Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The whole interest, then, of the city is ecclesiastical; but its ecclesiastical interest in one point of view surpasses that of every church in England,--I am strongly tempted to say, every church in Europe. The traveller who comes down the hill from Shepton Mallet looks down, as he draws near the city, on a group of buildings which, as far as I know, has no rival either in our island or beyond the sea. To most of these objects, taken singly, it would be easy to find rivals which would equal or surpass them. The church itself, seen even from that most favourable point of view, cannot, from mere lack of bulk, hold its ground against the soaring apse of Amiens, or against the windows ranging, tier above tier, in the mighty eastern gable of Ely. The cloister cannot measure itself with Gloucester or Salisbury; the chapter-house lacks the soaring roofs of York and Lincoln; the palace itself finds its rival in the ruined pile of St. David’s. The peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies in the union and harmonious grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, lady chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible unique bridge which by a marvel of ingenuity connects the church itself with the most perfect of buildings of its class, the matchless Vicars’ close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its window, or its turret falling in with the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all. The whole history of the place is legibly written on that matchless group of buildings. If we could fancy an ecclesiastical historian to have dropped from the clouds, the aspect of the place would at once tell him that he was looking on an English cathedral church, on a cathedral church which had always been served by secular canons, on a church of secular canons which had preserved its ancient buildings and ancient arrangements more perfectly than any other in the island.

The whole history of Wells before the time of Edward the Elder is excessively obscure, and much of it is undoubtedly fabulous. There is a story about King Ine planting a Bishoprick at Congresbury, which was presently moved to Wells, and a list of Bishops is given between Ine and Edward. There is also a document which professes to be a charter of King Cynewulf in 766, which does not speak of any Bishop at Wells, but which implies the existence of an ecclesiastical establishment of some kind. But unluckily the Congresbury story rests on no good authority, and the charter of Cynewulf is undoubtedly spurious. But because a charter is spurious in form, it does not always follow that its matter is unhistorical and I am the more inclined to attach some value to it, because, while implying the existence of some ecclesiastical establishment, it does not imply the existence of a bishoprick. Putting all things together, and remembering the strong and consistent tradition which connects the name of Ine with the church of Wells, I am inclined to think that there must have been some body of priests, probably of Ine’s foundation, existing at Wells before the foundation of the bishoprick by Edward. If then Ine did, somewhere about the year 705, found a church at Wells with a body of priests attached to it, we can well understand why Wells should be chosen as the seat of the new bishoprick in 909.

We have here in Wells the finest collection of domestic buildings surrounding a cathedral church to be seen anywhere. There is no place where so many ancient houses are preserved and are mainly applied to their original uses. The Bishop still lives in the Palace; the Dean still lives in the Deanery; the Canons, Vicars, and other officers still live very largely in the houses in which they were meant to live. But this is because at Wells there always were secular priests, each man living in his own house. In a monastery I need hardly say it was quite different. The monks did not live each man in his own house; they lived in common, with a common refectory to dine in and a common dormitory to sleep in. Thus when, in Henry the Eighth’s time, the monks were put out and secular canons put in again, the monastic buildings were no longer of any use, while there were no houses for the new canons. They had therefore to make houses how they could out of the common buildings of the monastery. But of course this could be done without greatly spoiling them as works of architecture. Thus while at Ely, Peterborough, and other churches which were served by monks, there are still very fine fragments of the monastic buildings, there is not the same series of buildings each still applied to its original use which we have at Wells. I wish that this wonderful series was better understood and more valued than it is. I can remember, if nobody else does, how a fine prebendal hall was wantonly pulled down in the North Liberty not many years ago. Some of those whose duty it was to keep it up said that they had never seen it. I had seen it, anybody who went by could see it, and every man of taste knew and regretted it. Well, that is gone, and I suppose the organist’s house, so often threatened will soon be gone too. Thus it is that the historical monuments of our country perish day by day. We must keep a sharp eye about us or this city of ours may lose, almost without anybody knowing it, the distinctive character which makes it unique among the cities of England.

It is then in this way that Wells became, what it still is, the seat of the Somersetshire Bishoprick. The Bishop had his throne in the church of St. Andrew, and the clergy attached to church were his special companions and advisers, in a word his Chapter. We have thus the church and its ministers, but the church had not yet assumed its present form, and its ministers had not yet assumed their present constitution. Of the fabric, as it stood in the Tenth Century, I can tell you nothing. There is not a trace of building of anything like such early date remaining: while in other places we have grand buildings of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, at Wells we have little or nothing earlier than the Thirteenth. But it is quite a mistake to fancy that our forefathers in the Tenth Century were wholly incapable of building, or that their buildings were always of wood. We have accounts of churches of that and of still earlier date which show that we then had buildings of considerable size and elaboration of plan. And we know that in the course of the same century Saint Dunstan built a stone church at Glastonbury to the east of the old wooden church of British times. The churches both of Wells and Glastonbury must have been built in the old Romanesque style of England which prevailed before the great improvements of Norman Romanesque were brought in in the Eleventh Century. You must conceive this old church of Saint Andrew as very much smaller, lower, and plainer than the church we now have, with massive round arches and small round-headed windows, but with one or more tall, slender, unbuttressed towers, imitating the bell-towers of Italy. I do not think that we have a single tower of this kind in Somersetshire, but in other parts of England there are a good many. There is a noble one at Earls Barton in Northamptonshire, and more than one in the city of Lincoln.

After about two hundred years from the beginning of the present building in the days of Jocelin, we may look on the cathedral church of Saint Andrew as at last finished. It was finished, in a sense, before the end of the Thirteenth Century, when everything had been built which was needed for its ecclesiastical completeness. But it was in the course of the Fifteenth Century that it finally assumed the shape with which we are all familiar, and which has from that time remained unchanged. Now then we have reached the point at which we can estimate the place which fairly belongs to the church of Wells among the other churches of England and of Christendom. As it seems to me, that position, as I began by saying, is a special and remarkable one; I need not say that in point of size and splendour, the church of Wells has no claim to a place in the first rank of European, or even English churches. Setting aside the Welsh churches, and the churches which have become cathedral without being originally meant for this rank, Wells is one of the very smallest of English episcopal churches. It is hardly fair to compare it with Carlisle, which is a mere fragment, or with Hereford, which has lost its western tower, and with it a part of its nave. But it is, in point of scale, with Carlisle, Hereford, Lincoln, and Rochester, or again with non-cathedral churches like Southwell, Beverley, and Tewkesbury, that Wells must fairly be compared, not with churches like Canterbury and York, or even like Salisbury and Gloucester. And among churches of its own class it certainly ranks high.

I have seen many fine churches both in our own country and abroad, many of them of course on a scale which might seem to put Wells out of all comparison. But I can honestly say that I know of no architectural group which surpasses the harmony and variety of our own cathedral, as seen by the traveller as he first enters the city from Shepton Mallet.

From the outside we turn to that of which the outside is after all the mere shell. When we enter the church we find ourselves in a building which can fairly hold its own against competitors of its own class. The nave has a distinct character of its own: there may be differences of taste as to its merit, but it has a character, and that character is clearly the result of design. The main lines of the interior are horizontal rather than vertical. We can hardly say that there is any division into bays; no vaulting-shafts run up from the ground, nor does the triforium take, as usual, the form of a distinct composition over each arch. In short, we cannot, as we can in most churches, take each arch with the triforium and clerestory over it as a thing existing by itself. One would rather say that three horizontal ranges, one over the other, all converged to the centre, without thinking of what was above or below them. Now tastes may differ as to whether this is a good arrangement or not, but there is no doubt that it is in its way an effective arrangement; there is no nave in which the eye is so irresistibly carried eastward as in that of Wells. And it is worth notice that this arrangement, in its fullness, is confined to the nave; in the transepts the bays are much more clearly marked. The idea of producing this marked horizontal effect was clearly one which came into the heads of the designers as they were working westwards.

It might have been expected that the marked prominence which is thus given to the horizontal line might have gone far to destroy all effect of height in the interior; but it is not so. There is no special feeling of height in Wells Cathedral--not so much, for instance, as there is in the church of St. Mary Redcliff; but there is no such crushing feeling of lowness as there is in Lincoln. This I imagine to be mainly owing to the form of the arch chosen for the vaulting, one boldly but not actually pointed, and to the way in which the lantern-arches fit into the vault. Contrast this with the far larger and loftier nave of York. In that nave the positive height is second only to Westminster among English churches, and the design of the separate bays can hardly be surpassed in its soaring effect. But in the direct eastern or western view the nave of York loses almost its whole effect, partly, no doubt, from the excessive breadth, but partly also from the flat and crushing shape of the vaulting-arch. The nave of Wells makes the most of its small actual height: so do the choir and the presbytery also; for, though I cannot at all admire the kind of vault which is there used, the shape of the arch is as judiciously chosen as it is in the nave. In the presbytery we also get the vaulting-shafts rising from the ground, so as to give the vertical division, and the consequent effect of height, in its highest perfection. Of the exquisite beauty of the Lady Chapel, looked on, as it should be, not as a part of the whole, but as a distinct and almost detached building, I have already spoken. In short, the internal effect of the church, whether looked at as a whole or taken in its several parts if not of the highest order, which its comparatively small scale forbids, may claim a high place among churches of its own class.

I think then on the whole that, even looking at the church by itself, we have every reason to be thankful for what we have got. We have not a church of the first order; but we have a church whose several parts fit very well together, all whose parts have been finished, and of which no part has been destroyed. And I may add that we may be thankful for another thing, for the goodness of the stone of which the greater part of the church is built. The sculpture of the west front indeed has crumbled away; but elsewhere at Wells, as at Glastonbury, wherever the work has not been wantonly knocked away, it is as good as when it was first cut. Now we might have had a church like Chester or Coventry, where the whole surface of the stone has crumbled away, and where the whole ornamental design has become unintelligible. I have said that the church of Wells forms a harmonious whole, that it was perfectly finished, and that no part has been destroyed; and this is a great thing to say. Let me compare the good fortune of Wells in this respect with the cathedral church of a much more famous city at the other end of England. At Carlisle there is a noble choir, ending in what is probably the grandest window in England. If that choir only had transepts, nave, and towers to match it, the church of Carlisle would be a splendid church indeed. But the choir is built up against a little paltry transept and central tower, and nothing remains by way of nave but two bays of the original small Norman church, the rest having utterly vanished. Here then is a church which does not form a harmonious whole, a church which remains utterly unfinished, and of which one essential part has been destroyed. Or, without taking such an extreme case as this, we may compare our church with some of those of which I have already spoken, with Hereford, Southwell, Beverley and Tewkesbury. In all of these some important feature has either never been finished or has been destroyed at a later time. The Church of Wells then, simply taken by itself, claims a high place among buildings of its own class, that is, among minsters of the second order. But the real charm of Wells does not lie in the church taken by itself, but in the church surrounded by its accompanying buildings. Some of them are inseparably connected both with the fabric and with the foundation of the Cathedral. And it is the preservation of them which gives Wells its peculiar character. Each part may easily be equalled or surpassed, but the whole has no rival in England, and I cannot think that it has many in Christendom.

THE COLISEUM

EDWARD GIBBON

Whatever is fortified will be attacked: and whatever is attacked may be destroyed. Could the Romans have wrested from the popes the Castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to annihilate that monument of servitude. Every building of defence was exposed to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of destruction were laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome, without a sovereign or a senate, was abandoned six months to the fury of civil war. “The houses,” says a cardinal and poet of the times, “were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; the walls were perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers were involved in fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by rapine and revenge.” The work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles they razed to the ground. In comparing the _days_ of foreign, with the _ages_ of domestic, hostility, we must pronounce, that the latter have been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch. “Behold,” says the laureat, “the relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! neither time, nor the barbarian, can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons, and your ancestors (he writes to a noble Annibaldi) have done with the battering-ram, what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword.” The influence of the two last principles of decay must in some degree be multiplied by each other; since the houses and towers, which were subverted by civil war, required a new and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity.

These general observations may be separately applied to the amphitheatre of Titus, which has obtained the name of the COLISEUM, either from its magnitude, or from Nero’s colossal statue: an edifice, had it been left to time and nature, which might perhaps have claimed an eternal duration. The curious antiquaries, who have computed the numbers and seats, are disposed to believe, that above the upper row of stone steps, the amphitheatre was encircled and elevated with several stages of wooden galleries, which were repeatedly consumed by fire, and restored by the emperors. Whatever was precious, or portable, or profane, the statues of gods and heroes, and the costly ornaments of sculpture, which were cast in brass, or overspread with leaves of silver and gold, became the first prey of conquest or fanaticism, of the avarice of the barbarians or the Christians. In the massy stones of the Coliseum, many holes are discerned; and the two most probable conjectures represent the various accidents of its decay. These stones were connected by solid links of brass or iron, nor had the eye of rapine overlooked the value of the baser metals; the vacant space was converted into a fair or market; the artisans of the Coliseum are mentioned in an ancient survey; and the chasms were perforated or enlarged to receive the poles that supported the shops or tents of the mechanic trades. Reduced to its naked majesty, the Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with awe and admiration by the pilgrims of the north; and the rude enthusiasm broke forth in a sublime proverbial expression, which is recorded in the Eighth Century, in the fragments of the venerable Bede: “As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.” In the modern system of war, a situation commanded by three hills would not be chosen for a fortress; but the strength of the walls and arches could resist the engines of assault; a numerous garrison might be lodged in the enclosure; and while one faction occupied the Vatican and the Capitol, the other was entrenched in the Lateran and the Coliseum.

The abolition at Rome of the ancient games must be understood with some latitude; and the carnival sports, of the Testacean mount and the Circus Agonalis, were regulated by the law or custom of the city. The senator presided with dignity and pomp to adjudge and distribute the prizes, the gold ring, or the _pallium_, as it was styled, of cloth or silk. A tribute on the Jews supplied the annual expense; and the races, on foot, on horseback, or in chariots, were ennobled by a tilt and tournament of seventy-two of the Roman youth. In the year one thousand three hundred and thirty-two, a bull-feast, after the fashion of the Moors and Spaniards, was celebrated in the Coliseum itself; and the living manners are painted in a diary of the times. A convenient order of benches was restored; and a general proclamation, as far as Rimini and Ravenna, invited the nobles to exercise their skill and courage in this perilous adventure. The Roman ladies were marshalled in three squadrons, and seated in three balconies, which on this day, the third of September, were lined with scarlet cloth. The fair Jacova di Rovere led the matrons from beyond the Tiber, a pure and native race, who still represent the features and character of antiquity. The remainder of the city was divided as usual between the Colonna and Ursini: the two factions were proud of the number and beauty of their female bands: the charms of Savella Ursini are mentioned with praise; and the Colonna regretted the absence of the youngest of their house, who had sprained her ancle in the garden of Nero’s tower. The lots of the champions were drawn by an old and respectable citizen: and they descended into the arena, or pit, to encounter the wild bulls, on foot as it should seem, with a single spear. Amidst the crowd, our annalist has selected the names, colours, and devices, of twenty of the most conspicuous knights. Several of the names are the most illustrious of Rome and the ecclesiastical state; Malatesta, Polenta, della Valle, Cafarello, Savelli, Capoccio, Conti, Annabaldi, Altieri, Corsi; the colours were adapted to their taste and situation; the devices are expressive of hope or despair, and breathe the spirit of gallantry and arms. “I am alone, like the youngest of the Horatii,” the confidence of an intrepid stranger: “I live disconsolate,” a weeping widower: “I burn under the ashes,” a discreet lover: “I adore Lavinia or Lucretia,” the ambiguous declaration of a modern passion: “My faith is as pure,” the motto of a white livery: “Who is stronger than myself?” of a lion’s hide: “If I am drowned in blood, what a pleasant death,” the wish of ferocious courage. The pride or prudence of the Ursini restrained them from the field, which was occupied by three of their hereditary rivals, whose inscriptions denoted the lofty greatness of the Colonna name: “Though sad I am strong:” “Strong as I am great:” “If I fall,” addressing himself to the spectators, “you fall with me:”--intimating (says the contemporary writer) that while the other families were the subjects of the Vatican, they alone were the supporters of the capitol. The combats of the amphitheatre were dangerous and bloody. Every champion successively encountered a wild bull; and the victory may be ascribed to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were left on the field, with the loss of nine wounded and eighteen killed on the side of their adversaries. Some of the noblest families might mourn, but the pomp of the funerals, in the churches of St. John Lateran and St. Maria Maggiore, afforded a second holiday to the people. Doubtless it was not in such conflicts that the blood of the Romans should have been shed; yet, in blaming their rashness we are compelled to applaud their gallantry; and the noble volunteers, who display their magnificence, and risk their lives, under the balconies of the fair, excite a more generous sympathy than the thousands of captives and malefactors who were reluctantly dragged to the scene of slaughter.

This use of the amphitheatre was a rare, perhaps a singular, festival: the demand for the materials was a daily and continual want, which the citizens could gratify without restraint or remorse. In the Fourteenth Century, a scandalous act of concord secured to both factions the privilege of extracting stones from the free and common quarry of the Coliseum; and Poggius laments, that the greater part of these stones had been burnt to lime by the folly of the Romans. To check this abuse, and to prevent the nocturnal crimes that might be perpetrated in the vast and gloomy recess, Eugenius the fourth surrounded it with a wall; and, by a charter long extant, granted both the ground and edifice to the monks of an adjacent convent. After his death, the wall was overthrown in a tumult of the people; and had they themselves respected the noblest monument of their fathers, they might have justified the resolve that it should never be degraded to private property. The inside was damaged; but in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, an æra of taste and learning, the exterior circumference of one thousand six hundred and twelve feet was still entire and inviolate; a triple elevation of fourscore arches, which rose to the height of one hundred and eight feet. Of the present ruin, the nephews of Paul the Third are the guilty agents; and every traveller who views the Farnese Palace may curse the sacrilege and luxury of these upstart princes. A similar reproach is applied to the Barberini; and the repetition of injury might be dreaded from every reign, till the Coliseum was placed under the safeguard of religion by the most liberal of the pontiffs, Benedict the Fourteenth, who consecrated a spot which persecution and fable had stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs.

When Petrarch first gratified his eyes with a view of those monuments, whose scattered fragments so far surpass the most eloquent descriptions, he was astonished at the supine indifference of the Romans themselves; he was humbled rather than elated by the discovery, that, except his friend Rienzi and one of the Colonna, a stranger of the Rhone was more conversant with these antiquities than the nobles and natives of the metropolis.

THE COLISEUM

CHARLES DICKENS

When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour staring up into the dome: and would not have “gone over” the Cathedral then for any money), we said to the coachman, “Go to the Coliseum.” In a quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in.

It is no fiction but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a moment--actually in passing in--they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust, going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions.

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass growing in its porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit: chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds, who build their nests within its chinks and crannies; to see the Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Cæsars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin--God be thanked: a ruin!

As it tops the other ruins: standing there, a mountain among graves: so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes as the visitor approaches the city; its beauty becomes devilish; and there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the common people in the streets, that would not be at home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.

Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur.

GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS

G. W. STEEVENS

The Sikhs are the youngest of the great powers of India. A kind of Hindu Protestants, their Luther arose about 1500 to fulminate against caste and the worship of idols. Instead of Shiva and Kali, they worship their Bible, which is called the Granth. They abhor tobacco, and it is impiety to shave or cut the hair. Sometimes, when a Sikh plays polo, you may see it come undone and wave behind him like a horse-tail. From Puritans they turned to Ironsides, praying and fighting with equal fervour, wearing an iron quoit in their turbans, partly as a sign of grace, and partly as a defence against a chance sword-cut.

For some three hundred years they fought the Musulmans, Mogul or Afghan, for the dominion of the Punjab, and won it in the end. The Musulmans tortured the Sikh teachers to death with their families; the Sikhs sacked and massacred in return. The Musulmans took Amritsar, blew up the temple of the Granth, and washed its foundations in the blood of sacred cows; the Sikhs took Lahore, blew up the mosques, and washed their foundations in the blood of unclean swine. Fanatics and heroes, they lived only for the holy war, and became the barrier of India against the Musulman tribes of the North-West. At last, in 1823, the Sikhs were united under Ranjit Singh into the greatest power of India. But he died in 1839; four wives and seven concubines were burned with him, and you can see their tombs under marble lotuses in Lahore. Ten years later the second Sikh War was over, and the Punjab was British. If the Sikh rule was short, their battles have ever been long.

The later history of the Sikhs--how kindly they accepted British rule, which has still treated their religion with more than tolerant respect; how they supplied and supply to-day noble regiments to our army; the splendid services they rendered in the Mutiny, but a decade after their conquest; the unswerving gallantry and devotion which they have displayed on every field of honour,--all this is part of the military history of the Empire. The very officers of Gurkha and Pathan and Dogra regiments admit that the Sikh is the ideal of all that is soldierly.

Ranjit’s capital was Lahore, but the holy city has ever been Amritsar. “The Pool of Immortality,” it means, and here in the centre of the pool is the Golden Temple. In its present form it is not yet a century old--quite an infant in India. Amritsar, indeed, is full of new things; for, as it is the Mecca, it is also the Manchester of the Punjab. Carpets and shawls and silks are manufactured there, or brought in by merchants from Persia and Tibet, Bokhara and Yarkand. Here you can see modern native India untainted by Europe.

Amritsar wears an air of solid prosperity. Not in the least like the manufacturing towns we know, lacking the machinery of Bombay or Calcutta, it neither shadows its streets with many-storied factories nor defiles its air with smoke. But it wears a uniform and thriving aspect, as of a town with a present and a future rather than a past. The Bond Street of Delhi is a double row of decayed mansions propped up by tottering booths; the houses of Amritsar are middle-sized, regular, stably built of burned bricks, neither splendid nor ruinous. The looms clatter and whir in the factories, and the merchant bargains between the whiffs of his hookah in his shop, and Amritsar grows rich in a leisurely Indian way, unfevered by Western improvements.

To the Western eye it is unenterprising and rather shabby. The stable comfort of Amritsar stops short at the good brick walls; inside, the shops are bare brick and plaster. There is nothing in the least imposing about it. “Chunder Buksh, Dealer,” says one placard, and it would be hard to say what else he could call himself; for his stock seems to consist of one fine carpet, some brass pots, and a towel. Above him is “Ali Mohammed, Barrister-at-Law,” in a windowless, torn-blinded office, which you would otherwise take for the attic of Chunder Buksh’s assistant. But compared with the rest of India, Amritsar is a model of wellbeing. It is dusty, but otherwise almost clean; the streets, of course, are full of bullocks and buffaloes, but it seems rare that animals share their bed with men; there are plenty of people all but naked, but it is rather from choice or religious enthusiasm than of necessity. The trousered ladies, strolling with trousered babies on their hips or smoking hubble-bubbles on shop counters, wear silver in their blue-black hair, pearls in their noses, gold in their ears; they jingle with locked-up capital. Finally, there is a Jubilee statue of the Queen, and a clock-tower for all the world like an English borough’s. But besides these and the Government offices and the railway-station there is hardly a whisper from the West in the town; and in Amritsar you begin to conceive a new respect for India.

The stream in the streets sets steadily towards the Golden Temple. From the heavy-browed city gate to the holy pool the winding alleys are splashed with all the familiar hues--orange outshining lemon and emerald throttling ultramarine. Following the stalwart, bearded pilgrims, in the midst of the city of shopkeepers you suddenly break into a wide square: within it, bordered by a marble pavement--white, black, and umber--a green lake dances in the sunlight; and in the midst of that, mirrored in the pool--you look through your eyelashes, for the hot rays fling back sevenfold-heated, blinding--gleam walls and roofs and cupolas of sheer gold.

A minute or two you blink and stare, then you see that it is a small temple on an island with a causeway leading to it from under an arch. And after the first blink and stare your notions of beauty rise up and protest against it. The temple is neither imposing by size nor winsome by proportion. It has two stories--the lower of marble, inlaid, like the marble of Agra, with birds and beasts and flowers, but with none of Agra’s grace and refinement; all above it is of copper-gilt. Above the second story rises something half-cupola, half-dome, but it is not in the middle; there are smaller cupolas at the side overlooking the causeway, and others smaller still at the far side. The whole temple is smaller than St. Clement Danes, and a little building has no right to be irregular. If the Taj Mahal, you say, which is three times this size, can take the trouble to be symmetrical--well, if this is the masterpiece of modern India--as for the gold, it blinds you for the first moment and amuses you for the second; but you might as well ask beauty of a heliograph.

Nevertheless, do not go away, for you will hardly see anything more Indian. Outside the gate they show you a Government ordinance that everybody must either conform to the religious customs of the place or forbear to indulge his curiosity; you bow, and a bearded giant, who might be a high-priest for dignity, takes off your boots and ties on silk slippers instead. You leave your cigar-case behind you: tobacco must not defile the holy place. Then, behind a white-bearded policeman--who performs the triple function of guiding, preventing you from doing anything impious, and clearing worshippers out of the way before you--you start forth to see.

The pilgrims shuffle on eagerly round the pavement to the great gate before the causeway. On a gilt tablet, in English and Punjabi, stands the record of a miracle: how that a great light from heaven fell before the holy book, and then was caught up into heaven again, whence the learned augured much blessing upon the British Raj. Past the gate they press without turning the head, though it is carved and pictured over every inch. On one side of the entrance a marble tablet shows the legend XXXV Sikhs and something in Punjabi. From the gate you issue on to the causeway. It also is flagged with marble, and lined with gilded lamp-posts; but the lamps above the gold are that crass-blue and green-coloured glass of the suburban builder, and more than one hangs broken. So you come to the sanctuary itself--a lofty chamber with four open doors of chased silver. Within sit three priests on the floor, under a canopy of blue and scarlet, before a low ottoman draped in crimson and green and yellow. The high-priest, eagle-eyed and long black-bearded, reads continually in a loud voice from the Granth; beside him sits one with a gilt-handled wisk and fans the sacred book. At another side sit two musicians: one twangs a sort of one-stringed mandoline, one thrums a tom-tom. Before the Granth lies a cloth; and each believer, crouching in, flings on it flowers or cowries or copper coins for his offering. To the white man they bring what looks like a dry half-orange or candied citron, only white; it is made of sugar, and the white man responds with the offering of a rupee. The walls about this strange worship blaze with blue and red and gold in frets and scrolls and flower-tendrils; above are chambers and galleries of the same and studded mirrors; in one more than holy room are brooms made of peacocks’ feathers wherewith alone it may be swept.

That is the great shrine of all; but there is much else. All round the lake are palaces of stone and white marble belonging to the great Sikh chiefs who came here to worship. Before them, on the pavement, men squatting under canvas screens hawk flowers--lotus, jasmine, marigold, or scabious--to be offered before the Scripture. In one of the palaces, which matches the temple with a gilt dome of its own, you see a glass case; within it, under crimson silk, rest the sword and mace of some old Sikh Boanerges, mighty in prayer as in battle. Then there is a tower temple of eight stories, dedicated to a bygone saint and miracle-worker, the lower chamber aflame with paint and gold. As the policeman enters he touches the step with his finger; a woman in violet trousers flings a flower on to a cloth and ottoman like that of the central shrine; a woman in green-and-gold trousers places a bread-cake before it and lays her forehead on the marble sill; others grovel and shampoo it with their hands. The next thing you come to is a plain shed with a dynamo that supplies the shrines and gardens with electric light. After that a group of naked fakirs, powdered white with ashes, with long mud-matted hair and mad eyes. Then a door, fast closed and seeming to lead nowhither, with a tiny wreath of marigolds hung on it.

Everywhere the same grotesque contradictions--splendour and squalor, divinity and dirt, superstition and manliness. The Western mind can make nothing of it, cannot bring it into a focus. You simply hold your head, and say that this is the East, and you are of the West. In the treasury above the gate are silver staves and gilt maces, canopies of gold and diadems of pearls and diamonds. In the sacred, putrid lake rot flowers. A fakir standing before an enclosure drones in a full voice words you do not understand, like a psalm without any end to it: the refrain, after every half-dozen words, sounds like “Hullah hah leay.” Inside the shrine the high-priest never ceases to intone the Granth, nor the other priest to fan it, nor the musicians to tinkle and thrum; and in and out that holy place fly clouds of pigeons, perching on the canopy and fouling the growing pile of offerings before the ottoman. At every turn you come on little shrines with books on silken cushions and prostrate adorers. A calf, unchecked, is trying to lick the gold off the great gateway.

THE GIRALDA

ΤΗÉΟΡΗΙLΕ GAUTIER

The Giralda, which serves as a campanila to the cathedral, and rises above all the spires of the town, is an old Moorish tower, erected by an Arabian architect, named Geber or Guever, who invented algebra, which was called after him. The appearance of the tower is charming, and very original; the rose-coloured bricks and the white stone of which it is built, give it an air of gaiety and youth, which forms a strange contrast with the date of its erection, which extends as far back as the year 1000, a very respectable age, at which a tower may well be allowed to have a wrinkle or two and be excused for not being remarkable for a fresh complexion. The Giralda in its present state is not less than three hundred and fifty feet high, while each side is fifty feet broad. Up to a certain height the walls are perfectly even; there are then rows of Moorish windows with balconies, trefoils, and small white marble columns, surrounded by large lozenge-shaped brick panels. The tower formerly ended in a roof of variously coloured varnished tiles, on which was an iron bar, ornamented with four gilt metal balls of a prodigious size. This roof was removed in 1568 by the architect Francisco Ruiz, who raised the daughter of the Moor Guever one hundred feet higher in the pure air of heaven, so that his bronze statue might overlook the sierras, and speak with the angels who passed. The feat of building a belfry on a tower was in perfect keeping with the intentions of the members composing that admirable chapter who wished posterity to imagine they were mad. The additions of Francisco Ruiz consist of three stories; the first of these is pierced with windows, in whose embrasures are hung bells; the second, surrounded by an open balustrade, bears on the cornice of each of its sides, these words--_Turris fortissima nomen Domini_; and the third is a kind of cupola or lantern, on which turns a gigantic gilt bronze figure of Faith, holding a palm in one hand and a standard in the other, and serving as a weathercock, thereby justifying the name of Giralda given to the tower. This statue is by Bartholomew Morel. It can be seen at a very great distance; and when it glitters through the azure atmosphere, really looks like a seraph lounging in the air.

You ascend the Giralda by a series of inclined ramps, so easy and gentle, that two men on horseback could very well ride up to the summit, whence you enjoy an admirable view. At your feet lies Seville, brilliantly white, with its spires and towers, endeavouring, but in vain, to reach the rose-coloured brick girdle of the Giralda. Beyond these stretches the plain, through which the Guadalquiver flows, like a piece of watered silk, and scattered around are Santiponce, Algaba, and other villages. Quite in the background is the Sierra Morena, with its outlines sharply marked, in spite of the distance, so great is the transparency of the air in this admirable country. On the opposite side, the Sierras de Gibram, Zaara and Moron, raise their bristling forms, tinged with the richest hues of lapis lazuli and amethyst, and completing this magnificent panorama, which is inundated with light, sunshine and dazzling splendour.

A great number of fragments of columns, shaped into posts and connected with each other by chains, except where spaces are left for persons to pass, surround the cathedral. Some of these columns are antique, and come either from the ruins of Italica, or from the remains of the ancient mosque, whose former site is now occupied by the cathedral, and of which the only remaining vestiges are the Giralda, a few old walls, and one or two arches, one of which serves as the entrance to the courtyard _de los Nanjeros_. The _Longa_ (Exchange) is a large and perfectly regular edifice, built by the heavy and wearisome Herrera, that architect of _ennui_, to whom we owe the Escurial, which is decidedly the most melancholy building in the world; the Longa, also, like the cathedral, is surrounded by the same description of posts. It is completely isolated and presents four similar façades; it stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar. In it are preserved the archives of America, and the correspondence of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro and Fernando Cortez; but all these treasures are guarded by such savage dragons, that we were obliged to content ourselves with looking at the outside of the pasteboard boxes and portfolios, which are stowed away in mahogany compartments, like the goods in a drapers’ shop. It would be a most easy thing to place five or six of the most precious autographs in glass cases, and thus satisfy the very legitimate curiosity of travellers.

THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly hybrid civilization. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits and imbibing the culture of their Musulman subjects, ruled a mixed population of Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of the princes was French; that of the Christians in their territory, Greek and Latin; that of their Mahommedan subjects, Arabic. At the same time the Scandinavian Sultans of Palermo did not cease to play an active part in the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of Europe. The children of the Vikings, though they spent their leisure in harems, exercised, as hereditary Legates of the Holy See, a peculiar jurisdiction in the Church of Sicily. They dispensed benefices to the clergy, and assumed the mitre and dalmatic, together with the sceptre and the crown, as symbols of their authority in Church as well as State. As a consequence of this confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and English ecclesiastics mingling at court with Moorish freedmen and Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains fraternizing with Greek corsairs, Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the prince, and Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The very money with which Roger subsidized his Italian allies, was stamped with Cuphic letters, and there is reason to believe that the reproach against Frederick of being a false coiner arose from his adopting the Eastern device of plating copper pieces to pass for silver. The commander of Roger’s navies and his chief minister of state was styled, according to Oriental usage, Emir or Ammiraglio. George of Antioch, who swept the shores of Africa, the Morea, and the Black Sea, in his service, was a Christian of the Greek Church, who had previously held an office of finance under Temim Prince of Mehdia. The workers in his silk factories were slaves, from Thebes and Corinth. The pages of his palace were Sicilian or African eunuchs. His charters ran in Arabic as well as Greek and Latin. His jewellers engraved the rough gems of the Orient with Christian mottoes in Semitic characters.[5] His architects were Musulmans who adapted their native style to the requirements of Christian ritual, and inscribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic legends in the Cuphic language. The predominant characteristic of Palermo was Orientalism. Religious toleration was extended to the Musulmans, so that the two creeds, Christian and Mahommedan, flourished side by side.

At Palermo, Europe saw the first instance of a court not wholly unlike that which Versailles afterwards became. The intrigues which endangered the throne and liberty of William the Bad, and which perplexed the policy of William the Good, were court-conspiracies of a kind common enough at Constantinople. In this court life men of letters and erudition played a part three centuries before Petrarch taught the princes of Italy to respect the pen of a poet. King Roger, of whom the court geographer Edrisi writes that “he did more sleeping than any other man waking,” was surrounded during his leisure moments, beneath the palm-groves of Favara, with musicians, historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of Oriental breeding.

The architectural works of the Normans in Palermo reveal the same ascendancy of Arab culture. San Giovanni degli Eremiti, with its low white rounded domes, is nothing more or less than a little mosque adapted to the rites of Christians. The country palaces of the Zisa and the Cuba, built by the two Williams, retain their ancient Moorish character, standing beneath the fretted arches of the hall of the Zisa, through which a fountain flows within a margin of carved marble, and looking on the landscape from its open porch, we only need to reconstruct in fancy the green gardens and orange-groves, where fair-haired Normans whiled away their hours among black-eyed odalisques and graceful singing boys from Persia. Amid a wild tangle of olive and lemon trees overgrown with scarlet passion-flowers the pavilion of the Cubola, built of hewn stone and open at each of its four sides, still stands much as it stood when William II paced through flowers from his palace of the Cuba, to enjoy the freshness of the evening by the side of its fountain. The views from all these Saracenic villas over the fruitful valley of the Golden Horn, and the turrets of Palermo, and the mountains and the distant sea, are ineffably delightful. When the palaces were new--when the gilding and the frescoes still shone upon their honeycombed ceilings, when their mosaics glittered in noonday twilight, and their amber-coloured masonry was set in shade of pines and palms, and the cool sound of rivulets made music in their courts and gardens, they must have well deserved their Arab titles of “Sweet Waters” and “The Glory” and “The Paradise of Earth.”