Chapter V: Part 5

Close beside this grand gateway, as if growing there on purpose, rose a thicket of sycamores and palms; while beyond it were seen the twin pylons of a Temple. The sphinxes were colossal, and measured about ten feet in length. One or two were ram-headed. Of the rest--some forty or fifty in number--all were headless, some split asunder, some overturned, others so mutilated that they looked like torrent-worn boulders. This avenue once reached from Luxor to Karnak. Taking into account the distance (which is just two miles from Temple to Temple) and the short intervals at which the sphinxes are placed, there cannot originally have been fewer than five hundred of them; that is to say, two hundred and fifty on each side of the road.

Dismounting for a few minutes, we went into the Temple; glanced round the open courtyard with its colonnade of pillars; peeped hurriedly into some ruinous side-chambers; and then rode on. Our books told us that we had seen the small Temple of Rameses the Third. It would have been called large anywhere but at Karnak.

I seem to remember the rest as if it had all happened in a dream. Leaving the small Temple, we turned towards the river, skirted the mud-walls of the native village, and approached the Great Temple by way of its main entrance. Here we entered upon what had once been another great avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep cut with hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some grand landing-place beside the Nile.

And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed by in the morning rose straight before us, magnificent in ruin, glittering to the sun, and relieved in creamy light against blue depths of sky. One was nearly perfect; the other, shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was still so lofty that an Arab clambering from block to block midway of its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel.

On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dismounted. Shapeless crude-brick mounds, marking the limits of the ancient wall of circuit, reached far away on either side. An immense perspective of pillars and pylons leading up to a very great obelisk opened out before us. We went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above our heads, and entered the First Court. Here, in the midst of a large quadrangle open to the sky stands a solitary column, the last of a central avenue of twelve, some of which, disjointed by the shock, lie just as they fell, like skeletons of vertebrate monsters left stranded by the Flood.

Crossing this Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to a mighty doorway between two more propylons--the doorway splendid with coloured bas-reliefs; the propylons mere cataracts of fallen blocks piled up to right and left in grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone. Only a jutting fragment of the lintel stone remains. That stone, when perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches across. The doorway must have been full a hundred feet in height.

We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus engraven on arm and breast with the cartouche of Rameses II., we crossed the shade upon the threshold, and passed into the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti the First.

It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression. To describe it, in the sense of building up a recognisable image by means of words, is impossible. The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing. It is a place that strikes you into silence; that empties you, as it were, not only of words but of ideas. Nor is this a first effect only. Later in the year, when we came back down the river and moored close by, and spent long days among the ruins, I found I never had a word to say in the Great Hall. Others might measure the girth of those tremendous columns; others might climb hither and thither, and find out points of view, and test the accuracy of Wilkinson and Mariette; but I could only look, and be silent.

Yet to look is something, if one can but succeed in remembering; and the Great Hall of Karnak is photographed in some dark corner of my brain for as long as I have memory. I shut my eyes, and see it as if I were there--not all at once, as in a picture; but bit by bit, as the eye takes note of large objects and travels over an extended field of vision. I stand once more among those mighty columns, which radiate into avenues from whatever point one takes them. I see them swathed in coiled shadows and broad bands of light. I see them sculptured and painted with shapes of Gods and Kings, with blazonings of royal names, with sacrificial altars, and forms of sacred beasts, and emblems of wisdom and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand at the foot of one--or of what seems to be the foot; for the original pavement lies buried seven feet below. Six men standing with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, could barely span it round. It casts a shadow twelve feet in breadth--such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. The capital that juts out so high above my head looks as if it might have been placed there to support the heavens. It is carved in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and glows with undying colours--colours that are still fresh, though laid on by hands that have been dust these three thousand years and more. It would take not six men, but a dozen to measure round the curved lip of that stupendous lily.

Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one hundred and twenty-two in number) are gigantic too; but smaller. Of the roof they once supported, only the beams remain. Those beams are stone--huge monoliths carved and painted, bridging the space from pillar to pillar, and patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow.

Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the one end a flame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm against a background of glowing mountain. To right, to left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless walls in every direction. The King, as usual, figures in every group, and performs the customary acts of worship. The Gods receive and approve him. Half in light, half in shadow, these slender, fantastic forms stand out sharp, and clear, and colourless; each figure some eighteen or twenty feet in height. They could scarcely have looked more weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on, and the sky shut out. It all looks right as it is; and one feels, somehow, that such columns should have nothing between them and the infinite blue depths of heaven....

It may be that the traveller who finds himself for the first time in the midst of a grove of _Wellingtonia gigantea_ feels something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and wonder; but the great trees, though they have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery that comes of human labour. They do not strike their roots through six thousand years of history. They have not been watered with the blood and tears of millions.[8] Their leaves know no sounds less musical than the singing of the birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the highlands of Calaveros. But every breath that wanders down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under the chariot-wheels of the conqueror.

_A Thousand Miles up the Nile_ (London, 2d ed., 1889).

SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.

CHARLES YRIARTE.

The document by which the council of the municipality of Florence decided the erection of her Cathedral, in 1294, is an historic monument in which is reflected the generous spirit of the Florentines.

“Considering that all the acts and works of a people who boast of
an illustrious origin should bear the character of grandeur and
wisdom, we order Arnolfo, director of the works of our commune, to
make the model, or a design of the building, which shall replace
the church of Santa Reparata. It shall display such magnificence
that no industry nor human power shall surpass it.... A government
should undertake nothing unless in response to the desire of a
heart more than generous, which expresses in its beatings the heart
of all its citizens united in one common wish: it is from this
point of view that the architect charged with the building of our
cathedral must be regarded.”

It must be admitted that it would be difficult to express a more noble idea and a more elevated sentiment than this.

The name of the Cathedral is evidently an allusion to the lily, the heraldic emblem of Florence. The ceremony of laying the first stone took place on September 8th, 1298; Pope Boniface VIII. was represented by his legate, Cardinal Pietro Valeriano. Arnolfo’s plan was a Latin cross with three naves, each nave divided into four arcades with sharp pointed arches. In the centre of the cross, under the vault of the dome, was reserved a space enclosed by a _ringhiera_, having open sides, with an altar in its axis, and in each of its little arms five rectangular chapels were placed. The walls were naked, and the architecture alone served for decoration; the effect, however, was altogether imposing.

Arnolfo did not finish his work; he died about 1230, leaving the church completed only as far as the capitals destined to support the arches. In 1332 Giotto was nominated to succeed him, and for about two hundred years the work was continued without interruption, under the direction of the most worthy men.

It is to Giotto that we owe that extraordinary annex to the Duomo, so celebrated throughout the world under the name of Campanile; its foundation was laid in 1334, after the little church of San Zanobio was razed. It is 85 metres high; Giotto, however, had calculated 94 metres in his plan and intended to finish the square column with a pyramid, like the Campanile of Saint Mark’s in Venice; but he was unable to complete his work, and his successor, Taddeo Gaddi, suppressed this appendix. The Campanile has six divisions; the first and the second, which are easily examined, are ornamented with sculpture executed by Andrea Pisano, after Giotto’s designs....

Even at the risk of banality, the saying attributed to Charles V. when he entered Florence after the siege should be mentioned here; he paused before the Campanile, contemplated it for a long while, and then exclaimed: “They should make a case for the Campanile and exhibit it as a jewel.”

Mounting to the top of the tower, we can count, one by one, the domes, the towers, and the monuments, and gaze upon the beautiful landscape which surrounds the city of flowers. There are in this tower seven bells, the largest of which, cast in 1705 to replace the one that had been broken, does not weigh less than 15,860 pounds.

Among the architects who succeeded Giotto, we must count the master of masters, who was, perhaps, the most incontestably illustrious of the Fifteenth Century architects--Filippo Brunelleschi. It was in 1421 that he began the superb dome which crowns the Cathedral. This was his masterpiece, surpassing in audacity and harmony all the monuments of modern art. Everyone knows that this dome is double: the interior casing is spherical, and between it and the exterior dome are placed the stairways, chains, counter-weights, and all the accessories of construction which render it enduring. It was only fifteen years after the death of the great Philippo that this dome was finished (1461). It inspired Michael Angelo for Saint Peter’s in Rome, and Leon Battista Alberti took it for his model in building the famous temple of Rimini which he left unfinished. Andrea del Verocchio, the beautiful sculptor of the _Enfant au dauphin_ and the Tomb of the Medicis in the old sacristy, designed and executed the ball, and Giovanni di Bartolo completed the node on which the Cross stands.

The church contains several tombs, among others those of Giotto, commissioned to Benedetto da Maiano by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that of the famous organist, Antonio Squarcialupi, a favourite of Lorenzo to whom “The Magnificent” wrote an epitaph. It is thought that the Poggio rests in Santa Maria del Fiore. The sarcophagus of Aldobrandino Ottobuoni is near the door of the Servi.

I have said that the walls are naked, that is to say that architecture does not play a great part on them, but the building contains a number of works of the highest order by Donatello, Michelozzo, Ghiberti, della Robbia, Sansovino, Bandinelli, and Andrea del Castagno. It was by the door of the Servi that Dominico di Michelino on January 30, 1465, painted Dante, a tribute paid tardily to the memory of the prince of poets by the society of Florentines, who were none other than the workmen employed in the construction of the Cathedral. Under these arches where Boccaccio made his passionate words resound to the memory of the author of the _Divina Comedia_, Michelino painted Dante clothed in a red toga and crowned with laurel, holding in one hand a poem and with the other pointing to the symbolical circles. The inscription states that the execution of this fresco is due to one of Dante’s commentators, Maestro Antonio, of the order of the Franciscans.

_Florence: l’histoire--Les Medicis--Les humanistes--Les
lettres--Les arts_ (Paris, 1881).

GIOTTO’S CAMPANILE.

MRS. OLIPHANT.

Of all the beautiful things with which Giotto adorned his city, not one speaks so powerfully to the foreign visitor--the _forestiere_ whom he and his fellows never took into account, though we occupy so large a space among the admirers of his genius nowadays--as the lovely Campanile which stands by the great Cathedral like the white royal lily beside the Mary of the Annunciation, slender and strong and everlasting in its delicate grace. It is not often that a man takes up a new trade when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar routine. But Giotto seems to have turned without a moment’s hesitation from his paints and panels to the less easily-wrought materials of the builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise or doubting his own power to do it. His frescoes and altar-pieces and crucifixes, the work he had been so long accustomed to, and which he could execute pleasantly in his own workshop, or on the cool new walls of church or convent, with his trained school of younger artists round to aid him, were as different as possible from the elaborate calculations and measurements by which alone the lofty tower, straight and lightsome as a lily, could have sprung so high and stood so lightly against that Italian sky. No longer mere pencil or brush, but compasses and quaint mathematical tools, figures not of art by arithmetic, elaborate weighing of proportions and calculations of quantity and balance, must have changed the character of those preliminary studies in which every artist must engage before he begins a great work. Like the poet or the romancist when he turns from the flowery ways of fiction and invention, where he is unincumbered by any restrictions save those of artistic keeping and personal will, to the grave and beaten path of history--the painter must have felt when he too turned from the freedom and poetry of art to this first scientific undertaking. The Cathedral was so far finished by this time, its front not scarred and bare as at present, but adorned with statues according to old Arnolfo’s plan, who was dead more than thirty years before; but there was no belfry, no companion peal of peace and sweetness to balance the hoarse old _vacca_ with its voice of iron. Giotto seems to have thrown himself into the work not only without reluctance but with enthusiasm. The foundation-stone of the building was laid in July of that year, with all the greatness of Florence looking on; and the painter entered upon his work at once, working out the most poetic effort of his life in marble and stone, among masons’ chippings and the dust and blaze of the public street. At the same time he designed, though it does not seem sure whether he lived long enough to execute, a new façade for the Cathedral, replacing Arnolfo’s old statues by something better, and raising over the doorway the delicate tabernacle work which we see in Pocetti’s picture of St. Antonino’s consecration as bishop of St. Mark’s. It would be pleasant to believe that while the foundations of the Campanile were being laid and the ruder mason-work progressing, the painter began immediately upon the more congenial labour, and made the face of the Duomo fair with carvings, with soft shades of those toned marbles which fit so tenderly into each other, and elaborate canopies as delicate as foam; but of this there seems no certainty. Of the Campanile itself it is difficult to speak in ordinary words. The enrichments of the surface, which is covered by beautiful groups set in a graceful framework of marble, with scarcely a flat or unadorned spot from top to bottom, has been ever since the admiration of artists and of the world. But we confess, for our own part, that it is the structure itself that affords us that soft ecstasy of contemplation, sense of a perfection before which the mind stops short, silenced and filled with the completeness of beauty unbroken, which Art so seldom gives, though Nature often attains it by the simplest means, through the exquisite perfection of a flower or a stretch of summer sky. Just as we have looked at a sunset, we look at Giotto’s tower, poised far above in the blue air, in all the wonderful dawns and moonlights of Italy, swift darkness shadowing its white glory at the tinkle of the Ave Mary, and a golden glow of sunbeams accompanying the midday Angelus. Between the solemn antiquity of the old Baptistery and the historical gloom of the great Cathedral, it stands like the lily--if not, rather, like the great Angel himself hailing her who was blessed among women, and keeping up that lovely salutation, musical and sweet as its own beauty, for century after century, day after day.

_The Makers of Florence_ (London, 1876).

GIOTTO’S CAMPANILE.

JOHN RUSKIN.

In its first appeal to the stranger’s eye there is something unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament than the martins’ nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God’s daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir-tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that head-stone of Beauty above the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count the sacred thoughts with which he filled Italy; ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labours, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon his crown was that of David’s:--“I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep.”

_The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (London, 1849).

THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR IN BOURGES.

AD. BERTY.

Certainly Jacques Cœur, that citizen of humble birth, who, by his merit reached the highest dignity of state at an epoch when aristocracy reigned supreme, this man of genius, who, while creating a maritime commerce for France, amassed so great a fortune for himself that he was able to help towards the deliverance of his own country in supporting at his own expense four armies at the same time, was not one of the least important figures of the Fifteenth Century. Posterity has not always been just to this illustrious upstart: he should be ranked immediately after Jeanne d’Arc, for the sword of the Maid of Domrémy would, perhaps, have been powerless to chase the enemy from the soil (which a cowardly king did not think of repulsing), without the wise economy and the generous sacrifices of him, who, at a later period, was abandoned by the king to the rapacity of his courtiers with that same ignoble ingratitude which he had shown to the _sainte libertrice_ of the great nation over which he was so unworthy to rule.

Jacques Cœur was the son of a furrier, or according to some authorities, a goldsmith of Bourges. He was probably following his father’s business when his intelligence and talents brought him into the notice of Charles VII., who had been forced to take refuge in the capital of Berry on account of the English conquests. The king appointed him to the mint, then made him master of this branch of administration, and, finally, _argentier_, a title equivalent to superintendent of finance. Cœur, in his new and brilliant position, did not abandon commerce to which he owed his fortune; his ships continued to furrow the seas, and three hundred clerks aided him in bartering European products for the silks and spices of the East and in realizing a fortune. Always fortunate in his enterprises, ennobled[9] by the king in 1440, and charged by him with many important political missions, he probably did not know how to resist the vertigo which always seizes those of mean origin who attain great eminence. He exhibited an extraordinary luxury, whose splendours humiliated the pride of the noble courtiers, excited their hatred and envy, and contributed to his ruin. With little regard for the great services which he had rendered to the country, such as, for example, the gift of 200,000 crowns in gold at the time of the expedition of Normandy, the nobles only saw in the magnificent _argentier_ an unworthy gambler, who should be deprived of his immense wealth[10] for their profit. For this purpose they organized a cabal. Cœur was charged with a multitude of crimes: he was accused of having poisoned Agnès Sorel, who had made him her testamentary executor, of having altered money, and of various other peculations; he was also reproached for having extorted money for various purposes in the name of the king....

The sentence of Jacques Cœur was not entirely executed; he was not banished, but, on the contrary, was imprisoned in the Convent des Cordeliers de Beaucaire. Aided by one of his clerks, Jean de Village, who had married his niece, he made his escape and went to Rome, where Pope Calixtus III., at that moment preparing an expedition against the Turks, gave him command of a flotilla. Cœur then departed, but, falling ill on the way, he disembarked at Chio, where he died in 1461. His body was buried in the church of the Cordeliers in that island.

Of the different houses which Jacques Cœur possessed, the one considered among the most beautiful in all France, exists almost intact, and is still known under the name of the _Maison de Jacques Cœur_, although it now serves for a hall of justice and mayoralty. This house, or rather this _hôtel_, was built between the years 1443 and 1453, and cost a sum equal to 215,000 francs of our money. For its construction, Cœur, having bought one of the towers of the ramparts of Bourges, commonly called _Tour de la chaussée_, from the fief of this name, built on a level with it another and more beautiful tower, and these two towers served as a beginning for the _manoir_, which was called, in consequence, the _Hôtel de la chaussée_. In building it they used stones taken from the old Roman walls of the town, which were on the site of the new _hôtel_, and which had already been pulled down by virtue of a charter given by Louis VIII. in 1224, by which, permission had been granted for building upon the ramparts and fortifications. At the time of the revision of the law-suit of Jacques Cœur under Louis XI. the _hôtel_ was given back to his heirs, who in 1552 sold it to Claude de l’Aubespine, secretary of state. By a descendant of the latter it was ceded to Colbert in 1679; Colbert sold it again to the town of Bourges on January 30, 1682, for the sum of 33,000 livres. Jacques Cœur’s house was therefore destined to become a _hôtel-de-ville_, and, as we have said, still exists to-day.

The plan of the building is an irregular pentagon, composed of different bodies of buildings joined without any symmetry, according to the general disposition of almost all mediæval civil and military buildings. The large towers are Jacques Cœur’s original ones. One was entirely reconstructed by him with the exception of the first story, which is of Roman work, as the layers of brick and masonry indicate; the other, on the contrary, received only its crown and a new interior construction, and, like the first, was flanked by a tower destined to serve as a cage for the stairway. The court of honour is vast, and arranged so that it was easy to communicate with the different parts of the _hôtel_.

The façade is composed of a pavilion flanked by two wings. Following an arrangement borrowed from military architecture, two doors were contrived, the little one for the foot-passengers and the large one, which was the door of honour, through which the Cavaliers entered. Both had pointed arches and were ornamented with an archivolt with crockets. One of them still possessed, until about a dozen years ago, its ancient sculptured panels and ornamental iron-work. Above these doors is a large niche with very rich ornamentation, which originally sheltered the equestrian statue of Charles VII. On its right and left is a false window, in which you see the statue of a man-servant in the one and that of a maid-servant in the other, both in the costume of the period. Above this niche the wall is pierced by a large window with four panes, whose tracery reproduces hearts, _armes parlantes_ of the proprietor, and a _fleur-de-lis_, a sign of his recognition by King Charles. A cornice of foliage forms the top of the wall of the pavilion, which is crowned by a very high roof with four sloping and concave sides. Upon the front and back faces of this roof is a large skylight-window and on its lateral faces, a stock of chimneys. On the summit of the roof is an imposing ridge which ends with two long spikes.

The back of the pavilion is exactly like the front, with the exception of a statue of Cœur corresponding to that of the king. To the right of the pavilion there rises an octagonal campanile of great elegance; at its base is a balustrade in whose open-work runs a phylactery, carrying the motto, which is frequently repeated in the building and which characterizes perfectly him who adopted it:

_À vaillans cœurs[11] rien d’impossible._

Notwithstanding the mutilations to which the house of Jacques Cœur has been condemned by its fate, it is certainly one of the most interesting and best preserved of all the civil buildings of the Middle Ages. A vast amount of information regarding the intimate life of the people, which has so great an attraction for the archæologist, is to be found here. If the fact that the study of buildings should be the inseparable companion to that of history was less evident, the house of Jacques Cœur would afford us an opportunity to demonstrate the truth; in reality, when we have studied this building we certainly gain a much clearer idea of the manners of Charles VII.’s reign than could be obtained from a host of lecturers upon history.

Jules Gailhabaud, _Monuments anciens et modernes._ (Paris, 1865).

WAT PHRA KAO.

CARL BOCK.

The first glimpse of Siam which the traveller obtains at Paknam is a fair sample of what is to be seen pretty well throughout the country. As Constantinople is called the City of Mosques, so Bangkok may, with even more reason, be termed the City of Temples. And not in Bangkok only and its immediate neighbourhood, but in the remotest parts of the country, wherever a few people live now, or ever have lived, a Wat with its image, or collection of images, of Buddha, is to be found, surrounded by numberless phrachedees, those curious structures which every devout Buddhist--and all Buddhists are in one sense or another devout--erects at every turn as a means of gaining favour with the deity, or of making atonement for his sins. On the rich plains, in the recesses of the forests, on the tops of high mountains, in all directions, these monuments of universal allegiance to a faith which, more perhaps than any other, claims a devotee in almost every individual inhabitant of the lands over which it has once obtained sway, are to be found. The labour, the time, and the wealth lavished upon these structures are beyond calculation....

The work which, in popular estimation at least, will make his Majesty’s reign most memorable in Siam, is the completion and dedication of the great royal temple, Phra Sri Ratana Satsadaram, or, as it is usually called, Wat Phra Kao. The erection of this magnificent pile of buildings was commenced by Phra Puttha Yot Fa Chulalok, “as a temple for the Emerald Buddha, the palladium of the capital, for the glory of the king, and as an especial work of royal piety.” This temple was inaugurated with a grand religious festival in the year Maseng, 7th of the cycle, 1147 (A. D. 1785), but, having been very hastily got ready for the celebration of the third anniversary of the foundation of the capital, it was incomplete, only the church and library being finished. Various additions were made from time to time, but the Wat remained in an unfinished state until the present king came to the throne. The vow to complete the works was made on Tuesday, the 23rd of December, 1879. The works were commenced during the next month and completed on Monday, the 17th of April, 1882, a period of two years, three months, and twenty days. Thus it was reserved for King Chulalonkorn, at an enormous outlay, entirely defrayed out of his private purse, and by dint of great exertions on the part of those to whom the work was immediately entrusted, to complete this structure, and, on the hundredth anniversary of the capital of Siam, to give the city its crowning glory.

The work was placed under the direct superintendence of the king’s brothers, each of whom had a particular part of the work allotted to him. One, for instance, relaid the marble pavement, and decorated the Obosot with pictures of the sacred elephant; while a second renewed the stone inscriptions inside the Obosot; a third laid down a brass pavement in the Obosot; a fourth undertook to restore all the inlaid pearl work; another undertook the work of repairing the ceiling, paving, and wall-decoration, and made three stands for the seals of the kingdom; another changed the decayed roof-beams; another covered the great phrachedee with gold tiles--the effect of which in the brilliant sunlight is marvellously beautiful--and repaired and gilded all the small phrachedees; another renewed and repaired and redecorated all the stone ornaments and flower-pots in the temple-grounds, and made the copper-plated and gilt figures of demons, and purchased many marble statues; two princes divided between them the repairs of the cloisters, renewing the roof where required, painting, gilding, paving with stone, and completing the capitals of columns, and so on. Thus, by division of labour, under the stimulus of devotion to the religion of the country, and of brotherly loyalty to the king, the great work was at length completed, after having been exactly one hundred years in course of construction. On the 21st of April, 1882, the ceremony of final dedication was performed, with the greatest pomp, and amid general rejoicings.

Under the name “Wat Phra Kao” are included various buildings covering a large area of ground, which is surrounded by walls decorated with elaborate frescoes. In the centre is a temple, called the Phra Marodop, built in the form of a cross, where on festive occasions the king goes to hear a sermon from the prince-high-priest. The walls of this building are richly decorated with inlaid work, and the ceiling painted with a chaste design in blue and gold. The most striking feature, however, is the beautiful work in the ebony doors, which are elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl figures representing Thewedas, bordered by a rich scroll. Behind this chapel-royal is the great phrachedee, called the Sri Ratana Phrachedee, entirely covered with gilt tiles, which are specially made for the purpose in Germany to the order of H. R. H. Krom Mun Aditson Udom Det.

There are several other large buildings in the temple-grounds, but the structure in which the interest of the place centres is the Obosot, which shelters the famous “Emerald Buddha,” a green jade figure of matchless beauty, which was found at Kiang Hai in A. D. 1436, and, after various vicissitudes of fortune, was at last placed in safety in the royal temple at Bangkok. This image is, according to the season of the year, differently attired in gold ornaments and robes. The Emerald Buddha is raised so high up, at the very summit of a high altar, that it is somewhat difficult to see it, especially as light is not over plentiful, the windows being generally kept closely shuttered. For the convenience of visitors, however, the attendants will for a small fee open one or two of the heavy shutters, which are decorated on the outside with gilt figures of Thewedas in contorted attitudes. When at last the sun’s rays are admitted through the “dim religious light,” and the beam of brightness shines on the resplendent figure--enthroned above a gorgeous array of coloured vases, with real flowers and their waxen imitations, of gold, silver, and bronze representations of Buddha, of Bohemian glassware, lamps, and candlesticks, with here and there a flickering taper still burning, and surrounded with a profusion of many-storied umbrellas, emblems of the esteem in which the gem is held--the scene is remarkably beautiful, and well calculated to have a lasting effect on the minds of those who are brought up to see in the calm, solemn, and dignified form of Buddha the representation of all that is good here, and the symbol of all happiness hereafter. The floor of the Obosot is of tessellated brass, and the walls are decorated with the usual perspectiveless frescoes, representing scenes in Siamese or Buddhist history.

It is in this Obosot that the semi-annual ceremony of _Tunam_, or drinking the water of allegiance, takes place, when the subjects of Siam, through their representatives, and the princes and high officers of state, renew or confirm their oath of allegiance. The ceremony consists of drinking water sanctified by the priests, and occurs twice a year--on the third day of the waxing of the Siamese fifth month (i. e., the 1st of April), and on the thirteenth day of the waning of the Siamese tenth month (i. e., the 21st of September).

The foregoing description gives but a faint idea of this sacred and historic edifice, which will henceforth be regarded as a symbol of the rule of the present Siamese dynasty, and the completion of which will mark an epoch in Siamese history.

_Temples and Elephants_ (London, 1884).

THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO.

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.

The exterior of the Cathedral of Toledo is far less ornate than that of the Cathedral of Burgos: it has no efflorescence of ornaments, no arabesques, and no collarette of statues enlivening the porches; it has solid buttresses, bold and sharp angles, a thick facing of stone, a stolid tower, with no delicacies of the Gothic jewel-work, and it is covered entirely with a reddish tint, like that of a piece of toast, or the sunburnt skin of a pilgrim from Palestine; as if to make up the loss, the interior is hollowed and sculptured like a grotto of stalactites.

The door by which we entered is of bronze, and bears the following inscription: _Antonio Zurreno del arte de oro y plata, faciebat esta media puerta._ The first impression is most vivid and imposing; five naves divide the church: the middle one is of an immeasurable height, and the others beside it seem to bow their heads and kneel in token of admiration and respect; eighty-eight pillars, each as large as a tower and each composed of sixteen spindle-shaped columns bound together, sustain the enormous mass of the building; a transept cuts the large nave between the choir and the high altar, and forms the arms of the cross. The architecture of the entire building is homogeneous and perfect, a very rare virtue in Gothic cathedrals, which have generally been built at different periods; the original plan has been adhered to from one end to the other, with the exception of a few arrangements of the chapels, which, however, do not interfere with the harmony of the general effect. The windows, glittering with hues of emerald, sapphire, and ruby set in the ribs of stone, worked like rings, sift in a soft and mysterious light which inspires religious ecstasy; and, when the sun is too strong, blinds of spartium are let down over the windows, and through the building is then diffused that cool half-twilight which makes the churches of Spain so favourable for meditation and prayer.

The high altar, or _retablo_, alone might pass for a church; it is an enormous accumulation of small columns, niches, statues, foliage, and arabesques, of which the most minute description would give but a faint idea; all this sculpture, which extends up to the vaulted roof and all around the sanctuary, is painted and gilded with unimaginable wealth. The warm and tawny tones of the antique gold, illumined by the rays and patches of light interrupted in their passage by the tracery and projections of the ornaments, stand out superbly and produce the most admirable effects of grandeur and richness. The paintings, with their backgrounds of gold which adorn the panels of this altar, equal in richness of colour the most brilliant Venetian canvases; this union of colour with the severe and almost hieratic forms of mediæval art is rarely found; some of these paintings might be taken for Giorgione’s first manner.

Opposite to the high altar is placed the choir, or _silleria_, according to the Spanish custom; it is composed of three rows of stalls in sculptured wood, hollowed and carved in a marvellous manner with historical, allegorical, and sacred bas-reliefs. Gothic Art, on the borderland of the Renaissance, has never produced anything more pure, more perfect, or better drawn. This work, the details of which are appalling, has been attributed to the patient chisels of Philippe de Bourgogne and Berruguete. The archbishop’s stall, which is higher than the rest, is shaped like a throne and marks the centre of the choir; this prodigious carpentry is crowned by gleaming columns of brown jasper, and on the entablature stand alabaster figures, also by Philippe de Bourgogne and Berruguete, but in a freer and more supple style, elegant and admirable in effect. Enormous bronze reading-desks supporting gigantic missals, large spartium mats, and two colossal organs placed opposite to each other, one to the right and one to the left, complete the decorations....

The Mozarabic Chapel, which is still in existence, is adorned with Gothic frescoes of the highest interest: the subjects are the combats between the Toledans and the Moors; they are in a state of perfect preservation, their colours are as bright as if they had been laid on yesterday, and by means of them an archæologist would gain a vast amount of information regarding arms, costumes, accoutrements, and architecture, for the principal fresco represents a view of old Toledo, which is, doubtless, very accurate. In the lateral frescoes the ships which brought the Arabs to Spain are painted in detail; a seaman might gather much useful information from them regarding the obscure history of the mediæval navy. The arms of Toledo--five stars, _sable_ on a _field_, argent--are repeated in several places in this low-vaulted chapel, which, according to the Spanish fashion, is enclosed by a grille of beautiful workmanship.

The Chapel of the Virgin, which is entirely faced with beautifully polished porphyry, jasper, and yellow and violet _breccia_, is of a richness surpassing the splendours of the _Thousand and One Nights_; many relics are preserved here, among them a reliquary presented by Saint Louis, which contains a piece of the True Cross.

To recover our breath, let us make, if you please, the tour of the cloisters, whose severe yet elegant arcades surround beautiful masses of verdure, kept green, notwithstanding the devouring heat of this season, by the shadow of the Cathedral; the walls of this cloister are covered with frescoes in the style of Vanloo, by a painter named Bayeu. These compositions are simple and pleasing in colour, but they do not harmonize with the style of the building, and probably supplant ancient works damaged by centuries, or found too Gothic for the people of good taste in that time. It is very fitting to place a cloister near a church; it affords a happy transition from the tranquillity of the sanctuary to the turmoil of the city. You can go to it to walk about, to dream, or to reflect, without being forced to join in the prayers and ceremonies of a cult; Catholics go to the temple, Christians remain more frequently in the cloisters. This attitude of mind has been perfectly understood by that marvellous psychologist the Catholic Church. In religious countries the Cathedral is always the most ornamented, richest, most gilded, and most florid of all buildings in the town; it is there that one finds the coolest shade and the deepest peace; the music there is better than in the theatre; and it has no rival in pomp of display. It is the central point, the magnetic spot, like the Opéra in Paris. We Catholics of the North, with our Voltairean temples, have no idea of the luxury, elegance, and comfort of the Spanish cathedrals; these churches are furnished and animated, and have nothing of that glacial, desert-like appearance of ours; the faithful can live in them on familiar terms with their God.

The sacristies and rooms of the Chapter in the Cathedral of Toledo have a more than royal magnificence; nothing could be more noble and picturesque than these vast halls decorated with that solid and severe luxury of which the Church alone has the secret. Here are rare carpentry-work in carved walnut or black oak, _portières_ of tapestry or Indian damask, curtains of _brocatelle_, with sumptuous folds, figured brocades, Persian carpets, and paintings of fresco. We will not try to describe them in detail; we will only speak of one room ornamented with admirable frescoes depicting religious subjects in the German style of which the Spaniards have made such successful imitations, and which have been attributed to Berruguete’s nephew, if not to Berruguete himself, for these prodigious geniuses followed simultaneously three branches of art. We will also mention an enormous ceiling by Luca Giordano, where is collected a whole world of angels and allegorical figures in the most rapidly executed foreshortening which produce a singular optical illusion. From the middle of the roof springs a ray of light so wonderfully painted on the flat surface that it seems to fall perpendicularly on your head, no matter from which side you view it.

It is here that they keep the treasure, that is to say the beautiful copes of brocade, cloth of gold and silver damask, the marvellous laces, the silver-gilt reliquaries, the monstrances of diamonds, the gigantic silver candlesticks, the embroidered banners,--all the material and accessories for the representation of that sublime Catholic drama which we called the Mass.

In the cupboards in one of the rooms is preserved the wardrobe of the Holy Virgin, for cold, naked statues of marble or alabaster do not suffice for the passionate piety of the Southern race; in their devout transport they load the object of their worship with ornaments of extravagant richness; nothing is good enough, brilliant enough, or costly enough for them; under this shower of precious stones, the form and material of the figure disappear: nobody cares about that. The main thing is that it should be an impossibility to hang another pearl in the ears of the marble idol, to insert another diamond in its golden crown, or to trace another leaf of gems in the brocade of its dress.

Never did an ancient queen,--not even Cleopatra who drank pearls,--never did an empress of the Lower Empire, never did a Venetian courtesan in the time of Titian, possess more brilliant jewels nor a richer wardrobe than Our Lady of Toledo. They showed us some of her robes: one of them left you no idea as to the material of which it was made, so entirely was it covered with flowers and arabesques of seed-pearls, among which there were others of a size beyond all price and several rows of black pearls, which are of almost unheard-of rarity; suns and stars of jewels also constellate this precious gown, which is so brilliant that the eye can scarcely bear its splendour, and which is worth many millions of francs.

We ended our visit by ascending the bell-tower, the summit of which is reached by a succession of ladders, sufficiently steep and not very reassuring. About half way up, in a kind of store-room, through which you pass, we saw a row of gigantic _marionettes_, coloured and dressed in the fashion of the last century, and used in I don’t know what kind of a procession similar to that of Tarascon.

The magnificent view which is seen from the tall spire amply repays you for all the fatigue of the ascent. The whole town is presented before you with all the sharpness and precision of M. Pelet’s cork-models, so much admired at the last _Exposition de l’industrie_. This comparison is doubtless very prosaic and unpicturesque; but really I cannot find a better, nor a more accurate one. The dwarfed and misshapen rocks of blue granite, which encase the Tagus and encircle the horizon of Toledo on one side, add still more to the singularity of the landscape, inundated and dominated by crude, pitiless, blinding light, which no reflections temper and which is increased by the cloudless and vapourless sky quivering with white heat like iron in a furnace.

_Voyage en Espagne_ (Paris, new ed. 1865).

THE CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD.

JULES LOISELEUR.

Chambord is the Versailles of the feudal monarchy; it was to the Château de Blois, that central residence of the Valois, what Versailles was to the Tuileries; it was the country-seat of Royalty. Tapestries from Arras, Venetian mirrors, curiously sculptured chests, crystal chandeliers, massive silver furniture, and miracles of all the arts, amassed in this palace during eight reigns and dispersed in a single day by the breath of the Revolution, can never be collected again save under one condition: that there should be a sovereign sufficiently powerful and sufficiently artistic, sufficiently concerned about the glory and the memories of the ancient monarchy to make of Chambord what has been made out of the Louvre and Versailles--a museum consecrated to all the intimate marvels, to all the curiosities of the Arts of the Renaissance, at least to all those with which the sovereigns were surrounded, something like the way the Hôtel de Cluny exhibits royal life.

It has often been asked why François I., to whom the banks of the Loire presented many marvellous sites, selected a wild and forsaken spot in the midst of arid plains for the erection of the strange building which he planned. This peculiar choice has been attributed to that prince’s passion for the chase and in memory of his _amours_ with the beautiful Comtesse de Thoury, _châtelaine_ in that neighbourhood, before he ascended the throne.

Independently of these motives, which doubtless counted greatly in his selection, perhaps the very wildness of this place, this distance from the Loire, which reminded him too much of the cares of Royalty, was a determining reason. Kings, like private individuals, and even more than they, experience the need at times of burying themselves, and therefore make a hidden and far-away nest where they may be their own masters and live to please themselves. Moreover, Chambord, with its countless rooms, its secret stairways, and its subterranean passages, seems to have been built for a love which seeks shadow and mystery. At the same time that he hid Chambord in the heart of the uncultivated plains of the Sologne, François I. built in the midst of the Bois de Boulogne a _château_, where, from time to time, he shut himself up with learned men and artists, and to which the courtiers, who were positively forbidden there, gave the name of Madrid, in memory of the prison in which their master had suffered. Chambord, like Madrid, was not a prison: it was a retreat.

That sentiment of peculiar charm which is attached to the situation of Chambord will be felt by every artist who visits this strange realization of an Oriental dream. At the end of a long avenue of poplars breaking through thin underbrush which bears an illustrious name, like all the roads to this residence, you see, little by little, peeping and mounting upward from the earth, a fairy building, which, rising in the midst of arid sand and heath, produces the most striking and unexpected effect. A genie of the Orient, a poet has said, must have stolen it from the country of sunshine to hide it in the country of fog for the _amours_ of a handsome prince. At the summit of an imposing mass of battlements, of which the first glance discerns neither the style nor the order, above terraces with ornamental balustrades, springs up, as if from a fertile and inexhaustible soil, an incredible vegetation of sculptured stone, worked in a thousand different ways. It is a forest of campaniles, chimneys, sky-lights, domes, and towers, in lace-work and open-work, twisted according to a caprice which excludes neither harmony nor unity, and which ornaments with the Gothic F the salamanders and also the mosaics of slate imitating marble,--a singular poverty in the midst of so much wealth. The beautiful open-worked tower of the large staircase dominates the entire mass of pinnacles and steeples, and bathes in the blue sky its colossal fleur-de-lis, the last point of the highest pinnacle among pinnacles, the highest crown among all crowns....

We must take Chambord for what it is, an ancient Gothic _château_ dressed out in great measure according to the fashion of the Renaissance.