TARAZONA--VERUELA.
I FOUND a pleasant drive of two and a half hours, through vineyards and
olive-grounds, from Tudela to Tarazona. In front all the way was the
noble Sierra de Moncayo, which, according to one of my Spanish
fellow-travellers, is the highest mountain in Spain, from which view
however I humbly, and somewhat to his annoyance, dissented. But whether
he were right or not, it is still of very grand height, and the more
impressive in that it rises by itself in the midst of a comparatively
flat country. Behind us was an admirable view of Tudela, backed by the
brown and arid hills which skirt the Ebro; beyond them, in the far
distance, the Pyrenees; whilst in the immediate foreground we had a rich
green mass of olives and vines spread in a glorious expanse over the
country.
The villages on the road have nothing to boast of if I except a
pilgrimage church at Cascante, approached by a long covered gallery from
below, and a brick tower at Monteacadeo, of the Zaragozan type. We
passed, too, a newly-established convent for monks, who are already
beginning to build, in spite of the ruin with which they have so lately
been visited. But long before the end of our journey was reached, the
towers and steeples of Tarazona rose attractively in front over the low
hill which conceals the complete view of the city until you are almost
close upon it.
Attractive as this general view undoubtedly is, this old city does not
lose when it is examined more closely and carefully. It is not only in
itself picturesque, but its situation on either side of the stream which
a few miles below falls into the Ebro is eminently fine, and has been
made the most of by the happy and probably unconscious skill of the men
who have reared on the cliff above the water a tall pile of buildings on
buildings, carried on grand arches, corbelled here and buttressed there,
and with a sky-line charming in itself, and rendered doubly beautiful by
the sudden break in its outline caused by the lofty brick steeple of la
Magdalena--one of the finest of its class--which rears itself, with
admirable hardihood, on the very edge of the cliff. The streets and
Plazas, too, of the old city are all picturesquely irregular, full of
colour and evidences of national peculiarities, and climb the steep
sides of the hills from the river-side to the high ground at the
northern end of the city, which is crowned by the church of San Miguel.
I call such skill as this “unconscious,” because it is so much a
characteristic of old works of this kind that their authors never
exhibit any of that pert conceit which so distinctly marks the efforts
of so many of us nowadays. Old architects fortunately lived in days when
society was moderate in its demands, and had not ceased to care for that
which is true and natural: sad for us that we live when every man wishes
only to excel his neighbour, and that without regard to what is true or
useful; so that, instead of obtaining those happy results which always
reward the artist who does exactly what is needed in the most natural
and unartificial manner, we, by our attempts to show our own cleverness,
constantly end in substituting a petty personal conceit, where otherwise
we might have had an enduring and artistic success.
The cathedral stands very much alone, and away from the busier part of
the city, at the upper end of a grass-grown and irregular Plaza, on the
opposite side of the river from the Alcazar, and indeed from the bulk of
the houses. This Plaza, when I first saw it, on a Sunday afternoon, was
thoroughly beautiful and characteristic as a picture of Spanish life.
There was a fountain in the centre, around which hundreds of peasants
were congregated in lively groups, talking at the top of their voices,
and all gay with whitest shirt-sleeves, bright-coloured sashes, and
velvet breeches, slashed daintily at the knees, to show the whiteness of
the linen drawers; and when I went on into the church, I found in the
Lady Chapel another group of them kneeling before the altar, and
following one of their own class in a litany to the Blessed Virgin, the
effect of which was striking even to one unable to join in the burthen
of the prayer.
The cathedral here is said to have been restored by Alonso the First of
Aragon, in the year 1110; but an old Breviary, cited by Argaïz, fixes
the foundation of the present cathedral in 1235,[386] and with this
date the earliest part of the existing church agrees very closely. The
plan[387] is very good, consisting of a nave of six bays, with aisles
and chapels between their buttresses, transepts, a lofty Cimborio over
the Crossing, and a choir of two bays, ended with a five-sided apse. The
chapels in the chevet have mostly been altered, though the first on the
north side appears to be original, and proves that the outline of the
plan of the chevet could never have been very good. This chapel is
four-sided in plan, but much wider at one end than the other, and we
must, I fear, give but scant credit to the architect who planned it. The
Lady Chapel is a late and poor addition of a very inferior kind, and
completely modernized--as indeed is the greater part of the church--on
the exterior. On the south side of the cathedral there are old
sacristies and a large cloister, of which more presently. The west end
seemed to me to have been intended for two steeples, but one only has
been completed, and this is on the north side of the north aisle.
The remaining portions of the thirteenth-century church have been so
much altered that the general effect of the early work is almost
entirely destroyed. The columns and arches generally are original; the
former have carved capitals; many of the latter are slightly horseshoe
in shape, and have labels enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The
choir and transepts retain a good simple arcaded triforium, carried on
detached shafts, and this returns across the gable-walls of the latter;
it is of the simplest early pointed character; so too are the choir
windows, which before their alteration appear to have been lancets, with
engaged shafts in their jambs, whilst in the eastern wall of the
transepts are windows of two lancet lights, with a circle above within
an enclosing arch. Most of the arches of the nave are adorned with
carved flowers on the chamfers, the effect of which is not good; indeed
I half doubted whether they were not plaster additions, though they
seemed to be just too good for this. The choir has two (and only two)
flying buttresses; and as they are evidently of early date, with
pinnacles of the very simplest pyramidal outline, they were probably
erected to counteract a settlement which showed itself immediately after
the erection of the church, for there is no evidence of any others
having existed. The walls of the apse had originally a richly carved
cornice, filled with heads and foliage. The groining of the aisles is
generally simple and early in date, and quadripartite in plan: that of
the whole of the rest of the choir and nave is of the richest
description, and of the latest kind of Gothic.
[Illustration: TARAZONA Ground Plan of Cathedral Plate XXII.
W. West, Lithr.
Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]
Here, as is so frequently the case all over the world, the builders of
one period used an entirely different material from that used by those
of earlier times;[388] so that you may tell with tolerable accuracy the
date of the work by the material of which it is built. Here the early
church was entirely built of stone, but in all the later additions brick
is the prevailing material; and at first sight it is in these later
additions that we seem to find almost all the most characteristic work
in the church. Many of these additions, as for instance the
Churrigueresque alterations of the clerestory, are thoroughly bad and
contemptible; but some of them, though they damage the unity of effect
of the building, and have taken the place of work which one would much
rather have seen still intact, are nevertheless striking in themselves.
Such is the singular and picturesque Cimborio erected by Canon Juan
Muñoz[389] in the sixteenth century; it is certainly most picturesque,
but such a curious and complex combination of pinnacles and turrets
built of brick, and largely inlaid with green, blue, and white tiles, is
perhaps nowhere else to be seen. It is octagonal in plan, and of three
stages in height, the angles of the octagons in the several stages being
all counterchanged. Enormous coats of arms decorate the fronts of the
buttresses. The whole work is of the very latest possible Gothic,
utterly against all rules both in design and decoration, and yet,
notwithstanding all this, it is unquestionably striking in its effect.
The mixture of glazed tiles with brickwork has here been carried to a
very great extent, and the result does not, I think, encourage any one
to hope for much from this kind of development. This work is not to be
compared to that at the east end of Zaragoza Cathedral, where a plain
piece of wall is carefully covered all over with a rich coloured diaper
of brickwork and tiles, which are all harmonious and uniform in
character, and--which is equally important--in texture, and it has, on
the contrary, great similarity to some attempts to combine bricks and
tiles which we see made in the present day, and seems to show that these
attempts are not to be carelessly encouraged. For even when such work is
first executed, and the brickwork is fresh and neat, I think we always
feel that the smooth hard surface of the tile offers rather too great a
contrast to the rougher texture of the bricks; and whilst the former is
likely to remain almost unchanged for ever, the latter is certain
gradually to grow rougher and ruder in its aspect, until, in the end, we
shall have walls showing everywhere picturesque marks of age, and yet
with their decorations as fresh as if they had but just been introduced.
Nothing can well be worse than this; for if the appearance of age is to
be venerated at all, it must be somewhat uniformly evident; and it no
more answers to permit the decorations on an old and rugged wall to be
always new and fresh-looking, than it does to allow a juvenile wig to be
put on the venerable head of an old man!
The brick steeple of the cathedral is an inferior example of the same
kind as that of la Magdalena, which I shall have presently to describe;
its upper half is modern, and the lowest stage of stone. The west front
is all modernized, and the north transept is conspicuous for a large
porch of base design, erected probably in the sixteenth century, and
exhibiting a curious though very unsuccessful attempt to copy--or
perhaps I ought to say caricature--early work.
The whole of the clerestory walls have been raised with a stage of
brickwork above the windows, which was added probably in the sixteenth
or seventeenth century.
The cloister, built in the beginning of the sixteenth century, by D.
Guillen Ramon de Moncada, is a remarkable example of very rich
brickwork. It deserves illustration as being of an extremely uncommon
style, and withal very effective. All the arches and jambs of the
openings are of moulded brick, and there are brick enclosing arches, and
a very simple brick cornice outside; but the delicate traceries which
give so much character to the work are all cut in thin slabs of stone
let into the brickwork. Of course such a work was not intended for
glazing, and was an ingenious arrangement for rendering the cloister
cool and unaffected by the sun, even when at its hottest. The forms of
the openings here are certainly not good, and look much more like
domestic than ecclesiastical work; but in spite of this one cannot but
be thankful for novelty, whenever it is, as here, legitimately
obtained. The bricks are of a very pale red tint, 12½ inches long, 6¼
inches wide, and from 1½ to 1¾ thick, and the mortar-joint, as usual, is
very thick--generally about ¾ of an inch. The cloister is groined, and
probably in brick, but is now plastered or whitewashed unsparingly, and
its effect is in great degree ruined.
[Illustration: Cloister, Tarazona.]
The sacristies are rather peculiar in their arrangement: they are all
groined, and one of them has a small recess in one angle with a chair in
it facing a crucifix, of which I could not learn the use. Another of
this group of buildings contains a fountain under a small dome, the
plashing of whose waters seemed to make it a very popular rendezvous of
the people, and made itself heard everywhere throughout the sacristies
and their passages.
The stalls in the Coro are of very late Gothic, the bishop’s stall, with
one on either side of it in the centre of the west end, having lofty
canopies. The Coro is more than usually separated from the Capilla
mayor, and there can be little doubt that it does not occupy its
original position. The men who built so long a nave would never have
done so simply to render its length useless by so perverse an
arrangement of the choir. Here, in fact, the Coro occupies the same kind
of position to which one so often sees it reduced in parish churches in
Spain, where it is usually either in a western gallery, or at any rate
at the extreme western end of the nave, behind everybody’s backs, and
apparently out of their minds!
A chapel on the north side of the nave, dedicated to Santiago, has a
richly cusped arch opening from it to the aisle, and its vault springs
from large corbels, carved with figures of the four evangelists, rudely
but richly sculptured. It is mainly worthy of notice now on account of
the beauty of a panel-painting still preserved over the altar: this is
painted on a gold background, richly diapered, and the nimbi and borders
to the vestments all elaborately raised in gold in high relief. The
frame is richly carved with figures of saints, and gilt. The predella
has on either side of the centre St. John and the Blessed Virgin, and
four other holy women; in the centre a sculpture of our Lord and four
saints which serves as a pedestal for a well-posed figure of Santiago;
and on either side of the saint are two pictures with subjects
illustrating his life. It is, on the whole, a very fine example of the
combination of painting and sculpture, of which the Spaniards in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were so fond. The paintings are less
realistic than German work of the same age, and, if not so delicately
lovely as early Italian works, are yet of great interest and merit.
[Illustration: No 47.
TARAZONA.
CAMPANILE OF LA MAGDALENA.]
Returning from the cathedral to the town, and before one crosses to the
opposite side of the river, a noble view of the buildings on the cliff
above it is obtained from the bridge. The grandest of these is an
enormous bishop’s palace, once I believe the Alcazar; and close to it is
the church of la Magdelena. The interior of this is entirely modernized,
but the east end outside is a valuable example of untouched Romanesque.
The eastern apse is divided into three by engaged shafts, stopping with
capitals at the eaves-cornice, which is carried on a very simple
corbel-table. To the west of this church is the steeple to which I have
already alluded as giving so much of its character to Tarazona. It is a
very lofty brick tower, without buttresses, with a solid simple base
battering out boldly and effectively, and diapered in its upper stages
with the patterns formed by projecting bricks, of which the builders
of the brick buildings throughout this district were so fond. At a very
slight expense a great effect of enrichment is obtained; the dark
shadows of the bricks under the bright Spanish sunlight define all the
lines clearly; and the uniformity of colour and the absence of
buttresses make the general effect simple and quiet, notwithstanding the
intricacy of the detail. The upper stage of this steeple is, as I need
hardly say, a comparatively modern addition, but it no doubt adds to its
effect by adding so much to the height, and in colour and design it
harmonizes fairly with the earlier work below.
The church of La Concepcion, not far from this, is a very late Gothic
building, with a western gallery whose occupants are quite concealed by
stone traceries of the same kind as those in the cloisters of the
cathedral. The sanctuary walls here are lined with glazed tiles, and the
floor is laid with blue, green, and white tiles, the colour of each of
which being half white and half blue or green allows of the whole floor
being covered with a diaper of chequer-work, which is very effective and
very easily arranged.
At the farther end of the city, and on the top of the long hill on which
it is built, is a church dedicated to San Miguel. This has a simple nave
with a seven-sided apse. The groining is all of very late date, the ribs
curling down at their intersection as pendants, the under sides of which
are cut off to receive bosses which were probably large and of wood.
This groining is probably not earlier than the end of the sixteenth
century, though the church itself is of the thirteenth or fourteenth
century, having two doors of one of these dates: that on the north side
has, in most respects, the air of being a work of the thirteenth, but
its sculpture seems to prove that it cannot be earlier than the
fourteenth century. It has the Judgment of Solomon carved on one of the
capitals, angels in the label, and a figure of St. Michael above. The
south doorway is executed in brick and stone, and is of the same date as
the other. A brick belfry on the north side is enriched in the same
fashion as that of la Magdalena, and, like it, batters out considerably
at the base, but it is altogether inferior both in size and design.
From Tarazona I made a delightful excursion to the Abbey of Veruela. It
is a two hours’ ride, and the path takes one over a hill which conceals
the Sierra de Moncayo from sight in most parts of Tarazona. The scenery
on the road was beautiful. The town itself is always very striking; and
as we ascended, the views of the distant hills and mountains beyond the
Ebro were finer and finer. After riding for an hour and a half, a grand
view of the whole height of Moncayo is obtained; below it to the right
is a little village guarded by a picturesque castle keep, and on beyond
and to the left a long line of roof, and towers, and walls girt around
with trees, which seems to promise much to reward examination: and this
is the old abbey of Veruela. At last the avenue is reached, which leads
to the abbey gateway, in front of which stands a tall but mutilated
cross, which forms the centre from which five paths--each planted with
an avenue of trees--diverge.
The history of this abbey is interesting. It was the first Cistercian
house in Spain, and was founded by a certain Don Pedro de Atares, and
his mother Teresa de Cajal, who commenced it in A.D. 1146, completed it
in 1151, and obtained its formal incorporation in the Cistercian order
on the 1st of September of the same year. There was a foundation for
twelve monks, who were the first of their order to cross the Pyrenees,
and who established themselves definitively here on the 10th August,
1171, under the direction of Bernard, Abbat of Scala Dei.[390]
I suppose the desolate situation of Veruela led to its being carefully
fortified, though, indeed, at the date of its foundation, most religious
houses were enclosed within fortified walls, and the severe rule of the
early Cistercians will account fully for the remote and solitary
situation chosen by the brethren who planted this house where we see it:
at any rate, whatever the cause, it is now completely surrounded by
walls, from which round towers project at intervals. The walls and
towers are all perfectly plain, and surmounted with the pointed
battlement so often seen in early Spanish buildings. A walled courtyard
protects the entrance to the main gateway, and it is in front of this
that the avenues mentioned just now all unite.
[Illustration: No. 48.
ABBEY OF VERUELA
ENTRANCE GATEWAY]
The view here is very peculiar. In front are the low walls of the outer
court, with a raised archway in the centre; behind these the higher
walls and towers, with a lofty and very plain central gateway, finished
with an octagonal stage and low crocketed spire of late date, but
pierced at the base with very simple thirteenth-century archways,
leading into the inner court. Beyond this, again, is seen the upper part
of the walls and the steeple of the Abbey Church, backed by a bold
line of hills. Passing through this gateway, a long narrow court leads
to the west front of the church; and to the right of this court is a
long range of buildings, all of which I think are of comparatively
modern erection, though the brickwork in a _patio_ entered by one of the
openings is picturesque and good.
The west front of the church has a very noble round-arched doorway,
boldly recessed, and with many shafts in the jambs. Above this is a
small stone inscribed with the monograms X. P. and A. Ω.;
and then, higher, a delicate line of arcading carried on slender shafts.
All this work is set forward in advance of the general face of the wall.
The nave and aisles were each lighted with a plain circular window, and
the arcading up the eaves of the western gable still remaining shows
that its pitch was always very flat. A steeple was built by an
Abbat--Lope Marco--in the sixteenth century, against the western bay of
the north aisle, and before its erection there was, I suppose, no tower
attached to the abbey.
In plan[391] the church consists of a nave and aisles six bays in
length, transepts with eastern apses, and a choir with an aisle round
it, and five small apsidal chapels. To the south of the nave is a large
cloister with a Chapter-house on its eastern side, and other ranges of
buildings on the west and south. To the east, too, are large erections
now occupied as a private residence, and of which consequently I saw
nothing properly, but without much regret, as they did not seem to show
any traces of antiquity, and had probably been all rebuilt in those
halcyon days in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, when Spaniards
had more money than they well knew how to spend.
If we compare this church with one of the earliest French convents of
the same order--as, for instance, Clairvaux--we shall find a very
remarkable similarity in most of the arrangements. In both, the church
is approached through a long narrow court, to which it is set in a
slightly oblique line. In both, the extreme simplicity, the absence of
sculptures, the absence of a steeple, are observed in compliance with
the fundamental rules of the Order. Both have their cloisters similarly
placed, with similar Chapter-houses, and lavatories projecting from
their southern alleys. The sacristies and the great libraries are in the
same position--though here the latter has been converted into an
enormous hall--and there are here groups of buildings all round the
cloister, which were probably appropriated much in the same way as were
those at Clairvaux. Both, too, were enclosed in a very similar way with
walls and towers, though at Clairvaux the enclosure was far larger than
at Veruela.
It is clear, therefore, that the French monks who were brought here to
found this first Spanish Cistercian house, came with the plan approved
by their Order, and it is probable with something more than the mere
ground-plan, for the whole of the work is such as might at the same date
have been erected in France.
The whole exterior of the church is very fine, though severely simple.
The west front has already been described. The exterior of the chevet is
more striking. The roofs of the chapels which surround it finish below
the corbel-table of the aisle, which has a steepish roof finishing below
the clerestory; and the latter is divided into five bays by plain
pilasters. All the eaves have corbel-tables, and the windows throughout
are round-headed. The chapels on the eastern side of the transepts are
of the same height as the aisle round the choir, and higher than the
chapels of the chevet. The design of the interior, though very simple,
is extremely massive and dignified. The main arches are all pointed, the
groining generally quadripartite (save in the small apses, which are
roofed with semi-domes), and the piers large and well planned. Many of
the old altars remain; and among them the high altar in the choir, and
those in the chapels of the chevet. The former is arcaded along its
whole front, but has been altered somewhat in length at no very distant
period. Near it is a double piscina, formed by a couple of shafts with
capitals hollowed out with multifoil cusping.
The chapel altars are all like each other, and unlike the high altar,
which is solid, whilst they are stone tables, each supported upon five
detached shafts. They stand forward from the walls in the centre of the
apses, and have rudely carved and planned piscinæ, and credence niches
on the right-hand side as you face them.
The stones are marked in all directions by the masons, some of them with
a mere line across from angle to angle, but mostly with marks of the
usual quaint description. A number of examples of them are given on the
engraving of the ground-plan.
[Illustration: No. 49.
VERUELA ABBEY CHURCH.
INTERIOR.]
Some part of the floor is laid with blue and white tiles, arranged in
chevrons with good effect, and other parts with tombstones of Abbats,
whose effigies are carved on them in low relief. They are flatter than
the somewhat similar stones in some of the German churches (as _e.g._ at
S. Elizabeth, Marburg) but are still a great deal too uneven on the
surface to be suitable for a pavement.
[Illustration: Chapel Altar, Veruela.]
The capitals are all very rudely sculptured, and the whole of the work
has the air of extreme severity, almost of rudeness, which might be
anticipated from the circumstances of its erection. A chapel was built
in the sixteenth century to the north of the north transept by Ferdinand
of Aragon, Bishop of Zaragoza, and nephew of Ferdinand the Catholic. It
has nothing remarkable in its design. Later than this a large chapel was
added to the east of the sacristy; and from what still remains of the
fittings of the Coro in the nave, they seem to have been still later in
date.
A fine late Romanesque door leads from the south aisle into the
cloister, the whole of which is a good work of the early part of the
fourteenth century, with well-traceried windows of four lights. The
groining piers are clusters of shafts, and the buttresses on the outside
are finished with crocketed gables and a bold cornice carved with
foliage. The traceries are now all filled in with very thin panels of
alabaster, which do not obscure the light much, whilst they effectually
keep out the sun; but this precaution against sunshine does not seem to
have been much needed, if the men were right who raised a second stage
upon the old cloister, the Renaissance arcades of which are all left
perfectly open. On the southern alley of the cloister there is a very
pretty hexagonal projecting chamber, in which no doubt--if we may judge
by the analogy of Clairvaux--was once the lavatory. The cloister has
been built in front of, and without at all disturbing, the original
Chapter-house, on its east side. The new groining shafts stand detached
in front of the old arcade to the Chapter-house, and the combination of
the two is managed very cleverly and picturesquely. This old arcade
consists of the usual arrangement of a central doorway, with two
openings on either side, all carried on clusters of detached shafts with
capitals of foliage. The Chapter-house itself is divided into nine
groining bays by four detached shafts; it is very low and small, and its
three eastern windows are blocked up, but nevertheless its effect is
admirable. One of its columns has been spoilt by the elaborate cutting
in of the names of a party of Englishmen who ascended the Sierra de
Moncayo to see the eclipse of the sun in 1860, and who recorded their
not very hazardous or important achievement in this most barbarous
fashion.
[Illustration: Entrance to Chapter-House, Veruela.]
It is a fact quite worth notice here, that none of the old windows are
blocked up: the truth is that the churches from which this was derived
were, in common with all Romanesque churches, taken straight from Italy,
where the requirements of the climate were very similar to those of
Spain. Yet it was only very gradually that the northern architects
discovered their unfitness for a northern climate, and increased their
dimensions. Here they give just enough and not too much light; but at a
later day, when the northern churches were all window from end to end,
the same fault was committed; and when their architects were employed to
build in other climates, they followed their own traditions without
reference to altered circumstances, as we see at Milan, at Leon, and
elsewhere frequently.
The church at Veruela seems now to be but little frequented, the high
altar alone being ever used. The stalls of the Coro are gone, and a
shattered fragment of the old organ-case standing out from the wall
serves only as a forlorn mark to show where it once stood. The buildings
generally are sadly decayed and ruinous, and I have seldom seen a noble
building less cared for or respected. It is sad to see this result of
the suppression of religious orders, and one may be permitted to doubt
whether it can be for the interest of religion that this noble
foundation should now be nothing more than the private residence of a
Spanish gentleman, instead of--as it was intended it should be by its
pious founder--a perpetual refuge from the cares of the world of those
in every age who aim to lead the holiest and most devoted lives.
I left Veruela with regret that I was unable to obtain more accurate
notes of such portions of the monastic buildings as probably still
remain overlaid with the poor additions of a too wealthy convent during
the last three centuries. It is, however, easily accessible, and the
plan which I give of the church will no doubt soon induce others to
complete my examination wherever it has been defective.
On the ride back to Tarazona, we made a short _détour_ to look at what
seemed to be an important church and village. Neither could well have
been less so! The church was without anything worth remark save a band
of tiles, set chevron fashion, in the cornice, and not harmonizing at
all well with the walls. The village was wretched in the extreme.
At Tarazona I was much struck by the extremely good character of the
common crockery in use in the inn and elsewhere. It is all painted by
hand, never printed; and the result is that, even when simple diapers
only are used, there is far greater life, variety, and vigour in the
drawing than there ever is in our machine-made work. The colour seems
generally to be used in such a way as that when burnt it varies
charmingly in tint and texture. Every plate is different in pattern; and
I fear that, uncivilized as we might think these good Spaniards in some
things, they would be justly shocked were they to see the wretchedly
inferior patterns with which, after many years of talking about art, we
are still satisfied to decorate our earthenware. These people excel,
too, just as much in form as in ornament. Their jugs are always quaint
and good in outline, and made with the simplest regard to what is
useful.
[Illustration: VERUELA ABBEY: Ground Plan of the Church &r: Plate XXIII.
W. West, Lithr.
Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]