were distinguishable into two portions. There was the Abbey, now
represented only by the beautiful and spacious fragment of ruin,
called the Royal Chapel, but then, despite the spoliations to which
it had been subjected by recent English invasions, still tolerably
preserved in its integrity as the famous edifice, in Early Norman
style, which had been founded in the Twelfth Century by David I., and
had been enlarged in the Fifteenth by additions in the later and more
florid Gothic. Close by this was Holyrood House, or the Palace proper,
built in the earlier part of the Sixteenth Century, and chiefly by
James IV., to form a distinct royal dwelling, and so supersede that
occasional accommodation in the Abbey itself which had sufficed for
Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh was their habitual or capital
residence. One block of this original Holyrood House still remains in
the two-turreted projection of the present Holyrood which adjoins the
ruined relic of the Abbey, and which contains the rooms now specially
shown as “Queen Mary’s Apartments.” But the present Holyrood, as
a whole, is a construction of the reign of Charles II., and gives
little idea of the Palace in which Mary took up her abode in 1561.
The two-turreted projection on the left was not balanced then, as
now, by a similar two-turreted projection on the right, with a façade
of less height between, but was flanked on the right by a continued
château-like frontage, of about the same height as the turreted
projection, and at a uniform depth of recess from it, but independently
garnished with towers and pinnacles. The main entrance into the Palace
from the great outer courtyard was through this château-like flank,
just about the spot where there is the entrance through the present
middle façade; and this entrance led, like the present, into an inner
court or quadrangle, built round on all the four sides. That quadrangle
of château, touching the Abbey to the back from its north-eastern
corner, and with the two-turreted projection to its front from its
north-western corner, constituted, indeed, the main bulk of the Palace.
There were, however, extensive appurtenances of other buildings at
the back or at the side farthest from the Abbey, forming minor inner
courts, while part of that side of the great outer courtyard which
faced the entrance was occupied by offices belonging to the Palace,
and separating the courtyard from the adjacent purlieus of the town.
For the grounds of both Palace and Abbey were encompassed by a wall,
having gates at various points of its circuit, the principal and most
strongly guarded of which was the Gothic porch admitting from the foot
of the Canongate into the front courtyard. The grounds so enclosed
were ample enough to contain gardens and spaces of plantation, besides
the buildings and their courts. Altogether, what with the buildings
themselves, what with the courts and gardens, and what with the natural
grandeur of the site,--a level of deep and wooded park, between the
Calton heights and crags on the one hand and the towering shoulders
of Arthur Seat and precipitous escarpment of Salisbury Crags on the
other,--Holyrood in 1561 must have seemed, even to an eye the most
satiated with palatial splendours abroad, a sufficiently impressive
dwelling-place to be the metropolitan home of Scottish royalty.
_Edinburgh Sketches and Memories_ (London and Edinburgh, 1892).
SAINT-GUDULE.
VICTOR HUGO.
The windows of Saint-Gudule are of a kind almost unknown in France,
real paintings, real pictures on glass of a marvellous style, with
figures like Titian and architecture like Paul Veronese.
The pulpit of this church is carved in wood by Henry Verbruggen
and bears the date of 1699. The whole of creation, the whole of
philosophy, the whole of poetry are expressed here by an enormous
tree which supports the pulpit in its boughs and shelters a world
of birds and animals among its leaves, while at its base Adam and
Eve are pursued by a sorrowful angel, followed by Death who seems
triumphant, and separated by the tail of the serpent. At its summit,
the cross--Truth--and the infant Jesus, whose foot rests upon the head
of the bruised serpent. This poem is sculptured and carved out of oak
alone, in the strongest, the most tender, and the most _spirituelle_
manner. The effect is prodigiously rococo and prodigiously beautiful.
No matter what the fanatics of the severe school would say, it is true.
This pulpit is one of those rare instances in art where the beautiful
and the rococo meet. Watteau and Coypel have also occasionally
discovered such points of intersection....
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT-GUDULE, BRUSSELS]
It was three o’clock when I entered Saint-Gudule. They were celebrating
the Office of the Virgin. A Madonna, covered with jewels and clothed
in a robe of English lace, glittered on a dais of gold in the centre
of the nave through a luminous cloud of incense which was dispersed
around her. Many people were praying in the shadow motionless, and a
strong ray of sunlight from above dispelled the gloom and shone full
upon the large statues of proud mien arranged against the columns. The
worshippers seemed of stone, the statues seemed alive.
And then a beautiful chant of mingled deep and ringing voices fell
mysteriously with the tones of the organ from the highest rails hidden
by the mists of incense. I, during this time, had my eye fixed dreamily
upon Verbruggen’s pulpit, teeming with life,--that magic pulpit which
is always suggestive.--Frame this with windows, ogives, and Renaissance
tombs of white marble and black, and you will understand why a sublime
sensation was produced by this scene....
I climbed the towers of Saint-Gudule. It was beautiful. The entire city
lay beneath me, the toothed and voluted roofs of Brussels half-hidden
by the smoke, the sky (a stormy sky), full of clouds, golden and curled
above, solid as marble below; in the distance a large cloud from which
rain was falling like fine sand from a bag which has burst; the sun
shone above everything; the magnificent open-work, lantern-like belfry
stood out sombre against the white mists; then the confused noise
of the town reached me, then the verdure of the lovely hills on the
horizon: it was truly beautiful. I admired everything like a provincial
from Paris, which I am,--everything, even the mason who was hammering
on a stone and whistling near me.
_En Voyage: France et Belgique_ (Paris, 1892).
THE ESCURIAL.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
Before my departure for Andalusia, I went to see the famous Convent
of the Escurial, the leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of
the world, the largest mass of granite upon the earth, and, if you
desire other imposing epithets, then you must imagine them, for you
will not find one that has not been used to describe it. I left Madrid
in the early morning. The village of the Escurial, from which the
Convent received its name, is eight leagues from the city, not far
from the Guadarrama; you pass through an arid and uninhabited country
whose horizon is bounded by snow-covered mountains. A light, fine,
and cold rain was falling when I reached the station of the Escurial.
From it to the village there is a rise of half a mile. I clambered
into an omnibus, and at the end of a few minutes, I was deposited in a
solitary street bordered on the left by the Convent and on the right
by the houses of the village, and shut in by the mountains. At the
first glance you understand nothing; you expect to see a building and
you find a city; you do not know if you are already in the Convent,
or if you are outside; you are hemmed in by walls. You advance, and
find yourself in a square; you look about you and see streets; you
have not yet entered, and already the Convent surrounds you: you are
at your wit’s end, and no longer know which way to turn. The first
feeling is one of depression: the entire edifice is of mud-coloured
stone, and all the layers are marked by a white stripe; the roofs are
covered with lead. You might call it a building made of earth. The very
high walls are naked and pierced by a great number of windows which
resemble barbicans. You might call it a prison rather than a convent.
You find this gloomy colour everywhere: there is not a living soul
here, and the silence is that of a deserted fortress; and beyond the
black roofs, the black mountain, which seems to be suspended over the
building, gives it mysterious solitude. It seems as if the founder must
have chosen the spot, the plan, and the colours, everything, in fact,
with the intention of producing a sad and solemn spectacle. You lose
your gaiety before entering; you can smile no longer, you are thinking.
You pause at the door of the Escurial with a kind of quaking, as if
at the entrance of a dead city; it seems to you that if the terrible
Inquisition is reigning in any corner of the world, it must be between
these walls; for it is here that you can see its last traces and hear
its last echo.
[Illustration: THE ESCURIAL.]
Everybody knows that the Basilica and the Convent of the Escurial
were founded by Philip II. after the battle of San Quintino to fulfil
his vow made during the war to Saint Laurence when he was forced
to cannonade a church consecrated to this saint. Don Juan Batista
of Toledo commenced the building and Herrera finished it, and the
work upon it lasted for twenty-one years. Philip II. wished the
building to have the form of a gridiron in memory of Saint Laurence’s
martyrdom; and, in reality, this is its form. The plan is a rectangular
parallelogram. Four large square towers with pointed roofs rise at the
four corners, and represent the four feet of a gridiron; the church and
the royal palace, which extend on one side, represent the handle; and
the interior buildings, which are placed across the two long sides,
represent the parallel bars. Other smaller buildings rise outside of
the parallelogram, not far from the Convent, along one of the long
sides and one of the courts, forming two large squares; the other two
sides are occupied by gardens. Façades, doors, and entrance-halls,
are all in harmony with the grandeur and character of the edifice: it
is useless to multiply descriptions. The royal Palace is magnificent,
and in order to keep a clear impression of each individual building,
it is better to see it before you enter the Convent and Church. This
palace is in the north-east corner of the building. Several halls are
filled with pictures, others are hung from the ceiling to the floor
with tapestries, representing bull-fights, dances, games, _fêtes_, and
Spanish costumes, after Goya; others are decorated and furnished in
princely style; the floor, the doors, and the windows are covered with
marvellous mosaics and dazzling gold-work. But among all the rooms,
that of Philip II. is especially remarkable. It is a dark and bare
cell, whose alcove communicates with the royal oratory of the church
in such a way that, when the doors were open, from his bed he could
see the priest celebrating Mass. Philip II. slept in this room, had
his last illness there, and died there. You can still see some of the
chairs he used, two little benches on which he rested his gouty leg,
and a writing-desk. The walls are white, the ceiling is unornamented,
and the floor is of stone.
When you have seen the royal Palace, you go out of the building, cross
the square, and re-enter the great door. A guide joins you and you pass
through the large entrance to find yourself in the Kings’ courtyard.
Here you gain an idea of the enormous structure of the building. This
court is entirely shut in by walls; opposite the door is the façade of
the Church. Above a wide stairway stand six enormous Doric columns;
each of these supports a large pedestal, and each pedestal upholds a
statue. These six colossal statues are by Batista Monegro, representing
Jehoshaphat, Ezekiel, David, Solomon, Joshua, and Manasseh. The
courtyard is paved and bunches of damp grass grow here and there; the
walls look like rocks cut in points; everything is rigid, massive, and
heavy, and presents the indescribable aspect of a fantastic edifice
hewn by Titans from a mountain and capable of defying earthquakes
and lightnings. At this point you really begin to understand the
Escurial....
After seeing the Church and the Sacristy, you visit the
Picture-Gallery, which contains a large number of paintings by artists
of all countries, not the best examples, however, for these have
been taken to the Madrid gallery, but of sufficient value to merit a
thoughtful visit of half a day. From the Picture-Gallery you go to
the Library by means of the large stairway, over which is rounded
an enormous vaulted ceiling, painted all over with frescoes by Luca
Giordano. The Library is an immense hall adorned with large allegorical
paintings, and contains more than fifty thousand rare volumes, four
thousand of which were given by Philip II., and beyond this is another
hall, which contains a very valuable collection of manuscripts. From
the Library you go to the Convent. Here human imagination is completely
lost. If my reader knows Espronceda’s _Estudiante de Salamanca_,
he will remember that the persistent young man, when following the
mysterious lady whom he met at night at the foot of a tabernacle,
runs from street to street, from square to square, and from alley to
alley, turning and returning, until he arrives at a spot where he can
no longer see the houses of Salamanca and where he discovers that he
is in an unknown city; and in proportion as he advances the town seems
to grow larger, the streets longer and the intertwining alleys more
tortuous; but he goes on and on without stopping, not knowing if he
is awake or dreaming, if he is intoxicated or mad; terror begins to
enter his brave heart and the most peculiar phantoms crowd into his
distracted mind: this is what happens to the stranger in the Convent
of the Escurial. You pass through a long subterranean corridor, so
narrow that you can touch the wall with your elbows, so low that your
head almost hits the ceiling, and as damp as a grotto under the sea;
on reaching its end, you turn, and you are in another corridor. You
go on, pass through doors, and look around: other corridors extend
as far as your eye can see. At the end of some of them you notice a
feeble light, at the end of others an open door which reveals a suite
of rooms. Every now and then you hear a footstep: you stop; all is
silent; then you hear it again; you do not know if it is above your
head, or to the right, or the left, or before you, or behind you. You
are about to enter a door; you recoil in terror: at the end of a long
corridor you see a man, motionless as a spectre, who is staring at you.
You continue your journey and arrive in a strange court, surrounded by
high walls and overgrown with grass, full of echoes, and illuminated
by a wan light which seems to come from some strange sun; it reminds
you of the haunts of witches described to you in your childhood. You
go out of the court, walk up a stairway, arrive in a gallery, and look
down: there beneath you is another, and deserted, court. You walk down
another corridor, you descend another stairway, and you find yourself
in a third court; then again more corridors, stairways, suites of empty
rooms, and narrow courts, and everywhere granite, a wan light, and the
stillness of death. For a short time you think you could retrace your
steps; then your memory forsakes you, and you recall nothing: it seems
as if you had walked ten leagues, that you have been in this labyrinth
for a month, and that you will never get out of it. You come to a
court, and exclaim: “I have seen this before!” No you are mistaken: it
is another one. You think you are on one side of the building and you
are on the opposite one. You ask your guide for the cloister, and he
replies: “It is here,” and you continue walking for half an hour. You
fancy you are dreaming: you have glimpses of long walls, frescoed, and
adorned with pictures, the crucifix, and with inscriptions; you see and
you forget; you ask yourself “Where am I?” You see a light as if from
another world: you have never conceived of such a peculiar light. Is it
the reflection of the granite? Is it moonlight? No, it is daylight; but
a daylight sadder than darkness; it is a false, sinister, fantastic
daylight. Let us go on! From corridor to corridor, from court to
court, you look before you with mistrust; you expect to see suddenly
at the turn of a corner a row of skeleton monks with hoods drawn over
their eyes and their arms folded; you think of Philip II.; you fancy
you hear his step growing ever fainter down the distant passages; you
remember all you have read of him, of his terrors, of the Inquisition;
and everything becomes suddenly plain; you understand it all for the
first time: the Escurial is Philip II., you see him at every step,
and you hear him breathe; for he is here, living and fearful, and the
image of his terrible God is with him. Then you want to revolt, to
raise your thought to the God of your heart and hope, and to conquer
the mysterious terror which this place inspires; but you cannot; the
Escurial envelops you, possesses you, crushes you; the cold of its
stones penetrates into your very bones, the sadness of its sepulchral
labyrinths takes possession of your soul. If you were with a friend,
you would say: “Let us go!”; if you were with your loved one, you would
tremblingly clasp her to your heart; if you were alone, you would take
flight. Finally you ascend the stairway, and, entering a room, go to
the window to salute rapturously the mountains, the sunshine, liberty,
and the great and generous God who loves and pardons.
How one breathes again at this window!
From it you see the gardens, which occupy a restricted space and
which are very simple, but elegant and beautiful, and in perfect
harmony with the building. You see in them twelve charming fountains,
each surrounded by four squares of box-wood, representing the royal
escutcheons, designed with such skill and trimmed with such precision
that in looking at them from the windows they seem to be made of plush
and velvet, and they stand out from the white sand of the walks in a
very striking manner. There are no trees, nor flowers, nor pavilions
here; in all the gardens nothing is to be seen but fountains and
squares of box-wood and these two colours--white and green--and such
is the beauty of this noble simplicity that the eye is enchanted with
it, and when it has passed out of sight, the thought returns and rests
there with pleasure mingled with a gentle melancholy....
An illustrious traveller has said that after having spent a day in the
Convent of the Escurial, one should feel happy for the remainder of
his life in thinking that he might be still between those walls, but
that he has escaped. That is very nearly true. Even now, after so long
a time, on rainy days when I am sad I think about the Escurial, then
I look around the walls of my room and I become gay; during nights of
insomnia, I see the courts of the Escurial; when I am ill and drop into
a feverish and heavy sleep, I dream that all night I am wandering in
these corridors, alone and followed by the phantom of a monk, screaming
and knocking at all the doors without finding a way out, until I decide
to go to the Pantheon, where the door bangs behind me and shuts me in
among the tombs.
With what delight I saw the myriad lights of the _Puerta del Sol_, the
crowded _cafés_ and the great and noisy street of the Alcala! When I
went into the house I made such a noise, that the servant, who was a
good and simple Gallician, ran excitedly to her mistress and said: “_Me
parece el italiano se ha vuelto loco._” (I think the Italian has lost
his senses).
_La Spagna_ (Florence, 1873).
THE TEMPLE OF MADURA.
JAMES FERGUSSON.
There does not seem to be any essential difference either in plan or
form between the Saiva and Vaishnava temples in the south of India. It
is only by observing the images or emblems worshipped, or by reading
the stories represented in the numerous sculptures with which a temple
is adorned, that we find out the god to whom it is dedicated. Whoever
he may be, the temples consist almost invariably of the four following
parts, arranged in various manners, as afterwards to be explained, but
differing in themselves only according to the age in which they were
executed:--
1. The principal part, the actual temple itself, is called the
_Vimana_. It is always square in plan, and surmounted by a pyramidal
roof of one or more storeys; it contains the cell in which the image of
the god or his emblem is placed.
2. The porches or _Mantapas_, which always cover and precede the door
leading to the cell.
3. Gate pyramids, _Gopuras_, which are the principal features in the
quadrangular enclosures which always surround the _Vimanas_.
4. Pillared halls or _Choultries_, used for various purposes, and which
are the invariable accompaniments of these temples.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF MADURA.]
Besides these, a temple always contains tanks or wells for water--to
be used either for sacred purposes or the convenience of the
priests,--dwellings for all the various grades of the priesthood
attached to it, and numerous other buildings designed for state or
convenience....
The population of southern India in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Century was probably hardly less than it is now--some thirty
millions--and if one-third or one-fourth of such a population were to
seek employment in building, the results, if persevered in through
centuries, would be something astonishing. A similar state of affairs
prevailed apparently in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, but with
very different results. The Egyptians had great and lofty ideas, and a
hankering after immortality, that impressed itself on all their works.
The southern Indians had no such aspirations. Their intellectual status
is, and always was, mediocre; they had no literature of their own--no
history to which they could look back with pride, and their religion
was, and is, an impure and degrading fetishism. It is impossible that
anything grand and imposing should come out of such a state of things.
What they had to offer to their gods was a tribute of labour, and
that was bestowed without stint. To cut a chain of fifty links out of
a block of granite and suspend it between two pillars, was with them
a triumph of art. To hollow deep cornices out of the hardest basalt,
and to leave all the framings, as if of the most delicate woodwork,
standing free, was with them a worthy object of ambition, and their
sculptures are still inexplicable mysteries, from our ignorance of
how it was possible to execute them. All that millions of hands
working through centuries could do, has been done, but with hardly
any higher motive than to employ labour and to conquer difficulties,
so as to astonish by the amount of the first and the cleverness with
which the second was overcome--and astonished we are; but without
some higher motive true architecture cannot exist. The Dravidians had
not even the constructive difficulties to overcome which enabled the
Mediæval architects to produce such noble fabrics as our cathedrals.
The aim of architects in the Middle Ages was to design halls which
should at the same time be vast, but stable, and suited for the
accommodation of great multitudes to witness a lofty ritual. In their
struggles to accomplish this they developed intellectual powers which
impress us still through their works. No such lofty aims exercised
the intellectual faculties of the Hindu. His altar and the statue of
his god were placed in a dark cubical cell wholly without ornament,
and the porch that preceded that was not necessarily either lofty or
spacious. What the Hindu architect craved for, was a place to display
his powers of ornamentation, and he thought he had accomplished all
his art demanded when he covered every part of his building with the
most elaborate and most difficult designs he could invent. Much of this
ornamentation, it is true, is very elegant, and evidences of power and
labour do impress the human imagination, often even in defiance of
our better judgment, and nowhere is this more apparent than in these
Dravidian temples. It is in vain, however, we look among them for any
manifestation of those lofty aims and noble results which constitute
the merit and the greatness of true architectural art, and which
generally characterise the best works in the true styles of the western
world....