Seville.
GARDENS OF THE ALCÁZAR.
SAN FERNANDO SQUARE.
the characteristics of a forest primeval; and all these, absent in Córdova, are to be found in the Cathedral of Seville. But if this cathedral be compared to a petrified forest, it must be to a forest of giant trees. There is something supremely massive, colossal, mammoth, in the huge, high pillars of this building—something which makes one wonder, as do the Pyramids of Egypt, that human might should have sufficed to place these monstrous stones in an upright position, and in symmetrical rows. The Córdovan pillars are mere walking sticks in comparison, and the ceiling which they support only one quarter as high as that in the Seville Cathedral, which is the largest—and its tower the highest—in Spain. So vast is its interior space that, notwithstanding its ninety-three windows, a dim, mysterious twilight pervades every part all day long.” Yet, although Seville is the warmest and sunniest place in Spain, and this cathedral its coolest spot, the flock of worshippers is very small indeed. The number of priests who officiate at the thirty chapels and eighty-two altars, have been reduced from 133 to 100; but it seems as if to-day one quarter that number would suffice for all needful purposes.
THE ALCÁZAR, AMBASSADOR’S HALL, SEVILLE.
The Alcázar, built on the ruins of the Roman Prætorium, was, in the design of its creators, the principal feature in the scheme of the city’s fortification. It was also the palace of the Moorish Kings, and is to-day the residence of the Spanish sovereign; but the exterior, with its masses of bare masonry and its embattled towers, still preserves the character of a mediæval castle. The Alcázar is in an excellent state of preservation, and its charms are bewildering; while its associations with the crisores and amours of three races of kings lend it an historic interest. The ornamentation of the rooms is superbly beautiful, and the variety of designs and colours, the gold and the gems, with which the walls are decorated, produce in the brain a feeling of tiredness and confusion. All that is marvellous in complicated design, all that is rich and exquisite in tone and material, all that genius and workmanship is capable of, has been enlisted in the beautifying of this palace of delight. One gazes from the friezes to the fairy-like columns, from the capricious arches to the bejewelled ceilings, from the secret doors to the lovely little windows, and in the mysterious gloom one feels again the thrill of exaltation and amazement that only love, or wine, or the spectacle of the sublime and the mysterious can beget. The Alcázar, taken in conjunction with its history, is a dose of artistic and imaginative intoxication that no living soul shall resist.