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

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

I fell to musing over the change that three or four hundred years had made in the state of things on this famous spot. For we are within the grounds of the Alhambra. And the time was when the splendor of Oriental courts was shining here in its brightest array, and the luxury of kings and queens was spread about these seats that are now the scene of this low revelry and mirth. The vanity of earth is impressed upon me by this miserable show. The fashion of this world passeth away. And, indeed, the lesson of the Alhambra is the strangest, saddest lesson that ruins teach. Its walls, its towers, its turrets, its gates, in their decay, as they yet linger on the heights overlooking the city and the plain, seem to say, We are witnesses to-day that the glory of kings is fleeting as the dew of the morning:

“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples—”

have dissolved; and the wreck behind is the monument of a departed race, an extinct dynasty, a better, wiser, nobler race by far than that which now inhabits the land. For when the Moors went out of Spain, they carried with them arts, science, enterprise, energy, strength, and taste. They left a people in possession ignorant, proud, bigoted, and indolent: a people that now, in the midst of an advancing age, is making no advance; a people who carry earth in baskets instead of wheelbarrows, and wood on donkeys instead of using carts!

Two things astonished me in Spain: the one, that the pictures in her galleries were so great and good, and the other that her cathedrals so far excel the rest of European temples in the grandeur of their architecture. Poor as Spain is now, we must not forget that it was once the most powerful of kingdoms, and the mistress of a world of its own. And the arts and sciences once flourished here as they did in the brightest days of Grecian and Roman glory. The paintings that are gathered in Madrid are probably as valuable in the eyes of the artistic world as those of any other gallery; and there are half a dozen cathedrals in Spain that are not equalled by the same number in all the rest of the Continent. One who visited them will not be apt to forget the florid beauty of the one at Burgos, the massive grandeur of that in Toledo, the thousand columns that sustain the arches on which rests the roof of the converted mosque at Cordova, or, the most majestic of them all, the vast and solemn pile that stands in Seville; nor will he readily lose the impressions made upon his soul by the cathedral at Granada, into which we are now entering, as we are about to take leave of the Alhambra, and go to the north of Europe.

It was the design of the founders of this temple to make it the most splendid in the world; and this weak and unworthy ambition has doubtless given to us many noble monuments of genius and labor which a less exciting motive might have failed to produce. We are met with a notice, on entering, that we are not to converse during service; and it is a caution that might well be put up in the Protestant as well as Catholic places of worship. Five naves are divided with massive pillars; the pavement is marble, and very beautiful; the interior 425 feet long and 250 feet wide, with chapels on the sides, on which private wealth has been lavished with a profusion that seems absolutely incredible; one of them was built by an archbishop, whose wealth was so great that he imitated the royal manner of living, and preferred to be like his Master a king, rather than like his Master a servant.

Charles V. called upon the artists of the world to come and embellish this house, and to assist him in building the sepulchres of his father and mother, and the kings of Spain. The chapel royal is the most impressive mausoleum in the whole kingdom; for here, in full view, are the tombs, and upon them the images, in marble, of Ferdinand and Isabella, and beneath these monuments repose the ashes of those illustrious monarchs whose names are so indissolubly linked with the history of our own distant land. By them lie the relics also of Philip and his wife, who was called Crazy Jane. There are no more elaborate sepulchral monuments than these. Four statues of learned divines and twelve apostles surround the royal tombs, as if keeping eternal guard over the inevitable dust. The statues of the royal dead are said to be good likenesses, and I hope they are, for these people had so much care and trouble in life, it is certainly pleasant to see them looking so quiet in their stone beds. Even Crazy Jane, the wife of Philip, is as calm and peaceful, in the effigy that lies at our feet, as if she never had been in the habit of carrying the corpse of her husband about with her from place to place, refusing to have it buried, and insisting on the pleasure of embracing it whenever she took a notion for so cold a comfort.

Isabella, the fair patron of Columbus, desired to be brought here and buried; and here she lies, one of the noblest women that ever sat upon a throne: a wonderful contrast with the late Isabella who came from Madrid to Granada, a few years ago, descended into the vaults, and caused mass to be performed for the souls of the departed; which souls are quite as well off without any masses as hers will be with many. Her visit was made here in 1862, and Ferdinand and Isabella took possession of the city in 1492, nearly four hundred years between the visits of the two Isabellas; and there is as great contrast between the characters of the two women as there is between the condition of the country under the reign of the one and the other.

A very obliging priest led us from chapel to chapel, and pointed out to us the several distinguishing marks of antiquity and sacredness that make the cathedral a joy to the believer, and one of the most—in many respects the most—sacred in Spain. He was not unmindful of a trifling fee when we parted, and one cannot but be amused with the solemn gravity with which this office of guide to the holies is performed by the priests, who doubtless have the mixed motive of displaying the charms of their sacred places, and of getting the little money that grateful travellers leave in their hands. It is best to have their services, for they answer a hundred questions that without them would be unanswered, and their weary life seems to be lightened by the brief companionship of strangers.

In the evening we set off from Granada by diligence, leaving the place in the same style that marked our entrance. A crowd gathered at the office to witness our departure. A woman at the window put down her money to buy a ticket to take a seat with us. Before she had received the ticket, a couple of officers of justice rushed in and seized her. They stripped off her bonnet and her luxurious head of hair: they tore off her mantilla, and, shocking to relate, her loosely-flowing dress fell at her feet, in the midst of the derisive shouts of an admiring multitude; and, thus stripped, she remained a well-dressed man! He had helped himself freely to the money in the shop where he was employed, got together all he could borrow and steal of others, and, in the disguise of a woman, was about to abscond to parts unknown! Probably he was going to that happy land far, far away, which is still believed by them to be the paradise of thieves. His career was suddenly arrested. The crowd followed hooting at his heels as the officers led him off to prison; the horn of the postilion rang out its call on the evening air, the dozen horses and mules at last consented to pull together, and we plunged out of Granada.