leagues beyond the river, and is full of chapels and genii and enchanted warriors. To visit it has cost kings their crowns; and the terrible sounds that are heard, and the rushing winds assailing the bold explorer, make the attempt too formidable for modern valor. The entrance is from the Church de San Gines, but is now walled up. In fact, it was never unwalled, except in the fancies of romantic historians.
One day, long time ago, as the Cid was riding through Toledo, his horse stopped suddenly, and knelt before a wall built against a bank of earth. The hill was opened, and within was found a niche, and in the niche an image of the Saviour, with the same lamps burning in it which the Goths had put there long centuries agone. A Moorish mosque is standing opposite, which has been converted into a Christian church, and in it the first mass was celebrated in 1085. It takes its name from the legend of the Cid, and is called Christo de la Luz. It is perhaps the smallest church in Toledo, only twenty-two feet square, yet the quaintest and most curious thing to be found in the city; short columns support arches in the shape of a horse-shoe, and three narrow naves, crossing each other, cut up the church into nine vaults. There is nothing in it worth seeing.
It took us half an hour to find the sacristan to open the door of Santo Tome, or St. Thomas, where we went to see a famous picture by El Grecco, a burial scene, of considerable power, and were it not that Spain has hundreds of finer pictures than this, it would be worth the time it cost us to see it.
Passing through the Zodocover, the largest public square in the city, where in the “good old times” of torture for the church, the poor unbelievers in papal faith have been made spectacles before the world, I met a boy with a pop-gun, anxious to show his skill in shooting with that formidable weapon. Yielding to his urgent desires, I set up a bit of money which he was to hit and take. A dense crowd, a hundred certainly, were the idle gazers on this ridiculous scene, forming a ring around me and the boy! I confess to a sense of great amusement when I stood where cardinals and bishops and priests, with armed soldiers and executioners, had burnt heretics in sight of kings, and multitudes thronging the tiers of balconies that look down into this square. It was certainly more human, not to say Christian, for me to divert this idle crowd by setting up coppers for a boy to shoot at with a pop-gun, than for my illustrious predecessors to entertain the populace of Toledo with the sight of martyrs burning at a stake.
Tired of walking, for Toledo is so up-and-down, that you might as well ride on a ladder, we entered a café for refreshments. In the wide, open court was a deep well sunk into the solid rock on which the city stands, and the water thereof was as cool and sparkling and delicious as that which the woman of Samaria gave to him who told her all things that ever she did. The saloon was fifty feet long or more, filled with marble-top tables, and men were eating and drinking, playing dominoes, and smoking. It was toward the close of the day. Of all the people there, none called for spirits, scarcely any asked for wine. Coffee and chocolate were the principal drinks. There was no noise, no gambling. It was chilly, and the servant brought in a brazier filled with live coals, and set it near us. Others drew around it, as they did in the high priest’s court-yard when Peter denied his Lord. Many Oriental customs brought in by the Moors are still retained in Spain. I made an excuse for wandering up to the house-top, and found the houses so closely built against each other, with no intervening spaces, that you could easily look into your neighbor’s, and sometimes see what was quite as well not seen.
While here we looked about for some specimens of the famous blades, which have made Toledo as celebrated as Damascus itself in this line. But we found nothing worth seeing. The manufactory of arms is outside of the town, and has no reputation beyond that of others in Spain. England or Connecticut will furnish as perfect a sword to-day as Toledo. Yet this is only another, and a very striking illustration of what Spain is, compared with what Spain was. As far back as under the Romans, Toledo had a character for the perfection of its weapons of steel. The Toledo blade has been a proverb for temper ever since.
The idea has prevailed, and the workers in metals in Toledo have not been unwilling to encourage it, that the waters of the river Tagus have virtues to impart peculiar firmness to the steel that is cooled in them. The manufacturers, of course, have long been constituted into a guild, or corporation, and the secrets of the trade preserved with care. So long ago as in the ninth century Abdur-rhaman II. gave a great impulse to the art in Toledo, and its fame was spread still wider. A thousand years have rolled away since that time, and now, in the nineteenth century, they do not make as good weapons as they did then.
In the museum at Madrid we saw the splendid swords which the famous warriors of Spain have worn, and, in the saloon of the Director of the Generaliffe, in Granada, the identical sword of Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings; but they make no such steel now. Indeed, the steel they use is imported from England, just as they keep up the stock of horses and cattle and sheep, by importations from other countries. It is very probable that long, thin blades, that may be curled up like a ribbon, can be produced in China, or Persia, or Sheffield, as well as here. The men of Milan and Florence made as good swords as these. The use of fire-arms naturally diminishes the value of a sword as a weapon of war.
Spanish people do not go CRAZY! Now and then there is a lunatic in Spain, but, as compared with the United States, or England, or France, the Spanish people manage to keep what wits they have. Just outside of Toledo there is a lunatic asylum. It is the successor of the one that Don Quixote ought to have been kept in, and which is mentioned in that knight-errant’s biography, the first work of fiction that I ever perused, and which then, in childhood, fired me with a desire to visit Spain. Don Quixote was crazy; and there may be thousands crazy whom the world do not reckon so.
In London the latest tables show that one person in every 200 is insane. In Paris one in every 222 is in a lunatic asylum, or ought to be. In Madrid, the capital of Spain, only one in every 3,350. In the year 1860 there were 2,384 lunatics in Spain, when the population was 15,673,481; and this would show one insane person to 6,566 inhabitants. In 1864 there were 3,818 persons in houses for the insane, but they do not regulate these institutions with the same strictness that prevails in some other countries, and they confine in them many of those criminals who would otherwise be let loose on the community to pursue their career of crime under the cloak of monomania. It would therefore appear, and there is no good reason to doubt the fact, that comparatively little insanity exists in Spain. One report of 1861 gives the following as the percentage of the cases, when pathologically classified: “Maniac exaltation, 31.91; monomaniacs, 11; melancholy, 6; derangement of mental faculties, 20.53; imbecility, 6.15; epileptic madness, 11; undetermined, 10.41.”
The medical faculty will understand this classification, but I do not know the difference between some of the sections into which the victims are thus divided. But when we come to the proximate causes of insanity, we are in a region level to the uninstructed mind, and here we find that moral and mental excitements growing out of love, such as jealousy and disappointment, are prolific causes: that physical ailments badly attended or wholly neglected frequently result in derangement; and the political turmoils of the State are followed by the same effects. But, on the other hand, there are at least three common causes of insanity in the United States, and probably in England also, that have a limited, if any, influence in Spain. These are religious excitements, haste to be rich, and intemperance in drinking. In Spain they take things easily. The people do not work the brain unduly in matters of religion or trade. The church takes care of the souls of the people: the law or the government excludes all disturbing elements that might come from the efforts of others to proselyte the people, and in their ignorance of any other way of getting to heaven than the church teaches them, they are quiet on that subject. Religion never made any one crazy; on the contrary, it has soothed the madness and healed the malady of many a crazed brain and distracted soul. But the wild and unenlightened excitement, begotten of blind fanaticism and erroneous teaching, has often driven men and women mad, as statistics of American insanity fearfully show. And in Spain there is not energy enough, not life enough, to make speculation dangerous in philosophy, morals, or even in money. I think it very unlikely that they will ever go wild after tulips, or mulberries, or petroleum. They are making railroads, but the French and English furnish the capital and send the engineers. And the great safety-valve, or rather the great preserver of the people’s intellects, is found in the fact that they are never in a hurry about any thing. The old Romans had a good motto, Festina lente, hasten slowly; but the Spaniards never hasten at all. They despise punctuality. An hour after the time when a positive appointment had been made with me, a man in Seville said, when I told him I had been waiting, “Why, the Queen never comes till an hour after the time announced for her arrival.” And this utter indifference to the value of time, which is money all the world over, begets, or is begotten, for it is hard to say if it be the cause or the effect, of that perfect sense of ease, content with one’s condition, idle carelessness, that dismisses all anxiety for the future. Such people do not go crazy.
And far above all other immediate causes of insanity in northern climes, is the use of spirituous liquors. The scholar drinks to keep up his mental fire, and when he becomes insane his malady is marked “excessive study.” The banker or merchant drinks too much, and when he is put into an asylum his madness is ascribed to his devotion to his business. The millions of our people drink, drink, drink,—and this vice of the north of Europe and of America yields thousands on thousands of cases of insanity every year. But in those countries where cheap wines, with little alcohol in them, are the common drink of the people, intemperance is comparatively rare. An English engineer, employing hundreds of men in building and repairing Spanish railways, assured me that intemperance is wholly unknown among them. The class of men who would be the most addicted to the vice with us in the United States, are here more temperate than any class of people in England or America. It is not to be supposed that this temperance is the result solely of the culture of the vine and the abundance of weak wine. It would be a false conclusion, from very inadequate premises, to infer such an idea. It is due in most part to the climate itself, which is at once favorable to the vine, and unfavorable to that elevation or excitement which strong drink begets. And in this delightful clime, where to live and breathe is a luxury, and to keep cool is at once a virtue and a joy, the heating stimulus of ardent spirits would not be sought as one of the pleasurable vices of the land.
Therefore, and to this conclusion we are easily led, the people here in Spain are not likely to be, as a general thing, insane. And if we of colder climes could be so humble as to take a lesson from poor, old, decrepit Spain, we might learn from these facts to moderate our desires, to pursue the good we seek with less haste and more speed, to use the world as not abusing it, and resting now and then, avoid the lunatic asylum on our journey to the grave.
At dusk we went to the station to take our departure from Toledo. In the train going up to Madrid was a large party of young men. Noisy, boisterous, rude, they cheered every lady who came to the cars, calling out to the good-looking ones to come to their apartment, and making sport of others; and all this with a freedom and indecorum that would not be tolerated even in our land of universal liberty. I was surprised both at their impudence and its impunity, and asked who the fellows were.
“Oh,” said Antanazio, “they are college boys: the same all the world over!”
Even so, I do believe.
CHAPTER VII.
LA MANCHA—ANDALUSIA.
AS I took my seat in a “first-class” car and left Toledo, a gentleman in the same compartment asked me, “Is smoking disagreeable to you?”
It was the first time that such a question had been put to me in Spain. I had heard it proposed to a lady, some days before, but generally no one pretends to ask the privilege of smoking in the cars, or the parlor, or anywhere. Everybody smokes, everywhere. It is not interdicted in any department of any railway carriage. Occasionally, in some hotels, I notice a rule posted in the dining-room, “Smoking not allowed.” But nobody heeds it. An attempt to enforce it would probably lead to the sudden departure of all Spanish guests from the house. At the largest and best hotel in Madrid, sixty or seventy persons, ladies and gentlemen, were at dinner, (table-d’hôte), and in the midst of dinner, between the courses, gentlemen lighted their cigarettes, smoked them, and resumed their eating. Yet the notice forbidding smoking was in full view, or was until the clouds of smoke obscured it. In the reading-rooms of the hotels, oftentimes small and unventilated, nine out of ten are smoking all the time, and the thought never occurs to one of them that this may be a nuisance to others. I am told, that at the theatres in Spain, in the midst of the play, the audience smoke in their seats, and if any managers attain to such a moderate height of civilization as to publish a rule restraining the odious habit, the Dons of Spain pay no sort of attention to it. All attempts at reform end only in smoke.
I asked Antanazio if smoking is allowed in the churches of Spain. “Oh no, no,” he answered, with a pious horror; “it was shocking to think of such a desecration.” “Then,” said I, “when I come to Spain to live, I will get a little church for myself, for nowhere else in this country can a man find refuge from this intolerable nuisance.”
“Ah, yes,” he replied; “but perhaps the incense will make a smoke quite as disagreeable as the American weed.”
This was a double hit, as it reminded me of my Protestant aversion to incense in churches, and also of the fact that the weed and the habit of using it came from my part of the world.
By this time the compartment was so densely filled with smoke that I opened the window and put out my head for breath, as a signal of distress, in the hope, but vain, of enlisting the sympathies of the smokers, and inducing them to forego their pleasures while I recovered. I detected grim smiles of satisfaction on the dark faces of my fellow-travellers, who puffed away the more vigorously, as they looked on my woe-begone face.
Perhaps by advertising a reward for the discovery, it might be possible to find a man in Spain who does not smoke. Yet, strange to say, the culture of tobacco in Spain is forbidden by law. The soil and climate are favorable, and its cultivation has been a great success. But by that kind of legislation or decree peculiar to Spain, and constantly reminding one of the Chinese, the mother country, Spain, is prohibited from raising tobacco in order that the daughter, Cuba, may have the monopoly. The right of importation is sold to contractors, who make a great business of it. In the middle of the fifteenth century the Spaniards began to get tobacco from America, and they have been getting more and more of it ever since. In 1860 they smoked seven millions of cigars, and cigars are not the thing they usually smoke. They have their tobacco rolled up in little bits of paper, and these they carry in their pockets, with matches. Often they carry the tobacco and the paper separately, and make a cigarette when they want it, making one while smoking another. These interesting manufactures are not peculiar to Spain; they are common in our own country, but not so general. The weed is used only for smoking and snuffing in Spain. I cannot learn that it is chewed at all.
Children smoke at an earlier age in Spain than in other countries. It is not uncommon for them to begin at six, or even five years of age. And they never leave it off till they die. Ladies smoke. Not often do we see them with a cigarette in their pretty mouths on the street or in the cars, but in the café and in the drawing-room they enjoy it, as well as in the boudoir and the bath. By cool fountains, in a marble-paved patio, among the orange-trees, or lolling at noon on their silken-hung couches, they love to smoke, and their lords have spoiled their own breaths and taste too effectually to make any objection. Where both eat garlic it amounts to the same thing.
In Seville we saw a tobacco factory, erected more than a hundred years ago, at a cost of nearly two millions of dollars then! It is 652 feet long and 524 feet wide. Five thousand persons are at work in it all the time, putting the imported tobacco into cigars or cigarettes, and making snuff, and they use two millions of pounds of tobacco every year. Most of these workers are women. Mothers who bring their children have nursery arrangements provided for them during the hours of work. But the most of them are young women, a class by themselves, known as cigareras, or cigar-girls. Smart at their business in the factory, they are wild as hawks and gay as larks at the bull-fight on Sundays, or the dance on the green. This is the largest establishment of the kind in Spain, and produces as good an article as any other, but the cigars made in Spain are not as popular with good judges as those brought directly from Cuba. The manufacturers there prefer sending the best to London, New York, or Paris, where they find a readier market for the high-priced article. And the Cubans are as cute in concocting peculiar flavors for their cigars, as the French or the Italians for their wines, or Jerseymen for their cider. The connoisseur in tobacco pays a quarter of a dollar (more or less) for a “first-rate” cigar, and smokes it with delicious enjoyment at his club, or after dinner in his study, rejoicing in the dreamy, balmy languor that softly steals upon his senses, soothes his nerves, and makes him sweetly oblivious of the cares and toils of the day just passed. He is sure it does him good. And he does not know, and will not believe when he is told, what every one knows who looks into the subject to learn, that at the very root and source of the business there is as much concoction of tobacco as there is of coffee or wine. Potash and soda are in abundant use to impart peculiar pungency to the plant. And many in the excited atmosphere of New York or London life demand a sedative cigar more soporific than the narcotic plant in its natural state. For them, cigars are made of tobacco leaves steeped in opium. Many of our clergymen, renowned for eloquence and piety and learning, denounce with blazing zeal the baneful practice of smoking or chewing opium, a habit becoming almost as common in the United States as in China. But these same excellent men are daily smoking opium in their cigars, quite unconscious of the evils, physical and mental, they are gradually but surely inhaling with every breath they draw through this venomous weed. The cigar burns freely when first lighted, its ashes are grayish white, and the ring is faint at the end, the smoke rises lightly, and the taste, if any, is nearly imperceptible; therefore they know it is a good cigar. But the opium-eater is not more surely a suicide than they. Dyspepsia often follows; and nervous debility, despondency, melancholy, insomnia, maladies supposed to be relieved by what is their producing cause. Epilepsy and apoplexy are not unknown effects.
We now cross the wide pastoral regions of La Mancha. Readers of Don Quixote recollect these plains as the scene of many a gallant exploit by the knight-errant who took his title from this province. And we had no sooner called him to mind than we saw a windmill, and then another, and soon many more, brandishing their huge arms, as when the crazy hero supposed them to be challenging him to fight, and with mad courage rushed to the encounter. Flocks of sheep are roaming over the plains as when he mistook them for hostile armies. His trusty squire Sancho proposed that they should wait until they saw which side was likely to come off conqueror, and join that; but the hero of the windmill denounced the counsel as worthy only of a craven, insisting it would be more becoming a valiant knight to join the weaker side, and insure it the victory.
No trees are seen. This is the peculiar feature of the Spanish landscape. Across vast plains that reach the horizon the eye seeks in vain to find a single tree to relieve the monotony of the view. And when the hills stretch away in graceful lines, bending and rising with voluptuous swells that seem to be carved and set against the sky, they are destitute of trees. In centuries past these have been stripped off, and none have been planted since; and the country is as bare as the back of your hand.
The sheep are tended by shepherds, who migrate from the higher to the lower pastures, according to the season of the year. They constitute a large part of the wealth of the people. Ten years ago there were seventeen millions of sheep in Spain. The number is, doubtless, much greater now. The wool trade of Spain was at one time of vast importance to the world, but England and Germany now far outstrip it, and the trade with Syria, in the coarser wools, has opened an outlet for the produce of Lebanon and the plains of Mesopotamia.
Corn, including cereals of all kinds, does well in this central part of Spain. It thrives in spite of the stupidest, or rather the most primitive style of agriculture, still prevailing. “Tickle the ground with a hoe,” and the crop will spring. But there is little tickling done with a hoe. They plough to this day with a tree, the root sticking into the ground and scratching it a little; or they leave a branch shooting out at an angle from the stem of the tree, and sometimes they cover this stick with a bit of iron, and with mules or oxen drag it along the field. They sow broadcast, and plough it under. They use no harrows. It is barely possible that one of the modern civilized ploughs has found its way into Spain, but I saw none, and heard of nothing better than the but-end of a small elm-tree. Yet agriculture is the great business of Spain, suited to the habits and genius of the people, who love the sun and enjoy the open air, and dislike trade or mechanics of any kind. And more than any other people in Europe the Spanish do as their fathers did, despising all innovations as unworthy of their ancestral dignity. The farmers of Virgil and Homer, and the rural scenes which are described in the Old Testament Scriptures, are the counterpart of what may be seen in Spain to-day. I am reminded daily of the fields in Asia Minor, in Syria, and Greece. If it were strange that improvements in husbandry had made very little progress there, much more surprising it is to find that all things in this country continue to be as they were. They are so near the rest of the world, and the means of communication are now so ready, it is a marvel of marvels that they are still in the same ruts their fathers were in a thousand years ago.
But there are signs of better times. The law of primogeniture has been abolished, and this new measure tends rapidly to the multiplication of owners of real estate. The lands of the church have been sold and divided. Vast tracts held by the crown have also been distributed by law among the people, at a moderate price. Agricultural societies have been formed, and cattle shows and fairs are becoming common. These things are in the right direction. The government has established agricultural schools and model farms. A few periodicals are published, with the intent of spreading useful information among the people; and those who can read will get some good out of them.
After crossing the plains of La Mancha we reach the Sierra Morena range of mountains, and are to work our way through and over them. The daring of the engineers who would push a road into such recesses is prodigious. The precipices are frightful. Peaks of mountains start up suddenly, and seem to pierce the clouds. Rocks of gigantic grandeur rise abruptly, and sometimes stand apart in solitary dignity. Deep gorges are to be spanned by the iron road. Long and frequent galleries lead, in gloomy state, through the bowels of the mountains. The road is sublime, if safe, and it appears to be well made. We come to a bridge under repairs. All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. They err generally on the safe side, provoking us by their delays, but very rarely breaking our necks. And, on the whole, their way of doing things is the best.
At Manjibar we stopped for lunch, or breakfast, or dinner, whichsoever any one might call it. It was hard to say where or when our last meal was, and what was the name of this. Still more difficult was it to ascertain the names of the dishes set before us. One dish had been chicken, but in some advanced stage of its post-mortem existence it had been consigned to a bath of pickle, and was now offered for our consumption. A single taste sufficed. It probably returned to its brine, to wait a bolder customer, with a better appetite. Then they gave us a stew. I suggested that it was hare. My companion thought it a cat. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, and turned away. The price of this meal that we tried in vain to eat, was the same as the table-d’hôte dinner at many hotels in Paris,—four francs.
Sick, I went into the air. I sat down on a trunk outside, sighing for other lands, and something to eat. A servant came out and drove me off the trunk, saying, “It is forbidden to sit here.” Into the waiting-room I directed my steps. It was full of dirty, disgusting people, some of them beggars, some gypsies, some in queer costumes, some in rags. The fragrance was too much for me, and I walked out again. Over the way was a table with candies and liquors to be sold. It was in front of a door that opened into the side of a hill. There was no other sign of a house. I went across the railway, and entered the open door. It let me into a small room, nicely cemented above and on all sides; a fire in a neat arrangement for it, and a chimney reaching out of the ground above. A man was sitting by the fire; a babe was in a cradle; the wife was bustling about. It was a very comfortable affair. Another room was the bed-chamber; and a third was a storeroom; and the three completed the underground cottage. In other climates it might be damp. Here it was dry enough; cool in summer and warm in winter. I spent a few minutes very cheerfully with these people, and they seemed to be pleased with a visit from a stranger. It was a far better house than the rude huts we had seen on the way.
We are now in Andalusia, and in one of the worst parts of Spain. True, it is Andalusia, and the very sound of the name is musical, suggesting beauty and pastoral delights. But in the province of Jaen, and we are near the city of that name, out of a population of 360,000, more than 300,000 are unable to read; and as ignorance and crime go hand in hand, the number of murders is between 350 and 400 every year, and nearly as many robberies. Such is a picture of much of Spain. This is, perhaps, as dark a picture as could be honestly drawn, but there are hundreds of towns, of which the mayor or chief officer does not know how to read or write.
Ten years ago, when the last census was made, in a population of 15,613,536, there were actually 12,543,169 who could not read and write, leaving only 3,070,367 people in Spain possessed of these accomplishments. In 1860 there were 1,101,529 children in the public schools of Spain, and they must learn something.
It is encouraging to learn that the government is paying increased attention to the subject of education. There are 25,000 primary schools in the kingdom, which ought to be exerting a powerful effect upon the people. Spain has ten universities, and the number of students in them is far greater than one would expect under the low state of popular education. They are thus distributed:—
| Madrid | 4,194 |
| Barcelona | 1,365 |
| Seville | 887 |
| Valladolid | 828 |
| Granada | 617 |
| Valencia | 624 |
| Santiago | 403 |
| Saragossa | 389 |
| Salamanca | 242 |
| Oviedo | 155 |
The course of study pursued in these institutions is substantially the same as that in other countries: 2,040 of the students are in the Philosophical and Literary course, 1,617 in the Exact Sciences, Physics, and so forth; while Law, Theology, and Medicine include the rest. Some of these universities once had a reputation as wide as the civilized part of the world, and students from all nations flocked to them as to the purest and sweetest fountains of knowledge in the earth. At Salamanca, where now there are less than 250 students, there were 10,000 in the fourteenth century, and its reputation has been higher than Oxford’s. It was at this university that the Copernican system of astronomy was held and taught, when the Romish Church denounced it as heretical and contrary to the Holy Scriptures. Yet even here Columbus could make no impression in favor of his theory of another continent, but all his arguments were treated with the greatest contempt by the learned men of the university of Salamanca. The professors of the modern school, which still retains the name and distinctions of the days of its glory, get $600 a year for their services, and that is probably an index of the estimation in which learning is held in these decayed and benighted regions.
The present population of Spain, making due allowance for increase since the last estimate, is about 16,400,000. It is therefore the eighth of the European powers in numbers, Italy and Turkey being both ahead of it. The increase of population in Spain is only at the rate of less than the half of one per hundred annually. At this rate the number would double only once in 181 years, placing Spain behind every country in Europe, in this respect, except poor Austria. She doubles once in 198 years; then Spain; then France, once in 122 years; Holland, once in 80 years; Scotland, once in 46 years; Prussia, once in 41 years; England and Wales, once in 29 years.
One of the most curious questions in morals, politics, and physiology, is started by these facts. They furnish food for thought. One class of speculators will find moral causes to explain the circumstances, and they may easily gather a pile of facts to sustain their positions. Climate, too, has its influence. The civil government, with the physical condition of the people, is to be considered. But when the physical, the moral, the civil, and the social state of Austria, Spain, France, Holland, Prussia, Italy, and England is duly examined, it still remains to be ascertained why it is that the number of inhabitants increased more rapidly among the colored people of the Southern States of North America while they were slaves, and now increases more rapidly among the Irish portion of the American population, than it does among these highly favored countries of Europe. The statistics of births in New England and other parts of the United States unhappily show that, with the increase of the cost of living, and of luxury and effeminacy, the number of children born is less and less from year to year. There is no truth in social economy better established by the comparison of an adequate number of facts than this, that the diminution in the number of births is attended by, if not consequent upon, the deterioration of the health and the morals of any people. Oppression which makes a wise man mad may depress the spirits, exhaust the energies, and retard the increase of a population, not supernaturally sustained as were the Hebrews in Egypt, who, the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew. But favored as the middle and southern countries of Europe are by climate and soil, affording the people an easy and comfortable subsistence, they might and would increase in numbers as rapidly at least as the northern, if they were so disposed.
We are now coming down into the region of the aloe, the olive, the orange, and the vine. Since we have crossed the Sierra Morena, the climate has softened. At this season of the year (February), the vegetation is not far advanced, but the leaves of the olive are always green, and the orange and the lemon bear leaves and fruit and flowers at the same time. The orange should, in some climates, like this and the south of France, remain on the tree, after it appears to be ripe, for two years, before it is sweet. Much of that delicious fruit which we have in our country is too sour to be good, because gathered and sent to market before it is fully ripe. Here, and all over the southern parts of Spain, it is a glorious fruit. It is very large, very yellow, and very sweet; and being abundant, is very cheap. A cent of our money will buy the largest, and the natives get them much cheaper than that. Sweet lemons are also common. But they are not agreeable. They seem to me a miserable attempt to be an orange. And the good sour lemons grow to an enormous size. I got one in Cordova to measure, and my hat would hold one lemon only! The skin was at least an inch thick; the juice not so acid as of the lemon generally, and there was no more of it than in one of ordinary size. These large lemons are used in preserves, the skin being the only available part of the fruit.
We are now on the plains, in sight of the graceful hills of Andalusia. In the soft sunlight of this warm winter’s day the hills appear to be sleeping and enjoying their repose. All nature, even now, invites to rest. We begin to feel the languor of the clime. There are no trees but the olive. No birds are singing, or we should know that summer is nigh. We stop frequently at little stations, to leave and take the mail. The letters and papers are tied up in a packet with a string, and are handed from the mail-car to a boy or a woman on hand to receive them. The letters from the place are delivered to the mail-agent in the same way. No bag, no box, no lock or key, not even a wrapper around the letters protects them. It is the way they do things in this country.
Over these wide plains there are few or no habitations to be seen. The peasants must travel many miles to their daily work, for they live in villages far away from the lands they till. Few cattle are to be seen; now and then a flock of sheep. More black sheep than white ones were in sight, and many of the blacks were singularly marked, having but one white spot on them, and that at the tip of their tails.
CORDOVA.
CHAPTER VIII.
CORDOVA.
A NEW, but old world, a sudden vision of the Orient, rose on the sight, when we reached the city of Cordova. Never did I enter a city that filled me with a deeper sense of the transient, temporal, and fleeting nature of all things material. It is not in ruins. It shows no tokens of decay to the coming traveller. A cleaner city is not in the world. It was the first city in Europe whose streets were paved, and the traditional habits of the people are so well preserved, that although it was a thousand years ago (in 850, under Abdurhaman) that this work was done, it has been done again and again, and the stones in the streets are kept as clean as the floor of a house. The Guadalquiver flows gently by the side of it, and under the shade-trees planted on its banks the idle and the fashionable have their favorite lounge and promenade. The bridge over this widely famed river was first built by Octavius Cæsar and rebuilt by the Moors. Standing on sixteen arches, it is a striking monument of two departed dynasties and forms of civilization. The city itself was great before Christ came into the world, and Julius Cæsar writes of it as it was in his day, when his armies swept over Spain. In the civil wars of Rome, Cordova declared for Pompey, and then Cæsar put 28,000 of its inhabitants to the sword.
After the Moors came over from Africa, and, in the battle of Guadalete, struck down the power of the Goths, this city was governed by the Caliph of Damascus, until it became independent and the capital of Moorish Spain. Then began its career of glory. In the tenth century it had 300,000 inhabitants (now 40,000), and for these devout and cleanly and hospitable and learned Mussulmans there were six hundred mosques, and nine hundred baths, and six hundred inns, and eight hundred schools, and a library of 600,000 volumes.
Outside of the city the people had gone in crowds to a rural fête. Men, women, and children, old and young, rich and poor, on foot, on horse, on mules or donkeys, and in carriages,—any way to go,—all had gone to have a jolly time in the country, as the custom is in Spain. It was a gay sight, but rising among the grounds were scattered here and there the remnants of ancient buildings, broken columns, fragments of capitals, and blocks of stone, that lay there silently speaking of departed glory. For here once stood the fairy palace of the Moorish Abdurhama, which that prince built for his favorite sultana, whose name it bore, and whose statue stood above the principal gate. The whole palace was of marbles and precious stones, adorned with the florid architecture which the genius of the East would invent. More than four thousand marble columns did this luxurious monarch bring from France and Italy and Africa to adorn his halls. And when he had spent more than fifty millions of pounds sterling upon it, he brought into his harem four thousand and three hundred women! Guarded by twelve thousand valiant men, he gave himself up to the pleasures of “the life that now is.” The city of Cordova was the city for such a king!
It is Moorish, Oriental, languid, voluptuous, in its decay. Walking along its quiet, almost noiseless streets, we looked in upon the courts that form the central patio around the four sides of which the house is built. In the midst, a fountain springs, and the water falls back into a marble basin. Around it shrubs with blooming flowers fill the air with fragrance and beauty. In some of them evergreen trees, of unknown age, are growing, and these have been trained so curiously, as to produce surprising effects. Planted at the four corners of a square, their tops are brought over to meet each other, the branches are joined, the redundant leaves and twigs being pruned away, they grow together, the whole four, like one tree of arch over arch, a perpetually verdant bower. The windows of the dwelling look down into this court; and in them, or on its marble pavements in the heat of the day, the women sit with their needle-work, enjoying the fragrant shade and the music of the falling water. The gardens abound in oranges, lemons, and limes, hanging over the walls in clusters of extraordinary size.
The interior of these ancient houses is no less interesting. One, to which we were invited, was said to be the best example of the Moorish domestic architecture extant in Cordova. A few jasper columns were standing under the archway by which we passed from the court. The modern whitewash had covered the most of the arabesque embellishments upon the walls. We ascended a flight of broad, brick steps, with a solid beam of wood at the outer edge of each step, and at the head of the stairs the venerable master of the house met us kindly and made us welcome. We heard a piano as we were coming up the steps, but it suddenly ceased, and a young lady flitted out of view. The house is said to be more than a thousand years old. It may be so, but the Moorish style is so imprinted on the tastes of the people that they build age after age with substantially the same models, and it is not safe to affirm that the hands of the Moors laid any of these stones. The ceilings are very low, the rooms small, the furniture, as in all lands, is according to the taste or means of the owner, but Eastern in its style, and adapted to the quiet, languid type of the modern as well as the ancient inhabitants of this and all such climes.
The wonder of Cordova is also one of the wonders of the world. Its cathedral has been a mosque of the Moors. To see it once is an adequate reward for all one has endured in travelling thus far through the most comfortless country in Europe. To see it often, and study it in the minute details of its extraordinary plan and finish, is to lay up a store of imagery for dreams of memory through the rest of a lifetime. At least so it seems to me now, since entering its magnificent Gate of Pardon, and suddenly standing in the midst of a thousand variously colored columns,—marble, jasper, porphyry, granite,—all surmounted by Corinthian capitals, a forest in a temple, a petrified grove of trunks of majestic trees, enclosed in walls. Perhaps the memory of it will fade, so that a year or two hence the impressions of wonder, of sublimity, of vastness, will not be so strong as they are now. But at the moment when the interior first broke upon my sight, it was as strange to me that the art of men could construct such an edifice, as that the great Architect should build the walls over which the Niagara rushes for ever.
Court of Oranges, Cordova.
Stepping out of the street through a gate in a solid wall, we are in the midst of a court-yard some 400 feet long: an orange grove, venerable trees that have been bearing fruit, as now, a century or more; and three fountains send up jets of waters that fall back into large marble basins filled with goldfish which groups of children are feeding. Near the gate, on benches, elderly men are sitting, smoking, and enjoying the sunshine. The elders sat in the gate in the Scripture times, and do now in Eastern towns, and here also, where Oriental manners still obtain. In former years this court became a great resort for the people who made a mart, or exchange, as in all ages men have been tempted to make the house of prayer a market-place, and so it often becomes a den of thieves. Now, this Court of Oranges, as it is called, is the resort of old men and children, who enjoy the warmth and shade and waters of the holy precincts. Passing through this court we come to the sacred edifice itself. Its history is as eventful as that of Spain. It was built by the Moors as a mosque, and when the Christians conquered Cordova, they converted the mosque into a church, though they could not convert the Moors into Christians. And this now-called cathedral is the one that Abdurhaman began to build A. D. 786, and his son completed in 796, pushing on the work with such tremendous energy that in ten years he constructed one of the most remarkable edifices in the world. His father’s idea was to surpass every temple on earth in extent and strength and splendor. It was to be the Mecca in Europe; and when the Western world was subdued to Islam, as he and all the believers believed it would be, the holy place to which pilgrimages from all these lands would be made was Cordova. It is, therefore, the finest example that Spain possesses of that peculiar style of architecture and ornamentation which the Moors introduced, and which have been gradually disappearing with the lapse of centuries. It doubtless has a symbolism behind its material forms, and the student of art and religious thought will read in the plan and a thousand details, a meaning that does not meet the unanointed eye of the simple traveller.
The Gate of Pardon is so called because, under the Roman Catholic dispensation, indulgences were granted to those who entered by it into the temple. There is one gate of the same name in each of the cathedrals that I have visited in this country. The bronze ornaments upon the doors are very curious, the royal arms are displayed, and while the Christian inscription, in Gothic letters, of the word Deus, proclaims the true God, the Arabic letters also testify that the Mahometans worshipped him, for they write, “The empire belongs to God.”
Within the temple there is at first a sense of gloom, almost of oppression, arising from the vastness of the area and the want of height. The roof cannot be more than 40 or 50 feet high, while the floor stretches away 640 feet in length and 460 feet in breadth. A thousand columns in long lines, like trees planted in the garden of the Lord, are each of one single stone,—the spoils of temples in the East and the West, and some of them imperial gifts, and hence a variety of colors and size, showing all sorts of marbles, the green and red jasper, black, white and rose, emerald and porphyry. Crossing each other, at right angles, these rows of pillars form nineteen naves one way and twenty-nine the other; long-drawn aisles, over which the horse-shoe-shaped arches, standing one upon the other and supporting the roof, produce a marvellous effect.
THE GREAT MOSQUE, CORDOVA.
The Holy of Holies in the mosque was the Mihrab, and it has been preserved in the converted temple, with religious care, as at once a curiosity and a memorial that the Mahometan has ceased to defile these courts. It is a recess in the wall of the temple, in which the Koran was kept, and where the Kalif came to say his prayers, looking out of a little window toward Mecca. It is a small six-sided room, about twelve feet across, the floor one piece of marble, and the roof, in the shape of a shell, is also, we were assured, of a single block, and up the six sides rise marble pilasters, the whole adorned with strange Arabic art and mysterious inscriptions. When Hakem was Caliph of Cordova, he sent messengers into the East to ask for skilful artificers in painting glass and giving this strange effect to tracery in metals and stone; for there is in mosaic work, when well done, something superior to the softest painting, and quite incomprehensible. The workers in mosaic came, and their skill now shines in this miracle of Oriental art, which has been here since 965, and is as fresh and beautiful as when it shone at the feast of the Rhamadhan, in the light of a thousand lamps. In the marble floor is worn a deep groove, by the knees of devout Mussulmans, who have thus gone around it while at their devotions.
On the sides of the cathedral are many chapels, each with its altar, its pictures, its relics, and its history. By one of them, once a Moorish sanctuary paved with silver, is a rude painting of a crucifixion, and an inscription in Spanish which tells us that that—
“While the Mahometans celebrated their orgies in this temple, a Christian captive uttered the name of Christ, whom he held in his heart, and he engraved this image with his nails on the hard stone of this pillar, for which his death has purchased this aureole.”
On the stone column is etched a crucifixion which tradition says the prisoner scratched in with his finger nails. The stone is very hard, and the story harder.
Come again and again, and this strange pile, with its thousand columns and its thousand years of history, grows on you with every visit. We come from a land where all is fresh and new, and these old temples fill us with awe. But if we are impressed with a ruin as in Rome, where Paganism built its temples to become the sites of Christian churches, which themselves have been buried and again dug up to be the wonder of the present age, how much more impressive is a building still fresh and unbroken by the march of centuries, where the pomp and ceremony of a religion, corrupt indeed, yet recognizing God the Father as the only true God, are perpetuated year after year till their number becomes a thousand years.
CHAPTER IX.
SEVILLE, ITS CATHEDRAL AND BULL-FIGHTS.
NOT until reaching Seville does one feel what a luxury it is to live,—just to breathe,—to inhale the delicious air and rejoice in being. Other climates had been cold, or damp, or chilly; some hot, debilitating; but this was just right, and when a man comes to the place where the weather just suits him, it is time to sit down and enjoy it. It was a privilege to be any thing that could breathe in this delightful clime. It is the latter part of February. If one of my lungs was out of order, or both of them, I would stay here till they were well, or until the weather became too hot for comfort, and that will be but a few weeks hence.
The city is clean, well-built, and in the evening the inhabitants throng some of the streets so as to make it difficult to walk. The courts around which the houses are built are beautifully adorned with flowers and shrubs, and trees; in warmer weather awnings are spread over them, and here the family enjoy themselves with the piano and guitar, the song and the dance. Here, too, the table is spread, and all Seville, it is said, takes tea out of doors.
“LA GERALDA,” SEVILLE.
It was a dreadful day for Seville, and indeed for Spain, when the Moors were driven out of the country; they had conquered it, and ruled eight hundred years. Four hundred thousand Moors, Jews and Arabs, left this city of Seville in a few days after it was surrendered to St. Ferdinand. Wealth, learning, taste, art, and the charm of Eastern life went out with them, and Spain has been lower in the scale of morals and manners ever since. This is no compliment to Mahometanism. To compare the present condition of Spain with any thing that has gone before it, and say that the former days were better than these, is saying very little for the better times. In this old city of Seville we found the Alcazar or palace, being the first specimen of Moorish magnificence we had seen. It consists of a group of palaces, on the banks of the Guadalquiver, and exhibits the same style of architecture and mural decorations that are so much admired and celebrated in the Alhambra. Indeed, the pavements and columns and arches and apartments have been preserved or restored with so much greater care than the Alhambra itself, that the latter appears to be a feeble example of Moorish taste and skill, compared with these glorious rooms in Seville. Fancy must people these chambers with men and women, of flesh and blood; clothe them in Oriental and gorgeous raiment, surround them with every luxury that gold and labor and power can give; hang these passages with curtains whose richness has not been excelled by any thing that modern art has produced. When the sleepy janitor opens the outer gate and leads you through these deserted and empty halls, in which your footfalls make the only sound, into apartments that for centuries have been silent as the grave, yet on every hand is beauty of coloring and carving and curiously wrought adorning that you must pause to admire; even in the midst of admiration one cannot but mourn that the barbaric splendor of Moorish glory has departed, and the degenerate race of effete Spanish civilization has taken its place. A thousand wives of a proud Moor once made these walls jocund with their mirth, and the adjoining gardens and the beautiful Guadalquiver were gay with their revels and song, and the moral tone of the palace was as high, and the happiness of the people just as great as when a dissolute queen and a profligate court, and an ignorant, depraved, and impoverished people, constituted the government and inhabitants of a nominally Christian kingdom.
Instead of a mosque, is the cathedral of Seville. It is the noblest example of the Gothic ecclesiastical architecture in the world. St. Peter’s at Rome produces no such effect on the soul when first you enter it. The Cologne cathedral is nearer it in power. I have no superstitious feeling that compels me to be awed by a place. But I cannot enter this temple without worshipping! Instantly, as you stand within its walls, its giant solemn columns rising around, scarcely visible in the twilight at the noon of a brilliant southern day, its vastness, its amazing height, the roof like a firmament, and resting on arches, dividing it into sixty-eight compartments, one feels that this surely ought to be none other than the house of God. High mass was celebrated during one of my many visits to the cathedral. When the tinkling of the bell gave the signal for the “elevation of the host,” the faithful, wherever they chanced to be in the vast area, fell on their knees and silently adored the idol which superstition had just held aloft for the worship of an ignorant multitude. A woman entered one of the chapels and knelt before an image of the Virgin and poured out her soul in prayer. As if unconscious that spectators were all around her, she wept and told her beads.
She wept and told her Beads.
The women of Seville are celebrated for their beauty. In the Central Park of New York, Hyde Park of London, or the Bois de Boulogne of Paris, you notice that many of the most splendid equipages carry very plain women, and one often admires the compensation system that gives the signs of wealth to some and saves the good looks for others. But you may stand by the fashionable drive of Seville and the first hundred carriages that pass shall have four handsome women in each of them. As “you would scarce expect one of my age” to be a connoisseur in this matter, I will give in the words of my guide the types of Spanish beauty: “Deep blue-black eyes, adormilados sometimes, and at others full of flashes, each a puñalada; a small forehead; raven hair, long and silky, which they might almost turn at night into a balmy soft pillow, and a long flowing mantilla by day; a peculiar meneo, sal, and indescribable charm, naturalness, and grace in every movement, together with liveliness and repartee,—form the principal features of their appearance and character.”
The dance and the song, the bull-fight more than any thing else in the season of it, make this city the home of the gayest, wildest, most dissolute men and women in the south of Europe. Corinth, in the days of Venus-worship, was not more wholly given up to the lust of the flesh and the pride of life than Seville to-day. Yet it was once the emporium of the New World. From its port set sail the fleet that carried Columbus to a land beyond the sea and brought back the wealth of the Western Ind. It has been the residence of kings; and successive dynasties, faiths, and customs have in turn made Seville their capital and terrestrial paradise. It is girt on every side by fertile plains, the orange and lemon trees hang loaded all the year with their golden fruit, and the silver river, whose name is poetry and whose banks are haunted with the memories of Eastern delights, washes the feet of this beautiful city.
If there was ever an original to Byron’s Don Juan, and there was perhaps an original to him as to Cooper’s Spy or Irving’s Schoolmaster, then the tradition may be true that points to a low white-washed house, close to San Leandro, and belonging to the nuns of that convent, where that graceless scamp once lived. And the “Barber of Seville,” of course, had his shop somewhere in town, and it has been conveniently located in the same neighborhood, so that when you visit the St. Thomas Square you can see them both. They are nothing to see, unless you are at that age when the poetry of Byron has charms they lose as you get older and wiser.
The house of Murillo, the painter of Spain, and not far from being the painter of the world, is an object of attraction, and Seville has it, and also some of the greatest pictures of this master. The Queen of Spain would send the Pope a present worthy of a sovereign to give to another, and she sent two of Murillo’s paintings. The Pope had them copied in mosaic, and sent the copies to the Queen of Spain. It is surpassingly wonderful that stone can be set so skilfully as to make a picture with all the softness of shade and color that belongs to the finest work in oil. We will look up some Murillos on our way, but just now we are near the site of the Old Moorish Castle, which is not more distinguished for the tales of Oriental life and love and war than it is for being the place in which the Inquisition was first established. What tales of horror its stones might tell if they were permitted to cry out! Nowhere on this planet has the notion of converting men to believe a lie, by roasting them if they will not believe, been carried to a higher finish than in Spain. In each of its chief cities a spot is still cherished with affectionate regard by the faithful, where in the good old times of their fathers the auto-da-fé was celebrated with pompous processions, when priests and soldiers and hosts of men and women marched to the public square with a company of those who had been condemned to the stake! The Quemadaro, or burning place of Seville, is outside of the city, and the plain is called the Field of St. Sebastian. Aceldama would be a more appropriate name.
On the banks of the Guadalquiver, near the Moorish Alcazar, stands a famous pile called the Tower of Gold, as well so called from its ancient color as the uses to which it has been put. Its summit gives an outlook far upon the plain across the river, and in times of old it has been a fortress of huge strength, to resist the enemy when threatening the palace itself. It was built by the Moors as a treasure-house. When the Spaniards got possession of it, Don Pedro made it a prison for his friends, men and women, who fell under his disfavor. And then came a time when it was wanted for the purpose of holding heaps of gold, for when Columbus had gone from Seville to a new world, and the stream of gold began to flow back to Spain, this Seville, which had sent out the great discoverer, received the returning treasures, and this tower became the reservoir to contain it. Eight millions of ducats and more have been stored here at one time, private and public funds, and the monarchs of Spain often put their arms deep into the bins of gold, and helped themselves.
The decline and fall of Spain would be the fitting theme for another Gibbon, and the lesson it teaches might be studied with advantage in the new world, whose discovery had so much to do with enriching, and then destroying the kingdom. It is very hard to speculate or philosophize on the causes that led to the prostration of a great power like this, when the element of religion is excluded from the study. Without the demoralizing influences of a political religion, there were causes enough to work the ruin of Spain, and foremost among these was the influx of wealth, that made every man greedy of a chance to get rich, at the expense of the State. It is useful to recur to it now, and in our own country, because the same causes are working mightily in the same direction, and producing the same deplorable effects. It was always so, but increased opportunities increase temptation and multiply the consequences. Men now seek and obtain office not for honor and the power of usefulness, but to get rich. Government in the hands of such men is an instrument of robbery, an engine of corruption, and it has in itself disease and death. The influx of gold from California has corrupted the American people in the same way, if not to the same degree that the Mexican gold and silver demoralized Spain.
Antanazio proposed to drive out of town, along the banks of the river, to the ruins of an ancient city. A charming ride of an hour, in a delicious winter day, without the winter, brings us to the ruins of an amphitheatre built by Scipio Africanus, A. U. C. 546. Here, away in this end of the then known world, three men were born, each one of whom became a Roman emperor! The glory of nations was once over all the palaces, temples, and theatres that distinguish this spot. But now the ruins themselves are ruined. We can mark, or rather we can believe when we are pointed to, the places where the nobles sat to see the games of blood in the arena of the amphitheatre, the dungeons of the wild beasts are laid open, and the chambers where gladiators stripped for the fight, that gladdened the hearts of men and women two thousand years ago. Yet they were quite as rational and refined, quite as Christianable and decent, as the bull-fights of to-day.
“Have you been to see a bull-fight?” was one of the first questions put to me by a delicate little lady-friend whom I met.
“No; have you?” I answered and asked in the same breath.
Her husband was sitting by; a splendid soldier-like looking man, six feet high, and well proportioned, who could take the bull by the horns when he pleased, and would do it were there any occasion. He did not wait for his pretty wife to answer my inquiry, but laughingly replied:
“Yes, she has, and I went with her, but could not stand it; the sight made me sick, and I had to leave in disgust; but she staid it out, and saw—how many killed was it, dear?”
“Six bulls and five horses,” she said with a smile of supreme delight.
“Killed!” I cried.
THE BULL FIGHT.
“Yes, killed,” they both answered, and he went on to say, “butchered;—horrid!”
“Tell me all about it, please; I would like to hear, at least.”
“Well,” said the amiable husband, “if you are going to talk bull, I will go into the reading-room and have a smoke.” He went out, and she went on:—
“These men” she said; “but I ought to say, you men, are so squeamish; you faint at the sight of a little blood; what would you do in a fight, a real battle with bullets and brains flying all about you and men bleeding to death by hundreds, if you can’t bear to see a bull cut down or a horse ripped up. Why, I saw a horse run all about the bull-ring with his entrails trailing on the ground, and a bull with his hamstrings cut, and making splendid fight on his knees. You must go and see it; now there’s my husband, poor fellow, he ought not to go to such places, it doesn’t agree with him!”
“Well, I would rather have you describe a fight,” said I, “than to go and see it. I have no particular taste for blood, but any thing would be agreeable that you would undertake to describe.”
“Thank you. You have seen the ring; every city in Spain has its bull-ring: a circular theatre, open to the sky, with seats rising from the arena in the centre. The seats on the east and southerly quarters are covered to protect the grandees, while the multitude sitting in the sun hold fans before their faces or take it as it comes. This ring will seat some fifteen to twenty thousand people, and a gayer, grander sight it is rare to see, than these bright-colored, dressy people; the women are the most beautiful in the world; they are far handsomer than American women, you know they are, don’t you?”
“Perhaps so, present company excepted, and one or two others: but pray go on,—I am more anxious to hear of bulls than women.”
“A blast of trumpets sounds the hour for the spectacle to begin, and the eager shout of the multitude shows their impatience to see the fun. A great show precedes, the magistrates riding in with a troop to give something like dignity to the occasion, and when they have swept around the circle and retired, the spectators sit in breathless silence. Two mounted men, called picadors, ride in, each with a long spear at rest, and take their position, some fifty feet in front of the gateway through which the beasts are to enter. All things being ready, and the breathless throng thirsting for the fray, the huge door unfolds, and a fierce bull dashes into the arena. The multitude greet him with a shout of ecstasy. He makes straight upon the picadors, if he is a bull of spirit. There’s a great difference in the animals; some of them go scouring all around the ring, head down and tail up, pursued by the picador; but a real bull of Navarre—they are the fiercest and pluckiest—pitches right ahead for the first enemy he sees. The horseman levels his lance to meet the tremendous monster as he comes; sometimes catches him on the shoulder, and the blood spouts from the wound. But he does not stop for trifles. It takes more than a scratch to stop a good bull; he rushes on and sometimes buries the iron deeper in his flesh, or tosses it off, and catching the horse on his horns, hoists him and his rider into the air, and as they come down in a heap, he drives on to meet other antagonists lying in wait, and ready to do him mischief. The very last time I was there, it was this sight that made my husband sick; the horse scrambled up, and actually went trotting around the ring, when there was more of him outside than in, he was so terribly ripped open by that one lunge of those splendid horns. I was in hopes that the bull would beat the whole of them; now he met the men on foot, with red cloaks on their arms, which they shake to attract the excited gentleman’s attention. He sees them and bears down gallantly upon them like a Monitor or a Miantonomoh, and the wily chulos, or cloakers, leap dexterously to one side, and sometimes they jump over the barriers among the spectators, where they have been followed by the raging bull himself. This is not often, however. He has still another set of fighters to drive out of the ring. These are the banderilleros, who throw fiery darts into the bull’s neck; these darts are provided with a powder squib which explodes when it strikes in the flesh, and puts his majesty into a horrid rage: by this time, the bull, hunted by all these foes, charging upon one and speared by another, is becoming exhausted, or the spectators are wearied with the sameness of the fight, and want a new victim. The matador, or chief butcher, then enters the field in a full court dress, with a scarlet robe in one hand and a sharp stiletto in the other. He brandishes the red skirt to draw the bull on, and as he comes he aims a stab at his neck, and, if he is a master at his work, takes him in the right spot, and the huge fellow falls dead at his victor’s feet. Once I saw the matador miss his aim, the bull wheeled suddenly, one horn took him in the side, and he went over the head of the bull and came down a mangled corpse. Then a shout went up as if to shake the skies. I felt badly myself, but these Spanish people seemed to relish it amazingly, and I suppose they get used to it. But the bull generally gets the worst of it. When he has had the finishing stroke, a team of mules is driven in, the dead beast is hitched on by a hook and chain and drawn out rapidly, and the ring is clear for another fight. All this has not taken half an hour, and a similar scene is repeated until four, five, or six bulls, and often as many horses, are killed.
“When a good hit is made the spectators rise en masse and shout their applause. This is the triumph of the gladiators in the sand. A little riband on the bull’s mane is a prize which the combatant seeks to capture, and this he presents to his lady-love as the evidence of his bravery and skill. The ladies are evidently quite as enthusiastic in their love of the national sport as the men, and they show it by clapping their little hands or fans and crying bravo, as eagerly as any.”
“And do you really find pleasure in this bloody spectacle?” I inquired somewhat anxiously, for I had been quite interested in her graphic description, and could readily see that she had spoken with feeling.
“Well, I must say that I do like the excitement of it. I never could see any sport in looking on when two or three or four horses were thrashed to make them run faster; yet many women think it the height of enjoyment to see a horse-race. The noblest men of England delight to stand in a ring around two men who beat each others’ faces into a jelly, and they call it the ‘manly art’! The ladies of New York go to theatres and operas with their necks and more exposed to the gaze of men, and the ladies look at the licentious dancing of ballet girls who have been tortured into the art of showing themselves disgustingly to every virtuous taste. And I have come to the conclusion that in all parts of the world people have their own ideas about amusement, and there is no great difference in the moral of it. For my part I like a good fair stand-up bull-fight more than any of them.”
My fair enthusiast rested; I thanked her for the information she had given, and added:
“I agree with you entirely, my dear madam, as to the moral of the sports you speak of; only I think the New York amusements are the most corrupt and corrupting. And when I write on ‘Bull-Fights in Seville,’ I shall do my best to put it in your words.”
“If you do,” said she, “send me a copy of your book; I want my husband to read it. He can’t bear bullfights.”
CHAPTER X.
SEVILLE.
DON MIGUEL DE MANARA, a Spanish rake, one of many like the Don Juan who stands as type of his race, having spent his life in the way rakes love to live, undertook to be religious in his later years. He had sowed his wild oats, and never got much of a crop, and now that death was likely to call for him soon, he thought to get ready for his coming by making over to some pious uses what he had not spent upon his lusts. According to the theory of that church which takes care of all Spanish souls, he made a sure thing of it by founding a hospital, to which was given the name of “La Caridad.” A brotherhood, whose special vocation was to minister to persons sentenced to death, and to bury their bodies, took charge of it. It is famous far beyond Seville and Spain. Its patients are tended by young men of good families in the city, who minister by turns to the sick and dying brought to this Charity. Perhaps some of the young gentlemen nurses, like the founder, have an eye to a compromise of their own infirmities, by giving attention to these miserably sick poor.
But the fame of the hospital is so great because it has within its walls some of the noblest paintings in the world!
The building stands in an obscure part of the town, and we had a long search to find it, Antanazio, our guide, being quite unused to take his travellers to hospitals and out-of-the-way churches, as theatres and bull-fights and fandangoes among the gypsies are much more attractive. But we found it; an old woman janitor let us in, and led us to the chapel where the art-treasures are to be seen.
This church is the guardian of the masterpieces of Murillo. His manner is as distinctly marked as Raphael’s or Titian’s, and the power of none of the Italian masters, unless we except Leonardo da Vinci, is greater than his. It was difficult to believe this in Italy, where Murillos are comparatively rare, but here, where alone his greatest and best works are to be found, it is easy to believe that he is among the first. Several of his pictures in this church are of St. John, and in one of them an angel assists the saint in carrying a sick man, and in another the same saint washes the feet of a pauper. The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is a wonderfully faithful presentation of that sublime scene. But the great picture, the one we specially came to see, is “Moses striking the Rock in the Desert.” Its eloquence tells and pleads its own story: a famished multitude pressing to the gushing stream and gathering the precious waters in their hands; mothers drinking, while their children, with parched lips, are pleading for the life-saving draught; even the beasts declare their joy at the sight of water, and gratitude lights up the faces of the thronging Israelites. But the central, majestic figure in the group, on which the painter’s high art is lavished with a wealth of skill, is Moses, with folded hands and upturned eyes, acknowledging the goodness and the power which this miracle, almost as wondrous to him as to his people, has so suddenly revealed. Near him is his brother Aaron, scarcely less than Moses in the scene, for he, priest-like, is still in the act of prayer. And in the people every form and feature of human life and feeling are portrayed, each after its own kind, with the hand of a master.
There are several pictures here by others, as well as other Murillos, that I have not space to mention. Marshal Soult carried off five of the great pictures by Murillo, and two of them, “Abraham entertaining the Angels,” and the “Prodigal Son,” were bought by the Duke of Sutherland. Wellington recovered, at Waterloo, some of Soult’s spoils of the galleries of Spain. The French are great thieves when they get among pictures or statuary. They once had the Venus de Medicis boxed and ready for Paris. War is pretty much the same game all the world over, and always.
The picture-gallery of Seville was saved from French spoliation by the forethought of a Spanish amateur, who sent all the paintings to Gibraltar before the French reached Seville. We found, to our disappointment, that the museum was closed for repairs, and a special order from the governor was necessary. Instead of sending the order, he promised to send us a guide to conduct us through the gallery the next day. An hour after the time he came, and the only service he came to perform was to lead us to the door of the museum, which was close to our lodgings, and then to receive his fees for this needless service. That was very Spanish. The porter then admitted us and received his fees. Another led us across the court into the hall where the pictures were standing along the walls, unhung, and he received his fees. When the convents in Spain were suppressed, the best pictures among them were gathered into this museum. Murillo painted some of his finest works for the Capuchin convent, which stood near the Cordova gate. One of the sweetest and most perfect of paintings is that of the two saints of Seville, the maidens Justa and Rufina, who held up the giralda, or tower of the cathedral, when it was likely to be blown down in a tempest. In the days of Pagan Spain a procession was passing through the streets bearing an image of Venus, to which the people made homage. Two young women, lately converted to the Christian religion, by name Justa and Rufina, refused to worship the idol, and the multitude in their madness made martyrs of them on the spot. When the Christians became masters of the city, the maidens became its tutelar saints, and are painted as holding the giralda in their hands, in honor of their kind interposition in a storm.
Here is Murillo’s first and last page of the gospel,—the Annunciation is the first page, with the beauty and joyful hope of the motherhood of him who is the desire of all nations; the last page is the Mother of Jesus weeping over the death of him who was to have redeemed Israel. The St. Thomas giving alms, by Murillo, has been praised by the best critics as not excelled by any of his works. Wilkie placed it among the finest.
It is a question often asked, and never answered, Why can we not have these pictures, or such as these, in the Western World? Few of the many who would enjoy and appreciate them ever can come to Spain or Italy, and must they live and die without the sight of all these glorious works of art? It would be an easy matter to have copies made of the most celebrated and magnificent pictures, and transported to New York, into a national gallery. Copies may be made so as to challenge comparison with the original, and to give a fair idea of the distinctive manner of each of the artists. It does not require the same genius to make a perfect copy that it does to conceive and give birth to the original. And there are no living artists, and have been none in the last three hundred years, to paint character, soul, thought, feeling, as those men did whom we call the Old Masters. We have as great painters now as they. But not in their line of things. England and France and America have had, and now have, artists whose works could not have been produced by Da Vinci, Giotto, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, Carlo Dolce, or Murillo. But there is no one alive now to paint the Last Supper, the Judgment, the Transfiguration, the Charles V. on horseback, or the Smitten Rock, comparable with those majestic transcripts of sentiment which stand up in the world of art among man’s works, as Niagara and Mont Blanc are sublime among the works of God.
After writing the account of the bull-fight in a former chapter, it occurred to me that you might ask whether I went to see the sport myself, or relied altogether on the descriptions of the ladies and others. That is a fair question, and I am therefore obliged to say that I did not; that I have never seen a bull-fight. Three reasons prevented me from going. First, they are usually to be seen only on Sunday, and I never go to places of amusement on that day, at home or abroad. Secondly, I have no taste for sights of blood, and would rather go the other way than into the bull-ring at any time. And thirdly and lastly, in the way of reasons for not going, there was not a bull-fight while I was there! It was and is yet the winter season, when the weather is cool compared with spring and summer, and the bulls do not fight well except when the weather is hot. The “season,” which is even more distinctly marked than that of opera in Paris or New York, begins the first Sunday after Lent, and a performance takes place every Sunday afterwards, if the weather permits, till the height of summer suspends it for a few weeks when the heat is excessive. It is resumed from the latter part of August until the first of October. Then the fall and winter are made dull by its absence, and the Spaniards long for the return of hot weather and the beasts.
There is a great deal of exaggeration in the descriptions given by those who enjoy the sport. The horses selected for the sacrifice are miserable jades, that are fit for nothing else but to be killed, and the bulls are rarely so fierce as to be dangerous, unless goaded or provoked into phrensy by the tricks of the combatants. The men who go into the fight are all hired butchers or fighters, who are paid regular salaries, like actors in a theatre, and they make a business of it. And so universal is the rage of the people to see this, the national sport and pastime, that the ring must furnish seats for ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand people, and the price of admission for such a multitude readily supplies the means to meet the great expenses of the entertainment.
One of the most curious facts developed by the bull-fight is the fondness that women have for such scenes. It is no fiction that ladies, whose refinement cannot be called in question, are in raptures when the fight is the most savage and bloody. It always was so. In the amphitheatres of Italy, when martyr Christians were compelled to fight with wild beasts, the fairest and proudest of women were among the spectators, who looked on with delight when their fellow-creatures were torn limb from limb. I have often heard it said, here and elsewhere, that women are more fond of these bloody spectacles than men are. We know they are more sympathetic with suffering, and in the hospital and chamber of sickness and anguish, they minister with a long-suffering patience and fortitude from which the sterner stuff that men are supposed to be made of revolts at once, or soon shrinks worn out, “used up,” as we say.
What is the effect of these scenes of blood and butchery on the national character? In the streets the boys play bull-fight: one holds up a red handkerchief and shakes it in the face of another boy, who makes a lunge at him with his head, and then pursues him, and another sets off after him, and so the bull-ring is enacted in the highway. As all the large towns have bull-rings, and the poorest classes of people manage to get money enough to see the show, and the country boy can give his girl no greater treat than to take her to a bull-fight, the thing is in the widest sense national, and its influence reaches down to the lowest ranks, while it is the pet of the nobility and gentry. And its effect must be degrading, brutifying, and demoralizing. If there were any thing in the Spanish character to work upon, for good or evil, the influence of such a decided national pastime would be more distinctly pronounced. But the senseless pride of the Spaniard,—pride with nothing to be proud of; pride with idleness, ignorance, and poverty; pride of the meanest and most contemptible sort,—is the warp and woof of Spanish character, and there is hardly any thing more in them than there would be in a nation of peacocks.
When you have excepted the vice of intoxication, and a great exception it is, you have said all that can be said in favor of the moral habits of the Spanish people. They do not steal from one another, that I know of, any more than other people do. But they certainly commit murders more frequently than other nations do, unless the slayer is maddened by drink. In estimating the comparative morality of peoples, this matter of intemperance holds the balance. It is the prolific parent of the greater part of the crimes of a people where it is the prevailing vice, yet very few moralists are disposed to reckon it the crime of crimes. In Spain the women are said to be almost universally corrupt. As a matter of course, the men must be just as bad. I have been assured here in Granada, by those who ought to know, having long resided here and become thoroughly acquainted with the state of things, that there is no social morality among men and women in Spain: that from the highest to the lowest they have all gone out of the way, and that they are known—the women are—as divided into four classes, with different degrees of refinement in vice, but all four classes lost to virtue and without conscience of sin. It is quite probable that such a statement is to be taken with many grains of allowance. But making all deductions that one’s good nature demands, there still remains a sediment of truth that one shudders to admit. In this plane of inquiry we are met with the truth that Austria, Italy, France, and Spain are the Roman Catholic countries where the vice of licentiousness corrupts the moral of social life. The Protestant countries of Europe are in colder climes, and intemperance is the vice that among the poorer people breeds misery more ruinous to their health and prosperity.
At the railway station, when we were leaving Seville for the Alhambra by the way of Malaga, a group of natives in the costume of Andalusia presented a picturesque and not unpleasing appearance. In the cities of Europe it is rare to see any thing national and peculiar in the dress of the people. Fashion is an empire that extends over every nation, and reigns in London, Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid with resistless sway. The seat of government is in Paris, and her edicts are obeyed in free America as well as in France. But when you get into the rural districts, the people cling to an ancient régime; a fashion, indeed, who sat on the throne long years ago, and has never been put aside by any revolutions of modern invention. These rural Andalusians, in breeches and sandals, with red belt or sash, and loose jacket, and conical hat and wide rim turned up all around, are dressed as their great-grandfathers were, and as their own great-grandchildren will be, and others, for generations to come. They had been to the city on an excursion, and were now going home again, none the better, but a deal the worse for the change of life they had suffered in town.
It was a good opportunity to learn something of the life of these people, who form, after all, the great mass of any nation, and the part of the people with whom every true heart is in sympathy. The rich and the gay, the fashionable people who throng in cities, can live as they please. The poor, who live from hand to mouth, and cannot choose for themselves, but must live as they can, these are the people in every country whose condition we want to inquire into; and when we have learned of their state, we know what their country is. It is the average of human comfort that we want to get at.
And it is a real help towards one’s satisfaction with the condition of a people to know that it does not take a vast amount of the good things of this life to make one happy, if he has never had any thing more or better than the little he has been contented with. These Andalusians work on the farms of large proprietors, and get six to ten cents a day and their food, when they are working by the season. This sounds small. The wages of laboring men who find themselves, and who work by the day, will average forty or fifty cents a day. To know what such pay is worth we must know how they live, and what it costs to buy the food they have. Their food is chiefly soup of bacon oil and vegetables, with bread and fruit. They take a kettle of this thick soup, more like a pudding than a soup, to the fields with them; and day after day, year in and year out, eat substantially the same thing. And this food costs the peasants a very little more than nothing. The ground is easily worked, the climate is so favorable to growth and land so abundant, that what can be raised for food is almost as accessible to the poor as if vegetables were spontaneous and free to everybody. So it is that these poor people are quite as well off, as to the mere physical comforts of life, as those who get one, two, and five dollars a day in other lands, and have to pay so much for food and lodgings as to be sorely puzzled to do what a cat often tries to do,—make both ends meet.
These Spanish peasants appear to be lively, intelligent, and wide-awake. They give a reason for doing any thing, when they are asked; and that is more than the Irish or English peasantry can do at home, or in the land of the soaring eagle. Except in Russia, there is not a people on the continent of Europe that appear more stolid and unthoughtful, more like mere cattle or machines, than the farm peasantry of merry England. This may be in appearance only; but the truth is that you can get more out of an ignorant laborer on the continent of Europe, whose language you do not more than half understand, than out of an English farm hand who is supposed to speak English.
Beer has something to do with this matter of stupidity. These southern climates in Europe and this soil are favorable to the culture of wine-grapes, and wine is the solace and stimulus of the commonest people. You may buy as good a bottle of wine for thirty cents in Spain as you would have to pay three or four dollars for in New York. And if you will not give thirty cents for it, you can have as much as you want for little or nothing. Until the railroads were built and transportation made easy and cheap, it was common, when the new vintage came in, to empty the casks that held what was left over of former years. And a church was pointed out to me that was built with mortar made with wine instead of water, there being a scarcity of water in the vicinity but plenty of wine that was to be thrown away. Sherry wine, which is the sack of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, is the leading wine of Spain, and is made now and here just as wine was made in the times of Hesiod and Isaiah; for in such climes as this the people keep on doing things as their ancestors or others did in the same place thousands of years ago. They drink wine as freely as the English drink beer, and as Americans drink rum and water. But they do not get drunk as our people do, and they are not so stupid as the beer drinkers of England are. They are stimulated, of course, and the exhilaration is carried to excess sometimes. It is not true to say there is no drunkenness in wine-growing countries, but the best informed men, who had the most abundant opportunities of learning the facts in the case, assured me that intemperance is not common; that it is very rare among the working people of Spain. This is not to be used as an argument in favor of wine raising and wine drinking in America. It would indeed be better for the health of the drinking men to drink pure wine than bad whiskey, or the vile compounds that are sold as wine in our country. But if wine were as cheap in the United States as in Spain, there would be just as much intemperance in the United States as now. The climate and the strife of such a country as ours furnish causes for the use of stimulating drinks that do not exist in Italy or Spain; and philanthropists who discuss and legislate on the subject of temperance, without regard to the physical circumstances of a people, are in the same case with the traveller who reckoned his bill without his host. It is well to multiply and fortify wholesome laws to restrain men from evil indulgence, and it is our duty to ply all possible moral agencies to reform and save our fellow-men; but our duty does not end with legislating and preaching. There are social burdens to be raised from the poor by the voluntary action of the rich, and by the application of the gospel principle of brotherhood, which will so ameliorate the condition of the lowly that they will not be tempted as now, by the pressure of weariness, care, and woe, to fly to the intoxicating cup for help to bear their load, or to forget that it is on them. But this disgression is getting dry, if it is on drinking.
A beautiful trait of character and a lovely custom of the Spanish peasantry appear in their love for parents. They yield to them obedience, respect, veneration, and love, after they are aged, and the children are men and women grown. The married children delight to have their parents to direct and govern them as in childhood, and these children even quarrel among themselves to get and keep possession of their aged parents. This trait of character is said to mark a slow country, where the past, the ancient, is held in honor; while progress has no such reverence for old age. Would to God that we had a little more Spain in young America, if it is Spanish to honor one’s father and mother.
In the Alameda, at Malaga.
CHAPTER XI.
MALAGA.
THE wind blowing from the north-west,—that is, a land breeze, at Malaga, excites the nervous system so much, that in courts of law it is held to be an extenuating circumstance in case of crime. It is therefore of great importance to know which way the wind blows when you are proposing to kill your neighbor or to commit a forgery. In our country we have hardly got to that point, but in Boston, where easterly winds prevail, the phrenologists set up a plea in behalf of the Malden murderer that was quite as absurd as the Malaga weather. In New York, the doctrine of mental and moral disturbance is held to be an extenuating circumstance in crime. And some of our eminent citizens, merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, and ministers have united in representing the strong excitement engendered by stock speculation, as an excuse for forgery. From all of which it is fair to infer that the guilt or innocence of a man in the New World, as well as the Old, depends very much upon the way the wind blows.
Malaga is one of the most celebrated resorts for invalids. It is not a resort of fashion, like Nice and Mentone, and perhaps Sicily is more sought by those whose maladies are partly imaginary and the other part nervous. But Malaga is a place to which intelligent physicians send hundreds of patients who are in a bad way, and yet have a fair chance of getting well if they spend a few winters in this uniform, genial, mild, but not enervating clime. The warm south wind comes in upon it from the sea, on whose shore it lies, and the mountains in the rear shield it from the northern blasts. In an ordinary room, without fire, the thermometer (Fahr.) ranges all winter long from fifty-two to seventy deg., never higher or lower, unless when an extraordinary fit of weather is on, and the average temperature is about fifty-five deg. from November to March. It is six degrees warmer than Rome, which is one of the dampest, chilliest, and most disagreeable places for an invalid to winter in. I tried hard to get well in Florence and Rome and Nice, and then fled to Spain, and found what neither Italy nor Southern France would furnish,—an equable clime; warm, but not debilitating. Nature has a laboratory for making mineral waters that chemists in vain attempt to imitate, and there are peculiar combinations of atmospheric elements in divers places, that must be tried on the spot if you would get the good of them. The invalid who wishes a climate that braces him up without exciting him to cough, will have to breathe in a great many places, perhaps, before he finds those opposite qualities blended, and if an unprofessional opinion is worth any thing, it is here given, that the south of Spain is the paradise desired. But nothing is more important for consumptives than uniformity of climate, and the argument in favor of Malaga is complete, when you learn that the range or variation of its temperature is less than that of any other place on the continent of Europe! Pau, that beautiful little nest in the Pyrenees, so sheltered by the hills that no wind visits it too roughly, has a range of no less than sixty-eight degrees during the year, and Rome has sixty-two, and even Nice, fairest of watering-places for winter, ranges sixty, but Malaga has only a range of forty-nine degrees in the year.
It rained almost every day in Rome. It rains in Florence implacably, just when you wish it would not. Nice is fairer, but not always fair. Malaga is so uniformly pleasant, that a day without sunshine is very unusual in the months of November, December, and January. Good authority says there are not, during the whole year, more than ten days on which rain would prevent an invalid from taking exercise. It seemed to me that the winter weather in Malaga is more nearly like to that of Cairo, in Egypt, than any other place, and there are but four degrees of difference in the average temperature.
But take it summer and winter through, and in the last nine years it has rained only 262 times, or thirty-nine times in the course of each year: and think of it, O ye dwellers in London, or Paris, or New York, it has been foggy or misty but sixteen days in three times three years! And this bright, beautiful atmosphere gives a blue sky so deep and pure, that it would take a poet of more than average fancy power to invent a firmament of superior glory, or to find a sunset in Greece or Italy to be mentioned in the same day with the gorgeous splendors that clothe the skies of Southern Spain at shut of day.
If you have consumption, or bronchitis, or any malady that is working mischief with your breathing apparatus, do not be governed, nor even guided, by the hasty generalizations of a man who writes from what he sees and hears in a tour for health and pleasure through half a dozen countries in the course of a season. The most that he can tell you is that such a climate as this is said to be excellent for those who have consumption already, and is likely to engender it where it is not; and if you cannot reconcile those two sayings of the books and the people, it is well enough to know that a sickly plant may be saved by being cared for in a hot-house, that might have been made to droop if taken in when it was in healthful vigor. Dr. Lee, whose opinion is of great weight, regards the climate of Madeira, Pau, or Pisa better than that of Malaga, for incipient tubercular disease, in persons of an excitable habit. And so much caution is to be used in deciding upon the means to be used for saving life by change of clime, that I would not write a line on this subject if I supposed that any one would be foolish enough to make a voyage on the strength of it.
When a miserly client attempted to get an opinion out of a lawyer by asking him at dinner, “What would you advise me to do in such and such a case?” the lawyer answered, “I should think the best thing you could do would be to take advice.” And this is what I advise.
No finer grapes than those of Malaga do we enjoy at home in the winter season, and the trade in raisins is enormous. We have been familiar with a raisin-box, but it was something quite novel to see extensive factories making nothing else but these rude little cases, all to be used for packing raisins. The raisin stores or depots where the boxes are waiting to be exported were so vast as to astonish me, but when one thinks of the extent to which they are distributed throughout the civilized world, it is only wonderful that the trade is not far greater.
The country around is flowing with wine and oil. It might easily be made to yield cotton and sugar enough to supply the market of Europe. But it is in Spain, and nothing thrives in Spain but Romanism and its sister.
Through a succession of streets so narrow that no wheel carriages can pass, and designed only for bipeds and quadrupeds to go on foot, reeking with smells that made fragrant the memory of Cologne, we wound our way, meeting Moors from Morocco, in their picturesque costume, caps, togas, or shawls, with bare legs and sandals; meeting gypsy women and gypsy men whose home is Spain, and whose story is part of life in Spain, we plied our devious walk on Sunday into the little square in front of the Malaga Cathedral. Built of white stone, on the site of a mosque, and still retaining part of the old Mahometan structure, it rises in a mass about three hundred feet square, to the height of 130 feet, and the tower rises 220 feet above the roof. High mass was celebrated when we entered, and few worshippers were present: most of these were women of some “religious” order, and some priests, not serving at the altar but on their knees before it, on the beautiful pavement of blue and white marble. Perhaps the interior is too light and florid: the various decorations have been added at periods so remote from each other that they lack harmony. But what is wanting in severity and solemn majesty is made up in the variety of ornament, portals, statues, and wood carvings.
The tribes of Jordan, in Palestine, once held this city and region, reigning and rejoicing in the climate, the soil, and the sea. They sent the luscious grapes away to China, and Ibu Bathula, who was here in 1630, was quite as delighted with what he had to eat and see as we are, who come 230 years after him, for he says: “I have seen eight pounds of grapes sold for twopence; its pomegranates are like rubies, and unequalled in the whole world; its courts have no rivals in beauty, and are shaded by wonderful groves of oranges.” He adds that he saw a preacher collecting money to ransom some Moors whom a Spanish fleet had captured. He rejoiced in the wine of Malaga, and all the more, it is probable, because its use was forbidden by the Koran: for we have the highest authority to say that stolen waters are sweet. And is it not Al-Makkari who tells the story of a dying Moor who prayed: “O Lord, of all things which thou hast in Paradise, I only ask for two; grant me to drink Malaga and Muscat wine!”
The old fortress once stood here, from which the beautiful Florinde threw herself into the sea, and by her death roused the rebellion that was headed by her father, and drove from the throne her betrayer, Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings. But all these stories, are they not written in the chronicles of Washington Irving, and is there any one so incredulous as to doubt the truthfulness of the thousand-and-one legends of that fascinating and most learned historian? For my part, since I have been dreaming here in the Alhambra, I have no more doubt of the Spanish tales that he told than I have of the verities of the Arabian Nights or the legend of Sleepy Hollow.
What travel was in Spain before the invention of diligences I know not, but probably the rich rode on horse or mule back, and the poor footed it; now that railroads have brought distant cities near each other, it is only occasionally that you are treated to an old-time ride in a coach, and perhaps you may be glad that once at least, in Spain, it was necessary for us to undergo this species of locomotion.
Between Malaga, a great seaport, and Granada, the ancient and glorious city of the Alhambra, there is no communication except by diligence. The time is fourteen hours. And the hour for starting is six in the evening! You have before you this luxury, of one long, jolting, execrable night ride, with no rest, no change from dewy eve till morn. You may be a delicate lady, or a feeble old man, or a middle-aged invalid, seeking rest and finding none; but you must go by the diligence, and go in the night and all night, or hire a carriage for yourself, and then there is no certainty that you will ever get to the other end of your journey.
The Spanish diligence is divided into two inside compartments, the berlina or coupe of three seats in front, and interior of six. By waiting over a day or two, we were able to get possession of the three seats in front, and though the fare was more than in the interior, we had the comfort of escaping suffocation by tobacco smoke, and of seeing the fun ahead.
At least a hundred ladies and gentlemen, evidently of the higher class, assembled at the coach office to take leave of some one who was going to Malaga to hold an office under government. It was a genteel and decorous company, and a sight quite peculiar to the country. In America or England, men are often escorted to and from the station, but this was a social, rather than a public ovation, and was a quiet and handsome farewell to a popular man in society.
THE DILIGENCE.
Wherewithal shall I give you an idea of the team that took us out of Malaga that lovely winter evening! Ten mules, the most refractory, ill-mated, and discordant beasts that have served a master since the days of Balaam, were hitched together and to the diligence with rope harness of primitive construction. On one of the leaders rode a postilion: by the side of the midway pairs ran a man whose duty and privilege it was to beat them; and the wheel mules were guided by reins in the hands of the driver on the top of the diligence. The driver thrashed the mules at his feet; the whipper thrashed the three pairs in the middle of the team, and the postilion thrashed the leaders. All thrashing at once as fast and as hard as they could. All shouting at once at the top of their voices, the lumbering vehicle is at last fairly launched and away it goes. The postilion on the forward beasts blows his horn to signal the people in the narrow and crooked streets that the thing is coming. The driver snaps his whip like a revolver, and after the snap brings the lash around the flanks of the lazy brutes: the whipper is now on one side and now on the other; whip, whip, whip all the while; kicking, punching, shouting, the mules spread themselves all abroad, never pulling in concert, but each one on his own hook, and as we got along out of the suburbs and into the broader ways of the country, the rebellious creatures seemed to grow frantic under the ceaseless blows rained upon them by their tormentors, and plunged and kicked till one of them made confusion all confounded by turning a somerset out of his harness and bringing the whole concern to a standstill. It was a short process, putting him in again, and then away they all scampered, more like a drove of cattle than a harnessed team, but the beating was redoubled the more they ran, till I really began to think it was time for these dumb beasts to open their mouths and speak some words of remonstrance. And yet how soon we became so demoralized, as rather to enjoy the excitement and frolic of the ride.
Night was drawing on. We begin to ascend the mountains behind Malaga. The city lies at their feet, all glorious in the golden light of a setting sun. The bay is a lake of loveliness; and the sea, unbounded, stretches off under the southern sky. Orchards of olives, always green, and hills that are vineyards in the season of grapes, and orange-trees, are around us,—evidence of a rich and fertile country. Yet every half mile or so an armed patrol guards the road to make it safe for travellers, and we have two or three on the top of the diligence with their guns loaded to give a welcome to any “gentleman of the road” who might be disposed to make free with unsuspecting travellers. And so, with the excitement of the novel mode of transportation, and listening with ears erect to the tales of robbers with which Antanazio beguiled the mortal hours, we passed a long and wretched night, winding among craggy mountains on the verge of precipices, and crossing deep ravines.
It was three o’clock in the morning when we reached Loja, where we were to stop for refreshments! out of the diligence tumbled a miserable set of people, sleepy but sleepless, cross and hungry, and made a general rush to the hostelry—by courtesy called an inn. Nobody was up, but in the course of ten or fifteen minutes a dirty old man brought in a pot of chocolate and put a plate of cakes in the middle of a table which had been spread with a cloth overnight. I noticed little black spots around on the cloth, and putting my finger at one of them, away hopped a flea, and a flock of them were soon in motion. The chocolate was good, and the fleas were stimulating. In twenty minutes we were caged again, and, with fresh teams and good spirits, set off for Granada.
About six o’clock in the morning we were passing through Santa Fé,—a large town—in the streets of which hundreds of men and women were seen standing, about to march off in gangs to distant fields to work. The inhabitants do not live in scattered houses over the country,—here and there a farmer’s cottage, as with us,—but, dwelling for safety in villages, they must go miles and miles away to and from their fields of daily labor. This Santa Fé has a history. It was built by Ferdinand and Isabella while laying siege to Granada, and here Columbus came and successfully made his plea for their royal favor and help to go out into the ocean in search of a new world. He found it that same year. Granada fell in 1492, and the last of the Moorish strongholds yielded to Spanish power.
As we rode across the wide and fertile plain that lies in front of Granada, the lofty mountains appeared; the east was in shadow, and the west tinged with the rising sunlight. Soon the city on a hill rose on the right, crowned with the Alhambra. One could not fail to be excited as the dreams of childhood and youth were becoming real. An hour more and we were in peaceful possession of Granada, and comfortably lodged within the grounds of the Alhambra.
CHAPTER XII.
THE ALHAMBRA.
WHEN the followers of Berber, the Moorish chieftain, some of whom came from the regions of Damascus and the valley of the Jordan, first entered the plain that lies in front of Granada, they imagined, in the fervor of their Oriental fancies, that they had struck Paradise itself. Perhaps they had come back to Damascus, the blessed and glorious city of the East, but that and Paradise to them were about the same thing. The wide and fertile plain was and is watered by two streams like those that flowed round about the Eden of sacred story, and if the earthly gardens of man’s delight were to be an emblem and foretaste of the flowers and fruits, the beauty and plenty of the gardens of the skies, they were certainly now before their eyes. They gave the name of “Damascus of the West” to the city that crowned the hill, and shone in the summer sun like the great dome to the temple of the King of kings. This city was called Granada, from the granates, or pomegranates, that then as now grew in abundance, with luscious grapes, figs and citrons and olives, and all the fruits of a southern and delicious clime. Near by, the snow-clad Sierra Nevada reminded them of their own Mount Hermon, and over all these was hung a canopy of blue, so deep and pure and clear that the sea, reversed and lightened by the sun by day, and set with stars at night, could not have been more lovely to behold.
OUTER WALL OF THE ALHAMBRA.
When the empire of the Moors in Spain was broken into hostile factions, preparatory to its final extinction, the city of Granada fell into the hands of Zawi Ibu Zeyri, who was its first king, and established his royal residence here. The towers or castle on the summit of the hill, and commanding the whole city, were called Alhambra, which means red castle, and to this color the stones turn after exposure to the air, from the oxide of iron they contain.
Within the walls of this castle, covering an area of several acres, the successive Moorish kings erected palaces, and embellishing them according to their own tastes, joined walls and towers, and courts and fountains and gardens, until in process of time the great enclosure became filled with the edifices which this luxurious and extravagant race of monarchs desired for themselves, their wives and concubines, and the hosts of servants and dependants which such a style of life, in such a country, must demand. At this moment, the palace of the Russian emperor holds five thousand persons, all actually required to wait upon the Czar and his household and one another. In the Seraglio of the Sultan of Turkey 40,000 oxen were eaten yearly, and 400 sheep a day. An army would therefore be as easily lodged as the family of a Moorish king in the palace at Granada. What it was in the days of Abu-Abdallah, who has the traditional honor of having built the palace itself, or of Yusef I., who added lustre to its walls by his gorgeous decorations, we can form but a faint conception from what we see of it now that it is stripped of its purple and gold, and has nothing of its former splendors but the mouldering walls and shattered stairs and broken floors.
The first prince who took up his abode in the Alhambra itself was Alhamar, from whom it has been by many supposed that the palace itself was named. He was a wise, gentle, and noble ruler, so widely differing from most of his race that he actually preferred peace to war; and, to make it possible for him to pursue without interruption his vast beneficent plans for the improvement of the condition of his people, he consented to pay an annual tribute to Ferdinand, King of Arragon. Alhamar constructed roads to the distant parts of his empire, which then reached to Gibraltar; he built colleges and hospitals; and the canals that carried waters far into the plains for irrigation were the work of this barbarian king. Under his reign the city rose to its zenith of splendor. The arts and sciences flourished as the vine and fig-tree in a genial soil. Wealth, learning, genius, taste, and chivalry lent their aid to heighten the attractions of this fair city. Yusef, one of his successors, added many buildings to those that he had left, and others were crowded into the arena in after reigns, so that for two hundred and fifty years it was growing in such magnificence and beauty, as the soft, languid, and effeminate tastes of a luxurious, debauched, and decaying race of irresponsible, licentious, and decaying monarchs, with a host of wives to prompt them to indulgence in every whim of fancy, could invent to add to the delights of their terrestrial paradise. What could be looked for as the result of such lives but the ruin of the empire. Kings had but short reigns, for intrigue, lust, ambition, and murder made one after another give place to a rival who sought his bed quite as much as his throne. The usurper soon became the enfeebled voluptuary of the harem, and the arm that was as strong as Hercules in the battlefield became as weak as a woman’s when love, not war, was the passion of the hour. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The cities of the Moors no longer were in league, but each, jealous of the rest, was in succession sieged and sacked.
At last Granada stood alone in its independence and its impending ruin. Mohammed Ibu Otsman had bowed his neck to the Queen of Castile, and the Alhambra was the only Moorish gem which remained to be transferred to the Christian crown. Ferdinand of Arragon, by marriage with Isabella of Castile, formed at once a union of hearts and arms that prepared the way for the overthrow of the last remnant of Moorish power in Spain. Columbus, repulsed from his native country, had strangely sought aid in this distracted land. As if a higher will than his own were directing his weary steps, he had pursued these conquerors of the Moors over the mountains, and found them in their tents within sight of the red towers on the heights of Granada. They had other conquests than of unknown worlds in view. The prize they sought was gleaming, like a sun, between them and the snows of Sierra Nevada. They turned a deaf ear, in the din of war, to the tales of the adventurous sailor. And he went away.
He had gone a day’s journey on his solitary way to Seville and had reached Loja, where we had fleas and cake for our lunch this morning, when a messenger from the queen arrested his steps and brought him back to the royal presence and favor. They gave him the blessing and the gold he needed, and then they conquered the Moors, and Granada, with its Alhambra, fell into their hands. And in the same year Columbus gave them a new world in the West.
Years and years since, even in the long time ago when the sunny days of childhood were yet in the glow of their noon, I remember wondering “what the Alhambra is.” It had to me then, and all the way along the lengthening years of life, a dreamy rather than a real existence, and if at times I read its story, the “Tales of the Alhambra” rather increased than weakened the sense of dream-life in which alone it was to be enjoyed.
In Malaga I went into a Spanish bookstore and asked for English books on Spain. The bibliopole sent me into the garret of his shop, where in a corner was heaped a pile of odds and ends of English literature, such as might have been left behind by some poor invalids who had perished in their perusal, while seeking to get a new lease of life in this delicious clime. But among them were several copies, in paper covers, of Irving’s “Tales of the Alhambra,” whose uncut leaves showed them to have been unread and kept for sale to passing pilgrims like myself. I carried one off. It would be pleasant to read on the spot: and I have read them with fresh delight, while every court and wall and tower, every fountain, stream, plain, hill is linked with the stories that the old master told while he dreamed within the ruins of the palace that his fiction has made more famous than its history. But reading tales about the Alhambra do not tell us what it is, and it is quite likely that my account will give you no more intelligible an idea of it.
We have ascended the hill through a long avenue shaded with elms, and approach a massive gate, the gate of judgment, a seat of justice in olden times, where in the open air, as was common in Oriental climes, the magistrates, the elders, were accustomed to administer the law. “Then he made a porch, where he might judge, even a porch of judgment.” I Kings, vii. 7. Many other passages of Scripture allude to the same custom. A square tower surmounts the gate, and the pillars are inscribed with Arabic legends. The horse-shoe arch has a mighty hand in bas-relief, with the fingers pointing upward, and on the second arch is a key in stone, and the tradition is that the gate was impregnable until the stone hand should take the stone key and unlock the gate for the enemy to enter. Without waiting for such a miracle, we pass through the two-leaved gates, and by a winding and still ascending path we reach the terrace on which the palaces and villas of the Moorish kings were built. This plateau is about half a mile long, and narrow, surrounded by red walls six feet thick and thirty feet high, and made strong by many towers, each one of which was the residence of some of the household of royalty. The various styles of architecture within and on these walls are the best illustrations of the successive races and tastes and power of the men who have ruled on this lofty eminence. Rome and Carthage has each in its turn been master here, and left his sign-manual in characters that time has spared. More incongruous than any thing else is the Tuscan palace of Charles V., and a modern parish church has risen on the ruins of a mosque. Napoleon’s soldiers were followed by the English, and modern war is not a whit more mindful of the proprieties of art and sentiment than the old savagery which we despise. Ruin, desolation, decay is now the spirit of the place. It is impressive, eloquent indeed; perhaps more so than those ruins in Egypt and Greece and Rome that have the hoar of more centuries upon them. It is not so strange, nor so mournful, that the columns and walls should now be in the dust that did their duty two, three thousand years ago. It seems to be almost becoming that the temples of old paganism should moulder in the dispensation of faith that worships in spirit only. But it is painfully suggestive of the transient nature of all human art and power that these massive structures with gorgeous decorations, whose splendor is only equalled by the fancies of romance, have had their rise, their reign, and their ruin all within the lapse of the last ten hundred years.
Antonio Aguilo ’y Fuster, Conseije del Palacio Arabe, Alhambra, gave me his card, as we entered a small door in the side of a plain wall, and were informed that we were now in the palace of the Moors, the veritable Alhambra itself! The important personage whose card was in my hand was the guardian of this mysterious realm, and would, for the usual consideration of a dollar to him paid, introduce us to the several apartments. The contract was concluded, and the porter led the way.
He brought us first into the Court of Myrtles. It is a vast open oblong, 170 feet by 74, with a lake in the centre, surrounded by a marble pavement and myrtle-trees, from which it takes its name. In this lake the wives of the Moorish monarch bathed, of course secluded from all eyes but his own, and the eunuchs, whose “sentry boxes” still remain. Light and beautiful columns, with graceful arches springing from the capitals, support a gallery on all sides. Out of this court open many rooms, whose floors and walls and ceilings, with their inscriptions, their delicate tracery work, not worth the name of sculpture, but beautiful as perishable, are the types of the race that revelled here in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Right here Mohammed III. had his head cut off, and his body was pitched into the water where the usurper king Nasr often enjoyed the luxury of a bath with his wives.
The governor, or more properly the janitor, made brief comments on the architecture and uses of the various apartments, and then led us to the Court of Lions. Above all other portions of the Alhambra this gives the most correct idea of the palace as it was in its ancient and early glory. A process of restoration has been going on for some years, under the direction of government, and Sr. Contreras having the work in charge, has succeeded so happily that Yusef himself, who was the first monarch to indulge in these Oriental shawl-pattern tracery and tawdry designs, would have been delighted to have the modern architect to help him from the beginning. And the Emperor of Russia has heard such reports of the wonderful restorative powers of this skilful manipulator of plaster, that he has ordered an Alhambra for himself, a copy of this series of ruined palaces, which he will keep for a curiosity on the banks of the Neva. In the midst of the court is a fountain supported by twelve marble lions, in the centre of a vast alabaster basin. Standing on the four sides of it are 124 white marble pillars, sustaining a light gallery and a pavilion projecting into the court, elaborately adorned with filagree-worked walls, and a domed roof that admits the tempered light and excludes the heat of the sun. This fountain too has been filled with blood, for here in the midst of all this luxury of splendid decorations the children of Abu Hazen were beheaded by the order of their own father. One only was spared, and he lived to regret it; for he lived to be the famous and unhappy Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings of Granada. The next hall into which we will enter is that of the Abencerrages, an illustrious family, who fell under suspicion of disloyalty to the throne. The wily monarch invited all the leaders of this line to a feast, and when they had been sumptuously entertained, they were invited, one by one, to the Court of Lions, which we have just left, and each man’s head was cut off as he entered. The dark spots on the marble floor are, of course, kept sacredly dark from year to year, in memory of the treacherous punishment of imaginary treason.
The most magnificent of all the halls is that of the Ambassadors. It is the largest of the apartments, and is seventy-five feet high. It was the grand reception-room, where the throne of the Sultan was placed, and around the sides of the room are niches where each one of the ambassadors of foreign courts was seated in state, on great occasions. The ceiling is curiously wrought in different colors,—blue, white, and gold, inlaid wood in crowns and stars and wheels. All around are inscriptions celebrating the praises of the kings, and couched in the panegyric imagery of the Oriental style.
It would be tedious to read, if I had patience to describe, the many courts and halls and baths, saloons and chambers, the galleries leading to them, the little gardens where the sun looks kindly down upon a few plants and flowers, and to tell you of the thousand-and-one tales with which so many of these towers and chambers have been made historic. Murder has followed close on the heels of jealousy, in all ages, and under a system that makes intrigue and lust the great amusement of life, the history of the harem has always been a story of suspicion and blood.
Portion of a Door.
Bensaken is the guide to the Alhambra. Others are willing to lead you through the labyrinth, and will talk to you as they go, in a mixture of Spanish, Italian, French, and English, with a dash of Arabic, which they have picked up from the translations of inscriptions on the walls; but they are all ignorant fellows, who live by the ignorance of those to whom they tell their stories. Now Bensaken is an Englishman, born in Gibraltar, and has lived to be seventy years old in Spain; has been through all these years adding to his knowledge of the country, its history and its condition, especially all that relates to the Moors, Granada, and the Alhambra, until he has grown into a walking cyclopedia of Spanish lore. And this learning of his he guards so cautiously that when other guides and interpreters, with travellers so unhappy as to have fallen into their hands, would come near to us while our learned Bensaken was discoursing to us of the wonderful mysteries of the Alhambra, its legends and its uses, he would suddenly pause in his interesting narrations, and begging pardon for his silence, would wait until they had passed beyond hearing; for, said our veracious and most agreeable Bensaken, “I cannot afford to let them fellows know what I have been learning all these years of my life, I have forgot enough to set all of them up in business.”
“Did you know our countryman, Washington Irving, when he was here?” I inquired.
“Oh yes, and a nice, worthy gentleman he was: so kind, so pleasant always; but he did not keep very closely to the facts: to tell you the truth, those are very beautiful stories of Mr. Irving, but the most of them are all in your eye, sir.”
“He speaks of the good people who lived here when he lodged in the Alhambra, and a fair maiden to whom he gave the name of Dolores, and a noble young man, Molina, or something like that; what ever became of them, can you tell me?”
Bensaken gave a low little laugh, and said that Dolores was a coarse and dowdy drudge, whom the warm imagination of the author had invested with purely rhetorical charms, and the other occupants of the palace had no claims to distinction. One of them whom he mentioned was murdered in a street brawl, and the whole family had passed into oblivion. Yet their names will live in the stories of the Alhambra while the genial and smoothly flowing pages of Irving are read as the pleasantest and most reliable account of the traditions of this wondrous pile.
We went down into the garden of the Queen’s prison, and on a little patch of green we stood while Bensaken pointed to the gallery where she was permitted to walk and take the air and enjoy the sunlight, but the various chambers to which she was restricted had no exit. This was not very close confinement, to be sure, but it becomes intolerable, even the luxury of a palace, with a flower garden in its court, and gorgeous hangings and gilded ceilings and marvellous sculptures, if the royal lodger is a prisoner, and hopes for no exit but through the gate that opens in the tomb.
And then we visited the “Hall of Two Sisters,” so fancifully named because of two immense marble slabs, which form a part of the pavement. The decorations of this apartment are exceedingly beautiful. The stalactite roof is said to consist of 5,000 pieces, and though all this plaster ornamentation is supported only by reeds, it remains almost unbroken as it was when first put up. These were the private apartments of the wives and slaves of the Sultan, and were furnished with couches and divans, and the walls are covered with love poems, in the glowing language of the East, celebrating the sensual delights of these voluptuaries of the harem. All that architecture and upholstery, poetry and taste could supply for the embellishment of chambers of pleasure, were lavished with wasteful profusion here, or, to use the more familiar terms of our Western phraseology, “they were got up regardless of expense.”
Passing out upon a balcony we looked down upon the Linderaka gardens, which once were the delight of a princess whose name, Linda Raxa, was the same as Pretty Rachel; she became a Christian, and her story, if put into the hands of a skilful manufacturer, would make a beautiful romance, with more truth than is necessary for half a dozen modern historical novels. The dressing-room of the Queen in one of the towers has a look-out upon the surrounding country; the Sierra Nevada, rising 11,000 feet, and so near in this clear atmosphere that it seems close at hand, and one feels the coolness of the snow-cliffs on its sides; there is the house, now a college, where Christians suffered martyrdom under Domitian and Nero; those huts in the hill in front and those holes into the hill itself are the habitations of gypsies, whose home is Spain, and who are very numerous in these parts; the city of Granada itself lies at our feet; once it had more than a thousand towers, and now it has more than 500, and they are monuments of departed glory. Yet there is nothing in the city so mournfully eloquent of human folly and frailty as the ruin in which we are standing. Here is a wide marble slab, pierced with twelve holes, and below the slab is the chamber where the perfume was prepared, and as it ascended the Queen stood over these holes, and was made suitably fragrant! In the days of Esther similar means were evidently in use, and they were probably quite as salutary and agreeable as the modern condensations which in a bag or bottle furnish the necessary facilities for making lovely woman odorous to her friends.
Down below was a suite of rooms where the baths for the Sultan and the children were arranged, with pipes for the supply of hot and cold water, as convenient as in “a house with all the modern improvements.” Places for couches, galleries for musicians whose melodies would make the luxury of the bath more enjoyable; the pavement is of white marble, the roof is pierced with holes like stars, and the whole arrangement corresponds with the baths of Turkey and Cairo at the present day.
The Vermilion Tower.
And the long passage through which we were now conducted led to the dungeons of the castle; most of them are walled up, but one was left open that we might see how short and easy was the mode of disposing of an unhappy victim of jealousy or revenge, who could be built into a recess and find it a dying bed and grave. It was a long subterranean walk till we came out to the governor’s court. Here I saw what I had not supposed to be possible,—a marble slab bent into the shape of a bow by the weight of a wall falling and resting upon it.
On every balcony and at every window the wise Bensaken was ready with a tale of love, or blood, or gold; and it would be hard to say in which he most delighted to indulge. He was sure that out of this window the beautiful Zoraya, the “Morning Star” of Abu Hazen, she that was once Dona Isabel de Solis, a fair Christian captive who became the favorite Sultana, and the mother of Boabdil, let him down by a basket into an abyss from which he escaped and saved his life, to become afterwards the last of the race of princes here. But I must tell you one of his stories that he knows to be true, and which has never yet been entered into any chronicles of the Alhambra.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ALHAMBRA (Continued).
BLASICHO, or, in good English, poor Blas, was an honest worker in leather, a mender of soles, in the city of Granada. There are streets in this queer old town wholly given up to one or another handicraft, and it is rather pleasing than otherwise to see the rule disproved that two of a trade can never agree. Perhaps it is easier for a whole street full of cobblers, or tinkers, or carders, or smiths, to live in peace, than it would be for only two rivals in trade, who would be jealous of each other as natural foes. It was curious to follow the walks along and see the little shops, sometimes not more than five or ten feet square, filled with the wares and the workmen, so that a customer would have had hard work to wedge himself in if he would be measured for a coat or boots, or examine the goods for sale. It looked as if there were some people willing to work, though we heard of a shoemaker who was called upon by a traveller like ourselves to repair his dilapidated shoe: the cobbler called out to his wife to tell him how much money there was on hand, and learning that she had enough to get them supper, he declined doing the work. This was in literal compliance with the Spanish rule which requires a man never to do to-day what can be put off till to-morrow.
Blasicho had a hard time of it to get work enough to earn the bread that his wife and his little ones must have from day to day, and he hated work, as all his neighbors did, and all his race do. If he had a wife with a cheerful temper, to cheer him as he beat his leather on his knee, perhaps it would have been better for him and his, for it does make work light and easy to have a good-natured woman near at hand, to say a pleasant word and hear even one’s complaints with a sympathetic smile. But the wife of Blasicho was neither fair to look upon nor gentle in her temper, and she led the poor cobbler a vexed and weary life of it. His lapstone was not harder than the heart of his spouse, and the blows that he gave it were more in number, but not more severe, than she rained upon him, when their words grew into quarrels that always ended in the thorough discomfiture of the man of the house. Her great sorrow was that she had not wealth: her sisters had found husbands who could give them the best of every thing, and as much as they required to make fine ladies of them, but she had married a cobbler too poor to live without work, and too lazy to work, and the only blessing they had in abundance was a flock of children that grew in stature and numbers every year, and demanded more and more to keep them alive. She dinned her woes into his ears, and his poor soul was worried to despair by the ceaseless pother of her querulous tongue.
He wanted money. If California had been part of the known world in the day of Blasicho’s misery, his greed would have driven him to the mines in search of gold. But gold he must have, or his wife would worry him to death. He had heard that the Moors had left heaps of gold in the earth all around him, and if he had some rod to guide him to the sacred spot where the treasure was concealed, it would be the making of him for life, to dig it and carry it home to gladden the heart of his discontented wife, and stop the everlasting run of her complaining tongue. Day after day he walked around the hill of which the Alhambra in its glory and decay is still the crown, and he studied the projecting rocks and the graceful curves and gentle depressions, and the peculiar growth of the citron and pomegranate, to discover some signs of a place where it might be that in the olden time some Moorish miser, or in later time some Spanish pirate coming home from foreign pleasures, had buried his gold. His hope was suddenly kindled into certainty. One sunny morning he was taking his daily walk about the sacred hill, and passing through the deep cut on the eastern side, where far above his head the aqueduct with the waters of the river run into the Alhambra with its refreshing and ceaseless flow, he sat down to rest awhile and muse upon his hapless lot, and the hopeless search in which he was wasting his days. He looked up at the craggy side through which the red rock cropped, and on the scanty soil in which the almond shrubs were struggling to hold their own, and he was wishing that one of those red rocks were a ruby or even a lump of gold, when a dove, whose home was in the Tower of Comares, flew down upon a projecting rock, and cocking his eye most knowingly, looked below as if it saw something there that would be worth having. Blasicho observed the motion, and the thought came to him that the dove was a messenger to point him to the spot where his treasure lay. He took note of the rock, and drew a line, with his eye, to the foot of the hill where the bird’s eye had guided his search. A few feet from the path, up the cliff-side, was a ledge of rock, and it was easy to see that, a century or two ago, a man might have stood on it and worked into the mountain and buried his gold. The ledge would be the mark by which he could find it, and its height was such that no one would suspect that such a spot would be chosen as a hiding-place for money.
Poor Bias went home with his head full of the dove and the gold. All day as he sat on his bench pretending to work, the beautiful neck of the dove, with his head turned sideways, and his one eye down looking to the ledge, was before him. That night he dreamed that he went there and broke into the hill with a pick and found a heap of gold. The next morning he went there and the dove came again, and again she peered into the ledge from above, and again Blasicho was comforted with the strengthened hope. He dreamed the second time the same, and came the third morning and the dove met him as before; and again, the third night, he dreamed that he burst into the mountain and was the possessor of more gold than his insatiable spouse had ever dreamed of having. This was more than the anxious cobbler could endure and be quiet. That night in the darkness and alone, for there was no one in Granada he could trust with his discovery, Blasicho sought the ravine, climbed cautiously to the ledge with a bar of iron to aid him in his burglary. He struck in vigorously, for it might be a long night’s work, and time was precious. The hollow sound that answered his blows quickened his heartbeats, for it assured him there was a chamber within. The débris was fast piling at his feet. He was already inside the hill. He heard something grating, rattling above and near him; he rose to his feet only to be struck with a land-slip which his digging had started: it caught him, dashed him off his perch, buried him, bruised him, half killed him, at the foot of his golden hill. The poor fellow struggled from underneath the mass of dirt and stones, and luckily finding no bones were broken, but more dead than alive, he crept home and went to sleep, while his wife was dinging into his ears her reproaches for his bad habits of being out late at nights. He was cured of hunting for gold in the dark. He became a new man, a new cobbler. His early hammer advertised his conversion. Business revived. He had to have some more help in the shop. The shop was soon too small. He wanted to enlarge it, and for that purpose he got permission of his landlord to dig away the hill in the rear to make room for an extension. This work he performed with his own hands after the day’s work in the shop. That digging made him rich! What he found he had wit enough to keep secret, even from his wife, for if his landlord should hear of it, he would lay claim to it as in his soil. But Blasicho went on with his cobbling and building. He bought a few lots in one of the fashionable quarters of Granada, and to each of his daughters, to whom suitors came in numbers, now that he was evidently prosperous, he gave a handsome house and portion.
More than all, and better, his wife’s temper improved. He and she still lived over the shop, but the apartments were embellished with all the comforts that the amiable woman wanted, and she was proud, and not humbled, when her sisters came to see her. None of them knew the source of his sudden wealth, and indeed he was cunning enough to develop gradually, so that it was attributed to his increasing business, and his good luck in trade.
He knew that it all came of his being cured of money digging, and sticking to his work. He had never heard of the Latin proverb, ne sutor ultra crepidam,—let the cobbler stick to his last,—but he knew the soundness of the principle. And he taught his grandchildren, who were fond of visiting him, that when he tried to get rich in a hurry he got nothing but wounds and bruises; but when he worked faithfully and steadily at his trade, prosperity followed his labors, and his days were crowned with plenty, contentment, and love.
An old woman sat at the foot of the stone stairway, and took the fee that admitted us to the Watch Tower. On the southern edge of the hill, and rising high above the rampart, the broad flat roof of the tower affords an off-look that scarcely has an equal for beauty of prospect and interest in historical association. A bell swings in a turret; the rope hangs within reach; and there is magic in the ring. For the second day of January is a great fête day in Granada,—the anniversary of the capture of the city by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492,—and every maiden who ascends this tower on that day, and rings the bell with her own hand, is sure to have a wedding ring on her hand in the course of the year. The bell therefore rings right merrily on the fête day from early morn to set of sun, and the sign is as sure as any of the many that love and folly have conjured.
And in the far west, across the plain, rise the Parapanda Mountains, on whose top a cloud resting is a sign of rain, and when it hangs there they say it will rain “if God wills;” but if the cloud descends the mountain-side they say “it will rain if God wills or no.”
There too, off on the verge of the plain, lies a farm of 4,000 acres which the Spanish government gave to the Duke of Wellington for his expulsion of the French, and his heirs now derive a revenue of some $20,000 annually from the land.
And that gap in the mountains is the pass where Moor and Christian, the Cross and Crescent, have encountered each other in murderous fight, when knights in armor met hand to hand, and in protracted battles far more bloody and fierce than in our modern warfare they contended for the possession of this beautiful vale.
It is called the vega, or the plain, and from the watch-tower on which we are now standing we have the best view of it. Two rivers, like those that watered Paradise, flow across it,—the Darro, which the Moors called Hadaroh and the Romans Calom, and the Genil, which the ancients knew as the river Singilis. This fertile and beautiful plain stretches thirty miles or more away from the city of Granada, like a vast amphitheatre, a prairie sea: now and then a white cluster of houses, a little village, like an island on the surface of this great ocean of corn and wine. The snow-clad heights of Sierra Nevada rise to the bluest of blue heavens that cover it as an infinite dome, and the five-hundred-towered city stands on this rocky height in the midst of this magnificent panorama, the green meadows and vineyards of the vega below, the white-capped mountains around, and the cerulean skies, so pure, so deep, so lovingly bending over and embracing the whole.
But the bell on the watch-tower answers a better purpose than merely to ring husbands for the lively Spanish girls. This plain is to be watered by these rivers, and they must be led away from their own banks by artificial channels to the thousands of plantations into which it is divided. But the rivers are not sufficient to allow the continuous flow of water through all these canals for irrigation, and the time and quantity of water are regulated by law. Each man has his water-gate, through which the stream is to come, and the hour when he is to open his gate and when to close is announced from the tower. At the stroke of one, all within a certain distance open their gates, and the water flows in upon their fields, until the bell strikes again, when they close, and the next open theirs, and so the supply is extended from one to another and the whole plain is watered.
The “Sigh of the Moor” is the name of that mountain in the south-east horizon, on the way to the sea-coast, and it gets its name from the tradition that when the last of the Moorish kings, the unhappy Boabdil of whom we have been speaking often, was flying from the city, he paused here, and as he looked back upon Granada “he saw a light cloud of smoke burst from the beautiful and beloved Alhambra, and presently a peal of artillery told that the throne of the Moslem kings was lost for ever. ‘Allah Achbar, God is great!’ he exclaimed; and, unable to refrain his grief, he burst into a flood of tears. ‘Weep not,’ said his mother, the stern proud Azeshah, ‘weep not as a woman for the loss of a kingdom which you knew not how to defend as a man.’”
As Bensaken pointed to the mountain of “El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro,” and told this sad story of the Sigh of the Moor, the tears stood in the old man’s eyes, and he was actually in sympathy with the Moor Boabdil who ran away from this tower nearly four hundred years ago.
Behind those hills, and in the valley beyond, there are to this day villages inhabited by a race of people who retain the Moorish manners and customs, mingling the Roman and Mahometan forms of worship, using no knives or forks, but eating with their fingers, in the Oriental style, and preserving with traditional jealousy the prejudices of the race that has been so long extinct in Spain. Rarely does a traveller climb the heights that stand between those settlements and the higher civilization of the plains and cities, but the few who push their adventurous way into those uninviting regions find themselves suddenly carried back into life and times of which we read now-a-days as if in the pages of romance.
Walking across the tower, we look down into a court, where a guard of soldiers is keeping watch over a prison! And, to our amazement, we find that we are in the very midst of the walls that contain four or five hundred political prisoners, who are here in durance vile for real or suspected offences. It is not the fashion at present to put to death political offenders, and the poor fellows that are shut up in these walls, hopeless and helpless, are perhaps on the whole disposed to think themselves better off than if they had lost their heads. Once the late queen punished the whole of her congress, some hundred and fifty, and sent them to prison, or foreign parts, thinking that their room was worth more than the advice they were disposed to give her. Some of the prisoners here confined are men of high social standing and of commanding influence in the country, but in the miserable strife for power and wealth, and the game of politics, which is more corrupt, if possible, here in Spain than in our own country, they have fallen victims to successful rivals, and are now wasting away in the dungeons of the Alhambra. Some of them had obtained the special favor of working in the gardens and among the flowers and shrubbery; and, under the genial beams of the bright sun in winter, they found a grateful mitigation of their sufferings.
We had seen enough for one day, and took a ride over the city. Bensaken pointed out, as we passed the modest mansion in which the late beautiful Empress of the French was born. Her father, Count Montejo, fell in love with a daughter of the British consul at Malaga, Mr. Kirkpatrick, whose name unites Scotland and Ireland. The count married her, and Eugenie is their daughter. Her grandfather is therefore a Scotch-Irish-English gentleman. Some of her relatives are not of much account. One of them asked of me the gift of a glass of whiskey.
Not far from the Alhambra, and a pleasant walk across the fields, is the Generaliffe, a pleasure-palace in olden time, a retreat in the country from the more stately grandeur and closer confinement of the citadel.
It has been preserved with greater care, or perhaps restored from time to time, and is now one of the most interesting remnants of the Moorish dynasty. Its courts are paved with marbles, gladdened with fountains and flowers, and from some of them tall cypresses rise, which in other countries would rather adorn a burial-place than a palace court. One of them is the famous tree under which the beautiful Sultana Zoraya was sitting when one of the Abencerrages came to prefer a petition, and being seen to kneel before her, was suspected of making love, and her life and that of all his family was the forfeit. Bensaken was greatly provoked by the evident disposition of the writers of historical tales to insinuate that the Queen was actually receiving a lover, while he makes out a case of innocence and positively merciful virtue that would melt a heart of stone.
But if Bensaken was kind in his judgment of the ancient Queen, whose guilt or innocence will never be made the subject of inquiry before a court of impeachment in this world, he was less inclined to say a good word for the women of Spain. And in this matter he was no harder on them than others who have lived long enough in this demonstrative country to know the facts in the case. The women of Spain are, as a nation, more beautiful than those of any foreign country in which I have travelled, and this average beauty covers the peasant classes as well as the better-born. This is to be mentioned in connection with the fact stated by all who are familiar with Spain, that virtue is scarcely known. It is impossible, without disregard of the proprieties, to go into the statistics which an illustration of this fact would require. I was repeatedly assured that ladies would regard it as a reproach, an evidence that they were slighted, if they had not an acknowledged lover besides their legal lord. Of course the men are worse than the women, if worse can be, and little or no disgrace can be said to accrue when the vice is so common that virtue is an exception, and is despised at that. If it be asked, how can such a state of things be, when the church embraces in its bosom all the people, young and old, and confession is required of all who commune? the answer is easy. The forced celibacy of the priests tends to corruption, and they have no moral power over the people, unless it be a moral power for evil. And this vice is not necessarily a vice of a Roman Catholic people: it is the vice of the climate: as genial to the south as intemperance in drink is to the north. We must be charitable in our judgments of our neighbors and our fellow-sinners everywhere. It is a very common impression that the sins of a people are fashioned by the type of the religion they profess; and that this vice, which prevails all over the south of Europe, has some relation to the Roman Catholic religion, which is also the ruling influence of church and state. Doubtless the reformation of the church would reform the state also, but human nature will remain substantially the same, and the vices peculiar to the climate would still discover themselves to a greater or less extent. Under the Protestant influences of the north of Europe, intemperance prevails fearfully. So it does in our country, in spite of the highest moral culture and the best opportunities of education. Religion in its purest forms does not reach the masses of mankind in any country so as to save all of them from vice, and in its imperfect development, as in Romish or half-reformed countries, it is even less powerful to deter the multitude from evil.
CHAPTER XIV.
GRANADA.
WHEN we came down this evening from the Generaliffe, we found a curious group in the vestibule of the inn where we were lodged, and a picture of troubadour and gypsy life in Spain was before us suddenly. A dwarf, so stout and short as to be a monster in his appearance, and two or three girls to sing and play with a rude tambourine, made hideous dancing. The landlord and landlord’s wife, the two daughters of the landlord and their husbands,—two lazy fellows who helped one another do nothing all day long,—were seated around, enjoying the scene. The short fellow was short mainly in his legs, which, indeed, were not much longer than his neck; and the antics he cut up were grotesque and ludicrous in the extreme. But who could refrain from joining in the dance to the music, rude as it was? The landlord’s daughters could not, and with a little coaxing the dandy husbands were brought upon the floor; other young people, hearing the fun, dropped in, the frolic became general, and we were treated to an impromptu Spanish fandango, of which I do not propose to be the reporter. It was not amusing merely, but interesting also to observe the phase of lower life among these people, and to see how easily they could find entertainment without going out of doors to get it. The ugly dwarf went through the company, cap in hand, gathered a few pence, and with his little troupe hobbled off to try his luck at some other place. They told me that he lives in the mountains, many leagues away from Granada, but comes down to town, during the season of company, to exhibit himself. And in this, too, he is not unlike the degraded in other parts of the world, who are always willing to make a living by their deformities, if they can get a chance.
THE ALHAMBRA (From the Generaliffe).
The gypsies held a horse fair in Granada to-day. We found them in great numbers, from distant parts of the country. It was a new scene and phase of life. Gypsies are seen in England, in America, in Germany, in Italy, indeed there is hardly a country unvexed by gypsies. Wandering over the world, having no continuing city or abiding place, like the frogs of the land from which they get their name, they find their way into king’s houses and everybody’s house,—lying, cheating, stealing, peddling, and meddling, a nuisance and a curse. But the gypsies of Spain are a race by themselves, and not the ancestors nor the children of the gypsies of the other lands I have named. They have indeed a language with many words in common, and their habits are similar all the world over, but these gypsies of Spain are a race by themselves. Where they came from, and who they are, it is hard to say. They are usually spoken of as from Egypt, and being once called Egyptians, then gyptians,—the name easily runs into gypsies in the English tongue. But they are called gitanos in Spanish, and the race has no relations with the wandering tribes or families that roam throughout Europe and the Western World.
They are, as a people,—at least they seemed to me,—larger and stouter than the Spanish; and by no means so well-favored. Dark complexions, black eyes, long straight black hair, high cheek-bones, and short noses, they resemble North American Indians more than any European race. They are not cleanly in their persons, nor their dwellings; their roaming habits lead them to eat and sleep anywhere, with their dogs and donkeys; they dwell in caves if no better houses are at their command, and the hill behind the city, which we see from the towers of the Alhambra, is pierced with holes that lead into the chambers where they make their homes. They have also one quarter of the town where they have dwellings, but the walls of a city are not agreeable to the freedom of their wills, and they prefer the hills and the country.
They have no moral principle. There is but one virtue known among them, and that is so rare in Spain, and so remarkable among such a people, that it must be set down to their credit at the very start. The women are chaste, and that to a degree that perhaps no other people in the world can claim. It is the one feature of their character that redeems them from the curse of utter and hopeless vagabondism, and, standing out as it does like an ivory tower in the midst of a waste of moral ruin, its beauty is the more lovely and its existence the more wonderful. I cannot say what I would of the care with which mothers guard their daughters from contamination with their own race and the outside world; and I cannot add another word in their praise. They live by fraud. Known to the world as swindlers and liars and thieves, they are nevertheless tolerated, and perhaps because feared; their ill-will being dreaded, and their friendship supposed to be conciliated by complying with their demands.
They get power over people in the same way that spiritualists do: by appealing to that latent superstition which lurks in almost every human bosom, and is much stronger in some than others, and is often strongest in those who would be the least suspected of such a weakness. Thus the women of this gypsy race are fortune-tellers. The young women of Spain, like the young women of every country that I have seen, have some curiosity and credulity, upon which a shrewd impostor will easily play and extort money as the reward of her trickery. To these young women lovers are promised, and when the pride or the passion of the young is tickled with the promise, the prophet is not very sharply questioned or judged. One very common trick performed by the gypsy women in Spain has been reproduced in our country and in England again and again, and will be repeated as long as rogues can find fools to be duped. As love is the ruling passion of the young, avarice is of older people, and to make a heap of money out of a handful is the great desire of the soul. The gypsy woman promises a lady to teach her how to make a trunkful of gold out of a few hundred dollars. The lady is to take all her gold, and to get as much as she can, and tie it up in a white handkerchief in the presence of the gypsy, then to keep it carefully by her side, night and day, for three days, then the gypsy is to return and they are to deposit it in a trunk over which the gypsy is to say her form of words, and then the trunk is to be carefully locked and guarded for three weeks, and when opened is to be found filled with gold. The gypsy, returning after three days’ absence, comes with a bundle of rubbish tied up in a white handkerchief concealed under her mantle, and easily substitutes it for the one which the lady has watched for three days, and after the other is well locked up she disappears, to be heard of no more in that quarter. A trick so stupid and silly one would hardly believe could be practised once; but it is played every year, upon many victims, in all countries. Last summer a spiritualist woman in Paris assured a gentleman that large treasures were buried in the grounds about his house, and he spent thousands and thousands in tearing up his place to find it. The woman got the most of the money spent, and he is hunting yet. But these gypsies are not mere fortune-tellers, they are traders and tinkers; they deal in horse-flesh particularly, and are a striking illustration of the curious fact that trading horses, buying and selling horses, all the world over, has some affinities with trickery. Why it is, perhaps, the attention of psychologists has not been sufficiently long directed to the subject to say; but gypsies and jockeys are usually reckoned as belonging to the same class, and nobody is expected to trust either.
Bensaken went with us among these strange people, and as he understood their language, he made our visit among them exceedingly entertaining, and the facts that we gathered from him and them of their haunts and habits are perhaps as reliable as those which Borrow and others have furnished. I could not learn that they have any religious system. They believe in one God, but they have more to do with the devil, whether they believe in him or not. They have no faith in anybody. Why should they, or rather how could they? Intending to keep faith with nobody, and living only to deceive, they cannot be expected to believe. If they are not lineal descendants of Ishmael, they are like the Arabs, a nomadic race, and their hands are against every man, and every man’s against them.
I fell to musing over the change that three or four hundred years had made in the state of things on this famous spot. For we are within the grounds of the Alhambra. And the time was when the splendor of Oriental courts was shining here in its brightest array, and the luxury of kings and queens was spread about these seats that are now the scene of this low revelry and mirth. The vanity of earth is impressed upon me by this miserable show. The fashion of this world passeth away. And, indeed, the lesson of the Alhambra is the strangest, saddest lesson that ruins teach. Its walls, its towers, its turrets, its gates, in their decay, as they yet linger on the heights overlooking the city and the plain, seem to say, We are witnesses to-day that the glory of kings is fleeting as the dew of the morning:
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples—”
have dissolved; and the wreck behind is the monument of a departed race, an extinct dynasty, a better, wiser, nobler race by far than that which now inhabits the land. For when the Moors went out of Spain, they carried with them arts, science, enterprise, energy, strength, and taste. They left a people in possession ignorant, proud, bigoted, and indolent: a people that now, in the midst of an advancing age, is making no advance; a people who carry earth in baskets instead of wheelbarrows, and wood on donkeys instead of using carts!
Two things astonished me in Spain: the one, that the pictures in her galleries were so great and good, and the other that her cathedrals so far excel the rest of European temples in the grandeur of their architecture. Poor as Spain is now, we must not forget that it was once the most powerful of kingdoms, and the mistress of a world of its own. And the arts and sciences once flourished here as they did in the brightest days of Grecian and Roman glory. The paintings that are gathered in Madrid are probably as valuable in the eyes of the artistic world as those of any other gallery; and there are half a dozen cathedrals in Spain that are not equalled by the same number in all the rest of the Continent. One who visited them will not be apt to forget the florid beauty of the one at Burgos, the massive grandeur of that in Toledo, the thousand columns that sustain the arches on which rests the roof of the converted mosque at Cordova, or, the most majestic of them all, the vast and solemn pile that stands in Seville; nor will he readily lose the impressions made upon his soul by the cathedral at Granada, into which we are now entering, as we are about to take leave of the Alhambra, and go to the north of Europe.
It was the design of the founders of this temple to make it the most splendid in the world; and this weak and unworthy ambition has doubtless given to us many noble monuments of genius and labor which a less exciting motive might have failed to produce. We are met with a notice, on entering, that we are not to converse during service; and it is a caution that might well be put up in the Protestant as well as Catholic places of worship. Five naves are divided with massive pillars; the pavement is marble, and very beautiful; the interior 425 feet long and 250 feet wide, with chapels on the sides, on which private wealth has been lavished with a profusion that seems absolutely incredible; one of them was built by an archbishop, whose wealth was so great that he imitated the royal manner of living, and preferred to be like his Master a king, rather than like his Master a servant.
Charles V. called upon the artists of the world to come and embellish this house, and to assist him in building the sepulchres of his father and mother, and the kings of Spain. The chapel royal is the most impressive mausoleum in the whole kingdom; for here, in full view, are the tombs, and upon them the images, in marble, of Ferdinand and Isabella, and beneath these monuments repose the ashes of those illustrious monarchs whose names are so indissolubly linked with the history of our own distant land. By them lie the relics also of Philip and his wife, who was called Crazy Jane. There are no more elaborate sepulchral monuments than these. Four statues of learned divines and twelve apostles surround the royal tombs, as if keeping eternal guard over the inevitable dust. The statues of the royal dead are said to be good likenesses, and I hope they are, for these people had so much care and trouble in life, it is certainly pleasant to see them looking so quiet in their stone beds. Even Crazy Jane, the wife of Philip, is as calm and peaceful, in the effigy that lies at our feet, as if she never had been in the habit of carrying the corpse of her husband about with her from place to place, refusing to have it buried, and insisting on the pleasure of embracing it whenever she took a notion for so cold a comfort.
Isabella, the fair patron of Columbus, desired to be brought here and buried; and here she lies, one of the noblest women that ever sat upon a throne: a wonderful contrast with the late Isabella who came from Madrid to Granada, a few years ago, descended into the vaults, and caused mass to be performed for the souls of the departed; which souls are quite as well off without any masses as hers will be with many. Her visit was made here in 1862, and Ferdinand and Isabella took possession of the city in 1492, nearly four hundred years between the visits of the two Isabellas; and there is as great contrast between the characters of the two women as there is between the condition of the country under the reign of the one and the other.
A very obliging priest led us from chapel to chapel, and pointed out to us the several distinguishing marks of antiquity and sacredness that make the cathedral a joy to the believer, and one of the most—in many respects the most—sacred in Spain. He was not unmindful of a trifling fee when we parted, and one cannot but be amused with the solemn gravity with which this office of guide to the holies is performed by the priests, who doubtless have the mixed motive of displaying the charms of their sacred places, and of getting the little money that grateful travellers leave in their hands. It is best to have their services, for they answer a hundred questions that without them would be unanswered, and their weary life seems to be lightened by the brief companionship of strangers.
In the evening we set off from Granada by diligence, leaving the place in the same style that marked our entrance. A crowd gathered at the office to witness our departure. A woman at the window put down her money to buy a ticket to take a seat with us. Before she had received the ticket, a couple of officers of justice rushed in and seized her. They stripped off her bonnet and her luxurious head of hair: they tore off her mantilla, and, shocking to relate, her loosely-flowing dress fell at her feet, in the midst of the derisive shouts of an admiring multitude; and, thus stripped, she remained a well-dressed man! He had helped himself freely to the money in the shop where he was employed, got together all he could borrow and steal of others, and, in the disguise of a woman, was about to abscond to parts unknown! Probably he was going to that happy land far, far away, which is still believed by them to be the paradise of thieves. His career was suddenly arrested. The crowd followed hooting at his heels as the officers led him off to prison; the horn of the postilion rang out its call on the evening air, the dozen horses and mules at last consented to pull together, and we plunged out of Granada.
CHAPTER XV.
GENEVA—FREYBURG—BERNE.
BY a very circuitous route, over which I will not ask you to follow me, I came to Switzerland, on my way to the north of Europe.
When I was a boy of nine, I read in Cæsar’s Commentaries, “Extremum oppidum Allobrogum, proximumque Helvetiorum finibus est Geneva,” and rendered it into English, “the farthest town of the Allobroges, and nearest to the frontiers of the Helvetii is Geneva.” Out of the lake flows the river Rhone, with waters so blue that they seem to have been colored with indigo, and Sir Humphrey Davy, who died here, attributed the deep color to the presence of iodine. The outlet of the lake is crossed by several bridges, and the city stands on both sides. The old wall on the left bank was originally built by the men of Julius Cæsar, as is attested by coins and other remains of those days, to this day occasionally found. Its antiquity, its remarkable history, its past greatness, and its present beauty, the many eminent men who have here spent their lives, and more than all its situation on this lake, give the city of Geneva an attraction that no other place in Switzerland possesses.
The cathedral here in Geneva is the venerable edifice in which John Calvin and his peers in the Reformation preached the doctrines that are now working their way into the minds of the entire Christian world, as the real basis for civil and religious liberty and progress.
GENEVA AND THE RHONE.
As we entered it, we trode upon the nearly worn-out epitaphs in the stones of the floor, to the memory of Roman Catholic dignitaries, who ruled here before the Reformation, for the edifice is more than five hundred years old. A chapel of the Virgin Mary, no longer needed for her worship, holds the tomb of the Duke and Duchess of Rohan, 1638, and in another part of the church is the monument to the memory of Agrippa d’Aubigny.
In the old library, just behind the cathedral, are many interesting manuscripts of Calvin, forty-four volumes of his sermons, twelve of letters written to him, his own letter to Lady Jane Grey while she was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and 394 other letters by his own hand. Besides these, there is nothing more than the severe simplicity and solidity of the edifice, with its remarkable history and associations, to make it interesting.
It appears like a slow old town. But the names of good great men, and great bad men, are so identified with Geneva, that it is never spoken of without being associated with their works and influence. Calvin came here three hundred years ago and more,—the three hundredth anniversary of his death was commemorated a few years ago,—Rousseau was born here, Voltaire and Madame de Stael and Lord Byron have resided here; and a long list could easily be made longer, of illustrious men, some of them flying from religious persecution, some from the reach of the sword of justice, some hiding from themselves, for it has been, and still is, an asylum for all, of every name, faith, and aim, who would be free to think and speak, while they yield wholesome obedience to the laws. I was quite surprised to-day when the excellent United States consul at this place showed me in one of the infidel Rousseau’s works a note in which that brilliant writer speaks in the highest terms of John Calvin, not only as a theologian, but a statesman whose views, he says, will be always held in reverence.
D’Aubigne’s Birthplace and Residence.
At the foot of the lake, and near the city, are many beautiful villas, with the water in front of them, the Jura mountains on the north to be seen by those on one side, and the mountains of Savoy on the south-east in full view from the other. Mont Blanc towers above them, “the monarch of mountains,” his white head and shoulders seen above the dark ranges in front of him, like the bare form of a giant among the hills. Rev. Dr. Merle d’Aubigné, the historian of the Reformation, Sir Robert Peel, and other eminent men, have had their residences on the south-east side, and Baron Rothschild has a splendid palace on the opposite shore. Voltaire’s house, and the residence of the Empress Josephine, are also there. The shores, as we go up the lake, are covered with vineyards, and every village that we pass is marked with some features of historical interest. Madame de Stael formerly resided at Coppet, a little village where is a Roman tombstone with this inscription, “Vixi ut vivis: morieris ut sum mortuus: sic vita traditur, vale viator et abi in rem tuam.” Ninon is an old town that boasts of Julius Cæsar as its founder, and under its castle are those gloomy dungeons which are the terrible witnesses of the cruel customs of past ages. On the left shore as we advance we notice a village on the extremity of a cape, which is called St. Protais; this saint was the Bishop of Avenches, the Roman Aventicum, who died in 530, and was buried here, tradition says, because “his body did not seem inclined to go any further.” And in 1400, nearly a thousand years after his burial, it was proposed to remove him to Lausanne, but he showed such signs of repugnance, that it was deemed improper to disturb him any more. Near this was once a town named Lisus, which was destroyed in 563 by a sudden rise of the lake occasioned by the fall into its waters of an entire mountain on the Savoy side. It was an important place, as the remains of vases, statuary, and mosaics attest to this day. As we reach the town of Morges the scenery of the lake has opened upon us with grandeur and beauty which is impossible to describe. The snow-clad summits of the Grand Muveran, the rocks of the Diablerets, and the tapering jagged peaks that are appropriately called teeth, and have their several names, which one is scarcely expected to remember, now rise in full view, and the excitement of the voyage is fairly begun. Away in the distance is Mont Combin, one of the stupendous Mont Rosa group, and there are the mountains of Abondance and the cragged peaks of Meillerie, while in the background, overlooking all, glows and blazes in the splendors of this summer sun the everlasting snow-crown of Mont Blanc.
That square tower in Morges is the old donjon of Wufflens. It rises 170 feet, and towers above a group of turrets, all of brick. It was built in the tenth century by Bertha, whose memory is so sacred, the good queen of the Burgundians, who visited every part of her kingdom on horseback once a year, with a distaff in her hand, to set her subjects an example of industry.
Lausanne, and the Lake of Geneva.
The most picturesque in its situation, and the most famous city on the lake, except Geneva, is Lausanne, the capital of the canton of Vaud, built on three hills, along the slope of the Jorat, and dating back to the year 563. And then, oh wonderful to relate! it became in 580 the see of a bishop, the prelate Marius bringing hither the relics of St. Anne, from whom the town is named, Laus Annæ, and a part of the true cross, and some of the Virgin Mary’s hair, and, more than all, a rat,—a veritable rat, which had devoured some of the bread after it was consecrated, and was thus converted into the body of our Lord! These valuable possessions drew immense numbers of pilgrims, and raised the celebrity of the place, which afterwards had a remarkable history, civil and religious. Its cathedral was consecrated by the Pope himself. In 1479 the whole region was overrun with a species of beetles like locusts, devouring every green thing. The invaders were excommunicated by the bishop, but the sentence had no effect! Farel and Viret and Calvin, with other reformers, were here in convention in 1536. Here Gibbon finished his work, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and the principal hotel bears his name, while the house he lived in and the terrace where he often walked, are pointed out as objects of interest to travellers. We rode through the quaint old place, and then continued our journey.
But if we pause even to mention the places on the northern shore of the lake, and allude to the events that have made them classic, we shall not get over the ground or the water to-day. We have now reached the upper section of the lake, and the mountains round about it have been rising in sublimity and beauty as we advance. The water is a thousand feet deep. On the right hand the mountains rise precipitously from the water’s edge, and on the left vineyards cover the sloping hills: sometimes walls sixty and eighty feet high have been built to support the soil, and on the terraces so formed luxurious vines are flourishing, and in the days of the old Romans a temple to Bacchus, the god of wine, was standing here, the ruins remaining to this day. The view from Vevey is regarded by many as the most delightful on the lake, and the situation of the town is so picturesque and healthful, so cool in summer and so warm in winter, that it is sought for as a residence by strangers all the year round, and in this strangely ordered region, in sight of everlasting snows, the pomegranate and the rose-laurel and myrtle blossom in the open air, as in the south of France. And now we come to the upper end of the lake, and such an amphitheatre of mountains, rocks, and hills, sure no other lake in the wide world presents. The sun was low in the west as we approached this eastern end, and a flood of golden light was poured in upon the bosom of the waters, and covered the stupendous battlements on either side with a living glory.
Close down on the edge of the lake is the old Castle of Chillon, more than six hundred years of age, where the Dukes of Savoy ruled with terrible power. Down into its dungeons we were led, to one where on a flat rock the condemned prisoners spent the last nights of their lives; to another where, on a cross-beam still here, they were hung; to the stone column, one of the supports of the castle, where for seven long years the Prior of St. Victor, Francis Bonnivard, for his heroic defence of the liberty of Geneva, was chained to a ring yet remaining in the pillar, the chain passing around his body, and allowing him space only to walk around it, year after year, or to lie down and sleep by its side. In this dungeon many of the reformers were imprisoned.
Castle of Chillon.
In an upper room we found the chamber of torture, in which was a wooden column, to which prisoners were put to the question, chained, and tormented with fire, or drawn and stretched with rings and pulleys; and in another room a trap-door is open, and a spiral stone staircase leads downward,—the prisoner, unconscious of what was before him, steps down three steps into the darkness, and the fourth is eighty feet below, where he is dashed to pieces on the rocks. Yet in this castle, and near to these horrid places, are the bed-chambers and parlors and dining-rooms of dukes and duchesses, men and women like ourselves, who could eat, drink, and be merry under the same roof with all this cruelty and misery.
And this is at the head of the Lake of Geneva. Within ten minutes’ walk is the Hotel Byron, one of the best places to stop at in all Europe. It is in the centre of a semi-circular sweep of beetling crags, and snow-peaked mountains, and wine-growing hill-sides; it looks away down the lake, and not another house, not a sound disturbs its deep tranquillity, while nature, history, poetry, and art invite us to repose.
Leaving Chillon in the morning by rail gave us a new idea of the way that Switzerland is now explored by tourists. When I was here, a dozen years ago, it was to be seen only by footing it through the passes, or riding on horseback, with now and then a lift in the diligence, or antiquated stage-coach. Now railroads have been made to connect so many of the principal places and points of interest, that only the younger and more vigorous of travellers strike out into the mountain fastnesses, and toil over the hills where as yet no roads have been made. I inquired of the porter this morning how to get across from Martigny to the Vale of Chamouny. “You takes von leetel hoss,” he said, from which I knew that the ponies still do the work through that finest of all the day’s rides in Switzerland. There are hundreds of interesting tours yet to be made where no rail or coach will ever intrude, and no other locomotive, unless Professor Andrews makes his air-ship a success: in which case it would be admirably adapted to travel in this country. One of the last places in the world I should have thought practicable for a railroad is the border of this lake, and yet here it is entering the valley where the Rhone empties, and so extending to Martigny and to Sion.
THE LAKE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
Penetrating secluded regions where frost has been king since the world began, the rail has made even the everlasting glaciers, these frozen cataracts, articles of merchandise. As the quarries in the mountains are worked by the art and spirit of man, so the icebergs that here grow from age to age, and scarcely seem to melt at all, are cut into blocks, and transported by the rail to Paris. The glacier of the Grindelwald is drank in brandy punches at the Grand Hotel and the Louvre. To get the ice, these mighty frozen seas are excavated in galleries and chambers, and magnificent saloons. The depths of snow on the surface exclude the sunbeams, but calcium lights shed a brilliant lustre, reflected as from a thousand mirrors of glass, and in small apartments fitted up for the purpose, the furniture of a well appointed parlor, sofas, chairs, and cushions, invite to cold but not inhospitable repose. When the Mer de Glace is taken by rail down into Italy, and thence by ship to the East Indies, ice will be reasonably cheap in Calcutta. And this will be more readily done than to tow an iceberg from the North Pole.
As I said, we left Chillon in the morning, and retraced our course a part of the way by the railroad which passes on the hill-sides, away above the lake, through luxuriant vineyards, and over stupendous gorges, spanned by stone bridges, and arrived before noon at Lausanne. Here we struck out into the interior of Switzerland. And I was at once impressed with the great progress, even in this stationary country, made in the last thirteen years. Then we traversed this wild and wonderful country mainly over paths that no wheel had ever marked, and sometimes by ways that only the footstep of the most cautious traveller might tread. Now, we take the coupé, or front compartment of an elegantly fitted up rail-car. It has seats for four persons only, with rests for the head and the feet, and a table before you, and windows in front and sides, so that you can see all that is around you, or write of what you see and feel. Before us are the peaks of untrodden hills, all covered deep in perpetual snows, the pink color on the white like the hues of roses, as the sun shines on but never melts them; here, on the right, I see the lake that yesterday we sailed through from end to end; now it is smooth as a silver sea, and as beautiful; reflecting majestic mountains, and cities and villages where wealth and art and letters and taste have for ages delighted to dwell. And on the other hand, and sometimes on both sides of us, we see Swiss valleys teeming with a busy, peaceful, happy people, whose homes suggest to me the thought of contentment, and therefore happiness. The old city of Romont we pass below, as it stands on a hill with an ancient wall and towers surrounding it; good enough in those old times when bows and spears and stones were the weapons of war, but of no account in these times of Columbiads and Paixhan guns. At the foot of the hill on which it stands, the fields are laid off with walks and garnished with groves, showing that the people of these regions delight in those enjoyments that indicate culture and taste.
The city of Freyburg, where we passed the night, is remarkable as being the seat of the chief power of Romanism in Switzerland. It has as many as ten convents and monasteries and high seminaries of learning. The suspension bridge is said to be the longest in the world, nine hundred feet: it is not so beautiful as the one at Niagara, but may be longer.
The organ of Freyburg has been long celebrated as one of the best instruments in the world, and there is probably but one superior to it. Yet the performances upon it are so unequal, varying with the skill or the humor of the organist, that very different reports are made of it by parties hearing it at different times. Perhaps it was my good fortune to hear it under circumstances the most favorable. Certainly the music was the most effective of any that I have ever heard, more so than any I expect to hear till the “nobler, sweeter strains” of the divine melodies break on the spirit’s ear among the harmonies of heaven.
The cathedral dates back to 1285. Over the front entrance is a queer old bas-relief, representing the last judgment. The Father, God himself, done in stone, sits aloft, with angels blowing trumpets around him. At his feet, on the right, the righteous are led off in triumph to their places in glory, and on the left a devil is weighing souls in a pair of scales; another devil, with the head of a pig, is carrying a lot of poor sinners in a basket on his back, and is about to cast them into a great kettle where others are boiling, while little imps are blowing the fires with bellows, and hell itself, represented by the jaws of a monster, yawns near, and Satan sits on his throne above. We studied this strange device until the evening shades were too dense to permit us to see it, and then entered the portals. Darkness and silence reigned within. Two candles on the columns near the altar gave all the “dim religious light,” that only served to deepen the gloomy grandeur of the venerable pile. A few persons had already been admitted, and were conversing in whispers, invisible and scarcely audible in the distance. We sat as far away from the organ as we could, and where it was probable it could be heard to the best advantage. As the hour approached (it is played from half-past eight to half-past nine every evening), the strangers, who pause here on their travels, entered in little groups, and then a large crowd of gentlemen, who, as I learned the next day, were the teachers, professors, and other literary men of Switzerland, came in together, filling every available place. They were in Freyburg in convention, and by invitation were now present to enjoy the musical feast. It may be that owing to this unusual attendance of the learned and cultivated men of the country, we had the highest possible development of the powers of the instrument and the ability of the organist.
Something in the circumstances doubtless added to the dramatic effect of the exhibition. The cathedral seemed to be full of people, but a few only could be seen, and a sense of solemnity, devotion, awe, began to steal upon me as I sat waiting for the first notes of the organ, which was lighted only by a single candle, and that unseen, so that the instrument seemed away among the stars. Some of its pipes are thirty-two feet long. They are 7,800 in number, with sixty-four stops. As I looked up expectant, I thought, “Oh, if it had only a soul!” And then, just then, a breath of melody, so soft, so sweet, so soul-like, came along on the still air, it might have been the first notes of the advent song of peace that fell like this by night over Bethlehem. This gentle stream of music rose and swelled into a river of melody that soon burst its banks and became a rushing torrent of sound, mighty in its power, almost awful in its expression. This was but the prelude. Then came, in successive anthems, songs and passages of master-pieces of the great composers; some of them familiar, all of them exquisite in their effect, to illustrate the wondrous faculties of this uninspired, untenanted mechanism, that was yet able to represent with such fidelity the deep and lofty, the softest and strongest emotions of the soul.
Now, the imitation of the human voice was so perfect, it required an effort of the mind to believe that a living being was not rendering those plaintive strains in some distant chamber of this vast hall; and now, the ring of bells broke musically on the ear, and the far-away toll of some solemn church-bell added its voice to the harmony. The Alpine horn, the flute, and other instruments were so distinctly given, it was hard to comprehend the truth that, in the midst of one grand performance, on a single instrument, so many and so distinct and perfect imitations of others could be introduced. Perhaps nothing was more beautiful than the tinkling of water dropping into a fountain; yet, when one effect had been enjoyed, as if the most complete, another soon succeeded, so delicate and so touching, that it seemed as if the last were more lovely than all which had been heard before.
It is quite impossible to speak of the closing performance without being suspected, by those who have not heard it, of exaggeration. And, indeed, so differently are we constituted, that some will be charmed with a picture or statue, ravished with eloquence of oratory or music, and delighted with a landscape or waterfall, while others exposed to the same influences are as unmoved as the marble or the instrument. I know that I am not one of them, thanks to him who made us to differ; and I know, too, that they who sat near me, when the last grand movement of this organ was made, are not of them. For when the strong wind began to shake the walls of the old cathedral, the rain to pour in torrents on the roof, the thunder rolling in terrific majesty,
“Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God,
Marching upon the storm in vengeance seemed,”
we bowed our heads, with such a sense of awe and adoration, as could scarcely have been increased if the war of elements had indeed been bursting on us, and the voice of the Almighty had suddenly filled his temple.
I will not describe the effect of this music: how it soothed, subdued, and melted the heart when its tenderest utterances fell like balm on a wounded spirit; how it carried me away to other days, and far-away lands, and lifted me again to thoughts of heaven and the harmonies of the saints; and so pure, so holy were the strains and the associations they brought with them, I wept that I had ever lived but in the hallowed atmosphere of the Good, the Unseen, and Infinite! Nor was this a transient sentiment, fading when the hour of such strange teaching was ended, and the gothic temple ceased to tremble with these majestic tones. It has followed me for days and nights among these stupendous mountain fastnesses, over ice-clad plains, where “motionless torrents, silent cataracts,” proclaim the power of him who “clothes them with rainbows,” only less lustrous than the one around his throne. I hear the voice of God everywhere, in this sublime and awful land. But if these silent works of his are eloquent to speak his praise, how much more is such a voice as that organ, the great achievement of a mind and hand that God made, endowed, and guided in their work.
I have thought in years past that words are not essential to a train of thought: we think in words, always and only in words. But now I know that we need no words to make us feel, and words are not made that are capable of expressing what we feel. As we sat in silence beneath the majestic harmonies of this surpassing instrument, even so it were better that I had made no attempt to portray with pen what is not in the compass of words to utter. It is to be heard and felt and enjoyed.
Just beyond Freyburg, as we go to Berne, is the battle-field of Morat, which battle was fought four hundred years ago, but is famous to this day: for the bones of the slain were gathered into a heap, and some of them are still to be seen. It was formerly the custom for every Burgundian who passed to carry a bone home with him to bury in his own country, and Lord Byron said that he took away enough to make a quarter of a man. But they are mostly gone now, and an obelisk is set up to mark the field.
Cathedral and Platform at Berne.
By stopping over from one train to another you will see all that is worth seeing in the quaint old city of Berne,—the German for Bear,—the city of Bears, so called because it is built on the spot where its founder, Berchthold, of Zahringen, slew a bear long time ago. So the people keep three or four of them in a stone pit, at the public expense, for the idle and youthful to look at and feed and see them climb a tree. It is amusing to see a city worshipping bears. Therefore go to see the bears, when you go to Berne. Do not fall over the parapet, for if you do, the bears will tear you to bits, as they did an unfortunate Englishman on the 3d of March, 1861. If you happen to be at the old clock tower when it is striking the hour, you will see a curious procession, which presents a very striking appearance; and, indeed, every fountain and statue and mountain is deformed with ugly bears, till you cannot bear to see them. You will be quite willing to leave the city after walking through its principal streets, where the second story of the houses projects over the sidewalks, making a covered promenade, and the shops are half-way in the street, and the market-women sit all along the way with their baskets of vegetables, and the chicken vendors are ready to cut off the heads of the fowls over a drain that carries off the blood, and so forth.
Besides the hotels, the only notable edifice is the Federal Palace, a new and truly beautiful building. Here the National Diet, or Congress of Switzerland, meets annually in July. There are twenty-two cantons, or states, in the Swiss Confederation, and they are severally independent, but unite in this council for purposes of mutual protection and support. Each canton has a dialect, or patois, peculiar to itself, and sometimes unintelligible to its neighbors; and the French, the German, and the Italian languages are so generally spoken in distinct cantons, that they are obliged to have an interpreter in Congress to redeliver a speech, or restate an argument in two other languages after a member has made it first in the only one that he understands. What a blessed thing it is that our congressmen understand, at least, each other’s language, for if their speeches had to be repeated three times, when would the assembly ever break up?
The grandest sight in Berne is the range of Bernese Alps, and a grander spectacle, perhaps, the country itself cannot present. When that long, white, rifted, mountain-boundary of the world stands up in its majesty, lighted as we saw it by a blazing noonday sun, it is sublime as well as beautiful.
On the Lake of Thun.
It is only an hour by rail to Thun, and then we are on a lovely little lake ten miles long, with lofty mountains on each side of it; so lovely indeed is this lake, that days after we had left it, when other views were spoken of, Thun always had its admiring advocates, who claimed for it the pre-eminence in beauty over all that we had seen. And so in this land of glorious natural scenery, where every valley is a subject for a picture, every mountain a study, and every lake a gem, it is easy to exhaust the words of admiration, and then fail to convey any adequate idea of the constant succession of splendors that greet the traveller’s never-wearied eye.
Writing these last words, I look up, and before me is the Jungfrau, clothed in white raiment from crown to foot. The sky kisses her cold brow. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so are the everlasting hills about her now and ever. But no words can give to you, beyond the sea, the faintest conception of what one feels who exposes his soul to these visions of grandeur and beauty, and rejoices as he thinks “My Father made them all.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BRUNIG PASS—LUCERNE.
IF it were required of me to name the pleasantest day’s ride thus far of this summer’s tour in Switzerland, I should give the palm for beauty to the day that took me with two friends from Interlaken to Lucerne by way of Brienz and the Brunig Pass.
Interlaken, as its name implies, is between the lakes Thun and Brienz. Thun is a beautiful gem of a sea; Brienz is a little smaller, but fortified by formidable mountains and scarcely less lovely than her sister Thun. Our carriage-road, after leading us out from Interlaken,—that great English boarding establishment with a road running through it, and interesting only as a flat valley in sight of the Jungfrau, and so full of people all summer long that you can find no sense of quiet or retirement, though the hotels are good, and the rides pleasant, and the mountain scenery sublime,—our road led us along on the western shore of Lake Brienz, and is cut into the hill-side so far up that all the way along we were able to survey the whole lake. I looked back to the Abendberg, a mountain which I once climbed to visit the Institution for the Relief of Cretins, the idiots of Switzerland, which Dr. Guggenbulre established there. That remarkable philanthropist and physician, in whom and his labors I became intensely interested when here before, has since that time been removed by death, and no one being found to carry on his benevolent and self-denying work, it was suspended, and the building is now a hotel.
On the east side of the lake some of the finest mountains in the country are to be seen, and the flat summit of the Faulhorn is even more inviting than the Rigi, which now is visited by scarcely more tourists. Cascades are leaping frequently from lofty heights into the abyss below, and we have scarcely exclaimed at the beauty of one before another rushes into sight. By and by we come to one more imposing than all the rest; at first we catch but a single fall; as we advance it takes another plunge, and then another, and soon the whole reach and all the leaps of the Giesback are roaring and tumbling down the lofty precipices before us. I had been under it and around it, at its base, but had not before stood, as now, where its successive falls are all blended into one, and the white crystal flood pours more than a thousand feet, through the green fir-tree borders, into the lake. If you have a night to spare, when you come here, you may cross from Brienz and spend it at the Falls, which are illuminated with Bengal lights, producing a spectacle of enchanting and bewildering magnificence and beauty. But if you have not time, get some one who has just been there, and who knows that you have not been, to tell you about it, and you will get an idea from his description that will quite surpass the original!
After passing the little village of Brienz,—where the English-speaking landlord of the Bear (Ours) will entertain you well if you give him a call,—we soon began the ascent of the Brunig mountain. It gives you at once some conception of the immense expenditure of money, time, and science of engineering required to construct these Swiss roads. As smooth as those of Central Park, and as solid, they are made to wind around and about so as to render the ascent gradual. Sometimes we seem to be returning on our track, but always singing Excelsior, and yet so gradually that the strain is not severe on the horses, and you feel no sense of danger as you are borne along without jolting or fatigue. And what a lovely vale is every moment in view at the foot of the mountain! A rapid river sweeps through it, and by its side a white, smooth road: sweet Swiss homes in the midst of green farms dot the valley, that may well be the pride of the whole land. Now we are looking down into the Vale of Meyringen. For two or three hours we have seen in the distance a splendid cascade, and now that we have approached it, we find it the lower leap of the celebrated Reichenbach Falls, and into the valley so many are pouring constantly, that you are not surprised to learn the inhabitants have often suffered sadly from the swelling of these mountain torrents, which come down so rapidly and fearfully as to bear away every thing before them. A hundred years ago, almost the whole village of Meyringen was buried twenty feet deep in the sand and rocks and rubbish. A mark on one of the principal buildings shows the height to which the waters rose in that memorable deluge. And as we are wound along up the Brunig, we enter the clouds and find the rain descending, so that we are obliged to shut the carriage up till we pass through the cloud, and emerge as we come down into a sunnier region. At the foot, the village of Lungern offers us dinner, and we rest. One of my friends had been suffering all day with toothache, and had at last reached the reckless determination to have it out, if a dentist, or even a blacksmith, could be found in the place. I admired his courage more than his discretion, but probably had only a feeble sense of his suffering. The village doctor was summoned, a fine-looking, self-reliant, intelligent young man. The landlord stood with solemn face at the door of the room where the dread operation was to be performed. The landlady wrung her hands in sympathy. The head waiter held the sufferer’s head. I held my peace. In a moment it was done! And then the charge, it was one franc! twenty cents!! Think of that, ye man tormentors, who, with forceps dire, tear a tooth by the roots from one’s bleeding jaw and charge him two dollars, or five!
Lungern, where now lies the bone of one of my countrymen, stands by a lake of the same name, which was once much larger than it is now. But the people, more in need of land than water, at the cost of $25,000 dug a tunnel under a hill that held the lake, put 1000 pounds of gunpowder at the end of the hole and touched it off. Away it went, and away went the lake, and the village itself was nearly whelmed too. Down went the lake 120 feet, leaving several hundred acres of ground which is now tilled. But not enough to pay for the work. God has given the seas and the lakes their bounds, and man is a poor tinker when he tries to blow the world up and make it over. I sympathize with the poet who rejoices that the sun and moon are swung out of reach,
“Lest some reforming ass
Should take them down and light the world with gas.”
The whole region beyond is historic, and the quaint villages we pass through have their several stories of battles, sieges, and victories. Every step of the way presents a new picture of loveliness or sublimity. At last we are brought into sight and now are riding along the base of Mount Pilatus, his head as usual crowned with clouds and storm. The tradition is,—and you must believe in all the traditions of this country, or you lose half the interest of travel in it: even the life and exploits of William Tell are traditional rather than historic, yet who that lives here or travels here thinks William Tell a myth? If he does, he had better not tell anybody he doesn’t believe in Tell,—the tradition is that Pontius Pilate, after condemning the Saviour, wandered over the world with a conscience goading him to death; that finally he committed suicide on the top of this mountain, which is almost always, in consequence of this awful event, begirt with tempests. And the popular belief that these storms were of infernal origin was so prevalent, that for a long time it was forbidden by law to make the ascent. But the mountain is the first great barrier the clouds meet as they are marching southerly into the Alpine regions. There they break, and around the peak of Mount Pilate the thunder and lightning play with vengeance, when elsewhere it is “clear shining after the rain.” The carriage-path is now along the shore of Lake Lucerne and at the foot of the mountains,—ahead of us it seems as though we were coming to the sudden terminus of travel, but the narrow way opens as we advance, and we sweep securely under a frowning precipice, and over a solid rock for the bed of the road, and having made the circuit of the mountain we emerge upon a plain which lies between us and Lucerne.
Pilatus, Lake of Lucerne.
The sun was just sinking to rest as we were bringing to a close our journey of ten hours, memorable for the picturesque views that were constantly before us, the four lakes that we had skirted in our ride, the uncounted waterfalls, majestic mountains, alternate rain and sunshine, and that pleasant friendly converse which an easy-going carriage permits and encourages, when, with tastes to enjoy the beautiful world that God has made, we sit all day under the open sky and admire, wonder, and adore.
Lucerne is one of the most beautiful spots in Switzerland. We have often laughed at the guide-books for calling each and every place, castle, river, waterfall, temple, or tower, the most beautiful, the oldest, largest, most romantic, or something quite as superlative. But we get into the same habit, and readers must make allowances for the enthusiasm of travellers. Take off as much as you please, and Lucerne is very lovely.
It was my first Sabbath, on this journey, in a place almost wholly given up to Romanism. The population is about 13,000, and less than a thousand are Protestants. At nine o’clock in the morning, with two American friends, I went to the cathedral or church of St. Leger, and found it already crowded and a sermon in progress. The preacher was arrayed with so much magnificence that I supposed he must be some very distinguished personage in the church of Rome. The Papal Nuncio, or representative of the Pope of Rome, has his official residence in Lucerne, but I presume he does not officiate as a preacher. The audience filling the seats and thronging the aisles were giving devout attention, each one on entering bending his knee and crossing himself. The women occupied one half, and the men the other, of the house. I could find no seat, but a young man in a pew rose, gave me his seat, and stood up himself, a politeness not common in any Protestant church in any part of the world to which my weary steps have been directed. The preaching was in German, and more unintelligible to me than if it had been in Greek or Latin, so that I was at liberty to study the surroundings. Over the altar was a statue of Christ crucified: the body made of wood painted to the life, and life-size, suspended so low that the face, with all its expression of intense agony, was perfectly visible. The blood had settled all below the knees and the lower part of the chest, and was trickling from the spikes through the hands and feet. The altar was richly adorned with gold, and candles were burning on it. On either side of it were minor altars; over one of them was an inscription in Latin recording the sacred relics there treasured. These are to be found in all the great churches on the continent, but have lost none of their hold on the reverence of these superstitious people. The toe-nail of the prophet Jeremiah would be the fortune of any relic-hunter who should light upon it. Over another altar, called Privileged, but why I did not learn, was a representation, in full life-size, of the descent from the cross. The weeping women had very sorrowful faces, and the wound in the Saviour’s side was gaping fearfully, and the blood still oozing out. As I was looking at it, a lady elegantly dressed, leading two children, four or five years old, entered a side door, and approaching this altar knelt before it, and turning her face upward to these images of the Saviour’s death, gazed long, and I suppose was praying. The sermon was still in progress, but she gave no heed to it. Perhaps, like myself, she was not able to understand it, and had come to worship, not to hear. When she had closed her protracted devotions, she took the little boy and girl and made them both kneel, where she had been kneeling, and look up as she had done, and when they had thus performed the service which she evidently prescribed, she led them out. Others cast themselves down before this and other altars, and with no attention to the service in progress, went on with their own prayers, and then left, or joined with the rest according to their pleasure. When the sermon was ended, long, and well delivered, in a persuasive, conversational tone, without notes, and with an evident air of earnest feeling, another priest, in gorgeous apparel, came to the high altar, and, attended by two or three boys to hold up his robes and move his missal-book from place to place, as he had to change his position, he proceeded to celebrate the mass. The officiating priest was an elderly man whose face indicated great intellectual force, and his appearance was that of a student and man of learning. As he took a golden chalice and laid his hands over it, and prayed, and then lifted it up while all the people bowed themselves with profound reverence, it filled me with amazement that such a man as he seemed to be could suppose that the wine in that cup had been miraculously and instantly converted into the blood of the Son of God!!! And when he held up in the same way a bit of bread in the shape of a wafer or thin cracker, two inches or so in diameter, and again all the people bent themselves in adoration, he himself, with uplifted hands and downcast eyes and moving lips, appeared to regard the ceremony as an immediate exhibition of a present and new-born God. Then he took the cup again and drank it, and drank once more, turning it bottom upward over his face; and when this was done he took a white napkin and dried the inside thoroughly, as if no drop of the sacred blood must remain within, and the door of a golden casket or closet on the altar being opened, he placed it within, with the bread he had converted, and locked it safely there. While this ceremony was going on, a priest had emerged from behind the altar, and with a brush in hand went up and down among the people, sprinkling them with holy water. A splendid organ and a choir of singers took part in the service, which was in all its parts imposing to the senses, fitted to make a deep impression on the ignorant masses.
The cloisters that surround the church are filled with tombs and memorial paintings and inscriptions, and the windows on the south command charming views of the lake and mountains.
From this service, which was rather to be called interesting than edifying, we went to the English church service. The Protestant Germans have a new and very pretty edifice, which they permit the English-speaking residents and travellers to enjoy for two services on the Sabbath. The sermon we heard was on the nature and blessed effects of prayer. It was evangelical and useful, some passages very touching and impressive. The prayers were read by a young American clergyman, and the audience, which was quite large, filling the church, was probably one-half American.
I have never found a more romantic, more sublime, more classic and beautiful lake in the little part of the world I have seen, than the Vier-Wald-Statter See, the Four Forrest Cantons, or, as it is more often called, Lake Lucerne.
You will come to Lucerne, to the Schweitzer Hof, the best hotel in Switzerland. From the wharf in front of it steamers go five times a day the whole length of the lake and return, making the excursion in five hours.
It is the lake of William Tell. Unbelieving sceptics intimate a doubt that such a man as Tell ever lived; but the apothecary in whose house I am lodging now has his scales in the form of a cross-bow, with a gilt apple on the top, to represent the great exploit of the hero’s life, and every house has its memento of the man without whom there is no Swiss history. You might as well tell me that George Washington is a myth, and that he never hacked his father’s cherry-tree with a hatchet. I have a piece of the tree, and know it to be true. And every Swiss patriot knows that William Tell shot the apple off his son’s head, and the monster cruelty of the order that made him do it roused the fires of indignant resistance to tyranny, and resulted in the independence of the country. It is necessary to believe this, to enjoy the scenes made sacred by the story.
Monument to the Swiss Guard. (By Thorvaldsen.)
You will leave the city of Lucerne, having seen the lion cut in a solid rock as a monument to some Swiss soldiers who were killed in Paris fighting for pay in 1792, and having also walked through the covered bridge that is distinguished, but not adorned, with a series of paintings by Holbein, representing the Dance of Death; and after the boat has gone from the landing about fifteen minutes, you must look back on the crescent city rising from the water’s edge, flanked by the ancient wall on which the useless towers still stand; and on the spires of the cathedral whose organ claims equal honor with that of Freyburg; and the old tower in the centre of the river which was once a light-house, Lucerna, whence the name of the town; and on the green hills, behind and on either side of the city, elegant residences of opulent citizens, and of some who from Paris and more distant parts come here to enjoy the summer in a delicious and healthful clime. Naples is grander, but hardly more beautiful, as she lies around her lovely bay, with Vesuvius, like the Rigi, keeping watch over her Italian charms.
For an hour or two out we are in the midst of the same bold and striking scenery which is common to all the Swiss lakes, with nothing of special interest except the historic associations that cluster about the little villages at the foot of the hills on the shores. We would be slow to believe that a population even of a few hundreds could hold on upon the sides of the mountains, or find the means of support among those green meadows, where lies the little village of Gersau, and there are only about 1,500 people in it. Yet so tenacious are these Swiss of independence, that this little, secluded, poor, portionless community, not more than two miles square, maintained its existence as a separate state for more than four centuries, and was then swallowed up by the French in the devouring fires of 1789. It is now part of one of the Swiss cantons. We cross the lake again and come to Brunnen, where the figures of the three historic patriots of Switzerland stand with each a hand held up to heaven, on the outside of the Sustenhaus, on the bank of the water. But when we leave Brunnen, and through a narrow pass enter the Bay of Uri, the grandeur of the view breaks instantly upon us with such a power as to set at defiance the attempt at description unless one has a bolder pen than mine. Philosophers have tried it. Poets have done what they could to illustrate and repeat it. So prudent, and yet so capable a writer as Sir James Mackintosh says it makes “an impression which it would be foolish to attempt to convey by words.” I will therefore not be foolish. Yet you may look with my eyes upon precipitous mountains starting from the bosom of the lake and pointing with silent and solemn majesty into the sky: here and there as we pass are verdant meadows, few and far between, but beautiful as they nestle at the feet or on the breasts of these gigantic cliffs, not a human habitation, sometimes for miles, to be seen, but all still, serene, and impressive in its solitude, and awful in its manifestation of the stupendous works of God.
A sharp rock rises perpendicularly from the water on the western shore, and some foolish people have put a gilt letter inscription on it: as if the words were of use to perpetuate the histories of these shores. We come to a low pasture, a narrow ledge, the most hallowed spot in Switzerland, for here the three great patriots whose portraits we saw at Brunnen,—Furst, Stauffacher, and Melchthal,—were wont to meet to concert their plans. And here at midnight, Nov. 7, 1307, they, with thirty trusty men whom they had chosen, took the oath that bound them in a solemn league to break the hated yoke of Austria, or die. They fought and conquered, and they perished too, but their names and deeds live, in revolving centuries, and pilgrims from lands that were then unknown now come and look with reverence upon the spot thus consecrated, for the lands of Tell and of Washington are lands of liberty, and the sons of each are brothers.
And across the See, a few miles on, is the chapel of William Tell. It marks the spot where the hero jumped from the boat to the rock and bounded away into the woods, when the tyrant Gessler was carrying him to prison. A storm had overtaken them: the tyrant, a coward of course, was afraid, and, as Tell was an expert in the boat, he ordered him to be unbound, that he might manage the little bark. Tell steered her close to the rock, and leaped ashore, and was gone. A little chapel, open on the lake front, is erected here, preserved with pious care, adorned with art and taste, and once a year a long procession of Swiss, in boats, approach the sacred place and listen to a discourse in honor of their sainted hero.
Tell’s Chapel, Lake of Lucerne.
Adown the sides of these majestic mountains frequent cascades leap and hang and play, and not far from the chapel two fountains spring directly out of the mountain side and pour two copious streams into the lake below. They are said to flow from a lake in the valley on the other side of the mountain; but whether this is true or not, it is an illustration of the way in which the veins of water run along beneath the earth, rising even on the sides and summits of the hills, and springing to the surface when reached by art, or, as in this case, discharging by a natural outlet. The earth has its mysteries yet unsolved. Some of these bare mountain rocks are laid in convoluted strata, a few feet only in thickness, but wrapped over and over, as if they were a heap of great sheets once, easily thrown into these forms. It is easy to say that they are of volcanic origin, and that these hills were once flowing down in presence of the Lord. But this explains nothing. The philosopher is no wiser than the poet. And neither sees any farther into the bowels of these mountains than the Christian pilgrim who sits with me on the boat, and, as he sees the water gushing out of the rock as if smitten by the rod of Moses, he says: “Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of the waters? Out of whose bosom came the ice? There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” And this is the way the waters go, through chambers cut in the rocks by Infinite skill, that they may flow just where they are wanted to bless or beautify the world.
Reaching the end of the lake at Fluellen, we enter at once upon the highway over the St. Gothard into Italy. Two miles on is Altorf, where William Tell shot the apple on the head of his son. And still farther on is the place where he finally lost his life, drowned while seeking to save the life of a child. The road beyond is one of the grandest and most historic of the Swiss passes, but I am not going that way now, as Capt. Lott said. What did he say? Why, this,—a passenger asked him why the ship was going so slow: the captain told him the fog was too thick to make much headway. “But,” said the passenger looking up, “it’s clear enough overhead.” “Yes,” replied the Captain, “but we’re not going that way just now.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BLACK VIRGIN OF EINSIEDELN—LIFE IN SWITZERLAND, &c.
MORE than a thousand years ago, a holy hermit, by the name of Meinrad, of royal blood, sought the wilds of Finsterswald, and here (for I am now on the spot) lived in a hut, and spent his days in prayer, with a little black image of the Virgin and Child which had been given him by the Abbess of Zurich. But his piety and the Holy Virgin did not shield him from the violence of wicked men. He was murdered in his hut by two robbers, who would never have been caught but for the interposition of the Virgin, who sent two ravens after them. These birds followed them to Zurich, and there hunted them till their guilt was detected, and they were put to death.
The odor of Meinrad’s sanctity spread far and wide, and the Benedictine monks came and established a community, built a monastery and a church, and have flourished on this spot ever since. So long ago as 948 the Bishop of Constance came here to consecrate the newly erected church, and in the night before the ceremony was to be performed he was awakened by the music of angels filling the place, and a voice from heaven came to him, saying that he need not proceed with his holy services, for in the night the house had been sanctified by the coming of the Saviour in his own proper person. This was reported to the Pope, who pronounced it a genuine miracle; and in obedience to his decree a plenary indulgence is granted to all pilgrims who come here, and on the church is inscribed, “Here is full remission from the guilt and punishment of sins.” During all these thousand years that have since revolved, this spot has been the shrine to which not less than 200,000 human beings each year, with heads and hands and feet like other people, have journeyed, to bring their offerings, and worship a black image of the Virgin Mary holding a black baby in her arms. Why the image is painted jet black I cannot learn. So great is the concourse of pilgrims here, and so large are their offerings, that this monastery, in a bleak Alpine vale, 3000 feet above the sea, and off from all highways, has become one of the richest in the world. One in Styria, one in Spain, and a third in Italy, are, perhaps, more numerously visited. But the annual revenue of this is immense. The abbot has his banking house in Zurich, where he deposits the funds, and the investments are constantly increasing. They are buying lands largely in the United States of America, especially in Indiana, and the order of Benedictines at Vincennes is in constant correspondence with Einsiedeln.
Hither have I just made a pilgrimage, not on foot, as many do. An old woman of seventy-five, carrying her shoes in her hand and toiling up with bare, sore feet, said the priest had bade her travel so to Einsiedeln, and her sins would be pardoned. But I came by the steamboat from Zurich to Ricksterwyl, and was then brought up the hill in a nice covered carriage, a much pleasanter way of doing a pilgrimage than walking barefoot, or even with peas in your shoes. It is a two hours’ ride from the lake, the ascending road being alive with travellers going and coming, and public-houses to entertain the pilgrims invite you to rest. The village itself consists of a multitude of taverns and shops for the sale of images, crosses, medals, &c. Passing through it, we come to a large paved square. On one side of it, and at the foot of a hill which rises behind it, stand the sacred edifices: a vast temple, with the monastic buildings on each side of it, imposing in their appearance among these wilds of nature, where it seems almost a miracle that they can ever have been reared and enjoyed by man. The church itself is adorned with extravagant pictures and marble chapels and shrines, and just at the entrance stands the image of “Our Lady of the Hermits,” the only black image of the Virgin I ever saw. She and the Holy Child wear crowns of gold, and glitter with diamonds and embroidered garments, their faces of ebony shining in the blaze of jewelry and tinsel finery. Before them, worshippers are always kneeling, counting their beads. At the other shrines others are bowing and murmuring their prayers. Painted skeletons of celebrated saints lie exposed in marble shrines. The offerings of those who have had their prayers answered hang around on the walls. All sorts of prayers are here made, and they who make them believe they are answered.
In the square in front of the church is a fountain with a dozen jets of water, and each pilgrim drinks from each one of them, to be certain that he drinks of the one out of which the Saviour refreshed himself nine hundred years ago!
The monastery is freely opened to strangers. Through long halls on each side of which are guest-chambers where their many visitors are lodged, we were led to a gallery, adorned with several splendid paintings, presented by Catholic monarchs: Louis Napoleon and his Empress, the Austrian Emperor, and several historical pictures. Out of this we walked into the reception-room, where the abbot himself was so condescending as to meet us. He speaks only German and Latin. A very large man, of commanding form and presence; with a face shining like the sun with good humor, good living, and content, he answered perfectly to your idea of the abbot of a Romish monastery. He gave me a cordial greeting, and understanding that I was from America asked if we enjoyed universal peace. When I assured him we did, he spoke of the late contest in Europe, which he pronounced “bellum atrocissimum,”—a most atrocious war. Then he inquired about the President, and produced from his private rooms a photograph of the late Lincoln in the arms of Washington in heaven!
After a little further general conversation he withdrew. He is by virtue of his office a prince of the Austrian empire, and is so addressed by all the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland. I was highly pleased with the interview, and not less with one of the monks to whose kind care I was now committed. He led me to the interior of the monastery, where the cells of the monks are arranged on the several stories or floors: each one is a comfortable room, with one window looking into the walled garden and the hill that rises behind. When we reached his own he unlocked it and showed me in; placing its only chair, he bade me be seated, while he went to look for the key of the library. “While I am absent,” said he, “enjoy yourself as you please, examine every thing, and be quite at home.” A few books were in a case over his writing-desk, by which he could sit or stand and the closets, shelves, every thing was bare of paint, and plain as could be. A little bed was in one corner near the door, simple enough for an anchorite. No images, pictures, or crucifixes were in sight. In a few minutes he returned, and led me through the cabinet of natural history, into the library of 30,000 volumes, neatly arranged in niches. When we came to the folios of the fathers, I pointed to the works of Irenæus, and said: I have the name of that father, my own father having given it to me because he admired the writings of the old author, the disciple of Polycarp, who sat at the feet of the apostle John; I was thus in the line of the succession. We took down the folio and looked at its imprint. Then he asked me if I would like to see the manuscripts, and upon my expressing a strong desire to do so, he raised an iron trap-door, and conducted me by a flight of stairs into a room below, where an immense number are deposited, and admirably preserved and disposed. None of them, however, are very ancient.
A college of two hundred students is maintained in the same range of buildings, and taught by some of the monks. Of these monks there are about forty, besides the priests who minister at the altars, and receive confessions in German, French, Italian, and Romanesch languages, according to the nationality of the pilgrims. The monks spend their time in reading, writing, and in the refectory, where they eat together, and enjoy the good things of this life as well as other people. Some of them are quite old. Death comes here as elsewhere, and closes up a life of apparent indolence, yet possessing some strange fascination that is hard to be comprehended by the outside world. It certainly is not favorable to the highest usefulness, for these men might be doing far more for God and their fellow-men in the pursuit of some honest calling, preaching the gospel, or working with their hands. They consume and do not produce. Nor is this mode of life friendly to holiness. Passions are part of man’s nature, and they are not quenched or dwarfed by seclusion from intercourse with the outer world. Human sympathies, which are cultivated and refined by the practice of social virtues, and so tend to make us better, are not apt to flourish in the cell of a monk. And although the walls of this magnificent monastery, in a sterile Alpine valley, shut out the pomps and vanities of the world, they cannot be made so high or so strong as to confine the wandering desire, which will sap the foundations of the sternest virtue, and make the bosom the seat of vice to which the soul consents, and therefore suffers. The pure in heart see God. Not in the cloister of the anchorite, the monk’s lonely cell, nor the hermit’s cave; but in the steadfast pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Great, in the daily walks of life. It is virtue to live above the world, while living in it. None but the children of the Holy One can walk through the furnace without the smell of fire on their garments.
Such were my thoughts as I left the monastery, shaking hands with Father Reifle, the Benedictine, who had so kindly waited upon me, and by his intelligent conversation and lively interest in my enjoyment had won my warm regards. He put the key into the lock of the iron gate at the head of the stone stairs, and unlocking it let me out, and we bade each other Adieu, as he stood within and I without the door.
Returning to Zurich, and going thence to St. Gall, I mounted a diligence, and rode an hour and a half into the hill country, up hill all the way, to a place unheard-of in the guide-books, and unvisited by travellers, unless business or the search for solitude should call them there. It is at least a thousand feet above the lake, of which a distant view is had, and in the midst of beautiful high valleys, green pastures, and thrifty villages, three or four of which are in sight, each with its single church spire or tower. Not a boarding-house was to be found in the place. There is a hotel, but hotels had been my dwelling-place long enough, and now I would have a home, and such a home as the people around me enjoy. In a private family, the village apothecary’s, I learned that, perhaps, a room could be had, and thither I bent my steps. Happily for me, they were willing to take me in, and in a short time the apartments were ready and I was duly installed.
My quarters are a parlor and bedroom, on the front of the house, first floor, up stairs over the shop. The floor is uncarpeted, made of various Swiss woods laid in mosaic, in diamond shapes, of three different colors. A large, earthen, polished, white, monument-like thing, gilt at the corniced summit, stands on one side, and I soon learn that it is a stove, the door of which is out in the hall, where the fire is kindled, and now in the middle of August a fire is needed all the time. On the corners of this ornamental as well as useful pile stand two Parian busts, one of Goethe and the other of Schiller. An engraving of Schiller reading one of his poems to his friends hangs on the wall, and a portrait of Columbus, and another of Luther and other celebrities are around me. The windows extend without interruption over the entire length of the room, and a row of flowers in pots are on the sill outside, and embroidered curtains within. The shutters are closed by raising them with a strap, as the windows of a rail-car. A sofa, an easy chair covered with leather, three tables, a divan, and a chair or two, with rugs lying around, and little gems of art with books scattered about, complete the furniture of this perfectly comfortable and delightful room. The walls and ceiling are all panel-work in wood, painted white, and as purely white as the Alpine snows. In the bedroom, the floor, the wall, and ceiling are as in the parlor, only the color is a light salmon, very chaste and clean. The bed has a down comforter on the top of it, and two pillows, with double cases, the inner of figured green silk, showing at the open embroidered end of the outer linen. It is almost too pretty to sleep in, in the dark. Over the head of the bed is a beautiful engraving of Uhland’s “Landlord’s Daughter.” On the stand at the bedside is a little basket of confectionery, a porcelain transparency of the Saviour standing among the clouds and pointing heavenward; a china night-lamp burning with a bowl of water over it, kept hot by the lamp; and every little nick-nack that delicate taste and an appreciating sense of what comfort is would be likely to suggest.
I am asked, before retiring, at what hour I will breakfast, and I reply, “When the family do; and let every thing be as you are in the habit of having it.”
The times of eating and the food were not to my taste the first day. It took me a little while to get adjusted to the change. But in every country I would live as the well-to-do people of the country live. And here I soon learned that the number of meals and the hours of eating were regulated by the climate, which is so bracing as to indicate frequent eating and substantial diet. I am writing this at ten o’clock at night, and I will give you the journal of the day.
Breakfast at 7½ A.M., consisting of coffee, bread and butter, with honey and cold meat.
Dinner at 12, noon, soup, fish, boiled beef, beef à la mode, vegetables, salads, cucumbers, apricots, pears, plums, apples, preserves, pastry, &c.
Lunch at 4 P.M., coffee, bread and butter and honey. Everybody takes this meal as well as the others. They come in from the fields and the shops to their coffee at 4.
Supper at 8 P.M. I am almost ashamed to say that at 8 this meal was served in my parlor, for me only: soup and a roast chicken, which disappeared, leaving scarce a wreck behind. And I forgot to say that at six o’clock I took tea out with a private family in the village, where the table was spread with the richest cream, butter, strawberries, currants, bread, and honey,—all but the tea being the fruit of the gentleman’s own grounds. And at my table there were presented several dishes not enumerated above, the names of which were worse than Greek, and the compound of a color and odor that did not enlist my sympathies. However, I try a little of every thing, and eat all the time. I understand there is a doctor in the village, whose fame extends to distant cities, and ere the week is out I may have to test his skill.