THROUGH SPAIN TO THE SAHARA.

T H R O U G H S P A I N
TO
T H E S A H A R A.

Tents of the Nomade Tribes. Sahara Desert.
BY
MATILDA BETHAM EDWARDS
AUTHOR OF
‘A WINTER WITH THE SWALLOWS’ ETC.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS.
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1868.

The right of Translation is reserved.

CHAPTER I.

SUNDAY AT TOURS.—LA COLONIE DE METTRAY.—BEAUTIFUL DORDOGNE.—A FRENCH PARSONAGE.—THROUGH THE LANDES.—THE SOPORIFIC EFFECTS OF ARCACHON.

N a golden autumn afternoon we found ourselves in the old city of Tours, bound for Spain and the enchanted lands lying north of the Great Sahara. Pleasant it was to look backward and forward; backward to the busy life in England, forward to the bright holiday of travel, repeating to ourselves again and again the sentiment, if not the words, of Catullus:—

“Jam mens prætrepidans avet vagari,
Jam læti studio pedes vigescunt,
Oh! dulces comitum, valete, coetus,
Longe quos simul a domo profectus
Diversæ variæ viæ reportant.”

We were to be made so much richer and so much wiser by the experiences of the next few weeks; a new country was about to be mapped out on our chart: we were to speak another language, breathe another atmosphere, feel the influences of another religion. For the present we were at home, among French faces and French voices; and, however impatient we might be to reach the wonderful country lying beyond the Pyrenees, we could but willingly linger in these lovely border-lands.

It was Sunday, and our hearts were yet full of the tender beauty of the region through which we had come, when we reached Tours, and joined the stream of church-goers. The Cathedral on that glowing autumn afternoon was a sight to remember, standing as it did against a bright blue sky, with a rosy flush of sunset upon its spires. Nothing can be richer than the façade, and yet so simple is the construction as a whole, that one comes away with a clear idea of it in every part. We lingered in the light for a little, and then went in. A mediæval-looking priest, with shaven head, was preaching to a crowd of reverent peasants—and we listened, no less reverent, to a sermon that might have been preached hundreds of years ago. The preacher had a melancholy, monastic face, and a fervid eloquence that would, perhaps, have stirred up any other congregation, though none could have been more devout than these simple-hearted vintagers and farmers. We stayed till the sermon drew to a close, and then went on by train to Mettray.

It was at Tours that the Saracens were driven back, and it seemed to us a good starting-point for a journey which had for one of its objects the study of Moorish monuments in Spain. We amused ourselves with speculating upon the condition of Europe had the Saracens succeeded at Tours. But for that defeat, we might have had now—who knows?—a Caliphate at Marseilles, and, perhaps, a Cordova at Oxford. But, no; climate, if not Anglo-Saxon spirit, would have driven the sunshine-loving Moors from our island, so that, even in dreams we cannot spread Islamism farther than the Rhine,—which is a consolation to good churchmen and patriots!

I purpose narrating our journey from the very beginning, because on our way from Paris to Bayonne we made two excursions which I should strongly recommend to every one; firstly, to the great agricultural Reformatory of Mettray, and secondly, to the Protestant Orphanages of La Force in the province of La Dordogne. We reached Mettray in about twenty minutes. Such a sweet, peaceful, little spot lying in the heart of the wine-country! The village postman conducted us, through a dusky winding road that was all a-twitter with the twilight songs of birds, to a large Swiss cottage that proved to be an inn, where we slept as if we had lived there all our lives.

The chirping of the birds woke us early, and we hastened to pay our visit to la Colonie, as the great Reformatory is cheerfully and properly called. For Mettray is neither more nor less than a collection of farms and factories, carried on by such waifs and strays of society as its humane founders have been able to snatch from destruction. Once having entered the gates, the whole system of the place suggested itself to us. To our right, to our left, peeped from the trees pretty-looking farm-buildings and workshops, all resounding with the noise of the wheel, the hammer, the saw, and the turning-lathe, and made sunny and pleasant with trellised vines and well-kept gardens. Every place was orderly, quiet, and cheerful; and, as we passed along, the young farmers and artisans greeted us, if not with blithe, at least with contented faces. Leaving our letters of introduction at the porter’s lodge, we made a survey of the place accompanied by an intelligent person employed as superintendent of the boys. Our first object of interest—for we knew something of agriculture ourselves—was the farm; and here was meat and drink to delight the most orthodox Suffolk farmer going. Beautifully stalled bullocks; pigs, cleanly littered or scampering about, of the proper breed, small of bone, long of body, sleek of skin; stores of grain, of root, and of forage; a good supply of modern farm-implements,—in fine, every accessory to good farming on a miniature scale.

Then we passed on to the workshops, which were like so many hives, only a little quiet, considering the age of the bees. Some of these workmen, in blue blouses and wooden shoes, were mere mannikins of six or seven years old; but if to a stranger the discipline appears a little hard, it must be remembered that each and all have been snatched from the discipline of prison. All these eight hundred boys, whom we saw working under such kind and pitiful supervision, were, in fact, criminals, and well for them and for society that the benevolent founders of Mettray had come to the rescue in time.

The type of physiognomy was strikingly low, narrow forehead, flat skull, vicious mouth, and deep-set, cunning eyes, which would seem as if the physiognomy, as well as the propensity, of vice, is hereditary; for most of these children were the offspring of crime and vagabondage. The lowest type of face, intellectually as well as morally speaking, was not that of the Parisian, but that of the peasant; and it interested us to find that, as a rule, the best-behaved Mettray boys were also the most intelligent. Each boy is at liberty to follow the trade he likes best, and, oddly enough, the favourite one seems to be that of tailoring. We found in the little world of Mettray, as in the great world beyond, that every one had fallen naturally into his place. The stupid boys loved to follow the plough, the inventive to handle the carpenters’ tools, the lovers of nature to tend the cattle, the effeminate to cook the dinners, the enterprising to manage the farm. All are at liberty, also, to attend evening classes, and, as a reward of merit, to learn music.

“If it were not for that,” said the good-natured superintendent to us, “we should fancy Mettray a prison. The boys are summoned to work by music every day, and sing at chapel on Sunday. Oh! if you only knew how they enjoy it!”

We could easily understand this, for when the little band of musicians was summoned to give us a concert, nothing could equal the alacrity with which the summons was obeyed. There was a good deal of shyness and excitement at first, but a real, hearty relish of the music as soon as it began, perfectly delightful to witness. The superior intelligence, I might almost go so far as to use the word refinement, of these boys from their fellows, was quite remarkable. Not one of them had a brutish or brutal look. When the concert was over, we went into the chapel and the class-room. The latter was decorated with pictures, maps, and “honourable mentions,” of former Mettray boys, who had fought in the Crimea, in Algeria, in Mexico. Portraits of the Emperor were not wanting, nor, indeed, anything to encourage these poor little outcasts to love their country, to go out into the world and to make men of themselves. I was pleased to find the wards and dormitories also decorated with pictures and medallions, the highly-prized rewards of good conduct; while the outside of every building was trellised with grapes, a more material reward, not of special good conduct, but of indiscriminate industry.

“The grapes belong to the boys and are divided when ripe,” said our guide; “it’s very pleasant to see that not a bunch is surreptitiously touched, and that every one gets his share at the proper time. But only consider what a saint we have at our head! Who could help growing better with such an example as Monsieur De M—— before him?”

The gentleman in question is the founder of Mettray, and spends all his time and thought among the outcast children of his adoption. It was quite touching to find how he had leavened the whole lump of this little society with his own goodness; and very proud and happy we felt at receiving an invitation to breakfast with him and his daughter the Countess B——. But before speaking of this pleasant breakfast, I must mention one of the most curious features in the Colonie of Mettray. Every one has seen in The Times the advertisement of some persistent and philanthropic clergyman, who undertakes to make unmanageable boys perfectly tractable and gentlemanly in a few months’ time. But they manage these things better in France, as will be seen by the way in which the benevolent supporter of Mettray has effectually supplied the want of such obliging clergymen.

Monsieur De M——’s pet project is what he calls, “La maison paternelle,”—in other words, a refined sort of prison for the refractory sons of gentlemen. The prison is attractive enough outwardly, and looks like a pretty Swiss house, but, in spite of carpets and curtains, the interior is gloomy. We were conducted all over the building, and our guide was at great pains to give us a clear idea of what was, evidently, his pet project. Unruly boys are sent here under the charge of a tutor for terms of one, two, or more months; they are kept to hard study, and during their hours of work the key of their cells is turned upon them, and their behaviour is watched by the tutor through a tiny pane of glass let in the doors. As a reward of good conduct, more cheerful kinds of cells looking on to the garden and adorned with pictures are given, but the peep-hole and the key are never wanting.

“It is an admirable institution, this maison paternelle,” I said, a little doubtfully; “and must relieve parents of a good deal of responsibility; but it would never do to lock up English boys, and watch them at their lessons through a peep-hole.”

The superintendent smiled.

“We had one English boy here once——” he said, and then stopped short.

“Well, and how did it answer in that solitary case?”

“Very ill, I assure you. He burst open the lock, refused to work, defied his tutor,—in fine, all but created a mutiny, and heartily glad were we to get rid of him.”

It was now ten o’clock, Monsieur De M——’s breakfast hour, and we were conducted to the simple yet elegant house which he inhabits among his adopted children. We found a man past middle age, exquisitely polished in manner, enthusiastic almost to the pitch of inspiration, kindly, grave, cheerful. It was worth the journey from Paris to make such an acquaintance. The Countess, too, was charming, and seemed almost as interested in the little world of Mettray as her father. But to talk with Monsieur De M—— was like being transported into a new and purer world. He seemed gifted with unselfishness as with a sixth sense, and handled sin and the sorrow born of it tenderly and trustfully as none but the Apostles of humanity can.

But even good and great men have their hobbies, and the hobby of M. De M—— was his maison paternelle.[1] So earnest and eloquent, indeed, was he in the cause that he all but converted us to the belief in bars and bolts as a cure for naughtiness. He gave us a prospectus of the establishment, which I transcribe below, and which will give the reader a truer idea of its spirit than any comments of mine. It is incontestable that, however antagonistic such a system may be to our English notions, it has hitherto worked well in France.

But a breakfast—even a French breakfast of twenty dishes—soon comes to an end, and we found ourselves compelled to quit our hospitable entertainer, just as we were fairly seizing the spirit of his great undertaking. Reluctantly we bade adieu to the peaceful asylum of Mettray, and sauntered through the vineyards to the railway station. It looked a lovely land to live in, especially now, when it lay bathed in the rosy splendour of autumn. Here and there, a stately old chateau peeped from amidst the chestnut-trees, or we came upon a grave peasant, who might have been one of George Sand’s heroes, driving his team across a sweet-smelling beetfield. As we passed the village church, a wedding party issued from the gate. The bride, who was a brunette, looked very handsome in her bright purple dress and orange-wreath, and the bridegroom and whole happy party saluted us. We ought to have stopped to wish them joy, but we didn’t think of it in time; and when we turned back, ashamed of our English shyness, the white ribbons of the last bridesmaid were disappearing round the corner. “Mon Dieu, those English are cold-hearted people!” I can hear these honest peasants say over their wedding-feast. “They meet our Jeanne and her Jeannot coming from church and never stop to utter a blessing!”

Pretty Jeanne! I hope that our negligence may prove no ill omen to her after-life. It was downright shyness, and not ill nature, on our part, after all.

From Mettray we proceeded by rail to Tours, and on to Libourne, a pleasant and picturesque bit of rail, spoiled in this instance, however, by the late inundations of the Loire. One reads of these inundations, and laments over them at home, but is far from realising the actual state of things without personal experience. Horace’s ode on the overflowing of the Tiber gives a more approximate idea of the prevailing ruin and dismay than anything; and my fellow-traveller (we don’t intend quoting Latin all the way) broke out with:—

“Piscium et summa genus hæsit ulmo,
Nota quæ secies fuerat columbis;
Et superjecto pavidæ natârunt
Æquore damæ.”

We travelled all the way from Tours to Libourne with an English gentlemen, who gave us horrifying accounts of the Spanish inns.

“Sleep at Cordova!” he uttered, with a positive shriek of dismay; “sleep at Cordova! I warn you not to attempt it; I forbid you to attempt it. It’s awful! it’s disgusting! it’s impossible! I was travelling in Spain with my wife a year ago, and we stayed a night at Cordova. The beds and floors were alive with vermin, and, as a last resource of sleeplessness and disgust, we betook ourselves to arm-chairs and railway rugs. Whatever you do, don’t sleep at Cordova.”

And so kindly anxious was he for our comfort that, when he alighted at some half-way station between Tours and Libourne, he ran back to the carriage just as the train was moving off and called out, “Don’t sleep at Cordova.”

We took the diligence to St. Foy next day, that being the nearest post-town to La Force. It was not a comfortable journey; the road was cut straight through a monotonous country, and the conveyance was terribly overcrowded. One of the passengers was a heavy-looking priest, and one a peasant woman with a week-old baby she was carrying home to nurse. I put one or two questions to M. le Curé about the Orphan-Idiot Asylums of La Force. Did he know the pastor B—— by name? Had he seen his Orphanages? But M. le Curé, though living in the next parish, seemed alike ignorant of both La Force and its founder. “Pasteur B——, a Protestant? I don’t know him at all,” he said. We then talked of the little fosterling, asked if it were customary to put out all infants to nurse in La Dordogne. On being answered in the affirmative, we said, “You ought to preach against that, Monsieur le Curé: it is a cruel custom;” and then we questioned the nurse as to the parentage of her little charge. All at once the Curé’s face lighted up, and he looked at us as if he were revealing an astounding piece of intelligence.

“Why,” he said, “it’s the child of Madame George, my parishioner, and I baptized it myself.”

Yet he had never heard of La Force nor of Mettray!

St. Foy is an old-fashioned town, charmingly situated on the banks of the Dordogne. The road to La Force wound along the river side, and had in some places been rendered impassable by the late inundations. As we proceeded on our way, sometimes on foot, sometimes in the crazy old vehicle we had hired, we caught glimpses of scenes so sunny, so full of tender beauty, so poetic, and so peaceful, that we felt as if we would fain escape to La Dordogne whenever the troubles of the world might lie heavy upon us. River, vineyard, hill and wood, all softened and illumined by the autumn sunshine, made up a little rural world very fresh and sweet to live in; one wonders, can any one be very unhappy here?

We brought letters with us from English friends, and the good pastor and his wife received us with more than kindness. Two or three pastors from Geneva were staying in their house, so that we found ourselves in quite a little Methodist community; and not being Methodists ourselves, though full of respect for all that is good in Methodism, it startled us a little to be catechised thus:—“The great and good Spurgeon, what is he doing at this moment?” “How many believers are gathered every Sabbath in his temple?” &c. &c. It was so new, too, to feel, in a world where the spirit of inquiry had not yet penetrated, and to know that here, if nowhere else, the authors of Ecce Homo and The Pentateuch Explained were all but unknown.

Naturally the conversation fell upon the present aspect of Protestantism, or rather Methodism, in France.

“It is very difficult to be a Protestant in France,” said Pastor B——, and sighed. “When I think of the reception I had in England, and of the precious friends there whose prayers are ever with me, I compare myself to some solitary exile in a hostile land.”

He went on to tell us much that was interesting and unexpected. It seems that the Protestant population decreases in France, on account of the disinclination or disability of the young men to marry, and, in some places, the little communities threaten to die away altogether.

After dinner and coffee, one of the ministers from Geneva gave a little religious discourse, our kindly host extemporised a prayer, and we were conducted to our rooms. But long past midnight we heard earnest voices in discussion, and by daybreak the sounds commenced afresh. It was the Pastor B—— and his friends who sat up late and rose early to discuss the prospects of the Church, as their time of intercourse was drawing to a close. When we came down to breakfast the visitors had gone.

The asylums of La Force are well worth the study of any one interested in the lowest forms of helplessness and suffering. Nothing can equal the cheerfulness and orderliness of the buildings both within and without. The rooms are spacious, well ventilated, and looking on pleasant landscapes of corn-field and vineyard; a pretty church is in construction close by; and both boys and girls have large gardens in which to play or work. The climate of La Dordogne is mild and sunny; snow is almost unknown; and on this November day when we found ourselves at La Force, the temperature was very nearly that of summer. Fortunate, indeed, are these poor idiots who rejoice in such material and moral sunshine; for the loving care and sympathy with which they are surrounded is, I should say, quite unequalled. We have read of the Crimean soldiers kissing Florence Nightingale’s shadow as it fell on the wall; and as the good Pastor moved along, there were looks of love and gratitude following him that did the heart good to witness. The most touching feature of Pastor B——’s Orphanages is the way in which the blind are taught to lead the blind. We saw an idiot boy acting as writing-master to a dozen children more or less imbecile, and idiot girls tending upon the paralysed and the epileptic. In one room there were about twenty poor things all more or less personally and mentally deformed; and the distorted faces, bent limbs, oblique eyes, and soulless grins and gesticulations, were horrible. Pastor B—— shuddered at the accustomed sight, and told us that most of these children were born of sin and shame too horrible to mention. With very few exceptions all have been taught to read, to write, to sew, and to labour in the fields; the great hindrance to the good minister’s scheme is want of money.

“We have many kind friends and supporters both in England, France, and Switzerland,” he said; “and yet we have hard work to pull through. Many people seem to think they do us good service in sending a poor orphan or idiot; we take all in, but at a cost far beyond our present means.”

We were glad, and yet sorry, to leave La Force and its generous supporters—glad to escape the sight of so much physical and mental deformity, and sorry that we could not effectually aid the noble efforts made in its behalf.

From La Dordogne to Bayonne extends the dreary desert of the Landes,—a desert only broken by pine-forests and shepherds’ huts, and offering no enticement to the impatient travellers bound to Spain. We did, however, spend a day at Arcachon near Bordeaux, for the place had been praised in our hearing as a second and more attractive Biarritz, and we wanted to know how far we might recommend it to friends at home.

I don’t think I can recommend any one to go to Arcachon, quiet and pretty as it is. In the first place, the air is so oppressively soft that we both felt stupefied by it, much as if we had taken morphine; and in the second, the houses are all built in such gimcrack style that one feels to be living in a sixpenny peep-show. But, on the other hand, there are sweet-smelling forests of young pine very refreshing to the sight and sense (if people preserve their sight and senses in soporific Arcachon), and salt-baths, and the pleasant feeling that here, if nowhere else in the world, it would be quite possible to become oblivious of every care and responsibility under the sun!

CHAPTER II.

THE MISCONCEPTIONS OF LUGGAGE.—THE COMFORTS OF SPANISH RAILWAY TRAVELLING.—OUR LIBRARY.—FROM THE TROPICS TO THE STEPPES.—GREGORIA AND ISIDORA.—JOURNEY TO MADRID.

OS billetes de primera clase para Burgos?” (Two first-class tickets to Burgos) with astonishment repeated the young woman acting as collector at the railway station of Biarritz. “To Burgos! to Burgos!”

“To Burgos,” we replied, quietly.

“If you are really going as far as Burgos,” she said, with the same look of unmitigated surprise, “I must apply to the station-master for the tickets. Have the goodness to sit down and I will see about it.”

We supposed by this young lady’s behaviour, and we afterwards found our supposition to be true, that it is a most unusual thing for ladies to travel in Spain. With one or two exceptions, we had the ladies’ coupé to ourselves from one end of Spain to the other, and very comfortable travelling we found it.

Our tickets came to hand in due time. We took our seats, the train moved slowly, and we felt fairly off to Spain. There was a pleasant excitement about such a journey just then, for every one prophesied a revolution in Madrid; it might come to-morrow, it must come soon, people said; and we were thought very venturesome to venture beyond the Pyrenees at all. Not that the sense of danger attracted us. We had come to Spain with very definite objects, and though we could not help feeling that the sooner a revolution came for the Spaniards the better, we hoped that it might not come till we were safely at Gibraltar, at least. The pictures of Velasquez, and the Moorish relics of Cordova, Seville, and Granada, were the loadstones that drew us to Spain; at the same time we could not but be alive to the great political and social questions agitating a country once so glorious, and still so capable of glorious things. But in a stay so short as ours was likely to be, we despaired of seeing more than the surface of Spanish thought and life, however much we might wish for other opportunities. It made us smile then, and it makes me smile now, to review the magnitude of our preparations for this trip. And now let me put down, if putting down be possible, a very absurd notion that, to travel comfortably, you should travel without luggage. I have travelled a good deal, and if I were writing a manual for all future tourists, I should affix, as a motto to the book,—“Always travel in your best clothes, and with half-a-dozen trunks at least.” Luggage and good clothes take the place of a train of servants. Luggage and good clothes ensure you good places, general civility, and an infinity of minor comforts. Luggage and good clothes will prove your good angels wherever you go. It is all very well for savages to travel without luggage—the Japanese Grandees don’t even carry pocket-handkerchiefs about with them; but if any one wants to travel pleasantly and profitably, let him carry a well-stored portmanteau. Surely in no country but patient Spain would two ladies have been allowed to fill the first-class compartment of a railway carriage in the way we did. Under the seats, on the seats, above the seats, were piled an infinite variety of packages, a box of medicines, a folding india-rubber bath, a basket of provisions (a precaution never to be neglected), two or three parcels of books, two or three bundles of rugs, a leather bag of sketching materials, sketching blocks of various sizes, a silk bag of needles and threads; lastly, an odd bag, containing note-books, opera-glasses, passports, a tea-pot, a water-bottle, an etna, an air-cushion, slippers, and sundries without number.

And everything was so useful in its turn. In that long, slow railway journey through Spain, we were, as I have said, always alone. We breakfasted, we dined, we wrote letters and diaries, we read all our books from beginning to end, and we mended our clothes, we made sketches, we made tea, we might have refreshed ourselves with a cold bath, but for want of water. Not a bit of our precious luggage could we have spared, and not a bit ever troubled us beyond the necessity of giving a few cuartos to the porters when changing carriages. As for books we were not half way through Spain before they were done, and yet we had taken a goodly supply; Ford’s Guide, Street’s Gothic Architecture, Don Quixote in Spanish, Stirling’s Life of Velasquez, Washington Irving’s pretty twaddle about the Alhambra, Chasles’ Memoir of Cervantes, the Manuals of Lavice and Viardot, Gautier’s book, and half a hundred books about Spain in French, German, English, and Spanish, among others, the delightful and racy sketches of his countrymen, by Don Ramon Mesonero de Romanos.

Of course our luggage accumulated as we went along. We bought books, maps, photographs, clothes everywhere, pottery of Andujar and Talavera, lace from La Mancha, embroidery at Malaga, capas at Granada, till, by the time we arrived at our journey’s end, our equipaje, as the Spaniards call it, was a sight for all beholders.

It was on the tenth of November that we crossed the Pyrenees, all glowing with the purple and gold of autumn, and entered Spain. What a change! It was like coming suddenly from the Tropics to the Steppes. As if by magic, the crimsons, the carnations, the violets, died out of the world, and all became cold and grey and barren. In Old Castile one fancies oneself in a desert—a desert only varied by occasional forests of the Pinus maritima, with its straight, weird stem and plumy tuft. The colour and character of the scene varied but slightly—here undulating plains of grey sand piled with columnar masses of granite, there forests of pine, the round bosses of bluish-green standing out sharp and clear against a bright blue sky; or breadths of brown corn-land, lightly ploughed for the autumn seed-sowing. There was something grand and harmonious about this wild monotony—broken rarely by an oasis of a village with ilex groves and yellow acacias and a narrow river winding near, and groups of wide-mouthed Sancho Panzas staring at us as we looked out of the window.

But I must go back to Burgos where the purples and crimsons ended and the desert began. We arrived a little before midnight and felt ourselves at last in Spain. The very air had, as we thought, a foreign smell, and so greatly did this feeling of novelty overcome us that all our Spanish vocabulary seemed to vanish just when it would have stood us in good stead. However, we found places in the omnibus of the Fonda del Norte, and, after waiting about three quarters of an hour, rattled thither in company of several Spanish gentlemen who were wrapped to the chin in their bandit-looking cloaks, and smoked away without intermission. Two or three long-limbed, black-eyed, rosy-cheeked young women, wearing enormous chignons of false hair, but no costume unless untidiness may be called one, led us upstairs flaring candles over our heads. “Dos cuartos,” we said; “Si, si,” they replied, and on they went, climbing stair after stair, till at last we caught hold of their sleeves in breathless expostulation; and they consented to descend. Finally we were consigned to rooms on the third floor, so spotlessly, ideally clean, that a sanitary inspector could have found nothing to suggest. The rooms had whitewashed walls, iron bedsteads that might have come out of Heal’s warehouse, deliciously cool floors of brick-red tiles, wool-mattrasses, sweet-smelling home-spun sheets, and pillows bordered with the lace of La Mancha. We slept delightfully, though the noise of the watchman calling the hours half awoke us now and then.

At seven o’clock, one of the maidens of the chignon, a handsome saucy creature, named Isidora, of whom we grew very fond, brought us chocolate à l’Espagnol, namely, tiny cups of sweet, thick chocolate, flavoured with vanilla, rolls of bread, glasses of exquisite water and azucarillas, or large crystals of sugar and white of egg. Isidora delighted to give us lessons in Spanish, and went into fits of good-humoured laughter at our blunders. At eleven o’clock we went to the table d’hôte breakfast, but there was no one there excepting a Spanish-American family, consisting of a grave father, an insignificant little daughter, and a cosmopolitan son, who spoke a little English. All were very uninteresting, so there was nothing to do but study the dishes, which were all excellent, and ab ovo usque ad mala, slightly flavoured with garlic. We had tortillas or omelettes, patties of brains, water-cresses served with oil, olla podrida of bacon, sausage, cabbage, maize cobs, lentils, and other vegetables too numerous to mention, roast snipes, fig jam, and Burgos cheese. The wine was excellent too, but the invariable flavour of tar is not pleasant to the unaccustomed palate. We were served by a waitress handsomer and saucier even than Isidora. She was named Gregoria, and with her napkin swung on her left shoulder went from one to the other, saying her say, and trying to get as much entertainment as was possible out of us. We were very comfortable at Burgos, excepting that it was impossible to keep warm indoors; the sun was shining brilliantly, yet we shivered in our clean bare rooms, which were chimneyless and only warmed by charcoal pans. Round these we squatted like Arabs, but to no purpose, and we went to bed at seven o’clock, finding bed the only warm place. How the cold of winter is endured in Spain I cannot conceive, for winter does come in earnest sometimes, and no preparations seem to be made for it.

We sauntered into the most beautiful old Cathedral on the morning after our arrival, which was Sunday, hoping to find it full of peasants in holiday costume; but though there were plenty of worshippers, except for the sombreros and brown capas or cloaks of the men, and the silk and lace mantillas of the women, there was no costume at all. People seem to enjoy going to church in Spain. The ladies come in with their little dogs, drop on their knees on a mat, adjust their fans, and fall into a sort of quiet ecstasy of prayer, the dogs sitting demurely by. The men are equally devout; and every one, caballero or beggar, soldier or priest, comes in his turn, week-day and Sunday. The churches are beautifully kept, warm in cold weather, cool in summer, clean and dusky and quiet always. No wonder they are never empty.

The Cathedral of Burgos is so rich in different sorts of beauty that it would be idle for me to try and particularise any, excepting perhaps the wonderful effect of it as a whole upon the accustomed eye. At first one is quite unable to take in the wonderful simplicity, and strength, and finish of the building, or rather mass of buildings, for it is a city in itself; but later you feel, as it were, a child of the place, loving and living in every part. The colour of the outside is of a soft deep grey, and is unspeakably rich when seen, as we saw it, against quite an Eastern sky. We never grew tired of wandering about the Cathedral, with Street’s Gothic Architecture in hand to help us through its history; and no one seemed to take offence at us for pursuing such studies within the sacred walls.

I have called the building a city in itself, and if a census were made of its silent population, there might seem some reason in such a simile. Who can doubt that these sculptured saints, archangels, kings, apostles, and monks without, these bleeding Christs, Virgins, infants, and martyrs within, would equal in number the living, moving world of Burgos? And this multitude, stony, silent, dead, though it seems, is not without a power and force that stand in good stead of vitality. Every Christ has its special congregation, every martyr its believers, every saint its legend quickening thousands of devotees to this day.

There is no trace of Moorish influence in the building, and despite many excrescences of bastard-Gothic and Renaissance work, the old Cathedral is still to be seen in all its beauty, reminding you of the purest thirteenth-century Gothic of France. All who have time to study it thoroughly will at the same time acquire a good deal of history, for there is hardly a portion of it which does not show the thought and work of many minds and periods. Spaniard, Gascon, Fleming, Englishman, Florentine, have all had a hand in this glorious work, which gradually increased in size and splendour, till nothing more remained to do except to disfigure it in these later times; which I am sorry to say has been done, within and without, by various means called “restoration.”

The ecclesiologist will find plenty to admire at Burgos, but the ordinary traveller will content himself with seeing the Cathedral and the Convents of Miraflores and Las Huelgas. The latter is especially interesting on account of its history. It was founded by the husband of Alienor, daughter of our King Henry II., whose daughter Costanza became abbess. Here numbers of royal ladies took the veil; here kings were crowned and buried; and here a lady abbess still lives and rules, though no longer, as in former days, a princess palatinate, receiving princely revenues.

But what makes Las Huelgas of peculiar value to students is the evidence of Angevine influence in the architecture. Queen Alienor, as Mr. Street justly observes, would naturally procure the help of some architect from her father’s dominion of Anjou in the abbey she induced him to found; and one finds here the early vaulting common to old churches in Anjou and Poitou. But these special objects of interest are less interesting than the general effect of the whole place.

It was here, indeed, that we were bodily as well as spiritually transported back to the middle ages. The transformation happened in this wise. After wandering about the cloisters we came unexpectedly upon a scene that simply enchanted us. It was the nuns’ chapel. Looking through a screen of delicately wrought cast-iron, we saw two kneeling figures dressed in the black and cream-coloured robes of the Cistercian sisterhood. They were as motionless as statues; and we felt them to be a part of the place as much as the Gothic arches, the stained walls, and the marble altars. So mediæval and ideal was the picture, that, when we came away, we felt as if we of the nineteenth century were dreaming, and the life of those women kneeling in the coloured light the only reality after all!

The roads are so bad around Burgos that it was with great ado we got to the celebrated Monastery of Miraflores, though it only lies two miles off the town. It is a dreary drive. The road winds around hills so bleak and desolate, as to give us an uneasy suspicion when a beggar in a long black cloak came to the carriage-door begging. He looked exactly like a bandit; and if it had not been for our sturdy coachman we should have trembled for the gold Isabelinoes we carried in our pockets.

Coming home we saw a regiment at practice. The soldiers were the shabbiest set I ever saw, the music poor, and the whole thing spiritless enough; but all the people of Burgos seemed to have turned out for the sight.

In Spain the railways are not made for travellers, but travellers for railways. The trains run so slowly and so seldom that a journey of any length always requires self-denial in the matter of sleep. No matter whither you are bound, to Alicant, to Cordova, to Saragossa, to Badajoz, you must rise early and not go to bed at all; and it is with very great management and disregard of comfort that one can contrive to travel by daylight through the most interesting tracts of scenery. To go to Madrid in the daytime we had to rise at four o’clock. It is true that the train did not start till nearly seven; but, whether you like it or not, in Spain you are always aroused an hour before you want to get up,—always carried off to the station an hour before the train starts, and to the steamers at least a quarter of a day too soon. People seem in such terrible haste to be rid of you, agreeable as the acquaintance may seem to have been on both sides.

This waiting about in the raw, cold air of an autumn morning is not without its compensations. Everything takes a supernatural shape in the ghastly lamplight; the horses that have brought us here seem, on a sudden, slim and spectral; the long lines of railway carriages have a funereal look; the men, waiting about in their long black cloaks, become brigand-like and terrible to look at; one’s own shadow is mysteriously long and dark; one’s own voice sounds hollow and unearthly. It is like reading a scene from Mrs. Radcliff’s novels. But when once the train moves slowly off, and the blessed sun warms you, it is the very poetry of railway-travelling. The carriage is so comfortable, the speed so easy, the quiet so delicious, that it is worth while coming to Spain to gain such an experience. No one seems impatient to arrive anywhere; if indeed, any one is bound anywhere. The train stops at every station, and at some so long that you might take photographs in the interval. If you alight to lunch or stretch your limbs a little, you are never hurried back into your carriage, but can loiter about in the pleasant assurance that the train is sure to wait for you. “The train is going to stop; now for a sketch,” we used to say when we approached a station; and there was always time.

And then there is the ineffable sense of safety. A single gauge leads from the French frontier to the Spanish capital; the up-train waits for the down train half-way, and each goes its destination as lazily as Kentish farmers jogging to market. How can there be accidents or discomforts under such circumstances?

Tourists are apt to complain of the incivility of officials in Spain. I can only say that we travelled from Biarritz to Gibraltar, and encountered nothing but courtesy and kindness. We spoke a little Spanish, it is true, and had left England with a solemn compact never to get out of temper, which may, perhaps, in some degree account for such experience. And we always travelled in the first-class carriage reserved for ladies. I do not think English ladies would find second and third-class travelling pleasant, on account of the smoking.

Thus we travelled through the brown deserts of Old Castille to Madrid. Treeless, tawny, and interminable, anything more dreary than these same Spanish steppes cannot well be conceived. Yet there was contrast and colour for the artistic eye. There was mass after mass of cool, grey limestone against a bright blue sky; and when the sun set over the undulating table-lands, a weird, fiery, unimagined splendour not to be put into any words!

CHAPTER III.

THE GAIETY OF MADRID.—THE IMPERATIVENESS OF TEETOTALISM THERE.—THE QUEEN AND THE ROYAL BIRTHDAY.—ROADS AND RIVER-BANKS.—APROPOS OF BULLS.

HERE is no more stir at the railway-station of Madrid than at that of Tunbridge Wells or Chelmsford; and as you rattle along the quiet streets, you ask yourself—Can this be the capital of so many great kingdoms? It is the fashion to represent Madrid as a dreary place, but, on the contrary, its first aspect is eminently cheerful. The streets are light and airy, the sky is generally without a cloud, and the population is a gay and unique one. I suppose Madrid is the only capital in Europe where the upper classes can be said to cling to anything like costume, for certainly the long cloaks of the men, and the mantillas and fans of the ladies, do merit the name of costume still. In Spain it is possible for a man to be dainty about his dress, since every cloak can be lined in different styles of luxury, with silk, with velvet, with fur, or with brocade. The upper cape of the cloak is thrown over the left shoulder in such a manner as to expose the lining; and as you walk along the streets, you are lost in admiration of a dress so graceful, and think regretfully of the orthodox great-coat worn in London, when a little colour would be so pleasant to the eye. Put a Spanish cloak upon every man in Fleet Street and Piccadilly, and how the bits of creamy fur, of crimson silk, of purple velvet, of gold brocade, would enliven these sober thoroughfares! But the Madrilenians are not a majestic race, though so majestically equipped. Diminutive in size, sallow, shaven like monks, one never dreams of calling the men handsome. At the same time they have, for the most part, beautiful features and fine eyes. The ladies, tripping about fan in hand, are pretty; but, like the men, frail-looking and without dignity. Treacherous as is the climate, they go about bare-necked, bare-headed, and with only a fan to shade them from a dangerous sun. Yet one sees the same thing everywhere—whilst the women wear tight-fitting clothes, and expose themselves to wind and sun, the men are wrapped up like Arabs in the easiest, most sensible dress possible. In England we are growing wiser, and we no longer kill our young girls by making them wear tight stays, thin shoes, and back-boards; but in Madrid—I suppose one of the unhealthiest places in the world—it never seems to enter into any one’s head that what is dangerous to a man is doubly so to a woman.

It will be easily understood why Madrid should be so unhealthy when a little consideration is given to its site. Built on a plateau 2412 feet above the sea, it is exposed to an African sun and a Siberian winter. Like Rome it stands in a treeless desert; and the icy winds may blow down from the chain of the Guadarrama, whilst the sun is scorching with fiery powers. You may pass in a moment from a cold climate to a hot one in Madrid; and at all times the air is so rarefied as to be terribly trying. I enjoy excellent health as a rule, but the climate of Madrid knocked me down in a day. I was tormented by a constant neuralgia; my face swelled up so that I could hardly see out of my eyes; and I became so languid that I could hardly set one foot before the other. Yet one must not take stimulants. Never shall I forget the dismay with which an English lady saw me take wine at dinner.

“Unless you are mad,” she said, “you will drink no wine here. When I first came to Madrid I felt as you do, feverish, listless, utterly good for nothing, and I tried a little vin ordinaire as a remedy, but it acted like a poison. My face became covered with a terrible eruption, and if I had not abstained in time, I should have had the colico of Madrid. It is a terrible climate alike for body and mind, and thankful enough shall I be to get away.”

Every one coughs everywhere. The men cover their mouths and keep on the sunny side of the street, as if death lurked in a “shady place;” whilst the ladies (would to heaven they did cover their mouths when the icy wind blows from the mountains!), who go bareheaded, have a frightfully fragile look. Indeed it is the very rarest thing to see a really robust-looking person in Madrid. The curled darlings of society are pale as spectres, the waiters and shopmen are thin and cadaverous; a fresh, beautiful look of health one meets nowhere. I don’t think this matter of climate is sufficiently taken into account by those who write about Spain and the Spaniards; for there is no denying the fact that since Madrid became the capital of this great country, its greatness grew pale and wan. Bred in a hot-bed of consumption, of colic, and all sorts of diseases, is it any wonder that the Madrilenian degenerates both in body and in mind, till he no longer looks capable either of mental or physical exertion? Wherever we found ourselves, at the Prado, at a review, on the Puerto de Sol, or in the churches, we were always looking at the sickly, lethargic population around us, with the thought—Is this the stuff of which reformations and revolutions are to be made?

And then the dire effects of the Inquisition must be taken into account. Who can doubt that for some of the mental and physical debasement witnessed in Spain at the present day the system of Ignatius Loyola is alone responsible? Torture, enslave, terrify a dozen men and women, and see what their children and children’s children will become? But whether this reasoning may be received as a mere fancy or not, the fact remains incontestable,—the upper ten thousand of Madrilenian population is the most miserable-looking of any in the world. Of Madrilenian society we had no experience, for, though we were furnished with letters of introduction, more important objects claimed our time. It is the greatest mistake to do two things at once, and having come to Madrid to see and study the Velasquez Gallery, we had no inclination to neglect this end for any other. As a substitute for personal experience, we read Spanish newspapers, modern Spanish novels, and plays; and though, as far as the latter goes, it was rather hard work, we felt the curriculum to be instructive. Putting aside the charming stories of Caballero and Trueba, the modern Spanish novel is a poor affair, and the play a poor affair too; but any one who really wishes to be entertained and instructed should read the social sketches of such writers as Don Ramon Mesonero de Romanos, Pedro de Medrazo, and José de Larra, who describe their country and countrymen with inimitable grace, satire, and discrimination.

And the newspapers, what is to be said of them? I think this paragraph might be headed,—“There are no newspapers in Spain;” for except as mediums of advertisements and local gossip, they don’t exist. On first installing ourselves in the comfortable Hôtel de Paris, we used to fly eagerly to the reading-room, laying hands on La Correspondencia de España, La Gaceta, La Regeneracion, &c., &c.; but very little did they tell us excepting the small-beer chronicles of every nation under the sun, and of Spain above all. Then there would be feuilletons of very inferior quality, long lists of advertisements for wet-nurses, and invitations to the friends of the late Don or Doña So-and-so to attend his or her funeral obsequies.

Of anything like political news, much less political discussion, there was seldom a vestige.

But though the Government has succeeded in bridling the tongue of the press, there is abundance of contraband talk in Madrid. No matter with whom you converse, the topic is sure to be of bloody revolutions and retributions unequalled in history. But mention the Royal name, and, whether you are among aristocrats or peasants, you will see dark looks, meaning shrugs of the shoulder, gestures significant of bitterest meaning.

“It must come soon,” people say to you; “and the sooner the better, though dire will be the coming of it. Never in history were such wrongs, such hatred, such tyranny, to be washed out in blood. We can only watch and wait.”

The acquaintance of a day,—nay, of an hour, is sufficient to warrant all sorts of confidences on public matters from a Spaniard, and this incautiousness, or rather candour, makes you forgive even his love of the bull-fight. It is, indeed, a most consolatory fact, that it is but a watching and waiting in Spain, and that underneath a semblance of indifference burns and rages a wholesome desire of liberty.

“We are at the present moment enduring a tyranny of which foreigners have no conception,” said a cultivated Spaniard to me, one day, in English; “and yet, despite of all that is going on secretly among us, no one can say when things will change. Change they must; we shall have the French Revolution acted over again in the streets of Madrid.”[2]

Again: we were taken to see the graves of some young officers of high family who were shot in prison during the disturbances of last year. A respectable man of the lower ranks was standing near, and he said, with tears in his eyes, but half-suppressed curses on his lips,—

“They were as innocent as new-born babes; though, thank God! this murder won’t long want vengeance.”

It would be almost impossible to convey any idea of the bitterness and hatred we found underlying the public mind at this epoch.

People gave us their confidences without any reason for doing so, confidences which all amounted to one and the same thing—contempt of the tyranny and resolutions to overturn the tyrants. “No one can tell how uncomfortable it is to live in Madrid now,” said an English lady to me one day. “It is the old fable of the sheep and the wolves over and over again. We are constantly laying in stores for three or four weeks’ siege; but I’ve done it so often in vain that I have determined never to do it again, and I daresay the consequence will be that a revolution will come and find my larder empty.”

And yet how gay it was in Madrid! Though the north-east wind blew from the mountains, ladies promenaded the streets bareheaded; and Opera-house, Plaza de Toros, Prado, and every other haunt of amusement, was crowded. We naturally tried each in turn. We saw a review on the Queen’s birthday, went to the Opera, drove on the Prado, and, much against my inclination, I spent twenty minutes at a bull-fight. The review was a spiritless affair, every one had prophesied some sort of outbreak on that day, but none came; and the Queen, who had been hissed at the theatre a few days before, did not appear. The King took her place, and very flushed and uncomfortable he looked. Not so le Père Claret, the Queen’s confessor. As he descended the palace steps to his handsome carriage drawn by four splendid mules, he looked quite contented with the existing order of things,—which I suppose is but natural,—and stepped along in his purple robes with as much dignity as if he had been the Pope himself. This man’s history and position are so extraordinary that one cannot but look after him with interest. By turns, soldier, ecclesiastic, missionary, and bishop, he has won a certain celebrity for his sermons and the publication of a coarse book called La Clave de Oro, and he has also won the royal ear. His rival in this latter respect is a nun, called Maria-Dolorès Patrocinio, abbess of the convent of St. Pascual d’Aranjuez, who was tried and condemned some time since by the tribunal, because she gave herself out to be the subject of a miracle, pretending to have the wounds of Christ on her hands. One can but pity the Queen, who has laid herself open to such unmitigated obloquy by her favouritism. No young sovereign ever passed through stormier ordeals than Isabella the Second. Pity that experience has not taught her wisdom, and that by her own hand she has undone, Penelope-wise, good deeds done in the gentleness of youth! There is a little book called The Attaché in Madrid, which gives some highly interesting sketches of the Spanish Court and capital during the eventful July of 1854. It was a reign of terror, and the Queen was as a shuttlecock driven hither and thither; but a Spanish mob is not a French mob, and always showed some threadbare kind of respect for royalty. An English writer on the affairs of Spain, says, “The Queen of Spain is not unpopular with the bulk of her subjects” (which statement I doubt), “and her great failing is, that feminine one to which Dr. Reaumur attributes all Mary Queen of Scots’ errors, ‘Sie konnte nicht ohne Männer leben.’” But it seems to me that it is faults of both heart and head that have made the throne of Isabella the Second the bed of thorns it is. If, despite a bad government, Spain is making undeniable progress, who can doubt what she might be under a good? I think no one who has had opportunity of studying her domestic history during the last thirty years will be inclined to agree with Mr. Buckle’s sweeping assertions. He despaired of the regeneration of Spain, but slow though the process must be, it has undoubtedly commenced. In commerce, in education, in literature, it has commenced; and who shall stem the flow of that slow but inevitable tide?

The great hindrance is from the badness and uncertainty of the government. There is no security in the land, without which there can be no spirit of enterprise. Who can say what to-morrow will bring forth? “A Spanish cabinet,” an English writer wittily says, “may be compared to a Chili house, constructed on a calculation that an earthquake will occur within the year.” All the best energy of the nation is spent upon the unhealthy excitement of political transformations. It is like living in an atmosphere overcharged with electricity. One moment, there is a succession of lightning-flashes, all sorts of brilliant miraculous heralds of a tempest that is to clear the air; then comes a growl of thunder, an outburst of popular feeling in Barcelona or some distant part; and all is hushed again for a short space, when the symptoms occur again and again without coming to a crisis.

But this underlying suspense and unrest do not interfere with the gay, out-of-door life of Madrid. The weather is always fine, and the Prado is always crowded.

There is nothing livelier in Europe than this same Prado, with its crowd of pretty ladies, picturesque cavaliers, dear little carriages for babies drawn by spotlessly white lambs, nurses from Estramadura in short, brown petticoats, embroidered with gold, water-sellers in sombrero and leathern gaiters, and an infinity of equipages, costumes, and cries, to distract the eye and ear of the foreigner. But if you are tired of gaiety, in ten minutes you can get into a scene so peaceful and quiet, that you might fancy yourself miles away from a capital. Drive down to the green banks of the Manzanares, where a thousand peasant women are beating linen in the afternoon sun. Their red and yellow skirts, and plentiful black hair, make quite a picture, and their blithe talk and singing never cease for a moment. Yet how tranquil and rustic it is here! One has a superb view of Madrid, with its background of blue and white mountains, palace and church and house-top flushing in the light of the setting sun, whilst the hum of its busy life seems silenced for a while. The river winds amid sloping banks of lustrous green, lightly sprinkled with yellow foliage, and team after team winds its sleepy way towards some village seen in the distance.

It sounds incredible, and yet it is true, that, within half-an-hour’s drive of Madrid, the roads are impracticabilities for any carriage having springs. I do not think there is a lane in Sussex, or in any heavy land district of Suffolk, where you could be so jolted in a tumbril as we were in a light cab just outside the Spanish capital. We found the same state of things throughout our journey. I suppose there is no functionary answering to that of our parish surveyor. No one seems to mind having his bones rattled over the stones, as if he were a “pauper whom nobody owns.”

I feel in duty bound to say a word about the Bull-fight, though let no one shut this book, thinking that I am about to describe that horror of horrors. Heaven knows, it is a sight that any one might make something of, for added to the accessories of a burning blue sky, and a picturesque assemblage of nine thousand people excited to the verge of frenzy, there are all the savage elements of the human and animal nature called into full play. But what I saw of “this bloody amphitheatre of Rome, with spectators in hats and coats,” as Ford calls it, so sickened me, that I never recur to the subject without repugnance. Before I left England I was told by an educated Spaniard that bull-fights were going out of fashion, and that his countrymen, at least those of the upper classes, no longer attended them. But what did personal experience teach me? It taught that Spanish ladies do go to bull-fights, and, moreover, that they take with them their young children, who clap their hands at the close of every bloody act, and watch the whole cruel drama as eagerly as their elders.

To judge fairly of those horrid amusements, you should go behind the scenes. There, in a dreary chapel, you see the matadors, the banderilleros, and all the other wretched actors in the play, taken by turns to confess and receive absolution at the hands of a priest. How ghastly pale and craven they look in their tinselly dresses!—more like culprits going to execution than the proud heroes of great feats. Adjoining the chapel is a room fitted up as a hospital, which is too often called into requisition; and from this you are led to the stables, where stand wretched hacks, soon to be blindfolded and tortured to death. These poor animals, it is said,—let us hope without truth,—are often the discarded and superannuated favourites of gentlemen; but no matter what they may have been, they are brought on the stage to be gored by turns, and their blood and agony count for nothing.

The arena is by no means imposing till it is filled with spectators; and the procession is tawdry enough. The dogs and mules which figure in it, are alone worth looking at. The former are called into requisition to madden any bull that does not show game, the latter to drag away the dead horses and bulls. But as soon as the horrid play begins, the place becomes a very infernus. Men and women vie with each other in noises, screams, and cries; now it is some unfortunate chulo who is the butt of the whole assembly, because he has allowed the bull to attack the horse too soon; now it is a picador, who gets praised by shouts, clappings of the hand, and all sorts of uproarious applause; and now it is the bull who becomes the pet of the moment for having skilfully overturned horse and rider. If anything can be more unbearable than the spectacle itself, it is the behaviour of the spectators. The noise is deafening,—nay, maddening; and when the first act of the drama ended, we rushed away too horrified to put our horror into words.

The wide street leading to the Plaza de Toros was so crowded with people going to the bull-fight, that it was with some difficulty we could get along. All Madrid seemed turning out for the sight, and yet it was a weekly one; and, on this occasion, of no exceptional attractiveness. On grand festivals there are extra bulls killed and far greater crowds; but all who wish to know more about bull-fights, past and present, should go to that fountain-head of knowledge on Spanish affairs, Richard Ford.[3] There is one consideration apt to be overlooked by those who are studying the subject, and that is, the hand-to-hand struggle between man and brute. From the moment the show commences till its close every player, whether he be chulo or banderillero, picador or matador, places his life in peril—not for the love of sport, mind, but for the sake of gain—and frequent occurrence of grave accidents, and the possibility of fatal ones, may well account for the pale faces of these desperate creatures. Only a few weeks before our arrival at Madrid, a well-known matador had been killed at Seville, and the whole horrid scene was described to us by an eye-witness. There was no show of sympathy made for the man; but cries of “Brava, toro! Bravo, toro!” filled the arena from end to end. The son of the murdered man took his father’s place!

For my part all my sympathies go with the bull. He, poor beast! is often the most peace-loving creature in the world, and, anyhow, suffers ten times more than the horse, which is not goaded into frenzy by shouts, arrows, fire-works, sword-pricks, and dogs, but is allowed to die quickly. The bull is tortured to the last as if he were a heretic. Pitiful it is to see him crawl into some quiet corner to die, with what regrets for his peaceful pastures, with what horror of his tormentors, with what quivering agony in every nerve, Heaven alone knows!

It sounds incomprehensible, and yet it is quite true, that bull-fights are often held for charitable purposes. A few years back a new church at Madrid was to be built. A committee was formed for the purpose, consisting of an archbishop, several bishops, noblemen, and others; the land was given, and the building commenced. But some money was wanting, and so they had a bull-fight, the proceeds of which helped them on a little. Later, their necessities were even more pressing, and they tried another bull-fight. This time, however, the owner of the bull-ring refused to give them a benefit, and other means had to be tried.

Cruelty begets cruelty, and as if the appetite for blood were not satisfied at the circus, the churches offer more in abundance. Anything more revolting than the bleeding, bruised Christs and saints, cannot be conceived. No shape nor symbol of suffering is left out of the dreary catalogue till one comes away, sick with the ghastly blasphemies witnessed on every side. This is all the sadder, since a real spirit of religious fervour seems predominant; and the brighter side of Romanism is never wholly hidden from the eyes of even the most superficial or prejudiced observer.

And what has not Murillo done to beautify this Church of Spain, whose annals are so stained with blood and tears?

CHAPTER IV.

VELASQUEZ, THE PAINTER OF MEN.—MURILLO, THE PAINTER OF ANGELS.—RIBERA, THE PAINTER OF INQUISITORS.—ZURBARAN, THE PAINTER OF MONKS.—GOZA, THE HOFFMAN OF SPANISH ART.—THE QUIETUDE OF THE GALLERIES.

E had come ostensibly to Madrid to see the works of Velasquez, and we carried out our intention, not glancing at, but really looking into and studying them as we study Homer, or Shakespeare, or Cervantes. The journey from London to Madrid is costly and fatiguing; but I advise any one to make it who is desirous of receiving a good lesson in art. I own that no one has taught me such a lesson on the largeness of it, the perfectibility of it, the ease of it. Velasquez’ work is simple creation, and that is the truth of it. Where will you find work like it? He was no poet like Murillo or Raphael. He sucked in no golden atmosphere that saints and seraphs breathe; he heard no music of the upper spheres, but he lived among ordinary men and women, and portrayed them, flesh and spirit, without an extravagance, without an idealism, without the hairbreadth of a deviation from the truth. Thus it happens that when you come away from his pictures, you forget the painter and the painting, and you remember only the subjects,—not elevated subjects, often quite the contrary, but æsthetically conceived by an intellect so unswerving, and touched with a hand so masterly, that they seem to “live, and move, and have their being.”

As has been truly said, “He drew the minds of men; they live, breathe, and seem ready to walk out of their frames. The dead come forth conjured up; we behold what written history cannot give—their actual semblance in life. His power of painting circumambient air, his knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective, the gradation of tones in light, and shadow, and colour, give an absolute concavity to the flat surface of his canvas; we look into space, into a room, into the reflexion of a mirror.” And elsewhere, “Aucun maître ne saisit comme lui un personnage pour le faire vivre, agir, respirer devant vous. En même temps, quelle tournure il lui donne! Comme il a le secret de cette fleur d’insolence et de ces belles rodomontades, dont à nos yeux l’hidalgo Castilien est le type!”

I suppose most people would prefer Murillo to Velasquez, because imagination is generally set on a pedestal above intellect. Murillo’s imagination is like an upsoaring fountain, ever sunny and ever luminous, whilst Velasquez did not dream, but reason. He is, indeed, the most logical of painters; and what makes his works so valuable to artists and lovers of art is the quality they have in common with the masterpieces of antiquity, and which has been well called the perfection of good sense. As a French author has said, “Velasquez écrit en prose, mais, pour le portrait, du moins, il est le premier des prosateurs.”

The Museo of Madrid contains more than sixty pictures of this great master,—the Voltaire of art, who tried his hand at everything and succeeded in everything,—portraits, landscapes, historic subjects, animals, interiors, flowers, fruit. There is nothing he left untried excepting the marine. It is quite astounding with what nobility he treated ignoble subjects, such as dwarfs, beggars, dull Infantas, and kings with “the foolish hanging of the nether lip,” painting all to the life; for though Velasquez was a courtier and a court-painter, he never flattered his royal patrons one iota. He treated ignoble subjects nobly, that is, faithfully, seeing and respecting in dwarfs, beggars, and foolish Infantas and kings, the same humanity that he saw in such lofty, stately Spaniards as he has elsewhere given.

Study one of Velasquez’ greatest pictures as a whole, as a creation in fact, and then set yourself to look into the manner of it, how much remains still to marvel at and admire. Moratin said, “Velasquez knew how to paint the air;” and nothing is more striking in his pictures than this clear, palpable, sunny atmosphere; one seems to breathe in it, and not in that of the galleries.

But when you have made this discovery, you will make others no less striking. Take, for instance, his colouring. Perhaps no painter ever employed fewer colours than he; he is as sparing of bright tints as a classic writer in the use of similes, yet his pictures glow with life and are perfect miracles of harmony and truth to nature. His painting has been well compared to a stately gentleman who maintains in his conduct, his actions and his words, a perfect and dignified equilibrium, and who avoids loud laughter or talking, or anything that might disturb the general harmony of his bearing and appearance.

His work, indeed, resembles his life, which was courtly, dignified, and complete. Though a courtier, he kept intact his pure manners and morals, his kindly nature, and his passionate love of art. All that is known of him redounds to his honour, from the period of his early youth, when he worked in the studio of Pacheco, and by his fine qualities of heart and brain won his master’s affection and the hand of his master’s daughter, to the fatal journey to Irun in 1660, where he brought on his death by overworking himself in preparing the ‘Ile de Faisans’ for the Infanta’s marriage. Of all noble Spaniards, hardly Cervantes seems to have been nobler than he.

It were worth any one’s while to make the journey to Madrid, if only to see his Borrachos; and there is a good story about our English Wilkie, who came to Madrid for the purpose of studying Velasquez, and went away having studied this one masterpiece only.

Wilkie used to visit the gallery every day, no matter what the weather might be, and to establish himself in a chair opposite this picture. After having contemplated it fixedly for three hours in silent ecstasy, he would utter a long and profound “ouf,” seize his hat, and rush away.

Hanging close (if I remember rightly) to the wonderful “Las Meninias,” is a religious picture, which every one should look at, for never had picture a stranger and more touching history.

Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez, the rich courtier, the familiar friend of the king, and the renowned artist, had a mulatto slave named Juan Pareja. It was Pareja’s office to mix the colours, to prepare the canvas, to clean the brushes, to arrange the palettes; and these occupations kept him perpetually in his master’s studio. He felt himself to be a born painter all the time that he exercised these humble duties, he watched his master at work, he listened to the instruction he gave his pupils, he spent his nights in making sketches and copies secretly. At last, when he was forty-five years old, he thought himself sufficiently accomplished in his art to make his secret known. Accordingly, one day he placed a small picture of his own, with its face turned to the wall, among his master’s; and when the king came to the studio, as he often did, brought it forward. “That’s a beautiful picture,” said Philip; “whose work is it?” Upon which Pareja threw himself on his knees and avowed that it was his own. Velasquez freed him from slavery by a public act, and received him, from that day, among his pupils and equals. But poor Pareja was so used to service and so devoted to his master, that he would fain have served him as a freedman; and after the great painter’s death continued so to serve his daughter.

From Velasquez, who lived in an age when Spain was great, and interpreted the spirit of it with the faithfulness of photography, and an introspective power quite Shakspearian, one naturally turns to his friend and pupil, the divine Murillo.

At first sight, the blazing sun of Velasquez’ genius would seem to obscure and dwarf the paler orb of Murillo’s. It is like passing from Cervantes to Calderon; and if the one paints men and manners with inimitable force and humours, the other takes us straight up to heaven, where we abide with saints and angels.

It is curious that the distinctive recognition of Murillo as a great religious painter should not yet have generally taken place in England. People who do not travel and read Mr. Ruskin’s criticisms, think of Murillo only or chiefly as a painter of dirty and vicious humanity, such as beggar boys and the like. Yet how unlike is such an impression, and how easy it is to know what Murillo really has done, even without going to Spain! There is one picture alone, in the possession of Mr. Tomline,[4] of Orwell Park, Ipswich, which tells you more about Murillo than anything English critics ever wrote. I did not see this picture till after I returned from Spain, though I had endeavoured to do so (having ridden eighteen miles for the purpose), but other travellers will be wise to see everything they can, not only of Murillo, but of Velasquez and other Spanish masters, before starting for tawny Spain. Some of Murillo’s finest pictures are at Seville, but as the Gallery of Madrid contains forty-five of his works, it is not necessary to go to Seville to see what this man of such rare gifts could do.

Murillo’s life was very different to that of Velasquez; and if his works are unequal,—some being inferior both in conception and finish—it must be remembered that he was no favoured friend of royalty, working at his leisure, and never hurried into laboured or crude execution by the necessity of money. Murillo painted for the public and for his bread; and whilst some of his works are glorious achievements of fancy and skill, fullblown blossoms of beauty that have ripened in the sun, others have evidently been too hastily conceived and matured. A French author, who has written discriminately about Murillo, draws an admirable distinction between his works and those of Velasquez, Titian, or Da Vinci, when he says that a chef d’œuvre of Murillo is only a chef d’œuvre relatively, and by comparison, whilst a chef d’œuvre of the latter painter’s is a chef d’œuvre absolute, defying all comparison whatever. He says, and very truly, that the possessor of one canvas of Murillo, were it the most beautiful of all, would have but a very incomplete idea of this painter, whilst a single masterpiece of Raphael or Titian suffices to attest their genius to the full.[5]

But setting aside criticisms and comparisons, what a legacy of beauty has Murillo left the world! With what deep religious fervour and poetic feeling he has embodied all that was most divine in the Catholic religion! There is not a phase of heavenly contemplation, or fervid ecstasy, that he has not made incarnate and immortal in enchanted colours; and if you contemplate his pictures for awhile, you seem to drop your fleshly garments and float in golden ether with rapt virgins and smiling cherubs. His colour has well been called ravishing; it is something impossible to describe, and as much the soul of the picture as essence is the soul of the flower.

This colouring is so delicious that it is no less of a vision to seeing eyes than miraculous healing would be to the blind man. I ought, perhaps, to say to Northern eyes, since Murillo’s atmospheres are hardly less luminous and lovely than those of his native Andalusia. He painted Andalusian beauty too, like Velasquez preferring to portray real to ideal human nature, though, unlike Velasquez, he contented himself with loveliness only. “One might say,” says M. Viardot, “that Velasquez is the painter of earth, and Murillo the painter of heaven.” He should have added,—of heaven as peopled by the believing Catholic with beautiful beneficent Christs, with archangels, angels, seraphs, with the noble army of martyrs, with Virgins ever fair and ever young, with crowned saints, and heavenly hosts shining resplendent round celestial thrones.

To understand a great religious painter like Murillo, one must have some sympathy with the age in which he lived, and the public which was his patron. He was eminently the painter of the people, from the time of his unlettered and humble boyhood, when he sold little pictures of Virgins and Christs at a few rials the dozen in the streets of Seville, to the last years of his long, independent, prosperous, honoured life. It must be remembered that the Inquisition kept a strict surveillance on artists, their works and their patrons; and that Velasquez is almost an exception in his divergence from the only fair field open to all, an exception impossible perhaps except to a royal favourite. Murillo’s more plastic genius accommodated itself to the circumstances surrounding it, and the result is, these marvels of colour and celestial expression, that realize the spirit of the time at once.

Whilst Velasquez may be said to have embodied in his works the aristocratic spirit of the most aristocratic age of Spain, and Murillo the purely devotional, Zurbaran may be called the painter of the ascetic, and Ribera, better known as Spagnoletto, of the Inquisitorial. Amateurs will not, I think, care much for Ribera’s pictures, except in so far as they show the cruel side of the same religion that in Murillo’s hands was so sweet and lovely. Ribera, or, as he has been called, “this cruel forcible imitator of ordinary ill-selected nature,” may be well studied at Madrid. Here you have every form and fashion of suffering and repulsive humanity, such, as Ford said, could be conceived by a bull-fighter, and please a people whose sports are blood and torture; and if for the sake of the powerful in drawing, and the wonderful mastery of light and shadow, you can contemplate those terrible subjects one after the other, you will have more powers of endurance and more passion for art than the present writer. This Spanish Caravaggio, who obtained his name of lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard, when he was a begging student in the streets of Rome, lived so much in Italy, and had such a passion for the great Italian masters, Correggio and Caravaggio, whom he studied, that, except in Madrid, one hardly thinks of him as a Spaniard at all. His busy and afterwards prosperous life was mostly spent at Naples, then a province of Spain, though the greater part of his pictures have been recovered by his native country; but it was not a life to look into so fearlessly as that of Velasquez or Murillo, and one gladly turns alike from the master and his work to others less painful.

Zurbaran has left no story. Like so many of the greatest Spanish painters, he arose from the humblest ranks, and that is almost all one knows of him. But he was a very great artist, and his pictures have the same historic interest as those of Murillo, portraying, as they do, a distinct phase of Catholic Spain. Indeed, a French critic has gone so far as to say that if by a miracle the remembrance of Spain were effaced from the universal human mind; and if we were ignorant of her moral and religious history, such pictures as these of Murillo, Zurbaran, Ribera, and Herrera, would lose half their worth. It is quite certain that Zurbaran’s pictures do owe much of their interest to the ascetic element prevailing in them, however far we may be from accepting the above conclusion. He saw a monk, and painted a monk introspectively, as no one else could do; and every one will do well to study his pictures, the finest of which are at Seville, and very few of which are at Madrid. They portray the austere element of the same religion which Murillo made so enticing with visions of light, loveliness, and colour. These three masters, Murillo, Ribera, and Zurbaran, may be said to express and eliminate the three vital principles of Romanism, such as men like Loyola and women like St. Theresa had made it, namely, ecstatic vision, torture, and asceticism. It seems as if in Spain the Trinity must stand or fall together.

The schools of Spanish art are generally divided into three, the Castilian, the Valencian, and the Sevillian; properly speaking, the kingdom of Aragon possessed another, though little known. Gallegos, who introduced the style of Van Eyck and Albert Dürer; Moralès, whose Ecce Homos and Madonna Dolorosas are scattered all over Spain; El Mudo, the dumb, who brought from Italy something of the rich Venetian colouring; El Greco, who was at once an architect, a sculptor, and a painter, “truly Spanish, unequal and eccentric,” and whose “streaky lights,” as Mr. Stirling says, “are sharper than Toledo blades;”—may be said to represent the school of Castile; whilst that of Valencia, the most effeminate and superstitious province of Spain, is represented by Ribaeta, the disciple of L. Carracci and Domenichino, and Ribera, Orrente, the Bassano of Spain. Then we come to Seville, the capital of sunny, many-gifted Andalusia. The school of Seville boasts of other honourable names before we come to its greatest—Velasquez, Murillo, and Zurbaran. There was Herrera, the first master of Velasquez; Pacheco, his second master and afterwards father-in-law, not only a painter of some pretensions, but a learned writer on art,—“coldly correct and classically dull in whatever he did,” says a critic; but let that pass. There was Pablo de Cespedes, also famous for achievements of pen and pencil; Juan de las Ruelas, the worthy pupil of Correggio and Giorgione, whose pictures are only to be seen in Andalusia. Alonzo Cano, alike architect, sculptor, and painter, whose passion for art was so strong, that on his dying bed he impatiently put a crucifix from his lips because it was badly carved.

What a splendid muster-roll is this! Who will not be tempted to come and judge for himself? The works of many of these artists, however, are only to be seen in the churches and convents of their native provinces, where they remain “hanging like golden oranges on their native boughs.”

But before leaving Madrid, you must give a little time—not too much, since it is so precious—among “these acres of canvas,” to the fantastic and not pleasing pictures of Goya, the last Spanish painter of any note, who died in 1828, at the age of eighty-six. Goya has been compared to Hogarth for his quality of humour; to Callot, for imagination; to Rembrandt, for vigour of execution, elsewhere to Velasquez and to Reynolds; but his pictures are so characterised by a sort of Hoffman-like revelling in the weird and the impossible, that it is difficult to understand and like them. Like Ribera he bids you sup on horrors.

And after this survey of all the Spanish painters, how much remains yet to see! Here are grand pictures of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, of Michel-Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, of Domenichino,—indeed, of all the Italian, Flemish, and French masters, and amongst so much to see, the only fear is of seeing nothing.

Our principal object in coming to Madrid was Velasquez, who is to be studied nowhere else, and we therefore saw many other pictures imperfectly. Other travellers may be less circumscribed as to time, and fortunate are they who, having leisure, can support the rarefied air of Madrid long enough to do justice to the greatest picture-gallery in the world. It is not only the greatest but the best-arranged, the quietest and the most comfortable. You leave your carriage at the door and stroll in for an hour or so. All is quiet, and silent, and orderly as in a church; the rooms are unadorned and perfectly lighted; the pictures are never hidden by crowds of copyists; the place is never crowded or noisy; and after contemplating your favourite pictures or picture for a time, you leave the gallery, not tired and blinded by too many impressions, but refreshed and invigorated with a calm intellectual enjoyment that is as good and simple as it is deep and lasting.

CHAPTER V.

A LEAR OF CITIES.—GOTHIC, ROMAN, AND MOORISH REMAINS.—COMMENTARIES ON STREET’S GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, AND ON TOLEDAN LANDLORDS.—TILES, AND A DISCOURSE THEREON.

HE railway journey from Madrid to Toledo is easy enough, occupying about eight hours. Time is given for refreshment on the way, and you are almost certain to be alone if you travel first-class, which, if you are a wise traveller, you will be sure to do. Every one knows how much easier it is to take long journeys in an uncrowded vehicle, and by following this precaution always we saved up strength for future ordeal.

Toledo looks imposing from the railway station, but it is the dirtiest, dreariest, most uncomfortable town in the world. We were driven from the station at a furious rate in the diligence drawn by four mules, and the driver lashed them so furiously and vociferated so franticly that we thought he must be mad or drunk. Over the bridge we went at a galloping rate, and so on, up-hill, down-hill, till we reached the town. Here, at least, I thought, we should stop in our mad career, for the streets of Toledo, like all Moorish streets, are mere bridle-tracks, paved with flint-stone; and as the town, like Rome, is built on seven hills, you are always ascending or descending. But our driver never slackened whip or reins for one moment; and, wonderful to say, the cumbersome vehicle emerged safely from break-neck alleys which looked hardly wide enough for a wheelbarrow. With such dash, indeed, did we drive into the court-yard of the Hôtel de Leno that we had taken the flattering unction to our souls that we were very welcome guests. But on alighting no one took any notice of us; and, though the master of the house, with a staff of waiters and maids, were standing about, it never seemed to occur to them that we needed their services. There we stood in the midst of our luggage—two portmanteaus and ten packages of smaller dimensions—for about a quarter of an hour, when the landlord came up and with a civil manner conducted us to our rooms. This apparent uncourteousness meant nothing more than Spanish indifference, as we afterwards found out, for never were we better treated than in this same Fonda de Leno. Finding that we objected to dine in the smoky salle-à-manger, the master himself served us in our rooms, and served us, I believe, to the best of his ability. He was a heavy-looking man, and his manners at first were a little disconcerting, but we liked him on better acquaintance, and he chatted a good deal about English travellers. I think our patience and smattering of “Castellano” won his good graces. The house was scrupulously clean, and the food, though ultra-Spanish, quite good enough for any one excepting an epicure.

Toledo boasts of an excellent guide, without whom the traveller would fare ill there, despite clean beds and wholesome food. What a debt of gratitude do we not owe to you, good Señor Cabezas, for having guided us so well through this more than Cretan myth—not I am sure from gain’s sake only, but from an honest antiquarian love of it! “I am a son of Toledo, hijo de Toledo,” he said to us; “and there is not a stone of the place unknown to me:” and this speech was made without any self-arrogance or vanity. It was the simple truth. There is this good trait about the Spaniard of the lower ranks, that he never affects, and is consequently never a snob. He treats you—a little too familiarly, I daresay, to please aristocratic palates—but always with a quiet dignity and self-possession, reminding you of the Arabs, and most likely inherited from them. How much, indeed, has not the Spaniard inherited from the Arab?

Señor Cabezas is a slightly-built, prematurely old man, with eyes of extraordinary vivacity, very small hands and feet (a veritable cosa de España), and a chronic cough that makes one think the climate of Toledo does not suit her son. He carries a stick, with which he points out any precious relic that comes in the way, and is so peremptory and so like a schoolmaster in making you understand the history of it, that you dread lest the stick should descend upon your knuckles or shoulders if guilty of inattention. But only really idle people would deserve the stick, for Cabezas thoroughly understands what he is talking about, and, like all wise men, reserves his talk for occasions worthy of it. You are never wearied by him, but follow his eyes and the point of the stick with unflagging interest.

Cabezas is always busy, and we had to accept thankfully as much of his time as he could spare.

“I have engaged myself this afternoon,” he said, “to an old French gentleman, a silk-merchant bound to Murcia, but, if you like, you can accompany us in our rounds.” This we did, and the silk-merchant proved not only an inoffensive, but a very amusing person.

The poor man seemed so tormented with the idea of seeing all the sights of Toledo that one would have fancied he was thereby doing penance for his sins. When he found himself in the Cathedral, his melancholy became overwhelming. The beautiful painted windows, the richly-carved stalls of the choir, the exquisite Retablo, the chapels, each so full of monuments and treasures, the pictures, relics, and jewels of the Sacristy, and the coup d’œils of the whole interior, could only elicit from him a dreary expression of regret that there was so much to see.

As we were led from chapel to chapel, he raised his hands and repeated, “Il y a trop à voir, il y a trop à voir”—which was perfectly true. There is too much to see, but then why not accept the fact cheerfully? To see every part of the Cathedral of Toledo would indeed require weeks, and to describe it, even in general terms, would fill a volume. I advise all travellers who have no time for a series of visits, or a scrupulous reading of many books, to go into the Cathedral alone and read nothing about it whatever. By following this plan you obtain one distinct and ineffaceable impression, whilst a hurried visit, with a garrulous cicerone at your heels, and a guide-book in your hands, results in very little but mortification. Grateful as we felt to good Señor Cabezas for his painstaking services, we were never so happy in the grand old place, as when we stole in by ourselves at early morning and twilight. Nothing then marred the prevailing impression of splendour and beauty; and we wandered up and down the quiet aisles, and looked at the tiers of gorgeously-coloured windows, lost in a rapture of wonder and delight.

I do not remember to have seen any finer sight in Europe than the interior of Toledo Cathedral; the whole is so magnificent, the detail so harmonious, the colouring so beautiful; such an impression never fades from the mind’s eye, but remains “a thing of joy,” and a storehouse of beauty, for ever.

It is a great pity that the exquisite chapels are so disfigured with images and altars dressed up in every form and fashion of tinsel. You are taken too to see the jewels and wardrobe of the Virgin—the strangest sight. It is difficult to reconcile the character of the lowly Mother of Christ with these gorgeous robes of velvet and brocade, stiff with gold and pearls, with these necklets, rings, and bracelets; with these tiaras of diamonds and emeralds. But everywhere you see the same thing, only on a smaller scale; the Virgin is petted and pampered with costly gifts as if she were something below an ordinary woman, since even ordinary women aspire to higher things than a fine toilette.

There was a homely German lady in the Sacristy with us, who had surveyed the aisles very calmly, but went into raptures over these jewelled mantles and petticoats.

“Himmel!” she said, touching the rich stuffs gingerly with her fingers, “what a pity such beautiful things are not worn; the silks must have cost six thalers a-yard at least.”

Putting aside the idea of profanity, no one can help enjoying the blaze of so many gems. It is like walking in Aladdin’s enchanted garden. Diamonds, emeralds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, are here collected in such masses, that one’s eyes get too dazzled and blinded at last to see any more. Nor does the treasure-house of the Cathedral stop here. There is a fabulous amount of gold and silver in the form of candelabras, urns, reliquaries and incensarios, or vessels for holding incense; there is an altar composed of pure amber; there are banners heavy with gold and precious stones, relics of saints more precious to the good Catholic than any jewels, and last, not least, illuminated Bibles and missals blazing with gold.

Well might the silk-merchant raise his hands and sigh, “There is too much to see!” I think it would take a month to see all these wonderful things fairly, and more than that to master their history. Then there are the sacred legends which would, doubtless, outnumber the Virgin’s pearls and diamonds, and are of infinite more comfort to the humblest of her worshippers. And how beautiful and tender are some of them! that, for instance, of the shrine of San Ildefonso. San Ildefonso was the primate of Toledo, and one day the Virgin came down from heaven to attend matins at the Cathedral. It all happened on a sudden, as miracles do. A moment before, the place had been empty, now it was filled—by whom? Could it be any other than the Mother of God, with those sweet eyes, that golden hair, that shining aureole around her head? Think of the awe, and bewilderment, and pious joy of the people worshipping there, especially the poor, who thrill with pride at sight of an earthly Queen. How they must have wept and wondered then! how they must have wept and smiled at repeating the story afterwards!

It is thirteen hundred years since this took place; the marble slab where the Virgin’s feet alighted has been hollowed with the kisses of thousands of worshippers, and the story moves to tears of joy still. No one can help feeling the enduring power of these old church legends before such evidence, and no one can help being, for the time, carried away by their simple pathos or burning faith. You should never travel in Spain without a book about the saints and martyrs. Every step you take leads across some way watered with holy blood and tears. Every town is peopled with the sorrowful ghosts of men and women whom the Church has tried and crowned; and only those who are obstinately blind can deny the influence exercised by their names still. Often and often have I found myself, as in the convent of Las Huelgas, realising the religious spirit of the middle ages in its vigour and purity. But, alas! only for a little while, and I think the most devout Romanist would hardly find Spain the country of his expectation.

Excepting the Cathedral, nearly all the glories of Toledo are Moorish. The Moors, those true artists and most conscientious workers, have here left an Alcazar, gateways, bridges, mosques, palaces, and towers, to perpetuate their golden age; and though the grand old metropolitan church remains the crowning jewel of the desolate old city (a Lear of cities, deaf, blind, decaying), all these anticipate the marvels of Cordova and Granada. But the Cathedral takes you back to quite another epoch of art and religion. Pass along the tortuous street called the Calle de la Chapinerier, and enter the north transept, and you might fancy yourself in one of the early Gothic churches of France.

The view into the double aisles round the choir across the magnificent Capilla Mayor, and down the side aisles of the nave, is superb, whilst the atmosphere of the whole place, so dusky, and twilight always, gives wonderful solemnity to the whole. The windows are large and numerous, but all are filled with beautiful stained glass, so that not a ray falls that is not quite marvellous in beauty of colours. The choir and aisles are arranged in three gradations of height, and the effect of the three tiers of coloured windows is full of charm. It is in the intermediate aisle that the practised eye recognises at a glance the influence of the Moor, for the arcade of the triforium has the unmistakeable horse-shoe arch; and very beautiful is the effect, and testifying to the good sense of the architect who so wisely imitated what was good in foreign art.

Spend hours in wandering from aisle to aisle from chapel to chapel, till you have mastered the grand outline of the architect in all its simplicity and perfection, and then how much yet remains to study! There is the beautiful arrangement of columns, about which Mr. Street writes so enthusiastically, the noble rose-window of the transept, the doorway of St. Catharine with its elaborate mouldings, the screens round the Coro, the chapel of San Ildefonso with its richly-sculptured tombs, all remarkable as specimens of fourteenth century work; then there are the cloister and chapel of San Blas; the chapel of Santiago, great and interesting works of the fifteenth century; the massive brass and iron screens, the grand and gorgeous Retablos, and lastly, the beautiful stained glass medallions of all periods. What treasures of tradition, of thought, of time, are here! Who leaves Toledo without a regret that none can be properly studied in a passing visit?

The cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo were all that we were able to see of Gothic architecture in Spain, but these more than fulfilled any expectations held out to us. Toledo, I presume, equals any church in Europe in the grandeur of its plan and the beauty of every part; and certainly surpasses any I have seen for solemnity. I would fain set out on another pilgrimage at some future time, to see the Cathedrals of Leon, Segovia, Salamanca, and the beautiful old churches of Cataluña. Indeed, so rich is Spain in ecclesiastical architecture, often exotic, but belonging to her by right of possession nevertheless, and so more than rich in church furniture, that such a journey would be unequalled in interest and instruction. Think for a moment of the treasures scattered by the way. There are the magnificent Retablos of Salamanca and Gerona, richly sculptured and covered with gold, with silver and with painting; there are the elaborately carved choir stalls of Toledo and Valencia, the sumptuous monuments of Avila, Miraflores, and Burgos, the exquisite screens or Rejas in metal, so plentiful in all the churches, curious old organs, carved doors and ceilings, regal magnificence and abundant labour manifested everywhere.

What is very curious in the history of Moorish and Christian art in Spain, is their distinction from each other. The two arts ran in parallel lines; and whilst the Moors were building the Mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar and Giralda at Seville, and the Alhambra, the Christians were raising the beautiful Gothic churches so thickly scattered all over the country. To this rule there are, of course, exceptions; such for instance as the triforium of the choir at Toledo, which is decidedly Moorish in design, the Moorish carpentry plentifully found in late Gothic buildings, the Moorish battlement constantly seen on the walls of Spanish towns; and there are other examples, though none on the whole of importance. The Moors and Christians were alternately conquerors and vanquished, and always enemies; so that it was not to be expected that they should have copied each other’s art, however ready they might be to adopt modifications of it. The Moorish builders and architects often worked for and with their Christian masters; and this accounts for the Moorish elements predominant in the streets and buildings of such a city as Toledo. But the arts of the two people remained as separate as their languages.

Toledo is a most bewildering place, and without good Señor Cabezas, the traveller would find himself lost in every sense. The streets are thoroughly Moorish, tortuous, narrow, steep, and ill-paved; and you might fancy yourself in Algiers in any one of these dark alleys, so admirably built for coolness, seclusion, and security. You might fancy yourself in Algiers, or indeed, in any Eastern city, on other accounts, especially the singing,—that monotonous, dreary, interminable singing you hear everywhere among the Arabs. The Spaniard, among other things, has borrowed of the Oriental those dreary “howlings of Tarshish,”[6] which in Toledo, in Cordova, and in Granada, recall the East, if the East has come within your range of travel, and if not, set you wondering whence so lively a people acquired so melancholy a kind of recreation. Anything more depressing than these same “howlings of Tarshish” cannot be conceived. If you are in a thoroughly Spanish inn you hear them incessantly from morning to night. The servants begin hours before you rise, the children of the house take up the strain, master and mistress sing over their cookery and ledger-writing, stable-boy and gardener sing over their work without. Strive as you may, you cannot get away from the sound. It is better to sing yourself, and then you like it.

Again, setting aside the old Moorish houses still remaining, you find that the modern Toledans have built on the same plan, shutting themselves up within four walls like true Orientals, and delighting their eyes with foliage and fountain in sunny courts. But the beautiful precept of cleanliness is not imposed on the Toledans as it was on the Moors, and everywhere one regrets it. The streets are filthy, and so rugged that they make you lame in an hour; and yet there is so much to see that, lame or no, you must keep walking on.

What irritates you beyond endurance is the culpable neglect of everything valuable to both historian and antiquary. Ruin runs riot as she pleases, and not a hand is put forth to stay her progress. Inlaid ceilings of cedar-wood, delicate diapers of plaster-work, pavements of beautiful tiles,—all are allowed to go to ruin; and they go so fast, that my advice to all interested in the wonderful Moorish antiquities of Toledo is, that they should see them at once. A few years hence there will be none to see.

Cabezas, who has a genuine love of what is really good in art and curious in antiquities, bewailed with us this cruel contempt of both on the part of his countrymen. There was something quite touching in the way he lingered over every relic, as if it were a living thing fading before his eyes. It is the same with every kind of artistic or archæological treasure, Roman, Gothic, and Moorish, all share the same fate. I don’t think Spaniards, as a rule, care much for what the Moors left behind them; rather it is cavilled at and despised.

A few years ago a most precious treasure-trove was discovered near Toledo and sold—oh! indifferent Spain!—to the Emperor of the French. It consisted of five or six crowns, with crosses suspended to them, and three smaller ones without crosses,—all of pure gold, beautifully worked and adorned with jewels. These crowns, now exhibited in the Hôtel de Cluny, are relics of the Gothic kings of Spain, and are evidently votive crowns, of the age of Recesvinthus, and the episcopate of San Ildefonso; and, though belonging to a very early period of art, about 650-672, exhibit extraordinary knowledge of the goldsmith’s art. Doubtless, from time to time, other reliquiæ, quite as interesting, will come to light; but what will become of them, Heaven only knows.

I don’t know which phase of Spanish history is most generally interesting—the Mahomedan, the Catholic, or the Aristocratic: the former being typified in the Alhambra, the second in the paintings of Murillo and Zurbaran, and the third in the splendid courts of the Philips. I confess that for me the Mahomedan phase, so graceful, so artistic, so beneficent as it was, surpasses in interest every other. Look a little into the history of Spain, and what do facts tell you? To whom is she indebted for her most sumptuous monuments, her most fertile districts, her most elegant arts, her most picturesque costumes, her most precious products?—To the Moors. Who brought down the cool waters from rocky prisons, turning whole wastes into sunny vineyards and gardens?—The Moors. Who built bridges, fortifications, and watch-towers?—The Moors. Who made the Spanish language what it is now, the most sonorous and picturesque of any in Europe?—The Moors. Who planted the orange-tree and the palm, the fig and the olive?—The Moors.

One cannot help crying out against the ingratitude of the Spaniards, who not only disclaim the good things thus inherited, but do their best to defile them. Nowhere is this defilement more obvious than at Toledo. It is as if everything Moorish were infected with the plague.

A wonderful lesson in history is this dreary old Spanish town, and offering food enough and to spare for the hungry antiquary. Toledo may be called a palimpsest; in its outermost surface is the Spanish writing, clear, and new, and plain; scratch it, and you see the Moorish, all glowing in colour and gold; scratch deeper, and you have the stately Roman; deeper, still, the rude Gothic; deeper still, the barbaric Carthaginian. Take up a handful of dust, and who can say what it is—ashes of Roman prætors, Gothic kings, or Moorish patrons of art and science? Or cast your eyes over the vast panorama of bridge and gateway, watch-tower and church, fort and pleasure-ground—which of these is not as much Roman as Moorish, more Moorish than Christian, and has not first belonged to an earlier civilization than either?

Nothing more forcibly recalls the East than the embroidered mule-trappings one meets at every step. Here in Toledo, as in all Moorish cities, the mules are as gorgeously dressed up as if each belonged to a prince; and, with that inexhaustible invention and love of ornament one finds among Orientals, no two trappings are made alike. These bits of colour in some measure redeem the monotony of the streets, which are tiring both to feet and eyes. All the beauties are hidden in ugly backgrounds, like toads’ eyes, and without a good guide you would never find them out. With such helps as Ford, Street, and good Señor Cabezas, the intelligent traveller need not remain ignorant of any; and though the relics of Moorish art may not have the attractions for every one that they had for us, none can but admire the exquisite little mosque turned into a place for Christian worship, the superb ceilings of cedar-wood, blue and white, the arches, courts, doors, tiles, and other disjecta membra of the age of the royal race of Granada long passed away.

We were particularly interested in the beautiful encaustic tiles, of which one sees so many specimens here. Cabezas very obligingly took us to a private house rich in this sort of ornament, and we spent the whole afternoon in copying the prettiest specimens. The master and mistress were handsome young people who seemed to have nothing to do but laugh and talk in their balcony, overlooking the patio where we sat. It was a very pretty place, so Eastern in colour and character. The court was open to the sky, the floor was of coloured tiles, the walls pure white above and gay with tiles below, whilst overhead burned and glowed a bright blue Southern sky.

Our host and hostess watched us at our work with child-like curiosity, and quizzing us not a little. “What curious people are they, these English! What in the world do they want to copy our tiles for?” said the lady, and the husband answered, “To sell ’em, I suppose.” “Come now, Señor Cabezas,” said the lady, “and tell us who these ladies are, and what they come here to paint for? I should think they might find something better to do than paint a few old Moorish tiles.” Cabezas explained apologetically that we were tourists much interested in anything Moorish, that one of us had a house in Algiers, that we had come to Spain on purpose to see the beautiful ruins of Toledo and Granada, and so forth.

“But how queerly they dress! Do all English ladies wear those funny things on their heads instead of mantillas?—And then they don’t wear chignons: what frights they look, to be sure!”

To be sure there is no accounting for tastes: we had thought the immense lumps of wool and false hair worn by Spanish women of all classes anything but pretty.

The lady had a hundred more questions to ask, the great object of inquiry seeming to be the relationship between my companion and myself.

“It’s impossible they can be sisters,” she observed, “for one is twice as big as the other.”

“Oh! what has that to do with it?” rejoined her husband; “one often sees sisters as unlike each other as can be.”

“Well, I should say,” the lady went on, “that the tall one with the golden hair is no relation to the little one whatever—unless it be her brother’s wife.” And finally they settled it so.

Meantime we got on admirably with our work, and made copies of several very beautiful tiles. Before coming away, the lady of the house descended from the balcony to look at them and us.

“They are very pretty,” she said, turning over the drawings one by one; “but what are they good for?”

“We want to compare them with those in the Alhambra and in the old Moorish buildings in Algeria,” we said, “to see which are the prettiest.”

She seemed by no means convinced.

“But what does it matter which is the prettiest?”

To this, of course, we found no satisfactory answer. What, indeed, does anything about anything matter to some people? and to the little Spanish lady, like Peter Bell, a Moorish tile and a primrose was a Moorish tile and a primrose—nothing more.

My friend did a little sketching out-of-doors and was sure to have a little crowd round her. In most cases it would be grave, portly, well-dressed peasants, who came to look on, and their behaviour was always respectful and intelligent. I liked the look of these Castilian farmers and shepherds, who wear their sheepskin, or coarse brown woollen rug bordered with colours over their shoulders with quite a noble air. They would come up to us, say simply “Buenos dias,” and then stand by, without either impertinence or apology. This pleasant freedom of manner, alike removed from obsequiousness or vulgarity, strikes a foreigner as much as the fine, thoughtful Velasquez face he often sees among the Castilian peasantry.

Once it was a dozen schoolboys who gathered round the English Señora to see what she was drawing. They were just coming home from school, and, by way of keeping them out of my companion’s light, I drew them aside and asked to look at their books. This seemed to create no little amusement; but when I opened a grammar and began a random examination, there was a chorus of laughter. It was a very learned and dry grammar that these young Toledans, all apparently of the lower classes, had to learn; but they seemed to know it very well. And there were also dry books of a theological tendency, besides a catechism and a history. No wonder Toledo remains orthodox in religion and grammar, when the sons of artisans and peasants are instructed so exclusively in both. It is said that here the noble Castilian tongue is spoken in all its purity; a matter in which the passing traveller is hardly able to judge, but the multitude of priests thronging the streets bespeaks the thoroughgoing Catholicism of the place. Despite the railway and the increased number of travellers it brings, an English lady seems to be as much an object of curiosity here as ever; and though the curiosity is not ill-natured, it rather spoils the enjoyment of one’s walks. Yet one is obliged to walk from morning to night; there is so much to see, and as fiacres are not to be heard of, there is no other way of getting about. The streets are not picturesque in themselves, but the view of the vast, scattered, decayed, and decaying old city, with its grand gates, walls, and bridges, from the Alcazar to the river side, is extraordinarily fine. The Tagus is a narrow, deep green stream, which runs amid dark rocks of rugged and fantastic shape: or waters soft green vegas, the sweeter, because so rare. Hardly the Tiber is more historic, and one leaves its banks lingeringly.

We had not seen half enough of Toledo when we came away, and should have stayed longer but for the cold. It was warm and brilliant all day long; but when evening came, and, tired and footsore, we reached our Fonda, the cold seemed insupportable. There were no fireplaces anywhere, and no other means of heating the room but a charcoal-pan, which is a wretched contrivance, never of use except when so heated as to be dangerous. We took refuge, as usual, in our soft, clean beds, and, by dint of rugs and wraps, contrived to get warm at last.

CHAPTER VI.

A MIDNIGHT HALT.—ITS CHARMS AND COUNTER-CHARMS.—DON QUIXOTE’S COUNTRY.—THE SLEEP AT CORDOVA.—THE WAKE IN THE EAST.—SHOPPING.

T was with real regret we left Toledo, as one leaves some rare old book, only glanced at, but enticing months’ study. Notwithstanding the depressing gloom and stagnation of the old city, we loved it for its beautiful and precious monuments, and for the historic solemnity hanging round each. We liked the people too—Cabezas our invaluable guide; our hotel-keeper; Pepa, our bright little chambermaid; and the homely but respectful waiters, who were so slow to understand what we wanted, and so slow to bring it when understood. When you leave a Spanish Fonda there is none of that obsequious crowding round you that you find in France and England. Chambermaids and waiters never hover about you, hinting by their looks that they expect vails, but say simply “Adios, adios,” and go their ways.

But I especially dwell on the civility we met with at the Fonda de Leno, because we afterwards heard it so terribly abused. We were dining at the table d’hôte at Granada, and a party of American travellers began talking of fondas in general, and of the fondas at Toledo in particular.

“I shan’t easily forget the boorishness of the landlord,” said one; “I really thought he would have turned us clean out-of-doors. Why, we civilly asked what there was for breakfast, and he said ‘Eel and chops,’ and turned on his heel without asking which we chose to have! And what cooking! everything tasted of tomatoes and garlic!”

“And what wretched rooms!” put in a young lady; “as bare of furniture as prisons.”

There were two young Frenchmen present who had also been at Toledo, and they now joined in the cry. They were starved, unhandsomely treated, badly housed, overcharged.

“But there is a comfortable hotel at Toledo,” I said; “we found very good food, moderate charges, and such civil people, at the Hôtel de Leno.”

There was a general exclamation of surprise.

“That is the very place we are complaining of!” they all said; and we compared notes with as much perplexity as amusement.

I don’t at all understand the usual tone taken by tourists in describing Spanish inns. We never found anything to complain of, and yet how few people admit the possibility of ladies travelling comfortably in Spain! Carry with you a tolerable supply of patience and gold pieces, you will do very well. Carry with you, also, always ready for use, a little courteous Castellano, which will often stand in good stead of many more costly things, such as time, money, and temper. Moreover, reverse the Micawber principle, and never expect anything to turn up, for that will save many a discomfort to yourself and others. The Spaniards are terribly slow and procrastinating, but the fact must be accepted as it is, and made the best of; as well expect an American to be lethargic as a Spaniard to be quick.

From Toledo to Cordova is a very long railway journey. You have to wait from seven o’clock in the evening till midnight to catch the down train from Madrid, which waiting might, of course, be easily avoided. Fancy waiting five or six hours at Didcot for the Leamington train! But mañana, mañana, all the good changes will take place in time!

We found the waiting at Castilejo not so bad as might be. Tourists had said to us with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a terrible ordeal to go through, that waiting at Castilejo. There will, very likely, be neither fire nor light, and you will have to choose between a dark hole of a waiting-room, full of men smoking, or get into an empty railway-carriage and wait there.”

We certainly were agreeably surprised to find a blazing fire; a room that, if not exceptionally clean, was at least airy and wholesome; and instead of the crowd of smokers we had been led to expect, a young Madrid lady with her maid and dog, two or three respectable servant girls, and one elderly railway guard, who might have been Don Quixote, he was so grim and so gallant. The girls dropped off to sleep one by one; the guard puffed away his inoffensive little cigarette deep in thought, and we got out our books and amused ourselves very well. There was a livelier scene at the buffet just behind the waiting-room, for, when I went to beg an extra light and to ask for chocolate, I found a number of soldiers and peasants regaling on hot little bits of meat that came, as if by magic, from behind the counter.

The young woman in attendance was, as usual, civil but indifferent.

“Have you chocolate?” I asked.

“I don’t think we have, Señora,” she replied; “I’ll see by-and-by.”

“Have you chocolate?” I asked, when the by-and-by had come.

“I don’t think we have, Señora,” was the answer a second time; “I’ll see by-and-by.”

I waited a little while, and then repeated the question, always in the politest way possible. This time I added that the Señora with me was very tired, and sadly in need of refreshment, and that if there was chocolate to be had I should be very much obliged.

“The mistress of the Fonda is gone to bed, and I don’t know where she keeps the chocolate,” was the reply this time; ‘but I have sent to hear, and if there is any you shall be served.’

About two hours from the time of my first inquiry came two delicious little cups of chocolate, which, I am sure, we should never have got except by means of patience and pretty speeches. The traveller who has not a goodly supply of both these things would, I fear, fare very ill. After a time the sleepers woke up, and began to talk in very lively fashion. A smart young lady, who seemed to belong to the station, soon came in, wished everybody “buenas noches,” and sat down, evidently with the intention of being amused. The young lady and her maid did not hold aloof from the conversation, the grave-looking guard joined in occasionally, and the two English ladies were not excluded.

The young women, who wore black silk mantillas, and chignons as large as cocoa-nuts, were immensely inquisitive about English ladies in general, and ourselves in particular. When we had satisfied their curiosity, we talked of Cosas de España, mantillas, fans, bull-fights, &c.

“Now, tell me,” I said to the young lady belonging to the station, “do you really like bull-fights or no? I have never heard the opinion of a Spanish lady on the subject.”

“That is, because foreigners make such a fuss about bull-fights,” she replied, archly; “people are afraid to speak their minds about it. For my part, I own that the sight is a horrid one, but it amuses me.”

“It don’t amuse me,” put in one girl; “I get sick and frightened, and want to come away.”

“Well,” added another, “it’s all very well for people to say they don’t like it; they go all the same. These English Señoras went, I’ll be bound; and yet they’ll go back to England and talk about us.”

My companion shook her head. I pleaded guilty.

“But,” I said in extenuation, “I only went to convince myself, with my own eyes, that the sport is so popular as travellers report. I couldn’t have believed it otherwise.”

Meantime train after train came and went, the train to Badajoz, the train to Alicante, the train to Saragosa, and, at last, the one which was to bear us to Cordova. There it came, creeping through the darkness with its big red eyes, like some monster of Eastern fable, but much more kindly, for it gave us what we needed—quiet, and sleep, and solitude. As usual, we found the ladies’ coupé empty, and, as usual, we curled ourselves up in our rugs, wished each other “good night,” and went to sleep.

There is a cant phrase about railways having done away with the poetry of travelling. Was ever such an absurdity uttered and believed in? I think if ever the poetry of travel was realised, it is now, especially at night and in Spain. You are whirled from region to region apparently by elemental fire alone. You pass through new, sweet, starry atmospheres, like a bird; you go to sleep, and never know under what strange or happy auspices you will awake. This beautiful moonlight landscape of tiny homesteads lying on the banks of a silvery river, of green meadows skirting snow-tipped mountains, and long lines of fir-trees pricking against a blue-black sky,—is it real or a picture only? These dreary table-lands that seem to stretch into infinity, these sloping olive-grounds, these sharp sierras, these alternating scenes of loveliness, and grandeur, and desolation, seem more like the phantasmagoria of dreams than anything else.

And then the aspects of human life, though fleeting, are yet so full of charm. You see faces that tell their own story, and in a moment they have vanished. You are let into little domestic scenes touching, or comic, or painful, or passionate, as the case may be. You cannot stop five minutes at a village station, or linger five minutes in a village waiting-room, without being moved to smiles or tears.

For my part I have never taken a railway journey, however short, that has not had some incident worth remembering; but in Spain, which is a collection of kingdoms, each rich in different sorts of interest, one is troubled, like the silk-merchant at Toledo, with the embarras de richesses. You see a hundred landscapes in a day you would fain remember. You see a hundred faces and hear a hundred things, that seem too characteristic to forget. But, like the changing colours of the sunset, these impressions melt one into the other, and, unless seized at the moment, are utterly lost. When day broke we found that we were traversing a mountainous region of olive-orchards and bare brown fields made ready for sowing, some no larger than a cottager’s garden, others covering acres. A tawny land is this Spain, as Shakespeare says, a gipsy among gipsies, and a Moor by complexion.

We were now in Don Quixote’s country,—such a dreary country, that every one should take Cervantes’ book to read on the way. Then La Mancha, though a mere waste of steppes, with here and there wretched mud-hovels, becomes enchanted ground, and every village named on the map, as sacred as Mecca. “Never let Don Quixote be out of our reader’s saddle-bags,” says the guide to Spain; “it is the best Hand-Book to La Mancha, moral and geographical; there is nothing in it imaginary except the hero’s monomania.”

What is more real than fiction after all?

The battle-fields of Spain are not more interesting than the spots immortalized by Cervantes’ marvellous novel, and one longs to make a pilgrimage to each. As we glide through the charmed region, how familiar do the names and aspects of places seem to us? We are near the village of El Toboso, where lived Dulcinea, whose real name was said to be Aldonza Corchuelo; we pass group after group of windmills, any of which are grim enough to appear like giants to a madman now; here the Don was knighted, there he did penance; amid those craggy heights of the Sierra Morena, he found Cardenio; there glides the stream in which beautiful Dorothea bathed her feet. New names, new faces, new associations, seem alone untrue, unreal, and out of place; and we live all day in Don Quixote’s country among Don Quixote’s friends; Dulcinea, the hospitable goatherd, the wicked little Duchess, the homely Maritornes, the curate and the niece, all are here; and we look across the brown lines of the table-land, and see, or seem to see, the Don himself, spare and spectre-like, followed by burly Sancho Panza, riding out in search of adventure.

There are some who say that Don Quixote should be eaten and drunk on Spanish ground, or its delicate flavour is wholly lost. For my part, I think if ever a book could bear translation and transportation, it is Cervantes’ novel of novels. There is nothing like it in any literature,—so new, so true, and so wonderful. What would life be without it? Take away the charms of style and the beauties of a language rare in beauties, and yet all remains that we most care for. Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, as creations, are too simple and too true to stand or fall by the ordinary test. Why, Don Quixote translated into a language as rude as that of Fighi islanders, would be every inch Don Quixote still, and of what other novel can so much be said? Few travellers will omit Cervantes’ Biography from their saddle-bags. He was the noblest of noble Spaniards, and his life shines like a diamond without one flaw. What a sad life, too! Even Don Quixote, the blossom of his riper intellect, brought no good fortune with it.

We leave La Mancha, and now the scene wholly changes. The air becomes soft and balmy; we see a garden of roses here, a cluster of palms there; white villages at the feet of green hills; sunny streams and golden sunshine everywhere. We are in Andalusia!

We had been recommended by our hotel-keeper in Madrid to the Hôtel Suisse, and, notwithstanding his recommendation, entered its walls with fear and trembling. The English gentleman’s words rang yet in our ears, “Don’t sleep at Cordova!” and we could hardly believe our eyes when we drove into a pretty Moorish court, with flowers and orange-trees and a fountain in the midst, and light galleries running round, all white and shining as if of marble. But, after all, this might be only the whitewashing of the sepulchre. We forbore any exclamation of surprise, and asked to see our rooms. A respectable-looking chambermaid led the way to three very well-furnished, clean, and airy rooms, in which we installed ourselves, feeling no longer any apprehension of discomfort.

Indeed, we found everything good at Cordova,—attendance, beds, and food; we had nice coffee or chocolate in our own rooms at seven o’clock, a breakfast of cold game, omelettes, cutlets, and fruit at mid-day, and an excellent table d’hôte dinner in the evening. Of course, we did not get, or expect to get, anything like English dishes; but we found the Spanish ones eatable and nutritious, and quid multa? I only allude to this subject, because it is a fashion to rail against Spanish inns, and, I think, unjustly. The charges are not higher than in Paris or Vienna, and the accommodation, in most cases, very good. You are not mulcted largely in the matter of vails, and though the servants are slow, they are obliging, and we found them, at least, honest.

The dilatoriness is very amusing. For instance, on the eve of quitting Cordova, we rang for our bill, ordering, at the same time, a basket of provisions to take with us. The summons was answered pretty promptly, and we were assured that our orders should be obeyed forthwith. After waiting a good hour, we rang again, for we were to rise next morning at five o’clock, and wished to go to bed. This time another waiter appeared, who seemed, however, to have a clear notion of what we wanted; and vanished, promising to see to things himself. Another hour passed, no bill, no basket, no trace of either; and as it was now ten o’clock, a very late hour for travellers, we determined to countermand the order, and stand our chance of procuring provisions by the way. But the third ring was answered to more purpose.

First came the bill, borne by the head-waiter; secondly, came a pair of roast partridges, steaming hot; thirdly, a loaf of bread: then there was a solemn pause of about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time we got our change, our basket with the remaining provisions, and quiet for the night! Fancy, a simple order like this requiring nearly three hours for its execution anywhere but in Spain!

The best plan is to carry about with you an amusing novel, and take it up whenever you have to wait for anything or anybody. Scolding does no good,—rather, I think, aggravates the evil. At least, we never found that we were worse off than other people who did scold.

But I must go back to the time of our arrival. Cordova is a brighter and more bustling place than Toledo, and more Oriental. The houses, the dress, the handicrafts, the tools, and the songs, are thoroughly Arab; the climate is soft, the sky clear and southern, and flowers are out as if it were June!

Here, too, one sees plenty of costume. The sheepskin jacket, the national sombrero, the brilliant sash, the beautifully-embroidered gaiters of Cordova leather. The women, for the most part, wear cheap cotton dresses that have evidently come from Manchester, but the mantilla and fan are always used at mass.

We were too late to see inside the Mosque that afternoon, and having looked longingly at its beautiful old walls, now mellowed to a deep orange by the setting sun, we strolled to the bridge. Never, I think, have I seen a picture more sweet and peaceful. The Guadalquivir (how Arabic does the word sound as pronounced here!) reflected an opal sky, that changed from violet to pink, and from pink to pale daffodil. The olive-clad slopes lay in tender shadow, and beyond river, and bridge, and roof, rose the dark ridge of the Sierra Morena. The air was so warm that we sat down by the river-side till the colours died out of the sky and landscape, and the grave and beautiful twilight enveloped all. Then we went home to our comfortable inn, and brought out our books, and read so much of the glories of Cordova, that we dreamed all night that we were living in the times of Haroun Al Raschid. Why describe what has been described so often and so well? In these days, when every one travels, and every one who does not travel, reads the experience of others, it would seem, then, useless to supplement Ford, and Borrow, and Gautier, and all the clever writers who have gone over the same ground. But it is impossible to write of Spain, and leave out Cordova, the Carthaginian capital, the rival of Cadiz in wealth and traffic, the birthplace of the Senecas, of Lucan, and of Averroes; alike the Athens and the Bagdad of the West; and the seat of a Caliphate, whose story reads like a page of the Arabian Nights. We can understand how the Moors came to love Andalusia, and make it their home, planting the palm, the orange, and the vine, building mosque, and palace, and tower, turning into a paradise the lovely land they had sought in exile. A thousand years ago, the Ommiad Caliphs, descendants of a lonely refugee, ruled in a splendid city containing a million of inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, six hundred inns, and all the elegancies and refinements of the most graceful civilization the world has yet seen. The Arabian historian, Al-Makkari, describes, in glowing words, “the running streams, limpid waters, luxuriant gardens, stately buildings, magnificent palaces, throngs of soldiers, pages, eunuchs, and slaves of all nations and religions, sumptuously attired in robes of silk and brocade; crowds of judges and Katib, theologians and poets, walking with becoming gravity, through the magnificent halls, spacious ante-rooms, and ample courts of the palace;” and having gone on to describe the ruin that overtook all, adds, with true Mahomedan resignation, “There is no God but Allah, the great, the Almighty!” And what is Cordova now, once the learned, the luxurious, the aristocratic? “It withered under the Spaniard,” says Mr. Ford, with pardonable sarcasm, “and, rich and learned under Roman and Moor, is now a dirty, benighted, ill-provided, decaying place, with a population of about fifty-five thousand.” He says elsewhere, “Cordova, poetic Cordova! when seen from afar with its drooping palms, the banners of the clime, its Moorish towers, walls, and pinnacles, appears beautiful as in the days of the luxurious, high-bred Abderrahman.... Alas for poor Cordova!”

But the Mosque remains still, though how defiled and degraded! Many of the portals have been walled up; the beautiful seat of the Caliph is filled with all kinds of church finery; the walls, once so delicately and richly carved, are hidden by tawdry decorations. You feel inclined to cry out vengeance against the despoilers of a temple which Solomon’s could not have surpassed.

It is the most wonderful place, and one can understand what a grand religious conception the Moors must have had when inside this, their temple of temples. After all, the Mahomedans were much more tolerant and enlightened than the people they alternately ruled and served, and were Unitarians, pur et simple, praying to the universal God, in whose name never was raised a more fitting house of prayer.

To have seen the Mosque of Cordova forms an era in one’s life. It is so vast, so solemn, so beautiful. You seem to be wandering at sunset time in a large and dusky forest, intersected by regular alleys of tall, stately palms. No matter in what direction you turn your face, northward, southward, eastward, westward, the same beautiful perspective meets your eye, file after file of marble and jasper columns supporting the double horse-shoe arch. Nothing can be more imposing, and at the same time graceful, than this arrangement of transverse aisles; and the interlaced arches, being delicately coloured in red and white, may not inaptly be compared to foliage of a palm-forest, flushed with the rays of the setting sun. If so impressive now, what must this place have been in the glorious days of Abderrahman, the Al-Raschid of Cordova, when the roofs blazed with arabesques of red and blue and “patines of bright gold;” the floors were covered with gorgeous carpets, and the aisles swarmed with thousands of worshippers in their bright Eastern dresses? The richest imagination cannot ever paint the scene, the readiest fancy cannot embellish it, and only those who have imbibed the rich colours of the East can close their eyes and dream of it. When the dream is over, cast your eyes along the long lines of columns, and you will see where the shoulders of spectators and worshippers of ages have left an enduring mark—a touching sight!—and then go into the once exquisite Maksura or Caliph’s seat, and weep to see what becomes of beautiful things in Spain!

Words are not strong enough to condemn the desecration of such a temple,—a temple worthy of the purest religion the world will ever know. Let the Catholic services be celebrated within its walls, let the priests preach from its altars, let the people kneel on its floors—but why, in heaven’s name, should every exquisite relic of Moorish art, and every vestige of Moorish devotion, be ruthlessly destroyed? One marvels to see even the pillars and horse-shoe arches left intact—who knows for how long? And there are still some inlaid ceilings of thuya wood, and some fragments of arabesque stucco, as remarkable for richness of design and delicacy of work as any of the Alhambra. But to those who are curious in such things, I say—See them soon, or you will be too late. It is always a question of Now or Never in Spain.

It is curious that Cespedes, the Spanish Crichton, or, as some call him, the Spanish Michel-Angelo, wrote a learned dissertation, trying to prove that, where this glorious Mosque now stands, a temple once stood dedicated to Janus, erected by the Romans after the conquest of Spain. Cespedes was a native of Cordova (hijo de Corduba), and a man of whom she has every reason to be proud. He was a scholar, an antiquary, a poet, a painter, a critic. Look at his pictures “if ever you should go to Cordova.”

When you have seen the Mosque you will have seen all that the Spaniards have left there. There were formerly Roman antiquities of no ordinary interest, aqueducts, an amphitheatre, and monuments, of which not a trace remains. Will it be believed that, in making the prisons of the Inquisition, some statues, mosaics, and inscriptions were found, all of which were covered again by the holy tribunal as being Pagan.[7] Of the Aladdin-like palaces of Abderrahman, there is not a vestige; mediæval Cordova, with its architecture, its arts, and its prosperity, is disappearing, bit by bit, whilst, like some physical manifestation of energetic disease, a large and splendid Plaza for bull-fights has sprung up!

A melancholy Italian acted as cicerone, and carried us to a lovely Eastern garden, just outside the town. Here were orange-trees bearing blossom and fruit, and the paler lemon, bosquets of myrtle and cistus making the air heavy with sweetness; clusters of gorgeous tropical flowers, crimson and yellow and purple; palm-trees glowing against the deep blue sky; ponds full of gold and silver fish, and everything lovely and gracious to both eye and senses.

Then we went to the market-place—a picturesque sight, for it was covered from end to end with heaps of the pretty hand-painted pottery of Andujar and Talavera. My friend was so enchanted with the taste displayed in this ware, both as to form and colour, that she bought a great quantity of it,—jugs, plates, cups, and basins, all shaped and coloured differently, and each piece costing no more than a few rials. This and lace from La Mancha—Don Quixote’s country—was all we found worth buying at Cordova; for the leather-work was not nearly so elaborate, and much costlier, than that so plentiful in Algiers. The lace is made of coarse thread, but is very pretty, and is used plentifully in Andalusia for decorating sheets and pillow-cases. We could but notice the extreme civility of the humble sellers of pottery in the market-place, and the impertinent nonchalance of the smart shopman who sold us the lace. The former, a well-to-do Andalusian peasant-woman, could not take too much pains about pleasing us, carried us home to her little house, in order to show us her stock-in-trade, introduced us to her daughter, and smiled alike whether we approved or no. The shopmen puffed away at their cigars, laughed and talked among themselves whilst attending to their customers, cared little whether we bought or no, and greeted us in quite a familiar fashion when we came away. Certainly the Spaniards play at business in a most amateur style, and can never be accused, as we are, of being a nation of shopkeepers. The ladies laugh and talk with the shopmen over their purchases; and if we may believe Mesonero and other satirists of the day, many a rendezvous is made under the pretext of “shopping.” You cannot take up a fashionable Spanish novel or play in which the ladies don’t talk of assignations and shops as if the one belonged to the other; and whilst the scrupulous way in which young girls are chaperoned wherever they go, would seem to hint at some danger lurking in their favourite occupation.

Young Spanish ladies never walk out unattended, and whenever Englishwomen chose to do so, their deviation from social orthodoxy is severely commented upon. Spanish ladies too, I have read somewhere, when promenading the streets en grande tenue, are flattered by the admiration, expressed or implied, of passers-by!—a notion so opposed to our English sense of delicacy that it is entertained with difficulty. Yet the bearing of the pretty, dark-eyed ladies we saw about us, coquetting with the fan, sweeping the ground with long trains only suitable for a ball or presentation, raising their skirts with ungloved jewelled hands, so as to show their pretty feet, go far to support the notion. A well-dressed English lady does not think of her dress; one cannot help seeing that a well-dressed Madrilenian does. She is very attractive, notwithstanding.

I would not advise any one to hurry away from Cordova, especially if he is an artist. The place is so picturesque in itself, and so full of poetic association, that a few days may well be devoted to it, especially in the beautiful autumn, when all kinds of glories are cast about hill, and tower, and river.

CHAPTER VII.

“THE SWEETEST MORSEL OF THE PENINSULA.”—COB-WALLS OR THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT.—PALMS.—THE GOOD WORKS OF THE SISTERS.—THE PRIESTS AND THE PEOPLE.—IS SPAIN UTOPIA?

HE journey from Cordova to Malaga lasts from six in the morning till five in the afternoon. You are, of course, aroused at four and carried off to the station at five; so that you are really on the way much longer. But the scenery of Andalusia is so varied and beautiful that you are almost sorry when the train reaches its destination.

Beautiful Andalusia! so quaintly called by a lover of it, “the sweetest morsel of the Peninsula.” Who can forget or over-praise its voluptuous southern sky, its rich brown plains, its glistening white villages peeping amid groves of the cistus, the ilex, and the cork-tree, its green slopes crowned with Moorish towers and palaces, its delicious climate, its trickling streams, its sweet-smelling flowers?

The railway is new and carries one through a most astounding bit of country. After passing leagues of olive orchards, we found ourselves suddenly in a wholly different world. First came range after range of cold grey mountains, then perpendicular columns of limestone of gigantic size, evidently thrown up by volcanic action. These rocks and their counterparts have been admirably drawn by Gustave Doré in his splendid Don Quixote, and are quite awful in their height and barrenness.

The train went at a snail’s pace right through the heart of the gorge, and during this part of the journey, most of the passengers got out and walked! I suppose the line was not quite safe, and indeed the soil is so light and sulphurous that it seems impossible ever to make it so. We kept our seats, however. What a slow journey it was! Sometimes we hardly seemed to move at all, and kept stopping at little signal stations so long that we read and wrote letters, worked, and sketched, as if at home in our own drawing-room.

The guards were most civil, as usual, and did their best to explain matters to us. The railway would go quickly enough by-and-by, they said, but the road was a difficult one to work, &c., &c. Mañana, mañana (to-morrow), everything will go quickly to-morrow, is the usual cry.

The villages of Andalusia are very picturesque, and remind you of the west of England, only here the foliage is richer, the skies are of a deeper blue, the landscape is wilder and more varied. Here the white cottages glisten, not amid groves of beech, elm, and willow, but amid the orange-tree, the ilex, and the olive; whilst the uncultivated plains, instead of being purple with heath and golden with gorse, are barren and sunburnt as the face of a gipsy, save where thickets of the cistus and the cork-tree break the dreary sameness.

But there is more than a fancied resemblance between the home of the Andalusian peasant and the Devonshire labourer. The walls of his cottage are constructed after precisely the same fashion, and of precisely the same materials—that primitive, cheap, durable mixture of earth and reeds, which, when whitewashed, tones down into a beautiful cream colour, surpassing the richest marble for softness and mellowness of tint. In beautiful Andalusia, “the poor cottager contents himself with cob for his walls, and thatch for his covering;” as quaintly says an old English writer, and what in England is called cob, with all its varieties of concrete cob, dry cob, rad and dab, &c., is only another variety of the tapia, or mud wall of the Arab and Moro-Andalusian. Of concrete cob indeed, that is, a mixture of lime, rough sand, pebbles, earth, and reeds rammed into cases, are formed not only the noble walls of Cordova and Granada, but the Moorish watch-towers or atalayas, that so grandly rise along the southern sea-coast. We might, if we were so disposed, trace this economical and excellent masonry down to Cain, the builder of the first city—at least, so says a learned authority on the subject.[8] And guided by the finger-mark of learned authorities, we might follow its progress from east to west; for the simple art of cob-building links the cities and civilizations of the ancient Egyptians and Phœnicians with those of the Devonshire peasant, the Andalusian, and the Moor of Barbary, of to-day. No one who travels through the south of Spain will fail to observe the picturesque aspect of its villages; and I have gone out of my way to notice this feature in them, because any relationship in the arts is interesting to a traveller. He will find traces of cob alike in India, in Mexico, in Greece, and in Italy; but nowhere is the original architecture of the Phœnicians more noteworthily copied than in the sunny plains of Andalusia.

After traversing this wilderness of limestone run mad, we glided into a warmer and lovelier zone. We fancied ourselves in Algeria. There were golden plumes of palm-trees waving against a deep blue sky; orange and lemon groves at the foot of bluer hills; hedges of aloe and wild cactus by the roadside; flowers and sunshine and sweetness everywhere. It was Sunday, too, and pretty it was to see the handsome Andalusian peasants in their gay dresses alight and descend at the different stations, with orange-branches, bearing golden fruit and glossy leaf, in their hands. Wherever we stopped there came Murillo-like children to the door, bringing glasses of fresh water, saying, “Agua fresca, agua fresca.”

At the end of these beautiful Eastern pictures came Malaga, a large, white, dusty town, with a quiet blue sea at its feet, and above and around it the most wonderfully-coloured hills, purple, rose-colour, violet, blood-red, rainbow-hued in the sunset and colourless never.

We found Malaga, in spite of its delicious climate, its bright sea, its gorgeous hills, and its Eastern gardens, a disagreeable place. The streets always smelt of fish,—raw fish, cooked fish, fresh fish, dried fish, stale fish. The common people are dirty and unpleasant, a mongrel race, half-gipsy, half-bandit, with an evil look. The pavements are filthy, and all the time of our stay a sirocco was blowing, so that we were choked with dust wherever we went.

We stayed here several days nevertheless; and though we never liked Malaga, could not fail to be enchanted with the oriental look of the place. Just outside of the town were lovely gardens full of roses and geraniums in blossom, and here and there clusters of palms overspreading white-domed Moorish algibe, or wells; whilst we drove for miles along a road hedged in by the beautiful African reed, so like gigantic corn, that is golden in the sunshine and black as the cypress at twilight.

The colouring of the mountains is most delicious, and in part makes up for the fishiness and filthiness of the streets. A ray of the setting sun turns the whole wild sierra into a pageantry of pink, deepest violet, crimson, and amber, and makes you long to be an artist in order to transfix the wonderful scene. Mountain and palm, city and tower and sea, seen through the medium of so rare an atmosphere, might well tempt an artist to linger here.

The English Consul was very kind to us, and from him we learned a good deal that was interesting about the place. He took us to the Protestant Cemetery—a beautifully kept garden covering a hill by the sea-side, from whence we had a lovely view. It is a sweet spot; the graves lie in clusters around the chapel, and are half hidden by all kinds of tropic trees and flowers, the graceful pepper-tree, the orange, the lemon, the palmetto, the cistus, the lily; whilst above them stretch sunny slopes, newly planted with the vine and the fig. The soil is very red in colour and full of iron, which accounts for the beauty and the fertility of the landscape everywhere. I believe that for this boon of a burial-place, alike English and foreign Protestants are solely indebted to the father of the present Consul. Protestantism is an obnoxious weed in Catholic Spain, and all those unfortunate Protestants who died at Malaga before our Consul’s intervention, were buried like dogs in holes dug along the sea-shore. Now, no matter what a man’s faith and nation may be, if shut out of the Spanish burial-ground, he finds a resting-place here.

What gave us as much pleasure as anything in Malaga, was the sight of some orphanages, founded by a young, rich, and beautiful Spanish widow lady, who, having lost her husband and children by sudden deaths, devotes all her time and money to charitable works. The schools are under the direction of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and the letter of introduction we carried with us procured ready admittance. The Sisters who received us had beautiful faces, a little sad perhaps, but expressive of the utmost peace and piety. One was a girl of twenty, and she had the sweetest eyes, brown, soft, and shy, with a child’s complexion, all pink and white, and a child’s rosy mouth—though not a child’s gaiety.

“But you are a Frenchwoman, ma sœur,” we said; “and you too!” we added, turning to the elder sister. “How is this? Are there not Spanish women enough to work for their own poor and fatherless?”

The elder sister shook her head.

“There are plenty of good Spanish women devoted to charity,” she answered, “but they seem wanting in energy and the love of organisation. They are content to serve, but have no desire to act and to travel. Now, we go to the uttermost ends of the earth and like it.”

“Yes; you see plenty of the world, ma sœur, you are always busy on good works. It is an enviable lot.”

She smiled, part pleased, part sad.

“We are content if we can do a little in the service of the Virgin and the blessed Saviour; but, alas! how little!”

“Do not say that, ma sœur. We who stand outside the Church are made better for your example of self-denial and benevolence.”

“Ah! you are Protestants, of course. Many come here to see the children at work.”

We now made the round of the school-rooms and ateliers, where we found children divided according to age. The little ones, from three to five, were seated on tiers of benches, as in our infant-schools, and were at lessons under the superintendence of a sweet-looking young woman, also a native of France. The system seemed admirable. The teacher held up a letter, and instantaneously every little hand waved, and every little mouth opened to say, “I see an A,” “I see a B,” “I see a C,” and so on, till the whole alphabet had been gone through. Their little lessons in spelling and arithmetic were gone through on the same plan, every response being accompanied by a gesture. The children seemed thoroughly to enjoy the lesson, and no wonder. It was as good as a game of gymnastics to them. I am sure this system is the only desirable one to pursue with very young children, who are like young animals, always wanting to frisk about. Every one who has had anything to do with village schools knows how difficult it is for the mistress to keep the little ones still, and how they are scolded, sent to the corner, and kept over hours for sinning in this respect. But the Sisters have no troubles of this kind, and by keeping body and mind alike active no time or temper is wasted on either side.

From the infant-school we went into the class-room and ateliers of the elder girls, and examined some very beautiful needlework, thread-lace, and embroidery, some completed and ready for sale, others in process. These children are all taken from the lowest classes; their work is sold and the proceeds set apart for them till such a time as they need a dowry, or outfit for service. Each child is, therefore, laying up a little nest-egg for herself, and is, at the same time, acquiring a profitable and womanly handicraft, and, what is even more important, a good moral training.