GENERAL INTERIOR VIEW, CÓRDOVA CATHEDRAL.
THE PRIM MEMORIAL, BARCELONA.
deprive other visitors of the enjoyment I got out of the innocent and exhilarating experience.
Everything about Córdova—the streets, the squares, the houses, with their patios—are small, lovely, mysterious, and Eastern. The ground-work is white—white and smooth are the walls and the houses—but the detail is a blaze of colours—roses, and oranges, and pinks forming a colour scheme of Nature’s own designing. The youthful gaiety of the town has overgrown its ancient might and sombreness, even as gay flowers, burst from between the ancient stones of a ruined castle. It has a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; a mysterious spell that one cannot resist. The cathedral is a fortress from without, but within it is a palace of enchantment; the town is a citadel become a pleasure garden; it is a museum of Roman and Arabian antiquities, peopled with blithesome men and women. Within a mile or two of Córdova once flourished Medina Az-zahra, which was one of the most marvellous works of architecture, the most superb earthly palace, and the most delicious garden in the world, and Zahira, built by the powerful Almansur, the governor of the kingdom. Both these superb cities have been destroyed, and not even the ruins are to be found.
The Castiles.
SOME of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated in the two Castiles—silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind; and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the Burgos of the older province. Burgos, a representative Gothic Castilian city, was long the capital of the kingdom of Castile and León, and its cathedral ranks among the finest in Spain. What voyager that crosses the Pyrenees is not acquainted with Burgos Cathedral? The train that hurls the traveller across the mountainous boundary dumps him in Burgos, and being there, he proceeds forthwith to inspect the Cathedral. He is, it may be assumed, new to Spain, the Spanish cathedrals have the charm of novelty, and the first one he visits he does thoroughly. Unless he is an architect, or an archæologist, he will expend over this first specimen of the Peninsula’s religious edifices an amount of enthusiasm that would, if properly apportioned, carry him with interest round all the cathedrals of Spain. As an illustration of this contention I may mention the experience of an American whom I encountered in Seville. He was enthusiastic about the bull-fighting, delighted with the Alcázar, and fascinated with the Sevillian patios; but when I spoke to him of the cathedral, he replied, in an off-hand manner and a shrug of the shoulders: “Oh, I haven’t seen it, except from the outside. I got so full up of cathedrals at Burgos that I haven’t been inside another.”
THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE CASTLE, BURGOS.