In this delightful region the dusky invaders established themselves at Valencia, which they dubbed the City of Mirth. The history of the land is alike a fevered dream of mediævalism. Across its pages flit the shadowy forms of Theodomir, and the Cid and Jaime lo Conqueridor, standing out against a back-ground of serried hosts and flaming cities. The people to-day are true children of the sun, passionate, vivacious, physically well proportioned. The country is a terrestrial paradise, where the flowers ever blossom and the sun ever shines. To-day the Valencian supplements the bounty of Nature by enterprise and industry. His ports pulsate with traffic, and side by side with memorials of the life of a thousand years ago, modern social Spain may be studied at Alicante and El Cabanal, the Brighton and Trouville of the Peninsula.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
THE ROYAL TAPESTRIES
AT MADRID
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL TAPESTRIES IN THE ROYAL PALACE AT MADRID. WITH OVER 200 PLATES
The Royal Palace at Madrid contains the most valuable and interesting collection of Tapestries in Europe. These were for the most part woven in Flanders, some in the early fifteenth century, at a time when the industry in that country had reached its zenith. At a later period the work of the Flemish artists was imitated in Spain itself with no little success. Among the designers of these superb works of art were Quentin Matsys, Pieter Breughel, and the Divine Raphael himself. Not artistically only but historically the collection is of rare interest.
SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL ARMOURY AT MADRID. WITH 386 PLATES
Although several valuable and voluminous catalogues of the Spanish Royal Armoury have, from time to time, been compiled, this “finest collection of armour in the world” has been subjected so often to the disturbing influences of fire, removal and rearrangement, that no hand catalogue of the Museum is available, and this book has been designed to serve both as a historical souvenir of the institution and a record of its treasures.