In its splendid art collection of the Museo, the city has a treasure only equalled by the Louvre at Paris and the galleries of Florence. To artists it is the one attraction of Madrid, and is principally composed of works by Spanish masters, though also containing many other fine works of art. Here we may see forty examples by the hand of Murillo, sixty-four from Velasquez, sixty by Rubens, twenty-five from Paul Veronese, thirty-four by Tintoretto, and many by Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Vandyke, and others of similar artistic fame. It is believed that Murillo appears at his best in this collection. Being a native of Seville, he is seen, as it were, at home; and artists declare that his works here show more power and expression than anywhere else. So we go to Antwerp to appreciate Rubens, though we find him so fully represented elsewhere. The same may be said of Velasquez as of Murillo; he also was at home here, and cannot be fairly, or rather fully, judged outside of the Madrid gallery.
When the French were masters in Spain, they proved to be terrible agents of destruction; leaving marks of their devastation everywhere. Not content with stealing many unequalled works of art, they often wantonly destroyed what they could not conveniently take away with them. In the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Grenada, they pried open the royal coffins, in search of treasure; at Seville they broke open the coffin of Murillo, and scattered his ashes to the wind; Marshal Soult treated the ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner. War desecrates all things, human and divine, but sometimes becomes a Nemesis (goddess of retribution), dispensing poetical justice; as when Waterloo caused the return to Spain of a portion of her despoiled art-treasures.
The bull-ring of the capital will seat eighteen thousand spectators. Here, on each Sunday of the season, exhibitions are given to enthusiastic crowds, the entertainments always being honored by the presence of the state dignitaries, and members of the royal family. The worst result of such cruelty is that it infects the beholders with a like spirit. We all know how cruel the English became during the reign of Henry the Eighth. Sunday is always a gala-day in Madrid, though the attendance upon early mass is very general, at least among the women. It is here, as at Paris and other European capitals, the chosen day for military parades, horse races, and the bull fight. Most of the shops are open, and do a profitable business; especially is this the case with the liquor and cigar stores and the cafés. The lottery-ticket vendor makes double the usual day's sales on this occasion, and the itinerant gamblers, with their little tables, have crowds about them wherever they locate. The gayly dressed flower-girls, with dainty little baskets rich in color and captivating in fragrance, press button-hole bouquets on the pedestrians, while men perambulate the streets with cakes and candies displayed in open wooden boxes hung about their necks. In short, Sunday is made a holiday, when grandees and beggars come forth like marching regiments into the Puerto del Sol. The Prado and public gardens are crowded with gayly dressed people, children, and nurses, the costumes of the latter being of the most theatrical character. No one who can walk stays within doors on Sunday at Madrid.
The cars will take us forty miles hence to Toledo, where the rule of the Moor is seen in foot-prints which time has not yet obliterated. It seems like realizing a mediæval dream to walk the narrow, sombre streets of this famous old capital. Strangely steep, winding, and irregular, they are! The reason for constructing them thus was doubtless that they might be the more easily defended when attacked by an enemy. In the days of her prime, Toledo saw many battles, both inside and outside of her gates. One can touch the houses of these streets, in many instances, on both sides at the same time by extending the arms. There are scores of deserted buildings, securely locked up, the heavy gates studded with great iron nails, while the lower windows are closely iron-grated. Some of them are open and unguarded, having paved entrances or court-yards, with galleries around them, upon which the rooms open. Everything bespeaks their Moorish origin. Some of these houses, which were palaces once, are now used as storehouses, some as carpenter-shops, some occupied as manufactories, while the appearance of all shows them to have been designed for a very different use.
The whole valley which Toledo overlooks, now lying so dead and silent, once teemed with a dense population, and sent forth armies, and fought great battles, in the days of the Goths. The cathedral of this old city is visited by architects from all parts of Europe and America, solely for the purpose of professional study, it being one of the finest examples of the Gothic order in existence, while the richness of its ornamentation and its artistic wealth, not to mention in detail its gold and silver plate, make it the rival of most cathedrals in the world, with the possible exception of that at Burgos. Its size is vast, with a tower reaching three hundred feet heavenward, the interior having five great aisles, divided by over eighty aspiring columns. It is said to contain more stained-glass windows than any other cathedral that was ever built. The high altar, a marvel of splendid workmanship and minute detail, is yet a little confusing from the myriads of single statues, groups, columns, and ornaments generally.
Toledo stands upon the boldest promontory of the Tagus, a dead and virtually deserted city. Coveted by various conquerors, she has been besieged more than twenty times; so that the river beneath her walls has often flowed red with human gore where it is spanned by the graceful bridge of Alcantara. Phœnicians, Romans, Goths, Moors, and Christians have all fought for, and at different times have possessed the place. Only the skeleton of a once great and thriving capital remains. It has no commerce, and but one industry, the manufacture of arms and sword-blades, which gives occupation to a couple of hundred souls—hardly more. The coming and going of visitors from other lands gives it a little flutter of daily life,—like a fitful candle, blazing up for a moment, and then dying down in the socket, making darkness only the more intense by the contrast. The one sword factory is found to be of little interest, though we are told that better blades are manufactured here to-day than of old.
In looking at the present condition of this once famous seat of industry and power, recalling her arts, manufactures, and commerce, it must be remembered that outside of the immediate walls, which formed the citadel of a large and extended population, were over forty thriving towns and villages in the valley of the Tagus, under the shadow of her wing. These communities and their homes have all disappeared, pastures and fields of grain covering their dust from the eyes of the curious traveller. The narrow, silent, doleful streets of the old city, with its overhanging roofs and yawning arches, leave a sad memory on the brain as we turn thoughtfully away from its crumbling walls and picturesque, antique Moorish gates.
Thirty-five miles from Madrid by rail will bring us to the Escurial, which the Spaniards call the eighth wonder of the world. This vast pile of stone buildings is more than three hundred years in age, and nearly a mile in circumference,—tomb, palace, cathedral, monastery, all in one. It was the royal home of that bigoted monarch Philip II., but is now only a show place, so to speak, of no present use except as an historical link and a royal tomb. One hall, over two hundred feet long and sixty wide, contains nearly seventy thousand bound volumes, all arranged with their backs to the wall so that the titles cannot be read, a plan which one would say was the device of some madman. The shelves, divided into sections and ornamental cases, are made of ebony, cedar, orange, and other choice woods. What possible historic wealth may here lie concealed, what noble thoughts and minds embalmed! In the domestic or dwelling portion of the Escurial, the apartments are very finely inlaid with various woods, besides containing some delicate and antique furniture of great beauty. A few cabinet pictures are seen upon the walls, and one or two large apartments are hung with tapestry, which, though centuries old, is as fresh as when it was first made. It might have come from the manufactory during this present year; for it certainly could not look brighter or more perfect.
The grounds surrounding the structure are laid out in pleasant gardens, where fountains, flowers, and a few inferior marble statues serve for external finish. On the outside, high up above the broadest portion of the dome, was placed the famous plate of gold, an inch thick and containing some ten square feet of surface, forming a monument of the bravado and extravagance of Philip II., who put it there in reply to the assertion of his enemies that he had financially ruined himself in building so costly a palace as the Escurial.