The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

Instead of a mosque, is the cathedral of Seville. It is the noblest example of the Gothic ecclesiastical architecture in the world. St. Peter’s at Rome produces no such effect on the soul when first you enter it. The Cologne cathedral is nearer it in power. I have no superstitious feeling that compels me to be awed by a place. But I cannot enter this temple without worshipping! Instantly, as you stand within its walls, its giant solemn columns rising around, scarcely visible in the twilight at the noon of a brilliant southern day, its vastness, its amazing height, the roof like a firmament, and resting on arches, dividing it into sixty-eight compartments, one feels that this surely ought to be none other than the house of God. High mass was celebrated during one of my many visits to the cathedral. When the tinkling of the bell gave the signal for the “elevation of the host,” the faithful, wherever they chanced to be in the vast area, fell on their knees and silently adored the idol which superstition had just held aloft for the worship of an ignorant multitude. A woman entered one of the chapels and knelt before an image of the Virgin and poured out her soul in prayer. As if unconscious that spectators were all around her, she wept and told her beads.

She wept and told her Beads.

The women of Seville are celebrated for their beauty. In the Central Park of New York, Hyde Park of London, or the Bois de Boulogne of Paris, you notice that many of the most splendid equipages carry very plain women, and one often admires the compensation system that gives the signs of wealth to some and saves the good looks for others. But you may stand by the fashionable drive of Seville and the first hundred carriages that pass shall have four handsome women in each of them. As “you would scarce expect one of my age” to be a connoisseur in this matter, I will give in the words of my guide the types of Spanish beauty: “Deep blue-black eyes, adormilados sometimes, and at others full of flashes, each a puñalada; a small forehead; raven hair, long and silky, which they might almost turn at night into a balmy soft pillow, and a long flowing mantilla by day; a peculiar meneo, sal, and indescribable charm, naturalness, and grace in every movement, together with liveliness and repartee,—form the principal features of their appearance and character.”

The dance and the song, the bull-fight more than any thing else in the season of it, make this city the home of the gayest, wildest, most dissolute men and women in the south of Europe. Corinth, in the days of Venus-worship, was not more wholly given up to the lust of the flesh and the pride of life than Seville to-day. Yet it was once the emporium of the New World. From its port set sail the fleet that carried Columbus to a land beyond the sea and brought back the wealth of the Western Ind. It has been the residence of kings; and successive dynasties, faiths, and customs have in turn made Seville their capital and terrestrial paradise. It is girt on every side by fertile plains, the orange and lemon trees hang loaded all the year with their golden fruit, and the silver river, whose name is poetry and whose banks are haunted with the memories of Eastern delights, washes the feet of this beautiful city.

If there was ever an original to Byron’s Don Juan, and there was perhaps an original to him as to Cooper’s Spy or Irving’s Schoolmaster, then the tradition may be true that points to a low white-washed house, close to San Leandro, and belonging to the nuns of that convent, where that graceless scamp once lived. And the “Barber of Seville,” of course, had his shop somewhere in town, and it has been conveniently located in the same neighborhood, so that when you visit the St. Thomas Square you can see them both. They are nothing to see, unless you are at that age when the poetry of Byron has charms they lose as you get older and wiser.

The house of Murillo, the painter of Spain, and not far from being the painter of the world, is an object of attraction, and Seville has it, and also some of the greatest pictures of this master. The Queen of Spain would send the Pope a present worthy of a sovereign to give to another, and she sent two of Murillo’s paintings. The Pope had them copied in mosaic, and sent the copies to the Queen of Spain. It is surpassingly wonderful that stone can be set so skilfully as to make a picture with all the softness of shade and color that belongs to the finest work in oil. We will look up some Murillos on our way, but just now we are near the site of the Old Moorish Castle, which is not more distinguished for the tales of Oriental life and love and war than it is for being the place in which the Inquisition was first established. What tales of horror its stones might tell if they were permitted to cry out! Nowhere on this planet has the notion of converting men to believe a lie, by roasting them if they will not believe, been carried to a higher finish than in Spain. In each of its chief cities a spot is still cherished with affectionate regard by the faithful, where in the good old times of their fathers the auto-da-fé was celebrated with pompous processions, when priests and soldiers and hosts of men and women marched to the public square with a company of those who had been condemned to the stake! The Quemadaro, or burning place of Seville, is outside of the city, and the plain is called the Field of St. Sebastian. Aceldama would be a more appropriate name.

On the banks of the Guadalquiver, near the Moorish Alcazar, stands a famous pile called the Tower of Gold, as well so called from its ancient color as the uses to which it has been put. Its summit gives an outlook far upon the plain across the river, and in times of old it has been a fortress of huge strength, to resist the enemy when threatening the palace itself. It was built by the Moors as a treasure-house. When the Spaniards got possession of it, Don Pedro made it a prison for his friends, men and women, who fell under his disfavor. And then came a time when it was wanted for the purpose of holding heaps of gold, for when Columbus had gone from Seville to a new world, and the stream of gold began to flow back to Spain, this Seville, which had sent out the great discoverer, received the returning treasures, and this tower became the reservoir to contain it. Eight millions of ducats and more have been stored here at one time, private and public funds, and the monarchs of Spain often put their arms deep into the bins of gold, and helped themselves.

The decline and fall of Spain would be the fitting theme for another Gibbon, and the lesson it teaches might be studied with advantage in the new world, whose discovery had so much to do with enriching, and then destroying the kingdom. It is very hard to speculate or philosophize on the causes that led to the prostration of a great power like this, when the element of religion is excluded from the study. Without the demoralizing influences of a political religion, there were causes enough to work the ruin of Spain, and foremost among these was the influx of wealth, that made every man greedy of a chance to get rich, at the expense of the State. It is useful to recur to it now, and in our own country, because the same causes are working mightily in the same direction, and producing the same deplorable effects. It was always so, but increased opportunities increase temptation and multiply the consequences. Men now seek and obtain office not for honor and the power of usefulness, but to get rich. Government in the hands of such men is an instrument of robbery, an engine of corruption, and it has in itself disease and death. The influx of gold from California has corrupted the American people in the same way, if not to the same degree that the Mexican gold and silver demoralized Spain.

Antanazio proposed to drive out of town, along the banks of the river, to the ruins of an ancient city. A charming ride of an hour, in a delicious winter day, without the winter, brings us to the ruins of an amphitheatre built by Scipio Africanus, A. U. C. 546. Here, away in this end of the then known world, three men were born, each one of whom became a Roman emperor! The glory of nations was once over all the palaces, temples, and theatres that distinguish this spot. But now the ruins themselves are ruined. We can mark, or rather we can believe when we are pointed to, the places where the nobles sat to see the games of blood in the arena of the amphitheatre, the dungeons of the wild beasts are laid open, and the chambers where gladiators stripped for the fight, that gladdened the hearts of men and women two thousand years ago. Yet they were quite as rational and refined, quite as Christianable and decent, as the bull-fights of to-day.