Prætorium, erected an upright column—a gift of Pope Pius V.—copied from the pillar at which Christ was scourged, and made a replica of the basin into which the thirty pieces of silver were counted. When the house came into the possession of the first Duke of Alcalá, he was acting as the Spanish viceroy at Naples, and he filled the rooms and corridors with Roman busts and statuary, gathered from Italy and the ruins of Italica. On every side the art treasures of the Romans adorn the perfect Moorish colonnades, and the shadows of Roman sculptures are thrown upon diapered marble pavements from light that enters through Arab lattices and ajimez windows. It has been described as a great curiosity shop, but to the art lover it is a treasure house of almost infinite beauty and variety.
The Moorish palace of the Duke de Alba, in the Calle de las Dueñas, once consisted of eleven courtyards, nine fountains, and more than a hundred marble pillars, and was surrounded by a garden, which is a forest of orange trees and myrtles. In Seville one wanders through streets which are redolent of Arabia, and peep into countless Oriental patios, cool with fountains, and shaded by palms and Eastern canopies. One “feels the East a-calling”—the colour, the scent, the witchery of it gets into one’s blood—and one recognises the truth that inspired the old Spanish saying: “To whom God loves He gives a house in Seville.”
TOLEDO
TOLEDAN history proper, as distinguished from the mixture of fable and tradition which are associated with the story of this ancient and royal city, dates from the invasion of the Goths. Toledo was old when Euric successfully scaled its seven rocks and stormed its battlements—how old, cannot be determined. Legend claims that the town was in existence when God made the sun; less exalted imagination dates its foundation no further back than the days of Tubal, the grandson of Noah. Alphonsus, “the Learned,” and Diego Mossem Valera, the historian of Isabel the Catholic, agree that it was built by Pyrrhus, the son-in-law of King Hispan, and a captain of the army of Cyrus. Hercules has been claimed as the father of Toledo by Rufo Festo Avieno, and Ferecio, one of the companions of Ulysses, is held by some to have retreated to this spot to escape the blood-vengeance of that little band of Greek adventurers. Other legends declare the city to be of Jewish origin; and its builders, the Judians, who fled from Jerusalem before the victorious hosts of Nebuchadnezzar. Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada discovers the founders of Toledo in Tolemon and Brutus, two Roman consuls in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes, and more reasonable supposition favours the theory that it was first settled by nomadic Celtic shepherds, who forsook their flocks to erect walls and fortifications on the rocky eminence above the Tagus. The little that is known of the origin and beginning of Toledo; the very mystery and obscurity of its earliest days, is accepted by the old historian, Alcocer, as a proof of its antiquity and nobility. Rais, the Moorish writer, says that Tago, at Toledo, was one of the eleven governors of Carpetania. Tago was foully murdered by Hasdrubal, the successor of Hamilcar, and the assassination of Hasdrubal was followed by so determined an insurrection that even Hannibal was forced to retreat before the infuriated Carpetanians. But Hannibal retreated, only to return with a reinforced army, and break Carpetania beneath the might of Carthagenian rule. In 191 B.C., after the fall of Carthage, Hilermo surrendered Toledo to the Roman forces, under Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. But Toledo held itself sullenly and haughtily aloof from the affairs of Rome. Viriate and Caius Plancius might cut each other’s throats on the banks of the Tagus; Sertorius might nurse his hates within the city; Cæsar and Pompey might be locked in a death struggle—those things mattered nothing to the contemptuous and independent Toledans. The Goth was the first real conqueror of Toledo; and the city, outwearing the scars of Rome, and throwing off the marks of the Moors, is, to-day, as insistently Gothic as Cordova and Seville are unmistakably Moorish.
One sees Toledo from the distance, from the bridges, and from the heart of the city, and recognises that it is as it has always been—that it will go down into the tomb of the centuries unchanged. It grew “out of the night of ages”—its rocky throne has defied the ravages of time and the transforming ingenuity of man. Maurice Barrès, who has felt the majesty and melancholy of this gaunt monument of mediævalism, writes: “The landscape of Toledo, and the banks of the Tagus, are amongst the saddest and most ardent things of this world. Whoever lives here has
PLATE XLIII.
