(monasteries) and rest-houses for pilgrims. All these are quaint,
carved, and gilded edifices from which you see endless yellow-robed
monks issuing. The monasteries situated at the foot of the great
pagoda seem peculiarly harmonious, as if they would seek protection and
shekel beneath the wing of their great mother church.
The pagoda itself is approached on four sides by long flights of steps,
but the southern is the principal entrance and that most frequented. At
the base of this stand two gigantic lions made of brick and plastered
over, and also decorated with coloured paint; their office is to guard
the sacred place from nats (evil spirits) and demons, the fear of which
seems ever to haunt the Burman’s mind and be a perpetual and endless
torment to him. From this entrance the steps of the pagoda rise up and
are enclosed by a series of beautifully carved teak roofs, supported
by wood and masonry pillars. There are several quaint frescoes of
Buddha and saints depicted upon the ceiling of these roofs, but the
steps which they cover are very rugged and irregular. It is, indeed, a
pilgrimage to ascend them, although the foreigner is allowed to retain
his shoes. The faithful, of course, leave theirs at the foot of the
steps.
The entrance to the pagoda inspires one with a maze of conflicting
emotions as one stands before it; joy, sorrow, pity, wonder,
admiration follow so quickly upon each other that they mingle into an
indescribable sense of bewilderment. The first sight of the entrance is
gorgeous, full of Eastern colour and charm; and then sorrow and horror
fill one’s heart, as one’s eyes fall suddenly upon the rows of lepers
who line the way to the holy place. Each is a terrible, gruesome sight,
a mass of ghastly corruption and disease, and each holds out with
maimed, distorted hands a little tin vessel for your alms.
[Illustration: THE SHWAY DAGOHN.]
Why should Providence allow so awful an affliction as leprosy to fall
upon His creatures? Could any crime, however heinous, be foul enough
for such a punishment? These are the thoughts that flit through your
brain; and then, as you pass on, wonder takes their place at the quaint
beauty of the edifice, and lastly intense and wild admiration takes
entire possession of you, and all is forgotten in the glorious nearness
of the great Golden Pagoda.
On either side of the rugged steps there are rows of most picturesque
little stalls, at which are sold endless offerings to be made to
Buddha--flowers of every shade and hue, fruit, glowing bunches of
yellow plantains and pepia, candles, wondrous little paper devices and
flags, and, lastly, the gold leaf, which the faithful delight to place
upon the beloved pagoda. It is looked upon as a great act of merit to
expend money in thus decorating the much loved and venerated shrine....
As you mount slowly up the steep uneven steps of the pagoda, turn
for a moment and glance back at the scene. It is a pagoda feast, and
the place is crowded with the faithful from all parts, who have come
from far and near to present offerings and perform their religious
observances. It is an entrancing picture, a marvel of colour and
picturesqueness--see, the stalls are laid out with their brightest
wares, and the crowd is becoming greater every moment. Look at that
group of laughing girls, they have donned their most brilliant tamehns,
and dainty shawls, and the flowers in their hair are arranged with
infinite coquettishness; behind them are coming a dazzling company of
young men in pasohs of every indescribable shade; perchance they are
the lovers of the girls whom they are following so eagerly, and they
are bearing fruit and flowers to present to Buddha. Beyond them again
are some yellow-robed Pohn-gyees; they are supposed to shade their eyes
from looking upon women with their large lotus-shaped fans, but to-day
they are gazing about them more than is permitted, and are casting
covert glances of admiration on some of those dainty little maidens.
Behind them again are a white-robed company, they are nuns, and their
shroud-like garments flow around them in long graceful folds. Their
hair is cut short, and they have not so joyous an expression upon their
faces as the rest of the community, and they toil up the steep steps
a trifle wearily. Behind them again are a little toddling group of
children, with their little hands full of bright glowing flowers and
fruits.
Shall we follow in the crowd and see where the steps lead? It is a
wondrous study, the effects of light and shade; look at that sunbeam
glinting in through the roof and laying golden fingers on the
Pohn-gyees’ yellow robes, and turning the soft-hued fluttering silks
into brilliant luminous spots of light.
At last we have arrived at the summit! Let us pause and take breath
morally and physically before walking round the great open-paved space
in the centre of which rises the great and glorious pagoda. There it
stands towering up and up, as though it would fain touch the blue
heaven; it is surrounded by a galaxy of smaller pagodas, which seem to
be clustering lovingly near their great high priest; around these again
are large carved kneeling elephants, and deep urn-shaped vessels, which
are placed there to receive the offerings of food brought to Buddha.
The crows and the pariah dogs which haunt the place will soon demolish
these devout offerings, and grow fat upon them as their appearance
testifies; but this, curiously, does not seem in the least to annoy the
giver. He has no objection to seeing a fat crow or a mangy dog gorging
itself upon his offering, as the feeding of any animal is an act of
merit, which is the one thing of importance to a Burman. The more
acts of merit that he can accomplish in this life, the more rapid his
incarnations will be in the next.
There are draped about the small golden pagodas and round the base of
the large one endless quaint pieces of woven silk; these are offerings
from women, and must be completed in one night without a break.
On the outer circle of this large paved space are a multitude of
shrines, enclosing hundreds of images of Buddha. You behold Buddha
standing, you behold him sitting, you behold him reclining; you see
him large, you see him small, you see him medium size; you see him
in brass, in wood, in stone, and in marble. Many of these statues
are simply replicas of each other, but some differ slightly, though
the cast of features is always the same, a placid, amiable, benign
countenance, with very long lobes to the ears, which in Burmah are
supposed to indicate the great truthfulness of the person who possesses
them. Most of the images have suspended over them the royal white
umbrella, which was one of the emblems of Burma, and only used in
Thebaw’s time to cover Buddha, the king, and the lord white elephant.
_Among Pagodas and Fair Ladies_ (London, 1896).
THE CATHEDRAL OF SIENA.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets, paved with brick
and overshadowed with huge empty palaces, we reach the highest of the
three hills on which Siena stands, and see before us the Duomo. This
church is the most purely Gothic of all Italian cathedrals designed
by national architects. Together with that of Orvieto, it stands to
show what the unassisted genius of the Italians could produce, when
under the empire of mediæval Christianity and before the advent of the
neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of marble, and overlaid, inside and
out, with florid ornaments of exquisite beauty. There are no flying
buttresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, such as form
the charm of French and English architecture; but instead of this, the
lines of party-coloured marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of foliage,
the mosaics and the frescoes which meet the eye in every direction,
satisfy our sense of variety, producing most agreeable combinations of
blending hues and harmoniously connected forms. The chief fault which
offends against our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal
lines, both in the construction of the façade, and also in the internal
decoration. This single fact sufficiently proves that the Italians
had never seized the true idea of Gothic or aspiring architecture. But,
allowing for this original defect, we feel that the Cathedral of Siena
combines solemnity and splendour to a degree almost unrivalled. Its
dome is another point in which the instinct of Italian architects has
led them to adhere to the genius of their ancestral art rather than to
follow the principles of Gothic design. The dome is Etruscan and Roman,
native to the soil, and only by a kind of violence adapted to the
character of pointed architecture. Yet the builders of Siena have shown
what a glorious element of beauty might have been added to our Northern
cathedrals, had the idea of infinity which our ancestors expressed by
long continuous lines, by complexities of interwoven aisles, and by
multitudinous aspiring pinnacles, been carried out into vast spaces of
aërial cupolas, completing and embracing and covering the whole like
heaven. The Duomo, as it now stands, forms only part of a vast original
design. On entering we are amazed to hear that this church, which looks
so large, from the beauty of its proportions, the intricacy of its
ornaments, and the interlacing of its columns, is but the transept of
the old building lengthened a little, and surmounted by a cupola and
campanile. Yet such is the fact. Soon after its commencement a plague
swept over Italy, nearly depopulated Siena, and reduced the town to
penury for want of men. The Cathedral, which, had it been accomplished,
would have surpassed all Gothic churches south of the Alps, remained
a ruin. A fragment of the nave still stands, enabling us to judge of
its extent. The eastern wall joins what was to have been the transept,
measuring the mighty space which would have been enclosed by marble
vaults and columns delicately wrought. The sculpture on the eastern
door shows with what magnificence the Sienese designed to ornament
this portion of their temple; while the southern façade rears itself
aloft above the town, like those high arches which testify to the
past splendour of Glastonbury Abbey; but the sun streams through the
broken windows, and the walls are encumbered with hovels and stables
and the refuse of surrounding streets. One most remarkable feature of
the internal decoration is a line of heads of the Popes carried all
round the church above the lower arches. Larger than life, white solemn
faces, they lean, each from his separate niche, crowned with the triple
tiara, and labelled with the name he bore. Their accumulated majesty
brings the whole past history of the Church into the presence of its
living members. A bishop walking up the nave of Siena must feel as a
Roman felt among the waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or
in war. Of course these portraits are imaginary for the most part; but
the artists have contrived to vary their features and expression with
great skill.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SIENA]
Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the Cathedral. It is
inlaid with a kind of _tarsia_ work in stone, not unlike that which
Baron Triqueti used in his “Marmor Homericum”--less elaborately
decorative, but even more artistic and subordinate to architectural
effect than the baron’s mosaic. Some of these compositions are as old
as the cathedral; others are the work of Beccafumi and his scholars.
They represent, in the liberal spirit of mediæval Christianity, the
history of the Church before the Incarnation. Hermes Trismegistus and
the Sibyls meet us at the doorway: in the body of the church we find
the mighty deeds of the old Jewish heroes--of Moses and Samson and
Joshua and Judith. Independently of the artistic beauty of the designs,
of the skill with which men and horses are drawn in the most difficult
attitudes, of the dignity of some single figures, and of the vigour and
simplicity of the larger compositions, a special interest attaches to
this pavement in connection with the twelfth canto of the “Purgatorio.”
Did Dante ever tread these stones and meditate upon their sculptured
histories? That is what we cannot say; but we read how he journeyed
through the plain of Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied floor,
how “morti i morti, e i vivi parean vivi,” how he saw “Nimrod at the
foot of his great work, confounded, gazing at the people who were proud
with him.” The strong and simple outlines of the pavement correspond
to the few words of the poet. Bending over these pictures and trying
to learn their lesson, with the thought of Dante in our mind, the
tones of an organ, singularly sweet and mellow, fall upon our ears,
and we remember how he heard the _Te Deum_ sung within the gateway of
repentance.
_Sketches in Italy and Greece_ (London, 1874).
THE TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN.
GRANT ALLEN.
Louvain is in a certain sense the mother city of Brussels. Standing
on its own little navigable river, the Dyle, it was, till the end of
the Fourteenth Century, the capital of the Counts and of the Duchy of
Brabant. It had a large population of weavers, engaged in the cloth
trade. Here, as elsewhere, the weavers formed the chief bulwark of
freedom in the population. In 1378, however, after a popular rising,
Duke Wenseslaus besieged and conquered the city; and the tyrannical
sway of the nobles, whom he re-introduced, aided by the rise of
Ghent, or later, of Antwerp, drove away trade from the city. Many of
the weavers emigrated to Holland and England, where they helped to
establish the woollen industry....
As you emerge from the station, you come upon a small Place, adorned
with a statue (by Geefs) of Sylvain van de Weyer, a revolutionary of
1830, and long Belgian minister to England. Take the long straight
street up which the statue looks. This leads direct to the Grand’
Place, the centre of the town, whence the chief streets radiate in
every direction, the ground-plan recalling that of a Roman city.
[Illustration: TOWN HALL OF LOUVAIN]
The principal building in the Grand’ Place is the Hôtel de Ville,
standing out with three sides visible from the Place, and probably the
finest civic building in Belgium. It is of very florid late-Gothic
architecture, between 1448 and 1463. Begin first with the left façade,
exhibiting three main storeys, with handsome Gothic windows. Above come
a gallery, and then a gable-end, flanked by octagonal turrets, and
bearing a similar turret on its summit. In this centre of the gable
is a little projecting balcony of the kind so common on Belgic civic
buildings. The architecture of the niches and turrets is of very fine
florid Gothic, in better taste than that at Ghent of nearly the same
period. The statues which fill the niches are modern. Those of the
first storey represent personages of importance in the local history of
the city; those of the second, the various mediæval guilds or trades;
those of the third, the Counts of Louvain and Dukes of Brabant of all
ages. The bosses or corbels which support the statues, are carved
with scriptural scenes in high relief. I give the subjects of a few
(beginning Left): the reader must decipher the remainder for himself.
The Court of Heaven: The Fall of the Angels into the visible Jaws of
Hell: Adam and Eve in the Garden: The Expulsion from Paradise: The
Death of Abel, with quaint rabbits escaping: The Drunkenness of Noah:
Abraham and Lot: etc.
The main façade has an entrance staircase, and two portals in the
centre, above which are figures of St. Peter (Left) and Our Lady and
Child (Right), the former in compliment to the patron of the church
opposite. This façade has three storeys, decorated with Gothic
windows, and capped by a gallery parapet, above which rises the
high-pitched roof, broken by several quaint small windows. At either
end are the turrets of the gable, with steps to ascend them. The rows
of statues represent as before (in four tiers), persons of local
distinction, mediæval guilds and the Princes who have ruled Brabant
and Louvain. Here again the sculptures beneath the bosses should be
closely inspected. Among the most conspicuous are the Golden Calf, the
Institution of Sacrifices in the Tabernacle, Balaam’s Ass, Susannah and
the Elders, etc.
The gable-end to the Right, ill seen from the narrow street, resembles
in its features the one opposite it, but this façade is even finer than
the others.
The best general view is obtained from the door of St. Pierre, or near
either corner of the Place directly opposite.
_Cities of Belgium_ (London, 1897).
THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
The Cathedral of Seville is isolated in the centre of a large square,
yet its grandeur may be measured by a single glance. I immediately
thought of the famous phrase in the decree uttered by the Chapter of
the primitive church on July 8, 1401, regarding the building of the
new Cathedral: “Let us build a monument which shall cause posterity
to think we must have been mad.” These reverend canons did not fail
in their intention. But to fully appreciate this we must enter. The
exterior of the Cathedral is imposing and magnificent; but less so than
the interior. There is no façade: a high wall encloses the building
like a fortress. It is useless to turn and gaze upon it, for you will
never succeed in impressing a single outline upon your mind, which,
like the introduction to a book, will give you a clear idea of the
work; you admire and you exclaim more than once: “It is immense!” but
you are not satisfied; and you hasten to enter the church, hoping that
you may receive there a more complete sentiment of admiration.
On entering you are stunned, you feel as if you are lost in an abyss;
and for several moments you can only let your glance wander over these
immense curves in this immense space to assure yourself that your
eyes and your imagination are not deceiving you. Then you approach a
column, measure it, and contemplate the others from a distance: they
are as large as towers and yet they seem so slender that you tremble to
think they support the edifice. With a rapid glance you look at them
from pavement to ceiling and it seems as if you could almost count
the moments that it takes the eye to rise with them. There are five
naves, each one of which might constitute a church. In the central
one another cathedral could easily lift its high head surmounted by
a cupola and bell-tower. Altogether there are sixty-eight vaults, so
bold that it seems to you they expand and rise very slowly while you
are looking at them. Everything in this Cathedral is enormous. The
principal altar, placed in the centre of the great nave, is so high
that it almost touches the vaulted ceiling, and seems to be an altar
constructed for giant priests to whose knees only would ordinary
altars reach; the paschal candle seems like the mast of a ship; and
the bronze candlestick which holds it, is a museum of sculpture and
carving which would in itself repay a day’s visit. The chapels are
worthy of the church, for in them are lavished the _chefs d’œuvre_ of
sixty-seven sculptors and thirty-eight painters. Montanes, Zurbaran,
Murillo, Valdes, Herrera, Boldan, Roelas, and Campaña have left there
a thousand immortal traces of their hands. St. Ferdinand’s Chapel,
containing the sepulchres of this king and of his wife Beatrice, of
Alphonso the Wise, the celebrated minister Florida Blanca, and other
illustrious personages, is one of the richest and most beautiful. The
body of King Ferdinand, who delivered Seville from the dominion of
the Arabs, clothed in his military dress, with the crown and the royal
mantle, reposes in a crystal casket covered with a veil. On one side
is the sword which he carried on the day of his entrance into Seville;
and on the other his staff, the symbol of command. In this same chapel
a little ivory wand which the king carried to the wars, and other
relics of great value are preserved. In the other chapels there are
large marble altars, Gothic tombs and statues in stone, in wood and
silver, enclosed in large caskets of silver with their bodies and hands
covered with diamonds and rubies; and some marvellous pictures, which,
unfortunately, the feeble light, falling from the high windows, does
not illuminate sufficiently to let the admirer see their entire beauty.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.]
But after a detailed examination of these chapels, paintings, and
sculptures, you always return to admire the Cathedral’s grand, and, if
I may be allowed to say it, formidable aspect. After having glanced
towards those giddy heights, the eye and mind are fatigued by the
effort. And the abundant images correspond to the grandeur of the
basilica; immense angels and monstrous heads of cherubim with wings as
large as the sails of a ship and enormous floating mantles of blue.
The impression that this Cathedral produces is entirely religious, but
it is not sad; it creates a feeling which carries the mind into the
infinite space and silence where Leopardi’s thoughts were plunged;
it creates a sentiment full of desire and boldness; it produces that
shiver which is experienced at the brink of a precipice,--that distress
and confusion of great thoughts, that divine terror of the infinite....
It is needless to speak of the Feasts of Holy Week: they are famous
throughout the world, and people from all parts of Europe still flock
to them.
But the most curious privilege of the Cathedral of Seville is the dance
_de los seises_, which is performed every evening at twilight for eight
consecutive days after the Feast of Corpus Domini.
As I found myself in Seville at this time I went to see it. From what I
had heard I expected a scandalous pasquinade, and I entered the church
quite ready to be indignant at the profanation of a holy place. The
church was dark; only the large altar was illuminated, and a crowd of
women kneeled before it. Several priests were sitting to the right and
left of the altar. At a signal given by one of the priests, sweet music
from violins broke the profound silence of the church, and two rows
of children moved forward in the steps of a _contre-danse_, and began
to separate, interlace, break away, and again unite with a thousand
graceful turnings; then everybody joined in a melodious and charming
hymn which resounded in the vast Cathedral like a choir of angels’
voices; and in the next moment they began to accompany their dance and
song with castanets. No religious ceremony ever touched me like this.
It is out of the question to describe the effect produced by these
little voices under the immense vaults, these little creatures at the
foot of this enormous altar, this modest and almost humble dance, this
antique costume, this kneeling multitude, and the surrounding darkness.
I went out of the church with as serene a soul as if I had been
praying....