Chapter III: Part 3

Valencia has little to boast in the way of archæological prizes. Her old churches and palaces, her _tapia_ walls and massive gates, with most of her ancient monuments, are gone; and only a few beautiful bits--the late Gothic Lonja, the octagonal _Miguelete_ belfry-tower, and some odd portions of the cathedral--remain. The very beautiful Lonja (Exchange), the ornamentation of which is characteristic of the Renaissance, is situated in the large Market square. The Lonja comprises the handsome Hall of Trade, the Watch Tower, on the ground floor of which is the chapel, and the Pavilion of the Consulado de Mar, which was previously used for offices and as a commercial hall. Extensive restoration work has recently been carried out in the building, which has suffered great mutilations. The Silk Exchange, besides being a market for this article, contains the commercial bourse, the municipal courts and other government offices. But if the city has swept herself almost clean of her precious art relics, she has assumed an air of modern alertness, and developed a commendable intention to move with the times. The improvements being carried out in the city of the Cid have almost entirely transformed Santa Catalina Square. Both the Santa Catalina and the Rhein Square near by, in the heart of the city, contain magnificent buildings, luxurious cafés, and all kinds of shops. There is a vast amount of bright life and gorgeous colouring in the streets and market places, with a quite Catalan forcefulness of character. The Valenciana is, moreover, a progressive and very excitable individual, and he imparts a special charm of fervour into all his affairs. On the occasions of their feasts and sports, the varied costumes of the lower classes--especially that of the huerta man, or peasant from the garden--may be seen in perfection. With his brilliantly-coloured _manta_ thrown loosely over a white linen shirt and black velveteen jacket, and with a bright kerchief knotted round his head, he is perhaps the best-dressed individual in the whole Peninsula, and he looks as if he thought so into the bargain.

A Peep into Murcia.

There are some parts of Spain over which I have travelled as the long hand travels round a clock dial--without haste, but without stopping. I have seen Murcia, as it were, from a moving platform, and the impression I derived of “African Spain,” as this quarter of the country has been called, has left me with the desire to return and spend a round of months amid its floral enchantments. This little province was the spot cherished by the Carthagenians, who found consolation in its possession for the loss of Sicily, and from it they derived the mineral wealth which enabled Hannibal to make war against Rome itself. The Goths of Murcia held their territory so stoutly against the Moors that during the lifetime of the warlike Theodimah the province was allowed to retain its independence. Under the Moors, Murcia was transformed into one continuous _huerta_ or garden; and after the disruption of the Kalifate of the Ummeyahs, it held its own as an independent State from 1038 to 1091, when internal dissensions among the members of the ruling Beni-Tahar family prepared the way for the triumph of the Spaniards. But to this day Murcia is regarded by the Spaniards as the Bœotia of the south.

At Alicante I spent four-and-twenty hours, but half as many weeks would not exhaust its attractions. I saw the ruined Castle of San Fernando from a distance, and made the acquaintance of the Castle of Santa Bárbara only from the outside. I perambulated the palm-shaded Paseo de los Martires, and the well-paved and capacious harbour, where the work of exporting minerals from Almagra and other places was going forward. There is always an air of bustling activity about the wharf,

which is alive with small wagons, roofed over by a cover of heavy matting, made of _esparto_ grass. Esparto, which resembles the spear-grass that flourishes on the sandy sea-shores of Lancashire, grows wild in vast quantities in this district. It is very wiry and tenacious in fibre, and is worked up by the natives into an infinite variety of purposes--such as matting, baskets, soles of sandals, &c. It is also largely exported to England, France, and the United States. It is the best substitute for rags in the manufacture of paper, and between 80,000 and 100,000 tons are annually imported into this country for that purpose. The Iberian whips, described by Horace, were manufactured of this material. The women and children are largely employed in the hand manufacture of _esparto_, and in the silkworm-gut industry, of which Murcia is the centre in this part of Spain.

The huerta, or garden of Alicante, is situated at some two or three miles from the town to the north, and is irrigated from the artificial _Pantano de Tibi_, of Moorish constructure. It is an oasis in a wilderness of sand and dust. The fields that surround this garden are parched and dry; the almond and fig trees that line the road are coated with dust that clings to them like thin snow, and the almond nuts resemble plaster imitations of themselves. And in the midst of this blistered country nestles the luscious _huerta_--a wide stretch of verdant plantations, thickly foliaged, cool, sweet, and refreshing, with villas embowered among its oranges and palms, a film of dim mountains in the background, and away to the south the silent brimming sea.

I received an invitation to inspect the tobacco factory in the northern suburb, and listened to enthusiastic descriptions of the beauty of many of the 6,000 girls employed there; but my time was limited, and I was compelled to postpone the pleasure of a visit.

From Alicante, past Elche to Murcia, lies a tract of African Spain--a vast plain covered with plantations of orange, lemon, pomegranate, fig and olive, among which scattered palms lift their broad heads with stately pride. At intervals, small towns, very Oriental in appearance, with domed, azure-tiled mosques, nestle among the palms, and add to the attractiveness of a scene of enthralling beauty. “Why is this lovely corner of the world so little known?” wrote a German enthusiast; and his question has been capped by the more prosaic cyclist, who asked: “Why are the people of these towns so rude and annoying, and why do the children favour us with a shower of stones?” One has not to ponder long in order to solve the cyclist’s problem. Cycles are as rarely seen in Murcia as bears in Bloomsbury, and it is scarcely surprising in the circumstances if the indefatigable wheelist is regarded with many wondering and sarcastic stares. But the peasant children in Spain, and especially in Southern

Spain, are, as a rule, chartered libertines. Until they are old enough to make themselves useful they are quite spoiled. On the assumption that children can do no wrong, they are permitted to do exactly what they please. The girls amuse themselves with singing and dancing, and the boys, in Southern Spain especially, find a favourite diversion in imitating the perils of the bull ring. Amongst themselves they are, even in argument, punctiliously polite; with the inoffensive stranger they are wary and not disobliging; but to the peripatetic oddity they are annoying in the manner that boys, given the same provocation, display all the world over.

Elche, rising from among its thousands of date-palms to a height of fifty feet, resembles an oasis in the desert. All around, the country is flat and fertile--a slumberland of soft greens and unbroken peacefulness. From Elche one passes to Granja, with its double-towered Moorish church, its old castillo clinging to the frowning height, its houses built into the rock of the mountain, and overgrown with aloes, fig, and cacti. There are Calossa de Segura and Albatera, flat-roofed and minareted; and from these spots may be seen the Montaña de Calossa, where amethyst steeps, glowing in the afternoon light, contrast with the varied tints of the plain in an ensemble of colour and outline nowhere surpassed in effect.

Carthagena, one of the three arsenals of Spain, and the largest

port in the country after Vigo, lies to the south. From here is shipped the silver and lead ores, iron ores, manganiferous iron ores, calamine, blend and copper ores from the rich mines in the surrounding districts, and also from the mines of the interior. In the suburbs of Sta. Lucia are extensive lead smelting and desilverization works, and the goods terminus of the steam tramway which connects Carthagena with La Union, the centre of the mining district. Escombreras, on a bay just outside the harbour, was at one time an important smelting and shipping place, but at the present time only one large furnace is open there. The country around Carthagena has been so wastefully denuded of forest as to make it an unmitigated desert. The landscape is a barren, burning waste, and the city itself is destitute of any semblance of greenness. Carthagena, which is considered impregnable to a foreign foe, was besieged by the Government soldiery in 1873, when a Commune was established there by Roque Barcia. A very little artillery practice directed against the walls, however, impressed Barcia with the advisability of taking a trip to Africa, and the Commune was at an end. There is an academy for cadets in the place, and blind people are numerous--a fact which may be owing to the excessive dazzle of the sunlight and absence of verdure. The men of Carthagena are so big, and the donkeys are so minute, that the latter are almost hidden beneath their human burdens.

The Moorish city of Murcia, the capital of its province, is a picturesque town in a beautiful setting. The city is one magnificent mass of varied colours, and all around, as far as the eye can see, are rare tropical shrubs and wide vistas of luxurious vegetation. Murcia is the land of roses--the Mecca of the floriculturist--the Canaan of the tribe of Art. I did not see its Gothic Cathedral, its picture gallery, nor its churches of Sta. Catalina or San Nicolas--I was there and away again, carrying

with me an impression of sunshine, and roses, and soft airs. The country is intersected with swiftly flowing brooks, that part in and out beneath the tall palms. Here the dark-complexioned and Oriental-looking Murcian washerwomen, dressed in brightly-coloured garments, assemble to follow their daily avocations; and the chatter, the laughter, and the brilliant hues of the many shawls are a perpetual delight to the ear and the eye. The men have the reputation of being the most ill-disposed and revengeful of any in Spain. The only indication I could discover of abnormal belligerency about them was in their practice of carrying the long Albacete knife; but I am inclined to the opinion that it is worn more for ornament than use. The teamsters, it is true, have a fierce aspect, and their manners are not improved by strong drink; but I have never met teamsters

in any part of the globe who were celebrated for remarkable sobriety, or angelic dispositions. The Murcian girls, as the traveller will observe at the various railway stations where they sell flowers and sweets, are pretty and engaging, and their costumes are charmingly picturesque.

The present city was built by the Moors from the remains of the Roman _Murgi_ in the early part of the 8th century. It was taken by the Spaniards under St. Ferdinand in 1240, and was reconquered by Alonso el Sabio, who left his heart and bowels to the Dean and Chapter; and these precious relics, preserved in a sarcophagus, are still to be seen in the Presbytery of the Gothic Cathedral.

From the palm-land of Murcia one passes over the unvarying, toneless plains of La Mancha to the Sierra Morena mountains, and beyond them to the daisy and buttercup-spread fields of Andalucia, which stretch away to the south, and lose themselves in a wide perspective, bounded by gold-shot undulating hills. The road runs down long slopes of flaming poppies, and beside gardens of blooming wild roses, amid extremes of perfectly-blended colour, to Bailen and Jaén, and the snow-crowned Sierra Nevada which surrounds Granada. Bailen is famous only as being the scene of the battle in which the French, under Duport, were defeated by the Spanish forces led by Castaños. Jaén, or _Gien_, the Arab word for fertility, is delightfully situated amid a jumble of mountains which are covered with luxuriant vegetation. Under the Moors it was a petty independent kingdom; but its ancient walls and its castle, which stands like a sentinel commanding the gorge of the mountain approach from Granada, have been almost entirely destroyed, and its own formidable bulwarks are reduced to a single gate. Jaén, like Baeza, surrendered to the victorious St. Ferdinand in the XIIIth century, and the two towns conjointly form the see of a Bishop.

Toledo and Cordova.

Spain is a country that has never laid aside the sword, or cast off her armour. Her martial spirit is lulled to rest, but its memory is kept alive in the frowning battlements, the gaunt fortresses that crown each peopled eminence, and guard the approaches of its ancient, war-scarred cities. Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths,” as Padilla describes it, is a rock built upon a rock 1,820 feet above the sea. It is a mighty citadel, almost engirdled by the rushing Tagus, and armed at every point by massive Moorish masonry--solid, venerable, invincible. Toledo, in the heyday of its history, contained, beside the cathedral, one hundred and ten churches, thirty-four hospitals, a university, and four colleges. Toledo, or Toledoth, the Hebrew “city of generations,” has now only fifty-nine churches; its hospitals have been reduced to four; its fame as a seat of learning is a tale that is told. John Lomas, who wrote of this city that it “never had rest until it entered into the tomb; blighted, but not destroyed. There is the old Toledo yet, simply fossilised--a theatre with the actors gone and the scenery left. But the curtain will never be drawn up again, or the music re-commence. Rome may play the wanton with each succeeding age, and deck herself out in obedience to every passing fashion. But Toledo--? She is at least faithful to the dead past. The liveliest imagination cannot picture her as a creature of to-day, a receptive pupil of nineteenth century science and improvement. And so she keeps her old ways: her old tongue, thank heaven! knowing nothing of the mixed dialects and slang that mark off progress; her old narrow streets and solid buildings that are so beautifully fitted for defence, intrigue, and shelter, and would spell ruin to any enterprising company that should attempt to adapt them to the requirements of the new life that has come into the world. She has been poked at--twice--by inquisitive, bustling railroads, without the slightest electrifying results. So she retains her old Soko, and will have nought to do with the correct _Plaza de la Constitucion_, her old stern inconveniences and her old traditions.”

In many respects the foregoing is a faithful picture of Toledo of to-day. But will the curtain never be drawn up again? Will the music never re-commence? I may be wrong, but I cannot share this opinion. Writing eighteen years after Mr. Lomas, I have been privileged to find his prognostications already proving incorrect. The power and virility upon which Spain built up her greatness may slumber for awhile; but even in the fastnesses

THE HIGH ALTAR, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]

of the Castilian mountains it has never died. The machinery of the curtain of the theatre of Toledo is a trifle rusty, the pulleys are jambed from long disuse; but that curtain is rising steadily if slowly, and already I can hear the tuning up of fiddles in its ancient orchestra. The ancient spirit still burns in the Toledans, and the ancient prosperity of their city is surely recovering itself. Since 1884 much re-building has been done, and more is in progress; whilst new and handsome shops are seen in the principal thoroughfares where an increase of population and traffic is apparent.

But one must live in such a city as Toledo in order to appreciate the changes that are being wrought in her. The casual visitor cannot hope to detect the specks of modernity in this vast temple of the antique. Its ancient grandeur is comparatively impervious to the pretty wiles of modern improvement. One’s eyes wander from the newly-built emporiums to the immensity of its enduring monuments, and one’s mind flings back instinctively into the past, out of which they arose to defy the hand of Time himself. And so the majority of book-makers, who take Spain for their subject, overlook the present condition of the country; the instant life that rushes before their eyes escapes their notice. And, indeed, it requires an effort, even on the part of a shrewd and unemotional observer, to stand beneath the shadow of the ruins of the old Alcázar and keep one’s mind from slipping backwards into the history of a city which presents an epitome of the principal arts, religions, and race-lives which have dominated the world for the last two thousand years. This was the theatre in which grim tragedy was ever played, where waves of strife, rapine, and misfortune swept remorselessly across its stage in constant succession; where Jew and Roman, Goth and Moor in turn played their stern parts. Here the voice of the Goth echoes amid Roman ruins, and the step of the Christian treads on the heel of the Moor. Here are palaces without nobles, churches without congregations, walks without people; and over all that silence which is so peculiar to the ancient cities of Spain. Before England was, Toledo had been.

In a city which holds one spellbound by its past, it must be difficult for the present to make headway. Wörmann has well described Toledo as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock;” and Street has declared: “Few cities I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest with it; and none, perhaps, come up to it in the singular magnificence of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its every corner.” And the grandeur is emphasised by the silence that serves to enhance the awe that the place inspires in the heart of the visitor. Such occasional sounds as are heard echo along the narrow streets, and turn innumerable corners, and the noise of a passing horse reverberates like the clatter of a charging squadron. But horses are few, and carriages are very far between, for the ascents of Toledo are formidable, and its turnings are endless. One must be resident in the city for months in order to learn its topography: the visitor must engage a guide, or be prepared to make a dozen inquiries on a journey from the Hotel de Castilla to the Cathedral. It is a maze built of masonry; an ideal place in which to lose oneself. One can walk for miles through these stone passages and make

ALCÁNTARA DOOR AND BRIDGE.]

but little progress, and zig-zag among the same houses for hours. Without a guide it is possible to live for weeks in Toledo and yet not see one quarter of the city. But, with an obliging cicerone to lead one about, the “Spanish Rome” may be superficially examined in a few days.

Special admirers of ecclesiastic sculpture and architectural detail will find in the famous cathedral of Toledo not one, but several weeks of study and enjoyment laid out for them. To attempt even a general survey of its marvels would be impossible in a volume of this size and design, and I must refer the antiquarian to Señor Parro’s exhaustive book on Toledo. In this work of 1,550 pages, one half is devoted to the cathedral, which is justly considered one of the most beautiful in the world. It is situated in the very heart of the city, around which cluster multitudinous churches and convents. So closely do the surrounding buildings press upon it, that no free view of the structure can be obtained, and one passes with a feeling of infinite relief from the congested vicinity of the exterior into the broad quietude, the lonely shade, and the austere gravity of the interior. I am told that it would take a week to minutely examine the high altar; it would take as long to inspect the accumulation of treasures in the sacristy--treasures of silver and gold, of pearls, rubies, and diamonds, sufficient, it is said, to entirely replenish the exchequer of Spain. The frescoed ceiling by Luca Giordano is the best in Spain; while pictures by Francesco Bassano, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Rubens, Goya, Guercino, Van Dyck, and Carlo Maratta are to be seen on every side. Through the beautiful Oriental-looking cloister garden, with its shade of great trees, its grove, and its mass of luxurious verdure, one arrives at the bell-tower, from which one can enjoy a magnificent view of the city and the surrounding country.

But an even finer panoramic view of Toledo is to be obtained from one of the four great towers of the Alcázar. Involuntarily one catches one’s breath, and pays a silent tribute of amazed admiration as the spectacle discloses itself to view. From this vantage ground, every street, and turning, and detail of the city is revealed, with the cathedral rising like a mountain of granite in the midst of it. The statues on the terrace of San Juan de los Reyes look like dolls, the houses like dolls’ houses, and the horses like huge beetles climbing the tiny alleys. Towers and fortifications lie below us. A little further off, near the _Puente de_

GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHOIR-STALLS, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]

_Alcántara_, are the ruins of the old _Castillo de San Servando_; and beyond and around lies the great green plain, stretching outwards to the distant rocks and mountains. At the foot of the city, and almost surrounding it, runs the River Tagus.

No finer panegyric has been written on this mighty River Tagus than Ford’s description of its poetical and picturesque course: “First green and arrowy, amid the yellow cornfields of New Castile, then freshening the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing the gardens with verdure, and filling the nightingale-tenanted glens with groves: then boiling and rushing around the granite ravines of rock-built Toledo, hurrying to escape from the cold shadow of its deep prison, and dashing joyously into light and liberty, to wander far away into silent plains, and on to Talavera, where its waters were dyed with brave blood, and gladly reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets of England--triumphantly it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of Almaraz, down to desolate Estremadura, and in a stream as tranquil as the azure sky by which it is curtained, yet powerful enough to force the mountains at Alcántara. There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a hundred miles to see: it stems the fierce, condensed stream, and ties the rocky gorges together: grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the tender colours of seventeen centuries, it looms like the gray skeleton of Roman power, with all the sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the interest of the past and present. How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No commerce has ever made it its highway--no English steamer has ever civilised its waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have witnessed battles, not peace: have reflected castles and dungeons, not quays, or warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of the Thames and Rhine: it is truly a river of Spain--that isolated and solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life: man has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and independent gambols.”

The old Alcázar, which occupies the highest ground in Toledo, is of Roman origin, and was used by the Visigoths as a citadel. The Cid resided here after the capture of the city by Alfonso VI., and it was converted into a palace by the saintly Ferdinand and the learned Alfonso. It was burned down in the war of Spanish Succession in 1710, was restored by Cardinal Lorenzana in 1772, was burned by the French in 1810, and in

CENTRAL NAVE.]

1887 it was gutted by a third conflagration. To-day it is utilised as a Military Academy for the education of officers for the Spanish infantry. The Archbishop’s Palace, the Hospital of Santa Cruz, the Moorish Mosque, the Town Hall, the Synagogue of _Santa Maria la Blanca_, and the Church of _San Juan de los Reyes_, which looks more like a royal palace than a church, are but a few of the many sights that Toledo has to offer to the leisured visitor. To the traveller, whose time is limited, as was mine when I stayed there, she leaves an impression of greatness, grandeur, and melancholy which one does not, and would not, lightly lose.

From Toledo I proceeded direct to Córdova, because, in my mind, the two cities were linked together by the broad band of longevity, and I desired to see them both in the same mood cycle. So, while the atmosphere of Toledan greatness was still hot in my veins, I hastened across the broad, bare, sandy plains of the celebrated Mancha--the immortal theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote--past Argasamilla--where Don Quixote was born, and died, and where his great creator, Cervantes, was imprisoned for debt--across the Sierra Morena to the land of the valley of the Guadalquiver--“the garden of Spain, the Eden of the Arabs, the paradise of poets and painters”--to Andalucia. Thenceforward there are no more rocks, but fields now studded, now hidden by flowers--flowers, flowers all the way--carpet after carpet of purple, gold, and snow-white flowers, poppies, daisies, lilies, wild mushrooms, and ranunculuses. Then, as we are carried deeper into the bosom of the south, we are met with grain and orange groves, olive groves, and green hillsides, vineyards, and fruit trees. First a few Moorish towers and many-coloured houses, then on the hills of the Sierra Nevada clusters of villas and gardens, then a perfumed air scented with rose leaves, an enchanted garden, and--Córdova.

Córdova is as different a place from Toledo as Monte Carlo is from Manchester. Toledo, sombre, austere, overpowering in its impressive solemnity; and Córdova, gay, vivacious, flashing its pervading whitewash in the sunshine beneath the clearest sky in Europe. And yet Córdova is one of the most ancient of cities; its record of all the races that have fought for it, made it, died for it during twenty centuries, are visible on every side. A thousand years ago it boasted upwards of a million inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and six hundred _fondas_. Its cathedral was formerly a mosque: before that it had been a basilica: and it had commenced life as a Roman temple dedicated to Janus. The Carthagenians styled the city the “Gem of the South.” Cæsar half destroyed it, and slaughtered 28,000 of its inhabitants, because it had sided with Pompey. Under the Goths its importance diminished; but it became, under the Moors, the Athens of the West, and was the

RETABLO, SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES CHURCH.]

successful rival of Bagdad and Damascus as a seat of learning, and the centre of European civilisation. It was the birthplace of Seneca, Lucan, Averroes, and Juan de Mena, the Chaucer of Spain; and here, in the Church of San Nicolas, Gonzalo de Córdova, the great captain of Spain, was baptised.

To-day Córdova is no more than an overgrown village in size and rank, a village with open-air market-places, and winding, uneven streets. Theophile Gautier wrote, in his delightful graphic style of the streets of Córdova, that “they have a more thoroughly African appearance than those of any other town in Spain. One threads one’s way between interminable whitewashed walls, their scanty windows guarded by heavy iron bars, over a pebbly pavement so rough that it is like the bed of a torrent, littered with straw from the burdens of innumerable donkeys.” These streets are traversed by happy, light-hearted people, who would seem to have no memory of the past, and no thought for the morrow. But the city contains a mosque which gives one a better idea of the power and magnificence of the Moors than anything else in Spain, not excepting even the Alhambra. This wondrous Arab temple--huge, wonderful, fairy-like in its Eastern gorgeousness--with its thousand marble columns, is unique in beauty as it is in curious detail. It is said that these columns were brought, already shaped, from various centres of the old civilised world--Carthage, Constantinople, Alexandria, Nîmes, and Narbonne--while others came from the marble quarries of the Sierra Morena, from Loja and Cadiz. Black, gray, dark green, and dull red in colour, they stretch out on every side, and form a seemingly boundless forest of marble pillars.

Concerning the impression made by this many-columned mosque, Gautier says: “You appear to be walking about in a roofed forest rather than in a building: whichever direction you turn to, your eye strays along rows of columns, which cross each other, and lengthen out endlessly, like marble trees that have risen spontaneously from the soil.” De Amicis has written of it in similar terms: “Imagine a forest; fancy yourself in the thickest portion of it, and that you can see nothing but trunks of trees. So, in this mosque, on whichever side you look, the eye loses itself among the columns. It is a forest of marble, whose confines one cannot discover.” It stands, this dazzling Mezquita, in the centre of the Court of Orange Trees, whose rows were planted to correspond with the lines of the columns in the mosque. Above the dark, shining foliage and flame-colour fruit rises the creamy delicate belfry-tower, rival of Sevilla’s Giralda.

Some day, when “the wandering footsteps of my life” take me again to Spain, I shall go to Córdova, and seek out this _Patio de los Naranjos_; and among its pleasant fountains, and its blithesome, indolent gossipers, I shall recall the impressions of my former visit. And, if possible, I shall again visit the city in May. The guide-books warn the traveller against going there in that month, when the annual fair is held. I know that fair, as the suspicious Brother Goldfinch used to say, with its booths erected under the trees, its band and its coloured lanterns, its dear dates and its cigar lotteries, its gaiety, its gaudy mantillas, its laughing, dark-eyed girls and gesticulating men, and its culminating display of fireworks. I know it, and I can conceive no reason why the guide-book makers should endeavour to

deprive other visitors of the enjoyment I got out of the innocent and exhilarating experience.

Everything about Córdova--the streets, the squares, the houses, with their _patios_--are small, lovely, mysterious, and Eastern. The ground-work is white--white and smooth are the walls and the houses--but the detail is a blaze of colours--roses, and oranges, and pinks forming a colour scheme of Nature’s own designing. The youthful gaiety of the town has overgrown its ancient might and sombreness, even as gay flowers, burst from between the ancient stones of a ruined castle. It has a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; a mysterious spell that one cannot resist. The cathedral is a fortress from without, but within it is a palace of enchantment; the town is a citadel become a pleasure garden; it is a museum of Roman and Arabian antiquities, peopled with blithesome men and women. Within a mile or two of Córdova once flourished Medina Az-zahra, which was one of the most marvellous works of architecture, the most superb earthly palace, and the most delicious garden in the world, and Zahira, built by the powerful Almansur, the governor of the kingdom. Both these superb cities have been destroyed, and not even the ruins are to be found.

The Castiles.

Some of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated in the two Castiles--silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind; and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the Burgos of the older province. Burgos, a representative Gothic Castilian city, was long the capital of the kingdom of Castile and León, and its cathedral ranks among the finest in Spain. What voyager that crosses the Pyrenees is not acquainted with Burgos Cathedral? The train that hurls the traveller across the mountainous boundary dumps him in Burgos, and being there, he proceeds forthwith to inspect the Cathedral. He is, it may be assumed, new to Spain, the Spanish cathedrals have the charm of novelty, and the first one he visits he does thoroughly. Unless he is an architect, or an archæologist, he will expend over this first specimen of the Peninsula’s religious edifices an amount of enthusiasm that would, if properly apportioned, carry him with interest round all the cathedrals of Spain. As an illustration of this contention I may mention the experience of an American whom I encountered in Seville. He was enthusiastic about the bull-fighting, delighted with the Alcázar, and fascinated with the Sevillian patios; but when I spoke to him of the cathedral, he replied, in an off-hand manner and a shrug of the shoulders: “Oh, I haven’t seen it, except from the outside. I got so full up of cathedrals at Burgos that I haven’t been inside another.”

Burgos Cathedral is certainly a magnificent specimen to get, to quote my American acquaintance, “full up on.” Although by no means large in comparison with many others in Spain, it appears to fill half the town. In addition to its conspicuousness and inviting aspect, it is the principal surviving monument to the ancient wealth and grandeur of the province, and one of the most beautiful structures in Europe. It was begun in 1221, and it was not finished till 1567, so that the period of its erection extends over three centuries and a-half, during which Gothic architecture passed through its successive stages in what we regard as Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. The exterior is greatly admired for the variety and richness of its outline, which embraces a whole forest of pinnacles, spires, and towers; but unfortunately it is so hemmed in with houses that it is not easy to find a point from which the eye can take in the whole sweep of the building from one end to the other. The _Capilla del Condestable_, the most interesting portion of the interior, might vie, for elevation and spaciousness of proportion, with many a church; while its magnificent tombs, profusion of sculpture and other decoration, combined with its general sumptuousness, render it worthy to be the sepulchre of kings. Burgos, like all other Spanish cathedrals, or all that I have visited, abounds in magnificent iron-work, a department of art which appears to have been cultivated with more ease in this country than in all the rest of Christendom. Almost every chapel (and some cathedrals contain no fewer than twenty) is fenced about by grilles of most graceful design and admirable workmanship; while the high altar is enclosed on two sides by railings, and in front by gates of the same material, each portion being a perfect marvel of the metal-worker’s art. Some of these gates stand thirty feet high; and when constructed of iron, as is usually the case, are not only richly gilt, so as to convey the effect of light and shade, but covered in addition with profuse ornamentation and heraldic devices.

There is a Christ in Burgos Cathedral--_the_ Christ it is called in Burgos--and it is claimed for it that it bleeds every Friday. It hangs behind a curtain over the altar in one of the chapels. When the curtain was drawn, I expected to see a figure of painted wood or marble, such as one sees elsewhere, and the spectacle filled me with horror. For this effigy is covered with skin, and is so terribly real that one recoils from it involuntarily. The beard, the hair, and the lashes are real, the hair is matted with clots of blood, the wounds gape in the side and the hands, and the pose is a marvel of realism. It has well been designated “_the_ Christ”--to see it is to lose all desire to look upon it again.

In one of the rooms of the old sacristy the visitor is shown the broken and worm-eaten coffer in which the Cid carried his treasure in his wars against the Moors. The Cid, it would appear, was the original exponent of the confidence trick. Being in need of ready money, he filled the coffer with metal and stones, and pawned it to a Jewish usurer, making a stipulation that it should not be opened until the loan was repaid. Seeing that the Cid would, in all probability, have kept the trick to himself if he had redeemed the goods, we may assume that he never paid his debt. People have been filling portmanteaus with bricks and living at hotels on the good faith of their worthless luggage ever since.

But Burgos, though magnificent in its cathedral and severe as a judge by temperament, is somewhat like an ancient and irrepressible comedian in appearance. Its situation, on the slope of the mountain is sufficiently impressive; its narrow, winding streets are serious and unresponsive in character; but its colouring is strangely genial, even to the verge of facetiousness. No two houses together are of the same colour; but orange and blue, red and grey and green confront the eye from doors, and railing, and windows, and from every bit of decoration that can bear its dollop of paint. No design is allowed to restrict the freedom of the artist’s fancy; the paints are daubed on irrespective of all the laws of colour harmony, and without any reference to the feelings of the family that live over the way. But the effect is decidedly cheerful and waggish, and the cathedral uprears its head in the midst of it like a Salvini in the middle of a crowd of Gaiety choristers. The silence of Burgos arises in part from the lack of vehicular traffic, and, in a measure, from the scarcity of women to be seen in the streets. Such ladies as are about keep their eyes to themselves, and pass along unheedful of the signs of life about them. But in the security of their _miradores_, or high-balconied windows, they regard mankind with perfect composure and entire freedom. So long as the beauty of Burgos can only be contemplated by throwing back the head and gazing up at “skied” windows, it is not a bad thing that carriages should be few and far between.

La Granja wakes up for three months in the year, viz., in July, August, and September, when the Court seeks in the altitude of the Palace a relief from the heat of the capital. Madrid has no reason to be ashamed of her elevation, but the Royal Residence of La Granja stands nearly 1,500 feet above the Palace of Madrid, and the Spanish people are well pleased that the King should desire so exalted a spot in which to live. The palace is a cheerful, if theatrical-looking French chateau, the antithesis of the severe Madrid palace, or the proud, gloomy Escorial. The interior is pretty rather than magnificent; agreeable rather than impressive. But if French art has reared the building, the natural surroundings are truly Spanish, and unmistakably Castilian. Around the palace on all sides are rocks, and forests, and crystal streams, and adjoining it are the palace gardens, which are at once among the finest, as they are certainly the most costly in the kingdom. These gardens, which cover an area of 360 acres, are an imitation, on a smaller scale, of the gardens of Versailles. The formal cut of the ground plan, the regularity of its avenues, the artificiality of the numerous fountains, marble vases and statuary, and its dwarf-like vegetations is all in striking contrast with the wild scenery on every side. In order to form these grounds, rocks were levelled and bored for the water pipes to feed the fountains, and hollowed to admit the roots of trees. One fountain--the Baños--which shoots up water to a height of 130 feet, cost Philip V. three millions of pesetas (over £100,000), but that monarch confessed that the display had amused him for three minutes. The cost of the gardens alone reached the enormous total of forty-five million pesetas; and on the death of Philip V. his debts were found to be within a couple of pesetas of that amount.

After the magnificent scenery of the Alpine Nava Cerrada, the chain of pine-clad mountain and the road, indescribably beautiful, that winds through the dark woods to La Granja, the 6 miles that still separate the traveller from Segovia are flat and uninteresting. But the dull, bare country changes as if by magic when a sharp corner is turned and the city bursts upon the view. The first sight of Segovia from La Granja fills one with a thrill of rapturous awe. The rocky gorge, by which the city is approached, is spanned by Trajan’s noble aqueduct; and beyond it, from the bosom of a soft, green vale, rises the rocky ridge upon which the fine old Castilian stronghold commands the surrounding country. The prospect is indescribably impressive, and one fears that the magic of the spectacle will disappear as we near it. But in this one is agreeably disappointed. The drive under the huge aqueduct gives one a momentary flash of realisation of the might of its Roman builders; and then the road struggles ever upwards, past red, sunlit plazas and curiously-fronted houses, beneath nodding roofs and under archways, into the _Plaza Mayor_, over which lies the shadow of the grim Gothic cathedral. The wonderful fairy-like “Puente del Diablo,” with its 320 arches, which rise, tier upon tier, to a height of 102 feet, is constructed of granite, without cement or lime. It is indeed a lasting monument to the enterprise, the resolution, and the architectural genius of its creators. The great cathedral, one of the largest in Spain, the old Alcázar which successfully stood out against the plundering _Comuneros_ who sacked the city in 1520, and the eighteen lesser churches, are for antiquarians and ecclesiologists: but the aqueduct is a separate ecstacy that appeals alike to the layman and the expert.

Although it has points in common with Segovia, Cuenca, and all these ancient cities of Castile, Avila, the home of the saint-like Teresa, Spain’s lady patroness, with its granite approach and its massive granite walls, its memories, its fortified cathedral, and its severe menacing air, is as well worthy a visit as any city in Spain.

The Avila of to-day is the Avila of a thousand years ago--a mediæval wall-girt city. Its frowning ramparts wear a strangely forbidding appearance, and its countenance is an index of its character. Protected by walls forty feet high and twelve feet thick, pierced by ten gateways, and studded by no less than eighty-six towers, commanding at every point the plain below, it stood from its foundation, until the era of artillery, a city impregnable. Local tradition has it that Avila was originally called Abula, after the mother of Hércules, and it is not incongruous to associate this brave old fortress town with all the heroes of mythology. The earliest authentic records of the city date back to B.C. 1660. The cathedral, dedicated to San Salvador, the Prince of Peace, reminds one of the futile voice that cries

“Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. Nor did Alva Garcia, its architect, gamble on its peace prospects; for its strong _cimborio_ was evidently built for defence, and its apse, with castellated machicolations, forms one of the towers of the city walls. From the general character of the cathedral it is evident that although it was commenced in A.D. 1091, it was not completed until the early part of the thirteenth century, and it is much disfigured by some poor patchwork restoration. Don Ramon of Burgundy, who rebuilt the city at the same time as the cathedral, endeavoured to secure peace by preparing for war, and the old church was pressed into the defence of the town.

The “Royal City” or Ciudad-Real is a fledgling among the cities of Castile, being little more than 650 years old. It was styled “royal” by Juan II. in 1420, and Cervantes called it “imperial,” and “the seat of the god of smiles.” Ciudad-Real may, in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, have worn a regal appearance, but the touch of a hand that is dead no longer lingers about this dull, poverty-stricken, backward town. The cathedral is vast, bare, and uninteresting; and when it has been hurried through, there is nothing else of interest to detain one in Ciudad-Real. Quite recently the tower of the cathedral partially collapsed, damaging, but happily only to a slight extent, in its fall, the beautiful dome of the building. The authorities, with commendable promptitude, engaged a small army of workmen, and at considerable risk removed the rest of the dangerous portion,

and prevented further injury to the dome. As the tower was regarded in the light of a national monument, a proposal to rebuild it is now under consideration. Within ten miles of the city is Almadén, a town that boasts no antiquity, and reflects not the shadow of a departed glory, but rather provides the substance of a matter-of-fact to-day. For at Almadén, on the confines of La Mancha, Estremadura, and Andalucia, is the great and apparently inexhaustible quicksilver mine, which is one of the few real sources of direct income to the State. These mines are Crown property; and of the £250,000 worth of the mineral which Almadén produces annually, a profit of £160,000 goes to the Government.

Rock-girt Cuenca is more picturesquely situated than either Ronda, or Granada, or even Monserrat. It is built on a granite height, the base of which is girdled by two graceful rivers, the Huecar and the Jucar, that run their green courses through the most luxuriant of valleys, filled with paths and groves of handsome trees. Terraced fruit gardens, rising like a grand staircase of verdure, stretch up to the perpendicular rock columns on one side of the city; and on the other it is guarded by abrupt, wild crags that fringe it in a hundred weird forms, their nakedness being modified, like the points of Monserrat, by lichens, ivy and other trailing vines.

From the city one looks across the river-washed valley, over the line of cliffs that merge into the distant mountains, and compose a scene of grandeur and loveliness, of slope, and precipice, and fairy-like verdure--a scene as grand and beautiful as one shall find in Spain. Time was when Cuenca was known to the world by its literature, its arts, and its manufacures; to-day it is no more than a back-cloth, a spectacle, an empty stage. Its trade has deserted it; its artists and authors have never been replaced. Time was when its mountains were the fastnesses in which the brave Celtiberians waged their desperate guerilla warfare against the Romans; to-day the Idubedan ranges are devoid of the vigorous spirit of either Roman or Celtiberian. The

race of rich traders who peopled these localities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is extinct. The beautiful _pinares de Cuenca_ still remain with their immemorial glades and rocks, their wild poetical scenery, and their myriad squirrels. All that is left to Cuenca is its history and its beauty, and if its history was great, its beauty is even greater and more enduring.

Granada and the Alhambra.

To the majority of travellers who visit Spain the Alhambra is Granada. They visit the city in order to see the wonders of the old Moorish palace, and unless they can spend many months in the neighbourhood they have no time to see anything else. A celebrated French artist declared that a man might worthily devote a life-time to the study of the Alhambra. Washington Irving, who lived for six years in Spain, and nearly the whole of it in Granada, complained, in 1829, that the Alhambra had been so often described that little remained to be said. Irving added to the literature of the subject his great and fascinating work, and it might have been thought that with this book the last word had been spoken. Hundreds of thousands of words in all languages have been written since then about the Alhambra, and yet I am not deterred from adding my few pages to the pile. There are many sights, like moonlight on running water, or the dancing shadows of feathery trees on a lawn, or the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Alhambra, which inspire one with _cacoēthes scribendi_, and the mania is not to be resisted.

Granada, which has been called the city of running waters, is another monument of Spain’s decayed glories. Under the Moors it boasted a population of half-a-million inhabitants; to-day it has but little more than a tenth of that number. There must have been more virility in the district under the Romans, who ever congregated where wealth was obtainable, and who reaped a rich harvest by washing the gold in the sands of the

TRANSEPT AND HIGH ALTAR, GRANADA CATHEDRAL.]

Darro. To-day this vast source of revenue is practically neglected; although, after the rains, a number of gold-fishers may be seen puddling in its eddies. The beautiful and magnificent cathedral, the burial place of the Catholic kings of mediæval Spain, the religious monuments--the superb Cartoja, the Montesacro, containing the grottos of the martyrs, the tomb of Gonzales di Córdova in the Church of San Geronimo, the Convents of St. Dominie and of the Angels--and, above all, the Alhambra, remain to link the city with its mighty past, but the only living survival of its ancient activity is represented by the sand washers on the banks of the Darro. Granada has gone to sleep. She is content to doze in the midst of her beautiful gardens, encircled by her noble mountains, rejoicing in the fruits that a fertile ground grows of its own accord--content in her idleness and the variety of her beauty. If she is reproved upon her condition, she replies with a yawn, and says, as a witty Italian writer puts it: “I gave to Spain the painter Alonzo Cano, the poet Luis de León, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the sacred orator Luis de Granada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas; I have paid my debt; leave me in peace!”