promontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams Eresma and
Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring times a palace, a
fortress, a prison (where our friend--everybody's friend--Gil Blas was
once confined), and of late years a college of artillery. In one of its
rooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his
orthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped
a royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara will
seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "La
Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathless
music of Donizetti.
Driving through a throng of beggars that encumbered the carriage wheels
as grasshoppers sometimes do the locomotives on a Western railway, we
came to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by Gil de Ontanon, father and
son, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a delight to the
eyes; the rich harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry of
proportion, the profuse opulence and grave finish of the details. It was
built in that happy era of architecture when a builder of taste and
culture had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, and before
the degrading influence of the Jesuits appeared in the churches of
Europe. Within the Cathedral is remarkably airy and graceful in effect.
A most judicious use has been made of the exquisite salmon-colored
marbles of the country in the great altar and the pavement.
We were met by civil ecclesiastics of the foundation and shown the
beauties and the wonders of the place. Among much that is worthless,
there is one very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de Juni, of
which that excellent Mr. Madoz says "it is worthy to rank with the best
masterpieces of Raphael or--Mengs;" as if one should say of a poet that
he was equal to Shakespeare or Southey.
We walked through the cloisters and looked at the tombs. A flood of warm
light poured through the graceful arches and lit up the trees in the
garden and set the birds to singing, and made these cloisters pleasanter
to remember than they usually are. Our attendant priest told us, with an
earnest credulity that was very touching, the story of Maria del Salto,
Mary of the Leap, whose history was staring at us from the wall. She was
a Jewish lady, whose husband had doubts of her discretion, and so threw
her from a local Tarpeian rock. As she fell she invoked the Virgin, and
came down easily, sustained, as you see in the picture, by her faith and
her petticoats.
As we parted from the good fathers and entered our carriages at the door
of the church, the swarm of mendicants had become an army. The word had
doubtless gone through the city of the outlandish men who had gone into
the Cathedral with whole coats, and the result was a _levee en masse_ of
the needy. Every coin that was thrown to them but increased the clamor,
as it confirmed them in their idea of the boundless wealth and
munificence of the givers. We recalled the profound thought of Emerson,
"If the rich were only as rich as the poor think them!"
At last we drove desperately away through the ragged and screaming
throng. We passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of the
Parral, which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later years
has been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined churches;
past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with its round-arched
cloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence the Bishop of Segovia,
and the elegant tower of St. Esteban, where the Roman is dying and the
Gothic is dawning; and every step of the route is a study and a joy to
the antiquarian.
But though enriched by all these legacies of an immemorial past, there
seems no hope, no future for Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of the
Plain. Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay company is gone.
Its streets are too large for the population, and yet they swarm with
beggars. I had often heard it compared in outline to a ship,--the
sunrise astern and the prow pointing westward,--and as we drove away
that day and I looked back to the receding town, it seemed to me like a
grand hulk of some richly laden galleon, aground on the rock that holds
it, alone, abandoned to its fate among the barren billows of the
tumbling ridges, its crew tired out with struggling and apathetic in
despair, mocked by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that ever
shone, and gazing always forward to the new world and the new times
hidden in the rosy sunset, which they shall never see.
THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS
Emilio Castelar said to me one day, "Toledo is the most remarkable city
in Spain. You will find there three strata of glories,--Gothic, Arab,
and Castilian,--and an upper crust of beggars and silence."
I went there in the pleasantest time of the year, the first days of
June. The early harvest was in progress, and the sunny road ran through
golden fields which were enlivened by the reapers gathering in their
grain with shining sickles. The borders of the Tagus were so cool and
fresh that it was hard to believe one was in the arid land of Castile.
From Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes of dun hillocks
and pale-blue vegetation, such as are only seen in nature in Central
Spain, and only seen in art on the matchless canvas of Velazquez. But
from the time you cross the tawny flood of the Tagus just north of
Aranjuez, the valley is gladdened by its waters all the way to the
Primate City.
I am glad I am not writing a guide-book, and do not feel any
responsibility resting upon me of advising the gentle reader to stop at
Aranjuez or to go by on the other side. There is a most amiable and
praiseworthy class of travellers who feel a certain moral necessity
impelling them to visit every royal abode within their reach. They
always see precisely the same things,--some thousand of gilt chairs,
some faded tapestry and marvellous satin upholstery, a room in
porcelain, and a room in imitation of some other room somewhere else,
and a picture or two by that worthy and tedious young man, Raphael
Mengs. I knew I would see all these things at Aranjuez, and so contented
myself with admiring its pretty site, its stone-cornered brick facade,
its high-shouldered French roof, and its general air of the Place
Royale, from the outside. The gardens are very pleasant, and lonely
enough for the most philosophic stroller. A clever Spanish writer says
of them, "They are sombre as the thoughts of Philip II., mysterious and
gallant as the pleasures of Philip IV." To a revolutionary mind, it is a
certain pleasure to remember that this was the scene of the _emeute_
that drove Charles IV. from his throne, and the Prince of Peace from his
queen's boudoir. Ferdinand VII., the turbulent and restless Prince of
Asturias, reaped the immediate profit of his father's abdication; but
the two worthless creatures soon called in Napoleon to decide the
squabble, which he did in his leonine way by taking the crown away from
both of them and handing it over for safe-keeping to his lieutenant
brother Joseph. Honor among thieves!--a silly proverb, as one readily
sees if he falls into their hands, or reads the history of kings.
If Toledo had been built, by some caprice of enlightened power,
especially for a show city, it could not be finer in effect. In detail,
it is one vast museum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills,
with its long lines of palaces and convents terraced around the rocky
slope, and on the height the soaring steeples of a swarm of churches
piercing the blue, and the huge cube of the Alcazar crowning the topmost
crest, and domineering the scene. The magnificent zigzag road which
leads up the steep hillside from the bridge of Alcantara gives an
indefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of some fortress of
impossible extent.
This road is new, and in perfect condition. But do not imagine you can
judge the city by the approaches. When your carriage has mounted the
hill and passed the evening promenade of the To-ledans, the quaint
triangular Place,--I had nearly called it Square,--"waking laughter in
indolent reviewers," the Zocodover, you are lost in the dae-dalian
windings of the true streets of Toledo, where you can touch the walls on
either side, and where two carriages could no more pass each other than
two locomotives could salute and go by on the same track. This
interesting experiment, which is so common in our favored land, could
never be tried in Toledo, as I believe there is only one turnout in the
city, a minute omnibus with striped linen hangings at the sides, driven
by a young Castilian whose love of money is the root of much discussion
when you pay his bill. It is a most remarkable establishment. The horses
can cheerfully do their mile in fifteen or twenty minutes, but they make
more row about it than a high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and the
crazy little trap is noisier in proportion to its size than anything I
have ever seen, except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an
excursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable;
let it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the better,
for every door is a study.
It is hard to conceive that this was once a great capital with a
population of two hundred thousand souls. You can easily walk from one
end of the city to the other in less than half an hour, and the houses
that remain seem comfortably filled by eighteen thousand inhabitants.
But in this narrow space once swarmed that enormous and busy multitude.
The city was walled about by powerful stone ramparts, which yet stand in
all their massy perfection. So there could have been no suburbs. This
great aggregation of humanity lived and toiled on the crests and in the
wrinkles of the seven hills we see to-day. How important were the
industries of the earlier days we can guess from the single fact that
John of Padilla, when he rose in defence of municipal liberty in the
time of Charles V., drew in one day from the teeming workshops twenty
thousand fighting men. He met the usual fate of all Spanish patriots,
shameful and cruel death. His palace was razed to the ground. Successive
governments, in shifting fever-fits of liberalism and absolutism, have
set up and pulled down his statue. But his memory is loved and honored,
and the example of this noblest of the comuneros impresses powerfully
to-day the ardent young minds of the new Spain.
Your first walk is of course to the Cathedral, the Primate Church of the
kingdom. Besides its ecclesiastical importance, it is well worthy of
notice in itself. It is one of the purest specimens of Gothic
architecture in existence, and is kept in an admirable state of
preservation. Its situation is not the most favorable. It is approached
by a network of descending streets, all narrow and winding, as streets
were always built under the intelligent rule of the Moors. They
preferred to be cool in summer and sheltered in winter, rather than to
lay out great deserts of boulevards, the haunts of sunstroke and
pneumonia. The site of the Cathedral was chosen from strategic reasons
by St. Eugene, who built there his first Episcopal Church. The Moors
made a mosque of it when they conquered Castile, and the fastidious
piety of St. Ferdinand would not permit him to worship in a shrine thus
profaned. He tore down the old church and laid, in 1227, the
foundations of this magnificent structure, which was two centuries after
his death in building. There is, however, great unity of purpose and
execution in this Cathedral, due doubtless to the fact that the
architect Perez gave fifty years of his long life to the superintendence
of the early work. Inside and outside it is marked by a grave and
harmonious majesty. The great western facade is enriched with three
splendid portals,--the side ones called the doors of Hell and Judgment;
and the central a beautiful ogival arch divided into two smaller ones,
and adorned with a lavish profusion of delicately sculptured figures of
saints and prophets; on the chaste and severe cornice above, a group of
spirited busts represents the Last Supper. There are five other doors to
the temple, of which the door of the Lions is the finest, and just
beside it a heavy Ionic portico in the most detestable taste indicates
the feeling and culture that survived in the reign of Charles IV.
To the north of the west facade rises the massive tower. It is not among
the tallest in the world, being three hundred and twenty-four feet high,
but is very symmetrical and impressive. In the preservation of its
pyramidal purpose it is scarcely inferior to that most consummate work,
the tower of St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of three
superimposed structures, gradually diminishing in solidity and
massiveness from the square base to the high-springing octagonal spire,
garlanded with thorny crowns. It is balanced at the south end of the
facade by the pretty cupola and lantern of the Mozarabic Chapel, the
work of the Greek Theotocopouli.
But we soon grow tired of the hot glare of June, and pass in a moment
into the cool twilight vastness of the interior, refreshing to body and
soul. Five fine naves, with eighty-four pillars formed each of sixteen
graceful columns,--the entire edifice measuring four hundred feet in
length and two hundred feet in breadth,--a grand and shadowy temple
grove of marble and granite. At all times the light is of an unearthly
softness and purity, toned by the exquisite windows and rosaces. But as
evening draws on, you should linger till the sacristan grows peremptory,
to watch the gorgeous glow of the western sunlight on the blazing roses
of the portals, and the marvellous play of rich shadows and faint gray
lights in the eastern chapels, where the grand aisles sweep in their
perfect curves around the high altar. A singular effect is here created
by the gilded organ pipes thrust out horizontally from the choir. When
the powerful choral anthems of the church peal out over the kneeling
multitude, it requires little fancy to imagine them the golden trumpets
of concealed archangels, who would be quite at home in that incomparable
choir.
If one should speak of all the noteworthy things you meet in this
Cathedral, he would find himself in danger of following in the footsteps
of Mr. Parro, who wrote a handbook of Toledo, in which seven hundred and
forty-five pages are devoted to a hasty sketch of the basilica. For five
hundred years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have worked together
and in rivalry to beautify this spot. The boundless riches of the Church
and the boundless superstition of the laity have left their traces here
in every generation in forms of magnificence and beauty. Each of the
chapels--and there are twenty-one of them--is a separate masterpiece in
its way. The finest are those of Santiago and St. Ildefonso,--the former
built by the famous Constable Alvaro de Luna as a burial-place for
himself and family, and where he and his wife lie in storied marble; and
the other commemorating that celebrated visit of the Virgin to the
bishop, which is the favorite theme of the artists and ecclesiastical
gossips of Spain.
There was probably never a morning call which gave rise to so much talk.
It was not the first time the Virgin had come to Toledo. This was always
a favorite excursion of hers. She had come from time to time, escorted
by St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. But on the morning in question,
which was not long after Bishop Ildefonso had written his clever
treatise, "De Virginitate Stae Mariae," the Queen of Heaven came down to
matin prayers, and, taking the bishop's seat, listened to the sermon
with great edification. After service she presented him with a nice new
chasuble, as his own was getting rather shabby, made of "cloth of
heaven," in token of her appreciation of his spirited pamphlet in her
defence. This chasuble still exists in a chest in Asturias. If you open
the chest, you will not see it; but this only proves the truth of the
miracle, for the chroniclers say the sacred vestment is invisible to
mortal eyes.
But we have another and more palpable proof of the truth of the history.
The slab of marble on which the feet of the celestial visitor alighted
is still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel built on the very
spot where the avatar took place. The slab is enclosed in red jasper and
guarded by an iron grating, and above it these words of the Psalmist are
engraved in the stone, _Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus._
This story is cut in marble and carved in wood and drawn upon brass and
painted upon canvas, in a thousand shapes and forms all over Spain. You
see in the Museum at Madrid a picture by Murillo devoted to this idle
fancy of a cunning or dreaming priest. The subject was unworthy of the
painter, and the result is what might have been expected,--a picture of
trivial and mundane beauty, without the least suggestion of
spirituality.
But there can be no doubt of the serious, solemn earnestness with which
the worthy Castilians from that day to this believe the romance. They
came up in groups and families, touching their fingers to the sacred
slab and kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father
would take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger
around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to the
grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frail
and so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of the
mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that pretty
white-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and pulling out a
blessing.
A few feet from this worship-worn stone, a circle drawn on one of the
marble flags marks the spot where Santa Leocadia also appeared to this
same favored Ildefonso and made her compliments on his pamphlet. Was
ever author so happy in his subject and his gentle readers? The good
bishop evidently thought the story of this second apparition might be
considered rather a heavy draught on the credulity of his flock, so he
whipped out a convenient knife and cut off a piece of her saint-ship's
veil, which clinched the narrative and struck doubters dumb. That great
king and crazy relic-hunter, Philip II., saw this rag in his time with
profound emotion,--this tiger heart, who could order the murder of a
thousand innocent beings without a pang.
There is another chapel in this Cathedral which preaches forever its
silent condemnation of Spanish bigotry to deaf ears. This is the
Mozarabic Chapel, sacred to the celebration of the early Christian rite
of Spain. During the three centuries of Moorish domination the
enlightened and magnanimous conquerors guaranteed to those Christians
who remained within their lines the free exercise of all their rights,
including perfect freedom of worship. So that side by side the mosque
and the church worshipped God each in its own way without fear or wrong.
But when Alonso VI. recaptured the city in the eleventh century, he
wished to establish uniformity of worship, and forbade the use of the
ancient liturgy in Toledo. That which the heathen had respected the
Catholic outraged. The great Cardinal Ximenez restored the primitive
rite and devoted this charming chapel to its service. How ill a return
was made for Moorish tolerance we see in the infernal treatment they
afterwards received from king and Church. They made them choose between
conversion and death. They embraced Christianity to save their lives.
Then the priests said, "Perhaps this conversion is not genuine! Let us
send the heathen away out of our sight." One million of the best
citizens of Spain were thus torn from their homes and landed starving on
the wild African coast. And Te Deums were sung in the churches for this
triumph of Catholic unity. From that hour Spain has never prospered. It
seems as if she were lying ever since under the curse of these breaking
hearts.
Passing by a world of artistic beauties which never tire the eyes, but
soon would tire the chronicler and reader, stepping over the broad
bronze slab in the floor which covers the dust of the haughty primate
Porto Carrero, but which bears neither name nor date, only this
inscription of arrogant humility, HIC JACET PULVIS CINIS ET NIHIL, we
walk into the verdurous and cheerful Gothic cloisters. They occupy the
site of the ancient Jewish markets, and the zealous prelate Tenorio,
cousin to the great lady's man Don Juan, could think of no better way of
acquiring the ground than that of stirring up the mob to burn the houses
of the heretics. A fresco that adorns the gate explains the means
employed, adding insult to the old injury. It is a picture of a
beautiful child hanging upon a cross; a fiendish-looking Jew, on a
ladder beside him, holds in his hand the child's heart, which he has
just taken from his bleeding breast; he holds the dripping knife in his
teeth. This brutal myth was used for centuries with great effect by the
priesthood upon the mob whenever they wanted a Jew's money or his blood.
Even to-day the old poison has not lost its power. This very morning I
heard under my window loud and shrill voices. I looked out and saw a
group of brown and ragged women, with babies in their arms, discussing
the news from Madrid. The Protestants, they said, had begun to steal
Catholic children. They talked themselves into a fury. Their elf-locks
hung about their fierce black eyes. The sinews of their lean necks
worked tensely in their voluble rage. Had they seen our mild missionary
at that moment, whom all men respect and all children instinctively
love, they would have torn him in pieces in their Maenad fury, and would
have thought they were doing their duty as mothers and Catholics.
This absurd and devilish charge was seriously made in a Madrid journal,
the organ of the Moderates, and caused great fermentation for several
days, street rows, and debates in the Cortes, before the excitement died
away. Last summer, in the old Murcian town of Lorca, an English
gentleman, who had been several weeks in the place, was attacked and
nearly killed by a mob, who insisted that he was engaged in the business
of stealing children, and using their spinal marrow for lubricating
telegraph wires! What a picture of blind and savage ignorance is here
presented! It reminds us of that sad and pitiful "blood-bath revolt" of
Paris, where the wretched mob rose against the wretched tyrant Louis
XV., accusing him of bathing in the blood of children to restore his own
wasted and corrupted energies.