"I count him wise
Who loves so well man's noble memories
He needs must love man's nobler hopes yet more!"
WILLIAM WATSON.
"Una restauración de la vida entera de España no puede tener otro punto de arranque que la concentración de todas nuestras energías dentro de nuestro territorio. Hay que cerrar con cerrojos, llaves, y candados todas las puertas por donde el espíritu español se escapó de España para derramarse por los cuatro puntos del horizonte, y por donde hoy espera que ha de venir la salvación; y en cada una de esas puertas no pondremos un rótulo dantesco que diga: "Lasciate ogni speranza," sino este otro más consolador, más humano, muy profundamente humano, imitado de San Ajustín: "Noli foras ire; in interiore Híspaniæ habitat veritas."
ANGEL GANIVET: "Idearium Español."
THE day drew near for our leaving Spain. Eight months had passed since we entered from the north of the Pyrenees isthmus, and now we found ourselves at its southern exit. They had been months filled with an absorbing and unexpected interest; we had come into Spain for a mere autumn tour, and she had forced us to linger. And I must repeat that I came with the average pessimistic idea that she was a spent and more or less worthless country, till what I saw about me daily changed me to a partisan. It was a hard farewell to take now. When Spain is allowed to show herself as she is, she wins a regard that is like an intense personal affection.
At dawn on the early day in June set for our departure we left Barcelona; before night we would be in France, but the leave-taking was to be broken by some hours in Gerona. As usual it was the fact of its possessing a first-rate church that determined us to stop. This was to be the last of the grand cathedrals which more than those of any land, even of France with their purer art, had realized my ideal of worship and reverence. As Gerona was in Catalonia, good architecture was to be expected, but this was better than good. The Cathedral which dominates the town was worthy of its stirring memories. An imposing flight of eighty steps, like that of the Ara Cœli in Rome, ascends to its west portal. At the head of this staircase we paused to look out on the panorama of the Pyrenees—mountain rose behind mountain, the foreground hills well-wooded, those beyond covered with snow. Here was no stupid Escorial facing in to a blank wall. The old masters with vivifying imaginations had brought the glories of nature to worship with them, had hung as it were in their porch, this lovely landscape.
Within the Cathedral the first impression is its spaciousness. The width is astonishing; indeed the hall-like nave of Gerona is the widest Gothic vault in Christendom, and were it longer by two bays, no cathedral of Europe could have surpassed the effect. The wide nave of Catalan churches is a national feature that here reaches its acme. The choir of Gerona is on a smaller scale, and the meeting of the two makes a curious feature, not bad inside, but in the exterior view extremely ugly. Probably in time the choir would have been enlarged to fit its monstrous nave. The men in those days started undertakings as if they could never die, but later generations have lacked their enthusiastic ambition.
By happy chance we were in time to assist at a last High Mass in a Spanish cathedral. It is no exaggeration to say one's heart felt heavy in listening to the solemn chanting, watching the reverence of priests, acolytes, and congregation, to realize that this was for the last time. The last time we should see the kiss of peace carried symbolically from the priest at the altar to the canons in the choir, the last time we should hear the clamor of the wheel of bells. I looked up to where they hung on the wall and nodded them a little personal farewell, so often had they charmed me. Farewell to sedate Spanish piety, to the devotional unconsciousness of individual prayer. Over the frontier, during the coming summer at Luchon, I was soon to hear wooden signals clapped during Mass to guide the wandering attention of the people, to see the children scamper out in obvious relief.
The chancel of Gerona is a gem. The iron reja that shuts in the capilla mayor is of the plainest, like a wall of stacked spears guarding the holy of holies. There is no towering retablo, which would be out of character with slender Catalan piers; instead, behind the altar is a marvelous reredos of silver carved in scenes, and surmounted by three Byzantine processional crosses,—all ancient and priceless enough to be the treasure of a national museum. The altar and the canopy over it are also of silver, retablo and altar being placed where they now stand in 1346. The effect of iron reja and precious shrine is faultlessly artistic; we sigh here for a beauty as completely lost for our copying as is the tranquil perfection of these gravestones, the sculptured stelæ of Athens.
The service over, we proceeded to examine the church. The cloisters are oddly irregular in shape, and look out on the snow-topped Pyrenees. So beautiful was the prospect that I added this cloister setting to the dream-cathedral Spain tempts one to build. It would have the cloisters of Tarragona with this outlook of Gerona's; also Gerona's altar and retablo, though the reredos of Avila and that of Tarragona are worthy rivals. There would be the grand staircase of this Cathedral, and it would ascend to a western portal like León's, with Santiago's Pórtico de la Gloria within; the north and south doors would be Plateresque from Salamanca and Valladolid. The cathedral would be set on Lérida's crag, with the city of Toledo climbing to it and the Tagus churning below. The nave would be Seville's, and Seville's windows would light it and her organ thunder there. The choir would be Toledo's, carved by Rodrigo, Berruguete, and Vigarni, the chancel Barcelona's stilted arches. How they could be combined is hard to solve, but round this capilla mayor would run the double ambulatory of Toledo, and the apse outside have León's flying buttresses,—the apse which the old mystics held as symbolic of the crown of thorns about the head of Christ (the Altar). Rejas from Burgos, Granada, Seville, would guard the chapels, and tombs of knights and bishops from Sigüenza, from Zamora—from every town of Spain in fact—would line the walls: tapestries and treasures from Saragossa; a via crucis by Hernández and portrait statues by Montañés; a sacristy like that of Avila; a sala capitular copied from the Renaissance grace of San Benito in Alcántara; and a wealth of side chapels,—a Condestable chapel, a San Isidoro, a Cámera Santa, a San Millán, a Santa María la Blanca, and an isolated shrine like Palencia's, standing in the ambulatory. And always beneath the vault of this cathedral would be found far-off little Lugo's solemn adoration, and there would be processions as imposing as Andalusia, with the piety of Estremadura, or the Basque. The Giralda, built in the warm red stone of Astorga tower, would stand close by, and not far away, a monastery, line for line, like Poblet. Sitting in a Spanish cloister looking out on the Pyrenees, one drifts into dream-pictures of the ideal cathedral.