armour. Her martial spirit is lulled to rest, but its memory is kept
alive in the frowning battlements, the gaunt fortresses that crown each
peopled eminence, and guard the approaches of its ancient, war-scarred
cities. Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world,
free from the time of the mighty Goths,” as Padilla describes it, is a
rock built upon a rock 1,820 feet above the sea. It is a mighty citadel,
almost engirdled by the rushing Tagus, and armed at every point by
massive Moorish masonry--solid, venerable, invincible. Toledo, in the
heyday of its history, contained, beside the cathedral, one hundred and
ten churches, thirty-four hospitals, a university, and four colleges.
Toledo, or Toledoth, the Hebrew “city of generations,” has now only
fifty-nine churches; its hospitals have been reduced to four; its fame
as a seat of learning is a tale that is told. John Lomas, who wrote of
this city that it “never had rest until it entered into the tomb;
blighted, but not destroyed. There is the old Toledo yet, simply
fossilised--a theatre with the actors gone and the scenery left. But the
curtain will never be drawn up again, or the music re-commence. Rome may
play the wanton with each succeeding age, and deck herself out in
obedience to every passing fashion. But Toledo--? She is at least
faithful to the dead past. The liveliest imagination cannot picture her
as a creature of to-day, a receptive pupil of nineteenth century science
and improvement. And so she keeps her old ways: her old tongue, thank
heaven! knowing nothing of the mixed dialects and slang that mark off
progress; her old narrow streets and solid buildings that are so
beautifully fitted for defence, intrigue, and shelter, and would spell
ruin to any enterprising company that should attempt to adapt them to
the requirements of the new life that has come into the world. She has
been poked at--twice--by inquisitive, bustling railroads, without the
slightest electrifying results. So she retains her old Soko, and will
have nought to do with the correct _Plaza de la Constitucion_, her old
stern inconveniences and her old traditions.”
[Illustration: THE VISAGRA GATE, TOLEDO.]
In many respects the foregoing is a faithful picture of Toledo of
to-day. But will the curtain never be drawn up again? Will the music
never re-commence? I may be wrong, but I cannot share this opinion.
Writing eighteen years after Mr. Lomas, I have been privileged to find
his prognostications already proving incorrect. The power and virility
upon which Spain built up her greatness may slumber for awhile; but even
in the fastnesses
[Illustration: TOLEDO.
THE HIGH ALTAR, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]
of the Castilian mountains it has never died. The machinery of the
curtain of the theatre of Toledo is a trifle rusty, the pulleys are
jambed from long disuse; but that curtain is rising steadily if slowly,
and already I can hear the tuning up of fiddles in its ancient
orchestra. The ancient spirit still burns in the Toledans, and the
ancient prosperity of their city is surely recovering itself. Since 1884
much re-building has been done, and more is in progress; whilst new and
handsome shops are seen in the principal thoroughfares where an increase
of population and traffic is apparent.
[Illustration: THE DOOR OF THE SUN, TOLEDO.]
But one must live in such a city as Toledo in order to appreciate the
changes that are being wrought in her. The casual visitor cannot hope to
detect the specks of modernity in this vast temple of the antique. Its
ancient grandeur is comparatively impervious to the pretty wiles of
modern improvement. One’s eyes wander from the newly-built emporiums to
the immensity of its enduring monuments, and one’s mind flings back
instinctively into the past, out of which they arose to defy the hand of
Time himself. And so the majority of book-makers, who take Spain for
their subject, overlook the present condition of the country; the
instant life that rushes before their eyes escapes their notice. And,
indeed, it requires an effort, even on the part of a shrewd and
unemotional observer, to stand beneath the shadow of the ruins of the
old Alcázar and keep one’s mind from slipping backwards into the history
of a city which presents an epitome of the principal arts, religions,
and race-lives which have dominated the world for the last two thousand
years. This was the theatre in which grim tragedy was ever played, where
waves of strife, rapine, and misfortune swept remorselessly across its
stage in constant succession; where Jew and Roman, Goth and Moor in turn
played their stern parts. Here the voice of the Goth echoes amid Roman
ruins, and the step of the Christian treads on the heel of the Moor.
Here are palaces without nobles, churches without congregations, walks
without people; and over all that silence which is so peculiar to the
ancient cities of Spain. Before England was, Toledo had been.
In a city which holds one spellbound by its past, it must be difficult
for the present to make headway. Wörmann has well described Toledo as “a
gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain,
arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock;” and Street has
declared: “Few cities I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest
with it; and none, perhaps, come up to it in the singular magnificence
of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its
every corner.” And the grandeur is emphasised by the silence that serves
to enhance the awe that the place inspires in the heart of the visitor.
Such occasional sounds as are heard echo along the narrow streets, and
turn innumerable corners, and the noise of a passing horse reverberates
like the clatter of a charging squadron. But horses are few, and
carriages are very far between, for the ascents of Toledo are
formidable, and its turnings are endless. One must be resident in the
city for months in order to learn its topography: the visitor must
engage a guide, or be prepared to make a dozen inquiries on a journey
from the Hotel de Castilla to the Cathedral. It is a maze built of
masonry; an ideal place in which to lose oneself. One can walk for miles
through these stone passages and make
[Illustration: TOLEDO.
ALCÁNTARA DOOR AND BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: FAÇADE OF SANTA CRUZ.]
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: ALCÁNTARA GATE.]
but little progress, and zig-zag among the same houses for hours.
Without a guide it is possible to live for weeks in Toledo and yet not
see one quarter of the city. But, with an obliging cicerone to lead one
about, the “Spanish Rome” may be superficially examined in a few days.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, TOLEDO.]
Special admirers of ecclesiastic sculpture and architectural detail will
find in the famous cathedral of Toledo not one, but several weeks of
study and enjoyment laid out for them. To attempt even a general survey
of its marvels would be impossible in a volume of this size and design,
and I must refer the antiquarian to Señor Parro’s exhaustive book on
Toledo. In this work of 1,550 pages, one half is devoted to the
cathedral, which is justly considered one of the most beautiful in the
world. It is situated in the very heart of the city, around which
cluster multitudinous churches and convents. So closely do the
surrounding buildings press upon it, that no free view of the structure
can be obtained, and one passes with a feeling of infinite relief from
the congested vicinity of the exterior into the broad quietude, the
lonely shade, and the austere gravity of the interior. I am told that it
would take a week to minutely examine the high altar; it would take as
long to inspect the accumulation of treasures in the sacristy--treasures
of silver and gold, of pearls, rubies, and diamonds, sufficient, it is
said, to entirely replenish the exchequer of Spain. The frescoed ceiling
by Luca Giordano is the best in Spain; while pictures by Francesco
Bassano, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Rubens, Goya, Guercino, Van Dyck, and
Carlo Maratta are to be seen on every side. Through the beautiful
Oriental-looking cloister garden, with its shade of great trees, its
grove, and its mass of luxurious verdure, one arrives at the bell-tower,
from which one can enjoy a magnificent view of the city and the
surrounding country.
But an even finer panoramic view of Toledo is to be obtained from one of
the four great towers of the Alcázar. Involuntarily one catches one’s
breath, and pays a silent tribute of amazed admiration as the spectacle
discloses itself to view. From this vantage ground, every street, and
turning, and detail of the city is revealed, with the cathedral rising
like a mountain of granite in the midst of it. The statues on the
terrace of San Juan de los Reyes look like dolls, the houses like dolls’
houses, and the horses like huge beetles climbing the tiny alleys.
Towers and fortifications lie below us. A little further off, near the
_Puente de_
[Illustration: TOLEDO.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHOIR-STALLS, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]
_Alcántara_, are the ruins of the old _Castillo de San Servando_; and
beyond and around lies the great green plain, stretching outwards to the
distant rocks and mountains. At the foot of the city, and almost
surrounding it, runs the River Tagus.
[Illustration: ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE, TOLEDO.]
No finer panegyric has been written on this mighty River Tagus than
Ford’s description of its poetical and picturesque course: “First green
and arrowy, amid the yellow cornfields of New Castile, then freshening
the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing the gardens with verdure, and
filling the nightingale-tenanted glens with groves: then boiling and
rushing around the granite ravines of rock-built Toledo, hurrying to
escape from the cold shadow of its deep prison, and dashing joyously
into light and liberty, to wander far away into silent plains, and on to
Talavera, where its waters were dyed with brave blood, and gladly
reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets of England--triumphantly
it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of Almaraz, down to desolate
Estremadura, and in a stream as tranquil as the azure sky by which it is
curtained, yet powerful enough to force the mountains at Alcántara.
There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a hundred miles to see: it
stems the fierce, condensed stream, and ties the rocky gorges together:
grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the tender colours of seventeen
centuries, it looms like the gray skeleton of Roman power, with all the
sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the interest of the past and
present. How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No
commerce has ever made it its highway--no English steamer has ever
civilised its waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have
witnessed battles, not peace: have reflected castles and dungeons, not
quays, or warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of
the Thames and Rhine: it is truly a river of Spain--that isolated and
solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life: man
has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and
independent gambols.”
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES, COURTYARD, TOLEDO.]
The old Alcázar, which occupies the highest ground in Toledo, is of
Roman origin, and was used by the Visigoths as a citadel. The Cid
resided here after the capture of the city by Alfonso VI., and it was
converted into a palace by the saintly Ferdinand and the learned
Alfonso. It was burned down in the war of Spanish Succession in 1710,
was restored by Cardinal Lorenzana in 1772, was burned by the French in
1810, and in
[Illustration: TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.
CENTRAL NAVE.]
[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF HIGH ALTAR.]
[Illustration: THE LION DOOR.]
1887 it was gutted by a third conflagration. To-day it is utilised as a
Military Academy for the education of officers for the Spanish infantry.
The Archbishop’s Palace, the Hospital of Santa Cruz, the Moorish Mosque,
the Town Hall, the Synagogue of _Santa Maria la Blanca_, and the Church
of _San Juan de los Reyes_, which looks more like a royal palace than a
church, are but a few of the many sights that Toledo has to offer to the
leisured visitor. To the traveller, whose time is limited, as was mine
when I stayed there, she leaves an impression of greatness, grandeur,
and melancholy which one does not, and would not, lightly lose.
From Toledo I proceeded direct to Córdova, because, in my mind, the two
cities were linked together by the broad band of longevity, and I
desired to see them both in the same mood cycle. So, while the
atmosphere of Toledan greatness was still hot in my veins, I hastened
across the broad, bare, sandy plains of the celebrated Mancha--the
immortal theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote--past
Argasamilla--where Don Quixote was born, and died, and where his great
creator, Cervantes, was imprisoned for debt--across the Sierra Morena to
the land of the valley of the Guadalquiver--“the garden of Spain, the
Eden of the Arabs, the paradise of poets and painters”--to Andalucia.
Thenceforward there are no more rocks, but fields now studded, now
hidden by flowers--flowers, flowers all the way--carpet after carpet of
purple, gold, and snow-white flowers, poppies, daisies, lilies, wild
mushrooms, and ranunculuses. Then, as we are carried deeper into the
bosom of the south, we are met with grain and orange groves, olive
groves, and green hillsides, vineyards, and fruit trees. First a few
Moorish towers and many-coloured houses, then on the hills of the Sierra
Nevada clusters of villas and gardens, then a perfumed air scented with
rose leaves, an enchanted garden, and--Córdova.
[Illustration: BRIDGE AND CATHEDRAL, CÓRDOVA.]
Córdova is as different a place from Toledo as Monte Carlo is from
Manchester. Toledo, sombre, austere, overpowering in its impressive
solemnity; and Córdova, gay, vivacious, flashing its pervading whitewash
in the sunshine beneath the clearest sky in Europe. And yet Córdova is
one of the most ancient of cities; its record of all the races that have
fought for it, made it, died for it during twenty centuries, are visible
on every side. A thousand years ago it boasted upwards of a million
inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and six hundred
_fondas_. Its cathedral was formerly a mosque: before that it had been a
basilica: and it had commenced life as a Roman temple dedicated to
Janus. The Carthagenians styled the city the “Gem of the South.” Cæsar
half destroyed it, and slaughtered 28,000 of its inhabitants, because it
had sided with Pompey. Under the Goths its importance diminished; but it
became, under the Moors, the Athens of the West, and was the
[Illustration: TOLEDO.
RETABLO, SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES CHURCH.]
[Illustration: THE LION DOOR, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: SEPULCHRE OF ALONSO DE CARRILLO, TOLEDO CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR, SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES CHURCH.]
successful rival of Bagdad and Damascus as a seat of learning, and the
centre of European civilisation. It was the birthplace of Seneca, Lucan,
Averroes, and Juan de Mena, the Chaucer of Spain; and here, in the
Church of San Nicolas, Gonzalo de Córdova, the great captain of Spain,
was baptised.
To-day Córdova is no more than an overgrown village in size and rank, a
village with open-air market-places, and winding, uneven streets.
Theophile Gautier wrote, in his delightful graphic style of the streets
of Córdova, that “they have a more thoroughly African appearance than
those of any other town in Spain. One threads one’s way between
interminable whitewashed walls, their scanty windows guarded by heavy
iron bars, over a pebbly pavement so rough that it is like the bed of a
torrent, littered with straw from the burdens of innumerable donkeys.”
These streets are traversed by happy, light-hearted people, who would
seem to have no memory of the past, and no thought for the morrow. But
the city contains a mosque which gives one a better idea of the power
and magnificence of the Moors than anything else in Spain, not excepting
even the Alhambra. This wondrous Arab temple--huge, wonderful,
fairy-like in its Eastern gorgeousness--with its thousand marble
columns, is unique in beauty as it is in curious detail. It is said that
these columns were brought, already shaped, from various centres of the
old civilised world--Carthage, Constantinople, Alexandria, Nîmes, and
Narbonne--while others came from the marble quarries of the Sierra
Morena, from Loja and Cadiz. Black, gray, dark green, and dull red in
colour, they stretch out on every side, and form a seemingly boundless
forest of marble pillars.
Concerning the impression made by this many-columned mosque, Gautier
says: “You appear to be walking about in a roofed forest rather than in
a building: whichever direction you turn to, your eye strays along rows
of columns, which cross each other, and lengthen out endlessly, like
marble trees that have risen spontaneously from the soil.” De Amicis has
written of it in similar terms: “Imagine a forest; fancy yourself in the
thickest portion of it, and that you can see nothing but trunks of
trees. So, in this mosque, on whichever side you look, the eye loses
itself among the columns. It is a forest of marble, whose confines one
cannot discover.” It stands, this dazzling Mezquita, in the centre of
the Court of Orange Trees, whose rows were planted to correspond with
the lines of the columns in the mosque. Above the dark, shining foliage
and flame-colour fruit rises the creamy delicate belfry-tower, rival of
Sevilla’s Giralda.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE, CÓRDOVA.]
Some day, when “the wandering footsteps of my life” take me again to
Spain, I shall go to Córdova, and seek out this _Patio de los Naranjos_;
and among its pleasant fountains, and its blithesome, indolent
gossipers, I shall recall the impressions of my former visit. And, if
possible, I shall again visit the city in May. The guide-books warn the
traveller against going there in that month, when the annual fair is
held. I know that fair, as the suspicious Brother Goldfinch used to say,
with its booths erected under the trees, its band and its coloured
lanterns, its dear dates and its cigar lotteries, its gaiety, its gaudy
mantillas, its laughing, dark-eyed girls and gesticulating men, and its
culminating display of fireworks. I know it, and I can conceive no
reason why the guide-book makers should endeavour to
[Illustration: CHOIR STALLS, CÓRDOVA CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: GENERAL INTERIOR VIEW, CÓRDOVA CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: THE PRIM MEMORIAL, BARCELONA.]
deprive other visitors of the enjoyment I got out of the innocent and
exhilarating experience.
Everything about Córdova--the streets, the squares, the houses, with
their _patios_--are small, lovely, mysterious, and Eastern. The
ground-work is white--white and smooth are the walls and the houses--but
the detail is a blaze of colours--roses, and oranges, and pinks forming
a colour scheme of Nature’s own designing. The youthful gaiety of the
town has overgrown its ancient might and sombreness, even as gay
flowers, burst from between the ancient stones of a ruined castle. It
has a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; a mysterious spell
that one cannot resist. The cathedral is a fortress from without, but
within it is a palace of enchantment; the town is a citadel become a
pleasure garden; it is a museum of Roman and Arabian antiquities,
peopled with blithesome men and women. Within a mile or two of Córdova
once flourished Medina Az-zahra, which was one of the most marvellous
works of architecture, the most superb earthly palace, and the most
delicious garden in the world, and Zahira, built by the powerful
Almansur, the governor of the kingdom. Both these superb cities have
been destroyed, and not even the ruins are to be found.
The Castiles.
Some of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated
in the two Castiles--silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst
of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp
of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their
Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind;
and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising
severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the
Burgos of the older province. Burgos, a representative Gothic Castilian
city, was long the capital of the kingdom of Castile and León, and its
cathedral ranks among the finest in Spain. What voyager that crosses the
Pyrenees is not acquainted with Burgos Cathedral? The train that hurls
the traveller across the mountainous boundary dumps him in Burgos, and
being there, he proceeds forthwith to inspect the Cathedral. He is, it
may be assumed, new to Spain, the Spanish cathedrals have the charm of
novelty, and the first one he visits he does thoroughly. Unless he is an
architect, or an archæologist, he will expend over this first specimen
of the Peninsula’s religious edifices an amount of enthusiasm that
would, if properly apportioned, carry him with interest round all the
cathedrals of Spain. As an illustration of this contention I may mention
the experience of an American whom I encountered in Seville. He was
enthusiastic about the bull-fighting, delighted with the Alcázar, and
fascinated with the Sevillian patios; but when I spoke to him of the
cathedral, he replied, in an off-hand manner and a shrug of the
shoulders: “Oh, I haven’t seen it, except from the outside. I got so
full up of cathedrals at Burgos that I haven’t been inside another.”
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE CASTLE, BURGOS.]
Burgos Cathedral is certainly a magnificent specimen to get, to quote my
American acquaintance, “full up on.” Although by no means large in
comparison with many others in Spain, it appears to fill half the town.
In addition to its conspicuousness and inviting aspect, it is the
principal surviving monument to the ancient wealth and grandeur of the
province, and one of the most beautiful structures in Europe. It was
begun in 1221, and it was not finished till 1567, so that the period of
its erection extends over three centuries and a-half, during which
Gothic architecture passed through its successive stages in what we
regard as Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. The exterior is
greatly admired for the variety and richness of its outline, which
embraces a whole forest of pinnacles, spires, and towers; but
unfortunately it is so hemmed in with houses that it is not easy to find
a point from which the eye can take in the whole sweep of the building
from one end to the other. The _Capilla del Condestable_, the most
interesting portion of the interior, might vie, for elevation and
spaciousness of proportion, with many a church; while its magnificent
tombs, profusion of sculpture and other decoration, combined with its
general sumptuousness, render it worthy to be the sepulchre of kings.
Burgos, like all other Spanish cathedrals, or all that I have visited,
abounds in magnificent iron-work, a department of art which appears to
have been cultivated with more ease in this country than in all the rest
of Christendom. Almost every chapel (and some cathedrals contain no
fewer than twenty) is fenced about by grilles of most graceful design
and admirable workmanship; while the high altar is enclosed on two sides
by railings, and in front by gates of the same material, each portion
being a perfect marvel of the metal-worker’s art. Some of these gates
stand thirty feet high; and when constructed of iron, as is usually the
case, are not only richly gilt, so as to convey the effect of light and
shade, but covered in addition with profuse ornamentation and heraldic
devices.
There is a Christ in Burgos Cathedral--_the_ Christ it is called in
Burgos--and it is claimed for it that it bleeds every Friday. It hangs
behind a curtain over the altar in one of the chapels. When the curtain
was drawn, I expected to see a figure of painted wood or marble, such as
one sees elsewhere, and the spectacle filled me with horror. For this
effigy is covered with skin, and is so terribly real that one recoils
from it involuntarily. The beard, the hair, and the lashes are real, the
hair is matted with clots of blood, the wounds gape in the side and the
hands, and the pose is a marvel of realism. It has well been designated
“_the_ Christ”--to see it is to lose all desire to look upon it again.
In one of the rooms of the old sacristy the visitor is shown the broken
and worm-eaten coffer in which the Cid carried his treasure in his wars
against the Moors. The Cid, it would appear, was the original exponent
of the confidence trick. Being in need of ready money, he filled the
coffer with metal and stones, and pawned it to a Jewish usurer, making a
stipulation that it should not be opened until the loan was repaid.
Seeing that the Cid would, in all probability, have kept the trick to
himself if he had redeemed the goods, we may assume that he never paid
his debt. People have been filling portmanteaus with bricks and living
at hotels on the good faith of their worthless luggage ever since.