Chapter VIII: Part 8

The bill at the _Boule d'Or_ is not an extravagant one; for as strangers are not common, the trick of extortion is unknown. The waiting-maid drops a courtesy, and gives a smiling _bon jour_, not surely unmindful of the little fee she gets; but she never disputes its amount, and seems grateful for the least. There is no "boots" or waiter to dog you over to the diligence; nay, if you are not too old, or ugly, the little girl herself insists upon taking your portmanteau, and trips across with it, and puts it in the hands of the conductor, and waits your going earnestly, and waves her hand at you, and gives you another "_bon voyage_" that makes your ears tingle till the houses of Limoges and its high towers have vanished, and you are a mile away, down the pleasant banks of the river Vienne.

Shall we set a foot down for a moment in the queer, interesting, busy old Norman town of Rouen, where everybody goes who goes to Paris, but where few stop for a look at what in many respects is most curious to see in all France? The broad, active quays, and the elegant modern buildings upon them, and the bridges, and the river with its barges and steamers, are, it is true, worth the seeing, and exposed to the eye of every passer, and give one the idea of a new and enterprising city. But back from this is another city--the old city--infinitely more worthy of attention.

Out of its midst rises the corkscrew iron tower of the Cathedral, under which sleeps Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy; and if one have the courage to mount to the dizzy summit of that corkscrew winding tower of iron, he will see such a labyrinth of ways, shut in by such confusion of gables, and such steep, sharp roofs, glittering with so many colored tiles, as that he will seem to dream a dream of the olden time.

And if he have an agricultural eye, it will wander delightedly over the broad, rich plains that there border the Seine, rich in all manner of corn-land and in orchards. And if he have an historic eye, it will single out an old castle or two that show themselves upon the neighboring hills; and the ruins, and the Seine, and the valley, and the town will group together in his imagination, and he will bear away the picture in his mind to his Western home in the wilderness; and it shall serve him as an illustration--a living illustration--to the old chronicles of wars, whether of Monstrelet, or Turner, or Anquetil, or Michelet, down through all the time of his thinking life. So, when he readeth of Norman plain blasted with battle, and knightly helmets glittering in the crash of war, he shall have a scene,--a scene lying clear as mid-day under the eye of steady memory,--in the which he may plant his visions of Joan of Arc, or of stout Henry V., or of drivelling Charles VI., or of _Jean sans peur_; for these--all of them, he knows--have trodden the valley of Rouen.

Whoever may have seen English Worcester or Gloucester will have a foretaste of what comes under the eye at Rouen; but to one fresh from the new, straight thoroughfares of America nothing surely can seem stranger than the dark, crowded ways of the capital of Normandy.

How narrow, how dirty, how cool! for even in summer the sun cannot come down in them--for the projecting balconies and the tallness of the houses; and between the fountains in the occasional open places and the incessant washings it is never dry. There is no pavement for the foot-goer but the sharp, round stones sticking up from side to side, and sloping down to the sluice-way in the middle. Donkeys with loads of cabbages, that nearly fill up the way, women with baskets on their heads, and staring strangers, and _gendarmerie_ in their cocked hats, marching two by two, and soldiers, and school-boys (not common in France), and anxious-faced merchants (still rarer out of the North), all troop together under gables, that would seem to totter were they not of huge oak beams, whose blackened heads peep out from the brick walls like faces of an age gone by.

What quaint carving! what heavy old tiles, when you catch a glimpse of the peaked roofs! what windings and twists! There are well-filled and sometimes elegant shops below, with story on story reeling above them.

Away through an opening, that is only a streak of light at the end, appears the ugly brown statue of the Maid of Orleans. There she was burned, poor girl!--and the valet, if you have the little English boy of the Hotel de Rouen, will tell you how, and when, and why they burned her; and he will ring the bell at the gate of a strange, old house close by, and beckon you into the court, where you will see around the walls the bas-reliefs of the Cloth of Gold. St. Owens too, which, after Strasburg Cathedral, is the noblest Gothic church in France, is in some corner of the never-ending curious streets. And on a fete day, what store of costume on its pavement! What big, white muslin caps,--flaring to left and right! What show of red petticoats, and steeple-crowned hats, and clumping sabots, and short-waisted boys, and little, brown men of Brittany!...

Many--many dull diligence--days lie between Rouen and the sunny southern town of Nismes; yet with the wishing we were there at once.

Where was born Guizot,--where are Protestant people,--where are almost quiet Sundays,--where there is a Roman Coliseum, dropped in the centre of the town,--there are we. On a December day, when I was there, it was as warm and summer-like,--the sunny side of that old ruin,--and the green things peeped out from the wall as fresh and blossoming, as if Merrie May had commenced her time of flowers. And the birds were chattering out of all the corridors, and the brown stone looked as mellow as a russet apple in the glow of that rich southern atmosphere.

The trees along the Boulevard--running here through the town--wore a spring-like air (there must have been olives or evergreen oaks among them), and though I cannot say if the peach-trees were in bloom, yet I know I picked a bright red rose in the garden by the fountain,--the great Roman fountain which supplies the whole town with water,--and it lies pressed for a witness in my journal yet. And there were a hundred other roses in bloom all around,--and a little girl was passing through the garden at the time, with one in her hair, and was playing with another in her hand. And the old soldier who limps, and lives in the little cottage at the gate of the garden, as patrol, was sunning himself on the bench by the door; and a canary-bird that hung over it was singing as blithely in his cage as the sparrows had been singing in the ruin.

And what was there in that charming garden spot of Nismes, with its wide walks and shade of trees, and fresh with the sound of running water and the music of birds? There was an old temple of Diana, and fountain of the Nymphs. Both were embowered in trees at the foot of the hill which lords it over the town.

The fountain rises almost a river, and alone supplies a city of forty thousand inhabitants. The guide-books will tell one that it is some fifty or sixty feet in depth, and surrounded with walls of masonry,--now green with moss and clinging herbs; and from this, its source, it passes in a gushing flood over the marble floors of old Roman baths, as smooth and exact now as the day on which they were laid. The old soldier will conduct you down and open the door-way, so that you may tread upon the smooth marble where trod the little feet of the unknown Roman girls. For none know when the baths were built, or when this temple of Diana was founded. Not even of the great arena, remarkable in many respects as the Roman Coliseum, is there the slightest classic record. Nothing but its own gigantic masonry tells of its origin.

Upon the top of the hill, from whose foot flows the fountain, is still another ruin,--a high, cumbrous tower. And as I wandered under it, full of classic fervor, and looked up,--with ancient Rome in my eye, and the gold AEgis, and the banner of triumph,--behold, an old woman with a red handkerchief tied round her head was spreading a blue petticoat over the edge of the tower to dry.

But from the ground beneath was a rich view over the town and valley. The hill and the garden at its base were cloaked with the deep black green of pines and firs; beyond was the town, just veiled in the light smoke of the morning fires; here peeped through a steeple, there a heavy old tower, and looming with its hundred arches and circumference of broken rocks--bigger than them all--was the amphitheatre of the Latin people, whose language and monuments alone remain. Beside the city--through an atmosphere clear as a morning on the valley of the Connecticut--were the stiff velvety tops of the olive-orchards and the long brown lines of vineyards;--away the meadows swept, with here and there over the level reach an old gray town, with tall presiding castle, or a glittering strip of the bright branches of the Rhone.

But not only is there pleasant December sun and sunny landscape in and about the Provencal town of Nismes, there are also pleasant streets and walks; there is a beautiful Roman temple,--_La Maison Carree_,--than which there is scarce a more perfect one through all Italy, among the neat white houses of the city. Within it are abundance of curiosities, for such as are curious about dates and inscriptions that cannot be made out; and there are Roman portals still left in the vestiges of the Roman walls....

There is the Grand Theatre for such as wish a stall for a month; and there is the grander theatre of the old Roman Arene. True, the manager is dead, and the actors are but bats and lizards, with now and then a grum old owl for prompter. But what scenes the arched openings blackened by the fires of barbarians, and the stunted trees growing where Roman ladies sat, paint to the eye of fancy! What an orchestra the birds make at twilight, and the recollections make always!

It was better than Norma, it was richer than Robert le Diable, to sit down on one of the fragments in front of where was the great entrance and look through the iron grating, and follow the perspective of corridors opening into the central arena, where the moonlight shone on a still December night,--glimmering over the ranges of the seats and upon the shaking leaves. And there was a rustle, a gentle sighing of the night wind among the crevices, that one could easily believe was the echo of a distant chorus behind the scenes:--and so it was,--a chorus of Great Dead Ones,--mournful and slow,--listened to by no flesh ear, but by the delicate ear of Memory.

There are rides about Nismes. There is Avignon with its brown ramparts and its gigantic Papal towers bundling up from the banks of the Rhone, only a half-day's ride away; and half a day more will put one down at the fountain of Vaucluse; where, if it be summer-time,--and it is summer-time there three-quarters of the year,--you may sit down under the shade of a fig-tree, or a fir, and read--undisturbed save by the dashing of the water under the cliff--the fourteenth Canzonet of Petrarch....

Coming back at nightfall, [the traveller] will have a mind to hunt through the narrow, dim-lighted streets of Avignon in search of the tomb of Laura, and he will find it embowered with laurels and shut up by a thorn hedge and wicket; and to get within this, he will ring the bell of the heavy, sombre-looking mansion close by, when a shuffling old man with keys will come out and do the honors of the tomb. He will take a franc,--not absolutely disdainfully, but with a world of _sang-froid_, since it is not for himself (he says) but for the poor children within the mansion, which is a foundling hospital. He puts the money in his red waistcoat-pocket, suiting to the action a sigh, "_Mes pauvres enfans!_" Perhaps you will add in the overflowing of your heart, "Poor children!"

As you go out of the garden, a box at the gate, which had escaped your notice, solicits offerings in behalf of the institution from strangers visiting the tomb. The box has a lock and key; the old man does not keep the key. You have a sudden suspicion of his red waistcoat-pocket, and sigh as you go out, _Les pauvres enfans!_

_Pont du Gard_ is the finest existing remain of a Roman aqueduct, and spans a quite deep stream, good for either fishing or bathing. Profusion of wild flowers grow about and over it, and fig-trees and brambles make a thicket together on the slope that goes down to the water.

One may walk over the top of the ruin--two yards wide, without parapet or rail--and look over into the depth three hundred feet below. The nerves must be strong to endure it, then the enjoyment is full. Less than half a day's ride will bring one from the Pont du Gard to the Hotel du Luxembourg of Nismes.

Montpellier is in Provence, the city of summer-like winters, and upon the river is Arles, with its Arena, larger even than that of Nismes, but far less perfect; and its pretty women--famous all over France--wear a mischievous look about them, and the tie of their red turbans, as if coquetry were one of their charms.

It is a strange, mixed-up town, that of Arles,--ruins and dirt and narrowness and grandeur, an old church in whose yard they dig up Roman coffins, and a rolling bridge of boats. Not anywhere in France are there dirtier and more crooked streets, not anywhere such motley array of shops amid the filth, red turbans and meat, bread and blocks, old coins and silks. Within the museum itself are collected more odd scraps of antiquity than can be found elsewhere together; there are lead pipes and stone fountains, old inscriptions and iron spikes, and the noblest monument of all is a female head that has no nose; but the manager very ingeniously supplies with his hand the missing feature.

Opposite the doors of this museum stands an obelisk of granite, which was fished out of the Rhone, and boasts a high antiquity, and upon its top is a brilliant sun with staring eyes. To complete the extraordinary grouping, upon another side of the same square is a church with the strangest bas-relief over its central door-way that surely madcap fancy ever devised. It is a representation of the Last Judgment; on the right, the angels are leading away the blessed in pairs, and on the left a grinning devil with horns, and with a stout rope passed over his shoulder and clinched in his teeth, is tugging away at legions of condemned souls.

There is rare Gothic sculpture within some old cloisters adjoining, and a marble bas-relief within the church, with a Virgin and Child in glory, was--I say it on the authority of an ingenious _valet de place_--of undoubtedly Roman origin.

Ancient sarcophagi may be seen here and there in the streets, serving as reservoirs at the fountains; and many a peasant of the adjoining country makes the coffin of a Roman noble his water-trough.

There belongs another antiquity to Provence besides that of Roman date,--it is that of the gay, chivalrous times of William IX., Count of Poitou, and all the gallant Troubadours who came after him. Then helmets glittered over the Provencal plains, and ladies wove silken pennants in princely halls. Then the tournament drew its throngs, and knights contended not only with their lances for martial fame but with their songs for the ears of love. Even monarchs--Barbarossa and Coeur de Lion--vied with Troubadours, and the seat of the Provencal court was the great centre of Southern chivalry. Arles had its court of love, more splendid than now, and its _arret d'amour_ was more binding than the charms of the brightest eyes that shine in Provence to-day.

Little remains of the luxurious tastes of the old livers at Arles. The cafe, dirty and dim, assembles the chivalry of the city, and a stranger Western knight, in place of baronial hall, is entertained at the Hotel du Forum, where, with excess of cheatery, they give him for St. Peray a weak, carbonated Moselle.

Let no one judge of the flat sand surface of Provence by the rich descriptions of the Mysteries of Udolfo, nor let the lover of ballad poetry reckon upon the peasant _patois_ as having the sweet flow of Raymond or Bertrand de Born.

A FRENCH FARMER'S PARADISE.

M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.

[So many woful stories are told us of the penury and strife for
bare existence of the agriculturists of Europe that it is
pleasant to read of happier scenes and more plentiful larders.
M. Betham-Edwards, than whom few are better able to speak of the
conditions of life in rural France, has drawn for us, in her
"Holidays in Eastern France," a cheerful picture of such a
scene, which we take pleasure in reproducing. We are here taken
out of the beaten track of ordinary travel into "fresh scenes
and pastures new."]

How delicious to escape from the fever, heat, and turmoil of Paris during the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the gently undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to the noise--if noise it can be called--of the mower's scythe, the rustle of acacia-leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon a nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor and the perpetual grind of the stonemason's saw! Yes, to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat, and nestle down in some country resort, is, indeed, like exchanging Dante's lower circle for Paradise. The heat has followed us here; but with a screen of luxuriant foliage ever between us and the burning blue sky, and with a breeze rippling the leaves always, no one need complain.

With the cocks and the hens, and the birds and the bees, we are all up and stirring betimes; there are dozens of cool nooks and corners, if we like to spend the morning out of doors, and do not feel enterprising enough to set out on an exploring expedition by diligence or rail. After the mid-day meal every one takes a siesta, as a matter of course, waking up between four and five o'clock for a ramble. Wherever we go we find lovely prospects. Quiet little rivers and canals, winding in between lofty lines of poplars, undulating pastures, and amber cornfields; picturesque villages, crowned by a church spire here and there; wide sweeps of highly cultivated land, interspersed with rich woods, vineyards, orchards, and gardens; all these make up the scenery familiarized to us by some of the most characteristic of French painters.

Just such tranquil rural pictures have been portrayed over and over again by Millet, Corot, Daubigny; and in this very simplicity often lies their charm. No costume or grandiose outline is here, as in Brittany; no picturesque poverty, no poetic archaisms; all is rustic and pastoral, but with the rusticity and pastoralness of every day.

We are in the midst of one of the wealthiest and best cultivated regions of France, moreover, and, when we penetrate beneath the surface, we find that in manner and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the peasant and agricultural population generally differ no little from their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the specialty of these rich dairy-farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard they may work at home, wear the smartest of Parisian bonnets and gowns when paying visits. I was going to say, when at church, but nobody does go there!

It is a significant fact that in the fairly well-to-do educated district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, where well-being is the rule, poverty the exception, the church is empty on Sunday, and the priest's authority is _nil_. The priests may preach against abstinence from church in the pulpits, and may lecture their congregation in private; no effect is thereby produced. Church-going has become out of date among the manufacturers of Brie cheese. They amuse themselves on Sundays by taking walks with their children, the _pater-familias_ bathes in the river, the ladies put on their gala dresses and pay visits, but they omit their devotions.

Some of these tenant-farmers--many of the farms being hired on lease, possessors of small farms hiring more land--are very rich, and one of our neighbors whose wealth has been made by the manufacture of Brie cheese lately gave his daughter one hundred thousand francs as a dowry. The wedding-breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters still attend to the dairies, and when they cease to do so doubtless farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we find it. It is delightful to witness the wide-spread well-being of this highly-farmed region.

"There is no poverty here," my host tells me, "and this is why life is so pleasant."

True enough, wherever you go you find well-dressed, contented-looking people; no rags, no squalor, no pinched want. Poverty is an accident of rare occurrence, and not a normal condition, every one being able to get plenty of work and good pay. The habitual look of content written upon every face is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen life were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only, if not of thankfulness. Class distinction can hardly be said to exist; there are employers and employed, masters and servants, of course, but the line of demarcation is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity wholly free from impoliteness, much less vulgarity, existing between them.

The automatic demureness characterizing English servants in the presence of their employers is wholly unknown here. There are households with us where the servants might all be mutes for any signs of animation they give, but here they take part in what is going on, and exchange a word and smile with every member of the household, never dreaming that it should be otherwise. One is struck, too, here by the good looks, intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is plain, are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the walls, flowers in the windows, and altogether a look of comfort and ease found nowhere in Western France. The Breton villages are composed of mere hovels, where pigs, cows, and poultry live in close proximity to their owners, a dung-hill stands before every front door, and, to get in-doors and out, you have always to cross a pool of liquid manure. Here order and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of well-being hardly, I should say, to be matched out of America.

Travellers who visit France again and again, as much out of sympathy with its people's institutions as from a desire to see its monuments and outward features, will find ample to reward them in Seine et Marne. On every side we have evidence of the tremendous natural resources and indefatigable laboriousness of the people. There is one point here, as elsewhere in France, which strikes an agriculturist with astonishment, and that is the abundance of trees standing amid cornfields and miscellaneous crops, also the interminable plantation of poplars that can be seen on every side, apparently without any object. But the truth is, the planting of apple- and pear-trees in fields is no extravagance, rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals and rivers is the work of the government, every spare bit of ground belonging to the state being planted with them for the sake of the timber. The crops are splendid, partly owing to the soil, and partly to the advanced system of agriculture. You may see exposed for sale, in little towns, the newest American agricultural implements, while the great diversity of products speaks volumes for the enterprise of the farmers.

As you stroll along, now climbing, now descending this pleasantly undulated country, you may see growing in less than an acre, a patch of potatoes here, a vineyard there, on one side a bit of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, with fruit-trees casting abundant shadow over all; on the other Indian-corn, clover, and mangel-wurzel in the green state, recently planted for autumn fodder; farther on a poppy-field, three weeks ago in full flower, now having full pods ready for gathering,--the opium poppy being cultivated for commerce here. All those and many more are found close together, and near them many a lovely little glen, copse, and ravine, recalling Scotland and Wales, while the open hill-sides show broad belts of pasture, corn, and vineyard. You may walk for miles through what seems one vast orchard, only, instead of turf, rich crops are growing under the trees. This is indeed the orchard of France, on which we English folk largely depend for our summer fruits. A few days ago the black-currant-trees were being stripped for the benefit of Parisian lovers of _cassis_, a liqueur in high repute.

We encounter on our walks carts laden with plums packed in baskets and barrels on their way to Covent Garden. Later on, it will be the peach and apricot crops that are gathered for exportation. Later still, apples, walnuts, and pears; the village not far from our own sends fruit to the Paris markets valued at one million francs annually, and the entire valley of the Marne is unequalled throughout France for fruitfulness and abundance.

But the traveller must settle down in some delicious retreat in the valley of the Marne to realize the interest and charm of such a country as this. And he must above all things be a fairly good pedestrian, for, though a land of Goshen flowing with milk and honey, it is not a land of luxuries, and carriages, good, bad, or indifferent, are difficult to be got. A countless succession of delightful prospects is offered to the persevering explorer who, each day, strikes out in an entirely different direction. I have always been of the opinion that the best way to see a country is to make a halt in some good central point for weeks at a time, and from thence "excursionize." By these means much fatigue is avoided, and the two chief drawbacks to the pleasure of travel, namely, hotels and perpetual railway travel, are avoided as much as possible.

Seine et Marne, if not one of the most picturesque regions in France, abounds in those quiet charms which grow upon the sympathetic traveller. It is not a land of marvels and pictorial attractions like Brittany. There is no costume, no legendary romance, no stone array of Carnac to entice the stranger, but, on the other hand, the lover of nature in her more subdued aspects, and the archaeologist also, will find ample to repay them....

My rallying-point was a pleasant country house at Couilly, offering easy opportunity of studying agriculture and rural life, as well as of making excursions by road and rail. Couilly itself is charming. The canal, winding its way between thick lines of poplar-trees towards Meaux, you may follow in the hottest day of summer without fatigue. The river, narrow and sleepy, yet so picturesquely curling amid green slopes and tangled woods, is another delightful stroll; then there are broad, richly-wooded hills rising above these, and shady side-paths leading from hill to valley, with alternating vineyards, orchards, pastures, and cornfields on either side. Couilly lies in the heart of the cheese-making country, part of the ancient province of Brie, from which this famous cheese is named.

[The French _departement_ of Seine et Marne possesses but two
important historical monuments, the Chateau of Fontainebleau
and the Cathedral of Meaux, though it contains archaeological
remains from the Mediaeval to the Celtic Age. Fontainebleau is
too well known to need description here, so we shall conclude
by following our traveller to Meaux.]

The diligence passes our garden gate early in the morning, and in an hour and a half takes us to Meaux, former capital of the province of La Brie, bishopric of the famous Bossuet, and one of the early strongholds of the Reformation. The neighboring country, _pays Meldois_ as it is called, is one vast fruit and vegetable garden, bringing in enormous returns. From our vantage-ground--for, of course, we get outside the vehicle--we survey the shifting landscape, wood and valley and plain, soon seeing the city with its imposing Cathedral, flashing like marble, high above the winding river and fields of green and gold on either side. I know nothing that gives the mind an idea of fertility and wealth more than this scene, and it is no wonder that the Prussians, in 1871, here levied a heavy toll; their sojourn at Meaux having cost the inhabitants not less than a million and a half of francs. All now is peace and prosperity, and here, as in the neighboring towns, rags, want, and beggary are not found. The evident well-being of all classes is delightful to behold.

Meaux, with its shady boulevards and pleasant public gardens, must be an agreeable place to live in, nor would intellectual resources be wanting. We strolled into the spacious town library, open, of course, to all strangers, and could wish for no better occupation than to con the curious old books and the manuscripts that it contains. One incident amused me greatly. The employe, having shown me the busts adorning the walls of the principal rooms, took me into a side closet, where, ignominiously put out of sight, were the busts of Charles the Tenth and Louis Philippe.

"But," said our informant, "we have more busts in the garret,--the Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress, and the Prince Imperial."

Naturally enough, on the proclamation of the republic, these busts were considered at least supererogatory, and it is to be hoped they will stay where they are.

CORDOVA AND ITS MOSQUE.

S. P. SCOTT.

[The following selection we owe to Scott's "Through Spain: A
Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the Peninsula," a work of
unusual interest, and which reproduces in picturesque language
most of the attractions of that favored peninsula. The Moorish
inhabitants of Spain have left in that country numerous
monuments of their graceful architecture, notably the Alhambra
of Granada and the Mosque of Cordova. The latter, to the
description of which this selection is mainly devoted, is one
of the most magnificent examples of Saracenic architecture
extant, and despite the efforts of ecclesiastics to ruin it,
still remains a worthy object of pilgrimage for the lovers of
art.]

Once more we turn our faces southward over the bleak and lifeless plains. Estremadura and La Mancha are soon left behind, as the flying train darts through the passes of the Sierra Morena, and descends into the beautiful province of Andalusia. It is almost like another world. The country is thickly settled, green fields take the place of the barren steppes, hedges of aloe and cactus enclose the extensive olive plantations, and, here and there, overtopping the orange groves, are seen the feathery branches of the palm. The costumes grow bright and odd, and the people become more swarthy in complexion.

The water-carrier, with her Arab alcarazza lightly poised upon her head, approaches the car window, and deals out the crystal fluid to the thirsty traveller at the moderate price of one-fifth of a cent a drink. A few miles farther, and, entering a long and irregular city, with tortuous streets reeking with villanous smells--each of which seems considerably worse than the one you have just escaped--and squares overrun with indefatigable beggars, all startling specimens of horrible and loathsome deformity, we are informed that this is at last the renowned capital of the Khalifs.

If Cordova at first sight is so unprepossessing, a better acquaintance is hardly calculated to produce a more favorable impression upon the stranger. It is a sleepy old town, substantially paved with stone blocks laid down by the Moors, whose notions of comfort and taste are further manifested in the shady courts, surrounded by latticed galleries resting upon graceful horseshoe arches,--peculiarities of the Arab style of architecture. The innumerable canals, aqueducts, and fountains that embellish the various squares reveal the predilection of its ancient citizens for an abundant supply of water, an advantage not recognized by the present inhabitants. The streets are so crooked, and pay such a disregard to the points of the compass, that three minutes after you have left the hotel you are helplessly lost, and wonder whether you will be able to find any one of whom to ask the way. You approach one of the houses that, barred like so many castles, line the streets, and knock. After some delay the gate opens, and discloses the leather-clad _portero_ rubbing his eyes, and half asleep. You explain your misfortune; he laughs, and with a volubility that is perfectly amazing delivers himself of a string of directions intended to be explicit, but which soon involve you more deeply in the labyrinth than before. Then you commit yourself to the tender mercies of a boy who has providentially appeared, and who knows nothing of what you wish to see, but will gladly repel the attacks of the beggars, a service which no one who has had the benefit of it will be disposed to underrate.

The bigoted character of the people of Cordova is betrayed by the number of shrines, and the swarms of well-fed priests that congregate in the neighborhood of the Cathedral and the parish churches. In the Jewish quarter--where the Hebrews, persecuted by other nations, enjoyed complete liberty of worship, as well as the confidence of their Saracen rulers--stands the mosque. It is on the shore of the Guadalquivir, and opposite the Alcazar of the Khalifs, which is now a military prison, and destitute of even a suspicion of its ancient grandeur. It is impossible to realize that this spot, now steaming with noxious vapors, smeared with filth of every description, and haunted by ghastly representatives of vice and misery, was once the abode of science and art, the seat of the wealthiest court of mediaeval Europe, the refuge of the oppressed of every creed in Christendom, and the home of the most polished society of the age.

The city contains but little to attest its former greatness, whose story reads like an exaggerated romance of the Orient. The mosque remains, indeed, sadly defaced by the hand of religious fanaticism; a few of the baths are intact, though long disused and abandoned; the wheels of the primitive stone mills are still turned by the rapid current of the Guadalquivir; and the venerable bridge erected by Augustus has survived the uninterrupted traffic and strange vicissitudes of nearly twenty centuries. There are a few handsome palaces, once curious on account of their minute and grotesque ornamentation, but now weather-beaten and decayed. The orphan asylum, built in the sixteenth century, offers the best example of the Gothic, but the churches are abominable, with the exception of San Nicolas, which possesses the only minaret left out of the seven hundred that once adorned the Saracen metropolis. The sight of the crumbling relics of an empire which once overshadowed all Europe with its power naturally recalls the circumstances under which that power was obtained, and suggests a brief notice of the wonderful civilization that, emanating from a people but a few removes from the Bedouins, communicated new life to the nations brought within the sphere of its authority, contributing so much of value to the common stock of human knowledge, and imparting an extraordinary impulse to scientific thought.

[This historical notice we omit, and proceed with a description
of the celebrated mosque of Cordova.]

There has probably never been an edifice erected by the piety of any sect whose materials were gathered in as many different countries, or which could boast such a variety of superb decorations, as the _Djalma_ of Cordova. The stones for its foundations were transported upon the shoulders of Christian captives from Narbonne in France. Pagan altars and Romish churches were alike despoiled of their precious marbles. Barbary gave her odoriferous woods, Egypt her ivory, Syria her stuccoes, Persia her tapestry, Constantinople her elegant mosaics.

The expenses of construction were defrayed by the appropriation of one-fifth of the spoils of battle, which amount, important in itself, was from time to time largely increased by contributions from the wealthy, tribute of conquered nations and munificent gifts from the royal treasury. The building measured six hundred and forty-two feet from north to south by four hundred and sixty-two feet from east to west; the walls were generally thirty-five feet high, except on the side towards the river, where they reached an altitude of seventy feet and a thickness of nearly twenty. They were strengthened by buttresses and crowned by battlements painted in brilliant colors. Over all towered the shapely minaret of Abderrahman III., inlaid with sculptured stone-work and enamelled tiles, and bearing upon its summit three huge gilded apples of bronze rising from the petals of silver lilies, the whole surrounded by a pomegranate of massy gold.

There were twenty-one entrances, encircled by legends from the Koran, interspersed with scarlet and gilded arabesques; the doors were very heavy, and covered with plates of polished brass. A subdued light came through the interstices of marble lattices, carved in fantastic patterns, imparting a mystic solemnity to the vast interior.

A spacious garden or court, called then, as now, the Court of the Oranges, planted with choice exotics and tropical trees, contained the fountains where the Moor performed the ablutions prescribed by his religion. One of these basins, still perfect, is a monolith hewn in the quarries of the distant sierra, and requiring the combined efforts of seventy oxen and hundreds of men to convey it to its present position. The nineteen naves of the mosque opened upon the court,--none of them had doors,--and through the fretted arcades were wafted odors of rose and jasmine, which, mingling with incense and the smoke of perfumed tapers, gave to the fanatic believer a reminiscence of Araby the Blest. Some of these tapers weighed sixty pounds, and the largest chandelier, used only during the feast of Ramadan, held fourteen hundred and fifty-four lights. Lamps of gold and silver were suspended from the richly-ornamented ceiling, and among them, memorable trophies of the conquest of Galicia, swung the bells of the church of Santiago.

Stretching around on every side was an endless forest of columns, the horseshoe arches arranged in tiers increasing the resemblance to a grove of palms,--that most primitive of temples,--which evidently served as a model for the interior of the mosque. Not far from the centre was the tribune, where, on Fridays, the Imam called the worshippers to prayer. Elevated a few feet above the floor, it was surrounded by engrailed, interlacing arches, and stood opposite the Kiblah, or point facing Mecca. The latter was indicated by three chapels, the Mihrab being placed in the central one.

The Byzantine mosaics, with which both walls and domes are incrusted, give to this part of the mosque an indescribably gorgeous appearance. They contain no piece larger than the top of a lead-pencil, and, being coated with glass like those of the church of St. Mark at Venice, which are of about the same date, have been preserved in all their original beauty. A noble horseshoe arch, opening in the mosaic, forms the entrance to the Mihrab, a little grotto faced with marble slabs, towards which the Moslem always turned to pray, and then made its circuit seven times upon his knees; the evidences of this act of devotion remaining, deeply furrowed in the pavement, after the lapse of six centuries. The Mihrab is hexagonal in shape, and twelve feet in diameter. Exquisitely carved, as became its sacred character, and the reverence with which it was universally regarded, the skill of its architects was exhausted upon its panels and its vaulted ceiling, cut from a single block of snowy marble in the exact representation of a shell. Here was kept the most precious relic of Mohammedan Spain, the Koran written by the Khalif Othman, which he was reading when assassinated. It was studded with jewels of immense value, and was so heavy that it required four men to lift it.

Great and important are the changes that have taken place in the arrangements of the mosque since the Spanish domination.

It was first purged of its heretical pollutions by the assembled clergy, and then lined with chapels presided over by ugly idols glittering with tinsel.

The marble pavement was next removed and replaced by coarse red tiles. The minaret, damaged by a storm in the sixteenth century, has been metamorphosed into an ordinary spire; thirteen of the exterior entrances, and sixteen of those in the Court of the Oranges, have been walled up; and many of the mosaics and stuccoes have been so daubed with whitewash that both colors and designs have disappeared. The carved ceiling was long since removed, and sold to guitar-makers and carpenters; the balustrades, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell, were utilized as fuel. The outside has suffered less, and there still remain numerous tokens of its Oriental origin,--the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, typical of the adoration of fire; the Syrian ornamentation of the door-ways, where can also be traced familiar symbols of ancient Egypt; and the suastika, or Indian cross, a mysterious emblem of the highest antiquity, which Layard found upon the palaces of Nineveh, Cesnola in the tombs of Cyprus, and Schliemann on the walls of Troy.

But even these "purifications" were not sufficient to satisfy the demands of an orthodox and iconoclastic priesthood. In 1523 a zealous bishop of Cordova, named Manriquez, wishing to distinguish himself, determined to build a cathedral in the very centre of the mosque. The people in vain protested against this outrage; the bishop appealed to the emperor, who sustained him; and though Charles afterwards, when visiting Cordova for the first time, sharply criticised the action of the prelate, the remonstrance came with a bad grace from one who had wrought such irreparable mischief in the Alhambra. The church was built, and, though in itself elegant, has destroyed the proportions of the unique structure, once the model of Saracen architecture and the pride of all Islam....

The Moorish city of Cordova was divided into five wards, each isolated by a fortified wall. Beyond these were the twenty-one suburbs, which--as well as the central part of the capital, where were located the palace and the Djalma--were paved and lighted, and furnished with mosques and markets. To accommodate a population that exceeded a million there were nine hundred public baths, more than are now to be found in all Europe.

Of the suburbs, that of Medina-Azzahra was the most celebrated. It enclosed a palace built by An-Nassir for a favorite of his harem, and we are told that its decorations surpassed those of the mosque at the period of its greatest magnificence. The most expensive marbles and jaspers were used in its construction; Byzantine mosaics covered its walls; the ceilings of its pavilions were composed of alternate plates of gold and silver. In the principal hall stood a porphyry basin full of quicksilver, so contrived that it could be agitated by hidden mechanism, reflecting the rays of the sun with dazzling brilliancy, and striking with terror the mystified beholders. Over this curious toy was a miniature temple, with a dome of ebony and ivory, incrusted with pearls and rubies, and sustained by columns of polished crystal. Attached to the palace were delightful flower-gardens, orchards, labyrinths, lakes, and fountains. There were six thousand three hundred women of all ranks in An-Nassir's harem, who were guarded by an army of twelve thousand eunuchs clothed in silk, and wearing girdles of gold. In the neighborhood of the Khalif's residence stood the villas of the nobility, which, with the houses of their slaves and retainers, constituted of themselves a town of no inconsiderable dimensions.

Having read much of Medina-Azzahra, I was naturally desirous to visit the site of this luxurious retreat of the Khalifs, which is known as "Cordoba la Vieja," or Old Cordova; and taking a carriage, the driver of which assured me he was perfectly familiar with the locality, I rode out to the mountains, a distance of about three miles. The carriage stopped; I got out, and, seeing a few steps away a low wall of masonry, evidently the enclosure of a pasture, I asked the driver what place this was.

Touching his hat, he replied, "This, senor, is Cordoba la Vieja."

"But the ruins you promised to show me,--where are they?"

"The ruins, senor--yes--there they are!" And he pointed to a row of dilapidated stables in the centre of the pasture, not far from where a herd of fierce Andalusian bulls were grazing. I would not have crossed that field for all the antiquities in Spain.

"And this is all that is to be seen here?"

"Yes, senor, this is all."

Re-entering the carriage, I returned to the city, with a feeling of disgust, which was not diminished by my honest coachman's demanding an exorbitant fee for his services as guide....

Among the many revolutions which have affected the manners and formed the society of Europe, none is entitled to more credit, or has been more completely ignored, than the occupation of Spain by the Saracens. This neglect is almost inexplicable, considering the prestige the invaders acquired by their extensive conquests, long a menace to the peace of Christendom, as well as by their invaluable services to literature, whose influence is even now to be traced in the language, the theology, the science, and the laws of distant countries, loath to acknowledge the debt they owe to this most ingenious and polished people. For the ambition and versatility of the Moor were boundless, and he labored with the same persevering energy in the solution of some abstruse mathematical problem as in the prosecution of every useful discovery and the encouragement of every branch of trade.

The importance of his foreign commerce is shown by the wealth and size of his seaports. Of these Almeria stood first in rank; its merchants not only maintained the closest intimacy with the nations of the Mediterranean, but penetrated as far as Persia and China. It employed three thousand eight hundred looms in the fabrication of damasks and brocades; the gardens and plantations of its environs embraced an area of four hundred square miles. Each city had its specialty: Baeza was famous for woollens, Murcia for coats of mail, Valencia for perfumes, Malaga for pottery and glass, Xativa for paper, Toledo and Seville for swords of perfect temper. In the early part of the twelfth century there were six hundred villages engaged in the manufacture of silk. Granada was the chief mart of this industry, and soon after the accession of Charles Fifth, when the Inquisition had already driven thousands of skilful artisans into exile, the crown revenues from this source alone amounted annually to one hundred and eighty-one thousand five hundred gold ducats, or seven hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars of our money.

The luxurious tastes of the East caused the introduction of many useful plants and fruits, among them the buckwheat, the sugar-cane, the peach, and the pomegranate, and the first palm ever seen in Andalusia was brought from Damascus by Abderrahman, in memory of his native land. In his control over water, the most valuable treasure of his forefathers, the Moor displayed a power little short of marvellous, and a reverence as for something peculiarly sacred. Every drop of the precious fluid was utilized, and its distribution protected by a code of stringent regulations, causing its benefits to be felt in the remotest hamlets of the kingdom. This code is still in force in Valencia, and the ancient tribunal of seven judges, chosen from the farmers of the province, holds its sessions in that city every Thursday, the last day of the Mohammedan week, to hear and decide without appeal all questions involving the laws of irrigation.

The rapid progress made by the Spanish Arabs in those arts that tend to diminish the burdens and increase the enjoyments of life, unexampled as it was in history, was not more remarkable than the diligence with which they applied themselves to literary and scientific pursuits, studies destined to exert such lasting effects upon the happiness and well-being of mankind....

In the personal appearance and mode of life of the Andalusians, and particularly in those of the inhabitants of Cordova, can be detected unmistakable signs of their Arab ancestry. Their skins are darker, and the women especially have larger and more lustrous eyes than those of the other provinces of Spain. Their dialect, full of proverbial expressions, and unintelligible by its elision of consonants, seems a barbarous jargon to the Castilian of Salamanca or Valladolid. The popular cloak is the burnous; the hat of the muleteer a degenerate turban; the haick, under whose folds Eastern jealousy required the features of all females to be concealed, survives in the mantilla, that once covered the face, and does yet in certain towns, as Tarifa, and which has even travelled to Spanish America as the _tapada_ of Lima. The sandal is much worn by the poorer classes, and the silken sash, or girdle, passes yet under its Arab name of _faja_. The irrigating apparatus, the cart, the plough,--which is nothing but a crooked stick,--are all Oriental; the mills were either actually built by the Moors, or modelled after those of that industrious people. Grain is still tramped out by cattle upon the primitive threshing-floor, and winnowed by the wind. The charcoal vender, with his panniers and his scales, is identical in all save costume with the vagrant charbonnier of Cairo.

The clapping of hands to call servants reminds one of the "Arabian Nights;" the seclusion of women savors strongly of the restraints of the harem.

Instances might be indefinitely multiplied to show the derivation of similar customs interwoven with every act of social and domestic life. And, notwithstanding the untold advantages and invaluable practical knowledge--the results of ages of experience--bequeathed by the Saracen to his conqueror, with the ruins of massive castles, and of palaces unrivalled in magnificent decoration, scattered all over the land; with the museums crowded with priceless relics of Arab art; with the fields watered by an ingenious yet simple system of irrigation, yielding prodigious returns with but trifling labor; it is the greatest insult you can offer a Spaniard to call him a "Moor," or insinuate that in his veins courses a drop of the blood of that despised race whose industry was once the boast, as its neglected souvenirs are now the glory, of his country.

THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHT.

JOSEPH MOORE.

["Outlying Europe and the Nearer Orient," by Joseph Moore, Jr.,
a work devoted to descriptive sketches of Egypt, the Holy Land,
and the various countries of Europe, is the source of the
following selection, which excellently delineates that ancient,
though hardly time-honored, institution of Spain, which has
long been its most distinctive form of public recreation.
Happily, no other race than the Spanish has adopted this cruel
sport.]

Nothing in the popular mind is more closely associated with Spain than the bull-fight. To travel in that country without witnessing the spectacle would imply the loss of an invaluable opportunity to study Spanish life. The people of all classes throughout the kingdom are unremitting in their enthusiasm for this favorite amusement, and no political or social prerogative could be guarded with more zealous devotion.