THE BULL-RING, MADRID.
who come from the neighbouring villages. It takes place on May 15th, and provides the most genuine bit of local colour that is to be witnessed outside Toledo. The great concourse sets out early; and crossing the Manzanares, follows a road which is lined with men and women offering their “agua fresca” (cold water) from large jugs. Water, it may be noted, is the staple beverage of all Spanish fairs and festivals. On the other side of the river—in May, the Manzanares belies the description—the miscellaneous vehicles (some drawn by as many as six mules) discharge their crowded freights, and soon the country is like an ant-hill, except that ants are usually in mourning, and do not wear such bright colours as the peasant women and the soldiers who form so large a portion of the crowd. There are innumerable booths for eating and drinking, and other common features of folk festivals. More unique are the family groups scattered everywhere, eating their slices of cold meat, salad, red pepper and oranges. Many have their wine in the same old pig-skins of which one reads in Don Quixote. At every hundred yards there is some sort of primitive music, to the rhythm of which the young men and young women dance with an expression of delighted absorption. Indeed the whole crowd wear a look of indifference to the past and future, and a determination to make the most of the passing moment. Away up the hill are long rows of booths with pottery, toys for children and cakes, and further up still is the saint’s chapel, into which all the people crowd in turn to kiss a silver image held by the priest, to receive a printed picture of the saint, and to drop a copper. But that wonderful crowd, whether at dance, or meat, or its devotion, contained the greatest number of happy faces I have ever seen together in my life.
El Escorial.
ANOTHER of the Spanish royal residences, of which no other European country can boast so many, is, to give the edifice its correct title: “El Real sitio de San Lorenzo el Real del Escorial,” which is situated some twenty-five miles from Madrid. The ancient glory of El Escorial, its revenues, its monks and its magnificence, are vanished, but the activity and importance of the district have been revived by virtue of the wonderful copper mines which lie almost under the shadow of the mighty walls of the historical building. The immediate vicinity of the Escorial is extremely beautiful. Close at hand rises a mountain range, highly picturesque in form and outline, and of a colouring singularly rich and varied, while many of the upland slopes are clothed with thickets and bushy patches of copse-wood, their varied tints thrown into bright relief by the dark grey rocks cropping out here and there along the face of the mountain. Immediately below lies the park with its dark foliage of ibex, while to the east lies a tiny lake, which glistens under the early sunbeams.
The Escorial, which has been pronounced to be the “eighth wonder of the world,” owed its existence to Philip II. and the celebrated architects, Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, and is at once a palace, a monastery and the pantheon of the monarchs of Spain. Formerly, it was known as the Royal Monastery of St. Lawrence, and it was raised in commemoration of the battle of St. Quentin, when the Spanish army routed the French on the festival day of the martyr, St. Lawrence. Philip II., or the architect, or both, are commonly believed to have designedly planned the outline of the building in the shape of a gridiron, out of respect for the butchered saint, whose martyrdom on one of those utensils is a matter of history. Probably, however, chance rather than design is responsible for the exact plan; though there can be no doubt, looking down at the Escorial from the top of the neighbouring mountains, that the simile is justifiable. A desire to protect majesty from the keen winds and to obtain for majesty’s apartments the bulk of the sunshine in the neighbourhood, perhaps helped to make the Escorial what it is, architecturally speaking.
ESCORIAL MONASTERY, THE EVANGELIST’S COURT.
Before the French invasion, the church teemed with treasures of art—sacred vessels of gold and silver—a multitude of shrines—reliquaires—and a tabernacle of such exquisite workmanship, that it was wont to be spoken of as worthy to be one of the ornaments of the celestial altar. All these were destroyed by La Houssage’s troopers when they occupied the Escorial in 1808, by way of giving vent to their national feeling respecting the battle of St. Quentin, two-and-a-half centuries before. The Escorial sustained a still greater loss in 1837, during the Carlist war, when about a hundred of the choicest paintings were removed, for safety’s sake, to the Museo at Madrid.
The exploration of the Escorial is a formidable undertaking, comprising as it does the inspection of a palace, a convent, two
