Impressions of Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

THE HIGH ALTAR, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.

of the Castilian mountains it has never died. The machinery of the curtain of the theatre of Toledo is a trifle rusty, the pulleys are jambed from long disuse; but that curtain is rising steadily if slowly, and already I can hear the tuning up of fiddles in its ancient orchestra. The ancient spirit still burns in the Toledans, and the ancient prosperity of their city is surely recovering itself. Since 1884 much re-building has been done, and more is in progress; whilst new and handsome shops are seen in the principal thoroughfares where an increase of population and traffic is apparent.

THE DOOR OF THE SUN, TOLEDO.

But one must live in such a city as Toledo in order to appreciate the changes that are being wrought in her. The casual visitor cannot hope to detect the specks of modernity in this vast temple of the antique. Its ancient grandeur is comparatively impervious to the pretty wiles of modern improvement. One’s eyes wander from the newly-built emporiums to the immensity of its enduring monuments, and one’s mind flings back instinctively into the past, out of which they arose to defy the hand of Time himself. And so the majority of book-makers, who take Spain for their subject, overlook the present condition of the country; the instant life that rushes before their eyes escapes their notice. And, indeed, it requires an effort, even on the part of a shrewd and unemotional observer, to stand beneath the shadow of the ruins of the old Alcázar and keep one’s mind from slipping backwards into the history of a city which presents an epitome of the principal arts, religions, and race-lives which have dominated the world for the last two thousand years. This was the theatre in which grim tragedy was ever played, where waves of strife, rapine, and misfortune swept remorselessly across its stage in constant succession; where Jew and Roman, Goth and Moor in turn played their stern parts. Here the voice of the Goth echoes amid Roman ruins, and the step of the Christian treads on the heel of the Moor. Here are palaces without nobles, churches without congregations, walks without people; and over all that silence which is so peculiar to the ancient cities of Spain. Before England was, Toledo had been.

In a city which holds one spellbound by its past, it must be difficult for the present to make headway. Wörmann has well described Toledo as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock;” and Street has declared: “Few cities I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest with it; and none, perhaps, come up to it in the singular magnificence of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its every corner.” And the grandeur is emphasised by the silence that serves to enhance the awe that the place inspires in the heart of the visitor. Such occasional sounds as are heard echo along the narrow streets, and turn innumerable corners, and the noise of a passing horse reverberates like the clatter of a charging squadron. But horses are few, and carriages are very far between, for the ascents of Toledo are formidable, and its turnings are endless. One must be resident in the city for months in order to learn its topography: the visitor must engage a guide, or be prepared to make a dozen inquiries on a journey from the Hotel de Castilla to the Cathedral. It is a maze built of masonry; an ideal place in which to lose oneself. One can walk for miles through these stone passages and make

Toledo.

ALCÁNTARA DOOR AND BRIDGE.