masonry: it consists of marvellous mosaics covering everything
and simulating brocades and embroideries, but far more beautiful
and durable than any woven tissue, for its lustre and diaper-work
have been preserved through long centuries because it is formed of
almost imperishable matter,--myriads of fragments of marble, with
mother-of-pearl and gold. Throughout the whole, green and gold
predominate. The designs are numbers of strange vases holding stiff
and symmetrical bouquets: conventional foliage of a bygone period,
dream-flowers fashioned in ancient days. Above these are antique
vine-branches composed of an infinite variety of green marbles, stems
of archaic rigidity bearing grapes of gold and clusters of pearl. Here
and there, to break the monotony of the green, twin-petals of great,
red flowers, shaded with minute fragments of pink marble and porphyry,
are thrown upon a background of gold.
In the glow of colour streaming through the windows all the splendours
of Oriental tales seem to be revealed, vibrating through the twilight
and silence of this sanctuary which is always open and surrounded by
the spacious courtyard in which we stroll alone. Little birds, quite
at home in the mosque, fly in and out of the open, bronze doors, and
alight on the porphyry cornices and on the pearl and gold, and are
benevolently regarded by the two or three venerable and white-bearded
officials who are praying in the shadowy recesses. On the marble
pavement are spread several antique Persian and Turkish rugs of the
most delicate, faded hues.
On entering this circular mosque its vast centre is invisible, as it is
surrounded by a double screen. The first is of wood, finely carved in
the style of the Mozarabians; the second, of Gothic iron-work, placed
there by the Crusaders when they used it temporarily as a Christian
fane. Mounting some marble steps, our eyes at last rest upon this
jealously-guarded interior.
Considering all the surrounding splendour, we now expect even more
marvellous riches to be revealed, but we are awed by an apparition
of quite a different nature,--a vague and gloomy shape seems to have
its abode amid the shadows of this gorgeous precinct; a mass, as yet
undefined, seems to surge through the semi-darkness like a great,
black, solidified wave.
This is the summit of Mount Moriah, sacred alike to the Israelites,
Mussulmans, and Christians; this is the threshing-floor of Ornan the
Jebusite, where King David saw the Destroying Angel holding in his hand
the destroying sword stretched out over Jerusalem (2 Samuel xxiv. 16;
1 Chronicles xxi. 15).
Here David built an altar of burnt-offering and here his son Solomon
raised the Temple, levelling the surroundings at great cost, but
preserving the irregularities of this peak because the foot of the
angel had touched it. “Then Solomon began to build the house of the
Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David
his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing-floor
of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chronicles iii. 1).
We know through what scenes of inconceivable magnificence and
desolating fury this mountain of Moriah passed during the ages. The
Temple that crowned it, razed by Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt on the return
from the captivity in Babylon, and again destroyed under Antonius IV.,
was again rebuilt by Herod: it saw Jesus pass by; His voice was heard
upon its summit.
Therefore, each of those mighty edifices which cost the ransom of
an empire, and whose almost superhuman foundations are still found
buried in the earth, confound the imagination of us moderns. After the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a Temple of Jupiter was erected
under Hadrian’s reign, replacing the Temple of the Saviour. Later, the
early Christians, to spite the Jews, kept this sacred peak covered with
_débris_ and dirt, and it was the Caliph Omar who piously caused it
to be cleared as soon as he had conquered Palestine; and finally, his
successor, the Caliph Abd-el-Melek, about the year 690, enclosed it
with the lovely Mosque that is still standing.
With the exception of the dome, restored during the Twelfth and
Fourteenth Centuries, the Crusaders found it in its present condition,
already ancient and bearing the same relation to them that the Gothic
cathedrals do to us, for it was clothed with the same fadeless
embroideries of gold and marble and with its glistening brocades which
are almost imperishable. Converting it into a church, they placed
their marble altar in the centre on David’s rock. On the fall of the
Franks, Saladin, after long purifications by sprinklings of rose-water,
restored it to the Faith of Allah.
Inscriptions of gold in old Cufic characters above the friezes speak
of Christ after the Koran, and their deep wisdom is such as to sow
disquietude in Christian souls: “O ye who have received the scriptures,
exceed not the just bounds of your religion. Verily Christ Jesus is the
son of Mary, the apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto
Mary. Believe then in God and in his Apostle, but say not there is a
Trinity, forbear this, it will be better for you. God is but one. It is
not meet that God should have a son. When He decreeth a thing He only
saith unto it: ‘Be’; and it is.” (Sura iv. 19.)
A dread Past, crushing to our modern puerility, is evoked by this
black rock, this dead and mummified mountain peak, on which the dew of
Heaven never falls, which never produces a plant, nor a spray of moss,
but which lies like the Pharaohs in their sarcophagi, and which, after
two thousand years of troubles, has now been sheltered for thirteen
centuries beneath the brooding of this golden dome and these marvellous
walls raised for it alone.
_Jérusalem_ (Paris, 1895).
THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
Notwithstanding that Burgos was for so long a time the first city of
Castile, it is not very Gothic in appearance; with the exception of a
street where there are several windows and doors of the Renaissance,
ornamented with coats of arms and their supporters, the houses do not
date further back than the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, and
are exceedingly commonplace; they are old, but not antique. But Burgos
has her Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful in the world;
unfortunately, like all the Gothic cathedrals, it is shut in by a
number of ignoble buildings which prevent you from appreciating the
structure as a whole and grasping the mass at a glance. The principal
porch looks upon a square, in the centre of which is a beautiful
fountain surmounted by a delightful statue of Christ, the target for
all the ruffians of the town who have no better pastime than throwing
stones at its sculptures. The magnificent porch, like an intricate and
flowered embroidery of lace, has been scraped and rubbed as far as the
first frieze by I don’t know what Italian prelates,--some important
amateurs in architecture, who were great admirers of plain walls and
ornamentation in _good taste_, and who, having pity for those poor
barbarian architects who would not follow the Corinthian order and
had no appreciation of Attic grace and the triangular fronton, wished
to arrange the Cathedral in the Roman style. Many people are still of
this opinion in Spain, where the so-called Messidor style flourishes
in all its purity, and, exactly as was the case in France before the
Romantic School brought the Middle Ages into favour again and caused
the beauty and meaning of the cathedrals to be understood, prefer all
kinds of abominable edifices, pierced with innumerable windows and
ornamented with Pæstumian columns, to the most florid and richly-carved
Gothic cathedrals. Two sharp spires cut in saw-teeth and open-worked,
as if pierced with a punch, festooned, embroidered, and carved down to
the last details like the bezel of a ring, spring towards God with all
the ardour of faith and transport of a firm conviction. Our unbelieving
campaniles would not dare to venture into the air with only stone-lace
and ribs as delicate as gossamer to support them. Another tower,
sculptured with an unheard-of wealth, but not so high, marks the spot
where the transept intersects the nave, and completes the magnificence
of the outline. A multitude of statues of saints, archangels, kings,
and monks animates the whole mass of architecture, and this stone
population is so numerous, so crowded, and so swarming, that surely it
must exceed the population of flesh and blood inhabiting the town....
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS, SPAIN]
The choir, which contains the stalls, called _silleria_, is enclosed
by iron grilles of the most wonderful _repoussé_ work; the pavement,
according to the Spanish custom, is covered with immense mats of
spartium, and each stall has, moreover, its own little mat of dry
grass, or rushes. On raising your head you see a kind of dome, formed
by the interior of the tower of which we have already spoken; it is a
gulf of sculptures, arabesques, statues, little columns, ribs, lancets,
and pendentives--enough to give you a vertigo. If you looked at it
for two years, you would not see it all. It is as crowded together
as the leaves of a cabbage, and fenestrated like a fish-slice; it is
as gigantic as a pyramid and as delicate as a woman’s ear-ring, and
you cannot understand how such a piece of filigree-work has remained
suspended in the air for so many centuries. What kind of men were
those who made these marvellous buildings, whose splendours not even
fairy palaces can surpass? Is the race extinct? And we, who are
always boasting of our civilization, are we not decrepit barbarians
in comparison? A deep sadness always oppresses my heart when I visit
one of these stupendous edifices of the Past; I am seized with utter
discouragement and my one desire is to steal into some corner, to place
a stone beneath my head, and, in the immobility of contemplation, to
await death, which is immobility itself. What is the use of working?
Why should we tire ourselves? The most tremendous human effort will
never produce anything equal to this. Ah well! even the names of these
divine artists are forgotten, and to find any trace of them you must
ransack the dusty archives in the convent!...
The sacristy is surrounded by a panelled wainscot, forming closets with
flowered and festooned columns in rich taste; above the wainscot is a
row of Venetian mirrors whose use I do not understand; certainly they
must only be for ornament as they are too high for any one to see
himself in them. Above the mirrors are arranged in chronological order,
the oldest nearest the ceiling, the portraits of all the bishops of
Burgos, from the first to the one now occupying the episcopal chair.
These portraits, although they are oil, look more like pastels, or
distemper, which is due to the fact that in Spain pictures are never
varnished, and, for this lack of precaution, the dampness has destroyed
many masterpieces. Although these portraits are, for the most part,
imposing, they are hung too high for one to judge of the merit of the
execution. There is an enormous buffet in the centre of the room and
enormous baskets of spartium, in which the church ornaments and sacred
vessels are kept. Under two glass cases are preserved as curiosities
two coral trees, whose branches are much less complicated than the
least arabesque in the Cathedral. The door is embellished with the arms
of Burgos in relief, sprinkled with little crosses, gules.
Juan Cuchiller’s room, which we next visited, is not at all remarkable
in the way of architecture, and we were hastening to leave it when
we were asked to raise our eyes and look at a very curious object.
This was a great chest fastened to the wall by iron clamps. It would
be hard to imagine a box more patched, more worm-eaten, or more
dilapidated. It is surely the oldest chest in the world; an inscription
in black-letter--_Cofre del Cid_--gives, at once, as you will readily
believe, an enormous importance to these four boards of rotting wood.
If we may believe the old chronicle, this chest is precisely that of
the famous Ruy Diaz de Bivar, better known under the name of the Cid
Campeador, who, once lacking money, exactly like a simple author,
notwithstanding he was a hero, had this filled with sand and stones
and carried to the house of an honest Jewish usurer who lent money on
this security, the Cid Campeador forbidding him to open the mysterious
coffer until he had reimbursed the borrowed sum....
The need of the real, no matter how revolting, is a characteristic of
Spanish Art: idealism and conventionality are not in the genius of
these people completely deficient in æsthetic feeling. Sculpture does
not suffice for them; they must have their statues coloured, and their
madonnas painted and dressed in real clothes. Never, according to their
taste, can material illusion be carried too far, and this terrible love
of realism makes them often overstep the boundaries which separate
sculpture from wax-works.
The celebrated Christ, so revered at Burgos that no one is allowed to
see it unless the candles are lighted, is a striking example of this
strange taste: it is neither of stone, nor painted wood, it is made
of human skin (so the monks say), stuffed with much art and care.
The hair is real hair, the eyes have eye-lashes, the thorns of the
crown are real thorns, and no detail has been forgotten. Nothing can
be more lugubrious and disquieting than this attenuated, crucified
phantom with its human appearance and deathlike stillness; the faded
and brownish-yellow skin is streaked with long streams of blood, so
well imitated that they seem to trickle. It requires no great effort of
imagination to give credence to the legend that it bleeds every Friday.
In the place of folded, or flying drapery, the Christ of Burgos wears
a white skirt embroidered in gold, which falls from the waist to the
knees; this costume produces a peculiar effect, especially to us who
are not accustomed to see our Lord attired thus. At the foot of the
Cross three ostrich eggs are placed, a symbolical ornament of whose
meaning I am ignorant, unless they allude to the Trinity, the principle
and germ of everything.
We went out of the Cathedral dazzled, overwhelmed, and satiated with
_chefs d’œuvre_, powerless to admire any longer, and only with great
difficulty we threw a glance upon the arch of Fernan Gonzalez, an
attempt in classical architecture made by Philip of Burgundy at the
beginning of the Renaissance.
_Voyage en Espagne_ (Paris, new ed., 1865).
THE PYRAMIDS.
GEORG EBERS.
Early in the morning our carriage, drawn by fast horses, rattles across
the Nile on the iron bridge which joins Cairo to the beautiful island
of Gezirah. The latter, with its castle and the western tributary of
the river which ripples by it, are soon left behind. Beneath the shade
of acacias and sycamore-trees runs the well-kept and level highway.
On our left lie the castle and the high-walled, vice-regal gardens
of Gizeh; the dewy green fields, intersected by canals, rejoice the
eye, and a tender blue mist veils the west. The air has that clearness
and aromatic freshness which is only offered by an Egyptian winter’s
morning. For a moment the enveloping curtain of cloud lifts from the
horizon, and we see the prodigious Pyramids standing before us with
their sharp triangles, and the misty curtain falls; to the right and
left we sometimes see buffaloes grazing, sometimes flocks of silvery
herons, sometimes a solitary pelican within gunshot of our carriage;
then half-naked peasants at their daily labour and pleasing villages
some distance from the road. Two large, whitish eagles now soar into
the air. The eye follows their flight, and, in glancing upwards,
perceives how the mist has gradually disappeared, how brightly
dazzling is the blue of the sky, and how the sun is at last giving out
the full splendour of his rays....
We stand before the largest of these works of man, which, as we know,
the ancients glorified as “wonders of the world.” It is unnecessary to
describe their form for everybody knows the stereometrical figure to
which their name has been given, and this is not the place to print
a numerical estimate of their mass. Only by a comparison with other
structures present in our memory can any idea of their immensity be
realized; and, consequently, it may be said here that while St. Peter’s
in Rome is 131 metres high (430 feet), the Great Pyramid (of Cheops),
with its restored apex would be 147 metres (482 feet), and is thus
16 metres (52 feet) taller; therefore, if the Pyramid of Cheops were
hollow, the great Cathedral of Rome could be placed within it like a
clock under a protecting glass-shade. Neither St. Stephen’s Cathedral
in Vienna, nor the Münster of Strasburg reaches the height of the
highest Pyramid; but the new towers of the Cathedral of Cologne exceed
it. In one respect no other building in the world can be compared
with the Pyramids, and that is in regard to the mass and weight of
the materials used in their construction. If the tomb of Cheops were
razed, a wall could be built with its stones all around the frontiers
of France. If you fire a good pistol from the top of the great Pyramid
into the air, the ball falls halfway down its side. By such comparisons
they who have not visited Egypt may form an idea of the dimensions of
these amazing structures; he who stands on the sandy ground and raises
his eyes to the summit, needs no such aids.
[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH]
We get out of the carriage on the north side of the Pyramid of Cheops.
In the sharply-defined triangular shadows women are squatted, offering
oranges and various eatables for sale; donkey-boys are waiting
with their grey animals; and travellers are resting after having
accomplished the ascent. This work now lies before us, and if we were
willing to shirk it, there would be many attacks on our indolence, for
from the moment we stepped from our carriage, we have been closely
followed by a ragged, brown, and sinewy crowd, vehemently offering
their services. They call themselves _Bedouin_ with great pride, but
they have nothing in common with the true sons of the desert except
their faults. Nevertheless, it is not only prudent but necessary to
accept their assistance, although the way up can scarcely be mistaken.
We begin the ascent at a place where the outside stone casing of
the Pyramid has fallen away, leaving the terrace-like blocks of
the interior exposed; but the steps are unequal and sometimes of
considerable height; some of them are half as high as a man. Two or
three lads accompany me; one jumps up first with his bare feet, holds
my hands, and drags me after him; another follows the climber, props
his back, and thrusts and pushes him forwards; while a third grabs
his side beneath his arm, and lifts him. Thus, one half-scrambles
up himself and is half-dragged up, while the nimble lads give the
climber no rest, if he wants to stop for breath or to wipe the drops of
moisture from his brow. These importunate beggars never cease shouting
and clamouring for _baksheesh_, and are so persistently annoying that
they seem to want us to forget the gratitude we owe them for their aid.
At length we reach our destination. The point of the Pyramid has long
since crumbled away, and we stand on a tolerably spacious platform.
When our gasping breath and throbbing pulses have partially recovered
and we have paid and got rid of the _Bedouin_, who torment us to
exchange our money for sham antiquities, we look down upon the vast
landscape, and the longer we gaze and absorb this distant view, the
more significant and the more incomparable it appears. Fertility and
sterility, life and death, lie nowhere in such close mingling as here.
There in the east flows the broad Nile covered with lateen sails, and
like emerald tapestry are the fields and meadows, gardens and groves
of palm-trees, spread along its shores. The villages, hidden under the
trees, look like birds’ nests among green boughs, and at the foot of
the Mokattam mountain, which is now shining with golden light and which
at sunset will reflect the rosy and violet afterglow, rise the thousand
mosques of the city of the Caliphs, overtopped by the citadel and by
those slenderest of all minarets which grace the Mausoleum of Mohammed
Ali, an unmistakable feature of Cairo, visible from the farthest
distance. Gardens and trees encircle the city like a garland around
some lovely head. Nowhere is there to be found a more beautiful picture
of prosperity, fertility, and life. The silver threads of the canals
crossing the entire luxuriant valley appear to be some shining fluid.
Unclouded is the sky, and yet light shadows fall across the fields.
These are flocks of birds which find plenty of food and drink here. How
vast is the bounty of God! How beautiful and rich is the earth!
The _Bedouin_ have left us. We stand alone on the summit. All is
still. Not a sound reaches us from far or near. Turning now to the
west, the eye can see nothing but pyramids and tombs, rocks and sand in
countless number. Not a blade, not a bush can find nutriment in this
sterile ground. Yellow, grey, and dull brown cover everything, far and
wide, in unbroken monotony.
Only here and there a white object is shining amidst the dust. It is
the dried skeleton of some dead animal. Silent and void, the enemy to
everything that has life--the desert--stretches before us. Where is
its end? In days, weeks, months the traveller would never reach it,
even if he escaped alive from the choking sand. Here, if anywhere,
Death is king; here, where the Egyptians saw the sun vanish every day
behind the wall of the Libyan mountains, begins a world which bears
the same comparison to the fruitful lands of the East as a corpse does
to a living man happy in the battle and joy of life. A more silent
burial-place than this desert exists nowhere on this earth; and so tomb
after tomb was erected here, and, as if to preserve the secret of the
dead, the desert has enveloped tombs and bodies with its veil of sand.
Here the terrors of infinity are displayed. Here at the gate of the
future life, where eternity begins, man’s work seems to have eluded the
common destiny of earthly things and to have partaken of immortality.
“Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock Time” is an Arabian
proverb which has been repeated thousands of times.
_Cicerone durch das alte und neue Ægypten_ (Stuttgart und Leipzig,
1886).
SAINT PETER’S.
CHARLES DICKENS.
When we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect fever, to strain
our eyes for Rome; and when, after another mile or two, the Eternal
City appeared, at length, in the distance, it looked like--I am half
afraid to write the word--like LONDON!!! There it lay, under a thick
cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses,
rising up into the sky, and, high above them all, one Dome. I swear,
that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it was
so like London, at that distance, that if you could have shown it me in
a glass, I should have taken it for nothing else.
We entered the Eternal City at about four o’clock in the afternoon,
on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came
immediately--it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy
rain--on the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that
we were only looking at the fag-end of the masks, who were driving
slowly round and round the Piazza, until they could find a promising
opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and getting,
in good time, into the thick of the festivity; and coming among them
so abruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was not coming very well
prepared to enjoy the scene....