CASTILIAN DAYS

BY JOHN HAY

Published November 1903

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

In this Holiday Edition of _Castilian Days_ it has been thoughtadvisable to omit a few chapters that appeared in the original edition. These chapters were less descriptive than the rest of the book, and notso rich in the picturesque material which the art of the illustratordemands. Otherwise, the text is reprinted without change. Theillustrations are the fruit of a special visit which Mr. Pennell hasrecently made to Castile for this purpose. 

BOSTON, AUTUMN, 1903

CONTENTS

MADRID AL FRESCO

SPANISH LIVING AND DYING

INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE

TAUROMACHY

RED-LETTER DAYS

AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS

A CASTLE IN THE AIR

THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS

THE ESCORIAL

A MIRACLE PLAY

THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE OF CERVANTES

MADRID AL FRESCO

Madrid is a capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat ofgovernment is established in some important town from the force ofcircumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the courtto resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris isthe heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spiteof the wandering flirtations its varying governments in differentcenturies have carried on with Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You canimagine no Residenz for Austria but the Kaiserstadt, --the gemuthlichWien. But there are other capitals where men have arranged things andconsequently bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his imperialcourt down on the marshy shore of the Neva, where he could look westwardinto civilization and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligentbarbarian the doings of his betters. Washington is another specimen ofthe cold-blooded handiwork of the capital builders. We shall thinknothing less of the _clarum et venerabile nomen_ of its founder if weadmit he was human, and his wishing the seat of government nearer toMount Vernon than Mount Washington sufficiently proves this. But Madridmore plainly than any other capital shows the traces of having been setdown and properly brought up by the strong hand of a paternalgovernment; and like children with whom the same regimen has beenfollowed, it presents in its maturity a curious mixture of lawlessnessand insipidity. 

Its greatness was thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptomsof the dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in precedingreigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrimtabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares. Charles V. Found the thin, fine air comforting to his gouty articulations. ButPhilip II. Made it his court. It seems hard to conceive how a king whohad his choice of Lisbon, with its glorious harbor and unequalledcommunications; Seville, with its delicious climate and natural beauty;and Salamanca and Toledo, with their wealth of tradition, splendor ofarchitecture, and renown of learning, should have chosen this barrenmountain for his home, and the seat of his empire. But when we know thismonkish king we wonder no longer. He chose Madrid simply because it wascheerless and bare and of ophthalmic ugliness. The royal kill-joydelighted in having the dreariest capital on earth. After a while thereseemed to him too much life and humanity about Madrid, and he built theEscorial, the grandest ideal of majesty and ennui that the world hasever seen. This vast mass of granite has somehow acted as an anchor thathas held the capital fast moored at Madrid through all succeeding years. 

It was a dreary and somewhat shabby court for many reigns. The greatkings who started the Austrian dynasty were too busy in their worldconquest to pay much attention to beautifying Madrid, and their weaksuccessors, sunk in ignoble pleasures, had not energy enough to indulgethe royal folly of building. When the Bourbons came down from Francethere was a little flurry of construction under Philip V. , but he neverfinished his palace in the Plaza del Oriente, and was soon absorbed inconstructing his castle in cloud-land on the heights of La Granja. Theonly real ruler the Bourbons ever gave to Spain was Charles III. , and tohim Madrid owes all that it has of architecture and civic improvement. Seconded by his able and liberal minister, Count Aranda, who waseducated abroad, and so free from the trammels of Spanish ignorance andsuperstition, he rapidly changed the ignoble town into something like acity. The greater portion of the public buildings date from this activeand beneficent reign. It was he who laid out the walks and promenadeswhich give to Madrid almost its only outward attraction. The PictureGallery, which is the shrine of all pilgrims of taste, was built by himfor a Museum of Natural Science. In nearly all that a stranger cares tosee, Madrid is not an older city than Boston. 

There is consequently no glory of tradition here. There are nocathedrals. There are no ruins. There is none of that mysterious andhaunting memory that peoples the air with spectres in quiet towns likeRavenna and Nuremberg. And there is little of that vast movement ofhumanity that possesses and bewilders you in San Francisco and New York. Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid agreat village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble eachother no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the home-stretch islike the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a marshy inlet. 

There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color. It is a city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, whichgirds its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia, fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck. 

But it is not for this reason destitute of an interest of its own. Byreason of its exceptional history and character it is the best point inSpain to study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but itis a patchwork of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula sends acontingent to its population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw itswater; the Asturian women nurse its babies at their deep bosoms, andfill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians carpetits halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas; in every streetyou shall see the red bonnet and sandalled feet of the Catalan; in everycafe, the shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. Ifit have no character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces ofthe Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of theWest, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods ring withevery note it has ever heard. 

Though Madrid gives a picture in little of all Spain, it is not allSpanish. It has a large foreign population. Not only its immediateneighbors, the French, are here in great numbers, --conquering so fartheir repugnance to emigration, and living as gayly as possible in themidst of traditional hatred, --but there are also many Germans andEnglish in business here, and a few stray Yankees have pitched theirtents, to reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to sell them ploughs andsewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and theRevolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent whichwould have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm withnewsboys and strangers, --the agencies that are to bring its people intothe movement of the age. 

It has a superb opera-house, which might as well be in Naples, for allthe national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word ofCas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Evencosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and easy-goingVienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in German. The champagnystrains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than theballads of the country. In Madrid there are more _pilluelos_ who whistle_Bu qui s'avance_ than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken its placeon the boards of every stage in the city, apparently to stay; and theexquisite jota and cachucha are giving way to the bestialities of thecasino cadet. It is useless perhaps to fight against that hideous orgieof vulgar Menads which in these late years has swept over all nations, and stung the loose world into a tarantula dance from the Golden Horn tothe Golden Gate. It must have its day and go out; and when it haspassed, perhaps we may see that it was not so utterly causeless andirrational as it seemed; but that, as a young American poet hasimpressively said, "Paris was proclaiming to the world in it somewhat ofthe pent-up fire and fury of her nature, the bitterness of her heart, the fierceness of her protest against spiritual and politicalrepression. It is an execration in rhythm, --a dance of fiends, whichParis has invented to express in license what she lacks in liberty. "

This diluted European, rather than Spanish, spirit may be seen in mostof the amusements of the politer world of Madrid. They have classicalconcerts in the circuses and popular music in the open air. The theatresplay translations of French plays, which are pretty good when they arein prose, and pretty dismal when they are turned into verse, as is morefrequent, for the Spanish mind delights in the jingle of rhyme. The fineold Spanish drama is vanishing day by day. The masterpieces of Lope andCalderon, which inspired all subsequent playwriting in Europe, have sunkalmost utterly into oblivion. The stage is flooded with the washings ofthe Boulevards. Bad as the translations are, the imitations are worse. The original plays produced by the geniuses of the Spanish Academy, forwhich they are crowned and sonneted and pensioned, are of the kind uponwhich we are told that gods and men and columns look austerely. 

This infection of foreign manners has completely gained and now controlswhat is called the best society of Madrid. A soiree in this circle islike an evening in the corresponding grade of position in Paris orPetersburg or New York in all external characteristics. The toilets areby Worth; the beauties are coiffed by the deft fingers of Parisiantiring-women; the men wear the penitential garb of Poole; the music isby Gounod and Verdi; Strauss inspires the rushing waltzes, and themarried people walk through the quadrilles to the measures of Blue Beardand Fair Helen, so suggestive of conjugal rights and duties. As for thesuppers, the trail of the Neapolitan serpent is over them all. Honesteating is a lost art among the effete denizens of the Old World. Tantalizing ices, crisped shapes of baked nothing, arid sandwiches, andthe feeblest of sugary punch, are the only supports exhausted naturereceives for the shock of the cotillon. I remember the stern reply of afriend of mine when I asked him to go with me to a brilliantreception, --"No! Man liveth not by biscuit-glace alone!" His heart washeavy for the steamed cherry-stones of Harvey and the stewed terrapin ofAugustin. 

The speech of the gay world has almost ceased to be national. Every onespeaks French sufficiently for all social requirements. It is sometimesto be doubted whether this constant use of a foreign language inofficial and diplomatic circles is a cause or effect of paucity ofideas. It is impossible for any one to use another tongue with the easeand grace with which he could use his own. You know how tiresome themost charming foreigners are when they speak English. A fetter-dance isalways more curious than graceful. Yet one who has nothing to say cansay it better in a foreign language. If you must speak nothing butphrases, Ollendorff's are as good as any one's. Where there are a dozenpeople all speaking French equally badly, each one imagines there is acertain elegance in the hackneyed forms. I know of no other way ofaccounting for the fact that clever people seem stupid and stupid peopleclever when they speak French. This facile language thus becomes themissionary of mental equality, --the principles of '89 applied toconversation. All men are equal before the phrase-book. 

But this is hypercritical and ungrateful. We do not go to balls to hearsermons nor discuss the origin of matter. If the young grandees of Spainare rather weaker in the parapet than is allowed in the nineteenthcentury, if the old boys are more frivolous than is becoming to age, andboth more ignorant of the day's doings than is consistent with eventheir social responsibilities, in compensation the women of this circleare as pretty and amiable as it is possible to be in a fallen world. Theforeigner never forgets those piquant, _mutines_ faces of Andalusia andthose dreamy eyes of Malaga, --the black masses of Moorish hair and theblond glory of those graceful heads that trace their descent from Gothicdemigods. They were not very learned nor very witty, but they wereknowing enough to trouble the soundest sleep. Their voices couldinterpret the sublimest ideas of Mendelssohn. They knew sufficiently oflines and colors to dress themselves charmingly at small cost, and theirlittle feet were well enough educated to bear them over the polishedfloor of a ball-room as lightly as swallows' wings. The flirting oftheir intelligent fans, the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes, teeth, and lips all did their dazzling duty, and the satin twinkling ofthose neat boots in the waltz, are harder to forget than things betterworth remembering. 

Since the beginning of the Revolutionary regime there have been seriousschisms and heart-burnings in the gay world. The people of the oldsituation assumed that the people of the new were rebels and traitors, and stopped breaking bread with them. But in spite of this the palaceand the ministry of war were gay enough, --for Madrid is a city ofoffice-holders, and the White House is always easy to fill, even if twothirds of the Senate is uncongenial. The principal fortress of the postwas the palace of the spirituelle and hospitable lady whose society nameis Duchess of Penaranda, but who is better known as the mother of theEmpress of the French. Her salon was the weekly rendezvous of theirreconcilable adherents of the House of Bourbon, and the aristocraticbeauty that gathered there was too powerful a seduction even for theyoung and hopeful partisans of the powers that be. There was nothingexclusive about this elegant hospitality. Beauty and good manners havealways been a passport there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talkingwith a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with acountess of Castile. 

But there is another phase of society in Madrid which is altogetherpleasing, --far from the domain of politics or public affairs, wherethere is no pretension or luxury or conspiracy, --the old-fashionedTertulias of Spain. There is nowhere a kindlier and more unaffectedsociableness. The leading families of each little circle have oneevening a week on which they remain at home. Nearly all their friendscome in on that evening. There is conversation and music and dancing. The young girls gather together in little groups, --not confined underthe jealous guard of their mothers or chaperons, --and chatter of themomentous events of the week--their dresses, their beaux, and theirbooks. Around these compact formations of loveliness skirmish lightbodies of the male enemy, but rarely effect a lodgment. A word or asmile is momently thrown out to meet the advance; but the long, desperate battle of flirtation, which so often takes place in America indiscreet corners and outlying boudoirs, is never seen in thiswell-organized society. The mothers in Israel are ranged for the eveningaround the walls in comfortable chairs, which they never leave; and thecolonels and generals and chiefs of administration, who form the bulk ofall Madrid gatherings, are gravely smoking in the library or playinginterminable games of tresillon, seasoned with temperate denunciationsof the follies of the time. 

Nothing can be more engaging than the tone of perfect ease and cordialcourtesy which pervades these family festivals. It is here that theSpanish character is seen in its most attractive light. Nearly everybodyknows French, but it is never spoken. The exquisite Castilian, softenedby its graceful diminutives into a rival of the Italian in tendermelody, is the only medium of conversation; it is rare that a stranger'is seen, but if he is, he must learn Spanish or be a wet blanketforever. 

You will often meet, in persons of wealth and distinction, an easydegenerate accent in Spanish, strangely at variance with their eleganceand culture. These are Creoles of the Antilles, and they form one of themost valued and popular elements of society in the capital. There is agallantry and dash about the men, and an intelligence and independenceabout the women, that distinguish them from their cousins of thePeninsula. The American element has recently grown very prominent in thepolitical and social world. Admiral Topete is a Mexican. His wife is oneof the distinguished Cuban family of Arrieta. General Prim married aMexican heiress. The magnificent Duchess de la Torre, wife of the RegentSerrano, is a Cuban born and bred. 

In one particular Madrid is unique among capitals, --it has no suburbs. It lies in a desolate table-land in the windy waste of New Castile; onthe north the snowy Guadarrama chills its breezes, and on every otherside the tawny landscape stretches away in dwarfish hills and shallowravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses the vast steppesinto one drab plain, which melts in the hazy verge of the warm horizon. There are no villages sprinkled in the environs to lure the Madrilenosout of their walls for a holiday. Those delicious picnics that breakwith such enchanting freshness and variety the steady course of life inother capitals cannot here exist. No Parisian loves _la bonne ville_ somuch that he does not call those the happiest of days on which hedeserts her for a row at Asnieres, a donkey-ride at Enghien, or abird-like dinner in the vast chestnuts of Sceaux. "There is only oneKaiserstadt, " sings the loyal Kerl of Vienna, but he shakes the dust ofthe Graben from his feet on holiday mornings, and makes his merrypilgrimage to the lordly Schoen-brunn or the heartsome Dornbach, or thewooded eyry of the Kahlenberg. What would white-bait be if not eaten atGreenwich? What would life be in the great cities without the knowledgethat just outside, an hour away from the toil and dust and struggle ofthis money-getting world, there are green fields, and whisperingforests, and verdurous nooks of breezy shadow by the side of brookswhere the white pebbles shine through the mottled stream, --where youfind great pied pan-sies under your hands, and catch the black beadyeyes of orioles watching you from the thickets, and through the lushleafage over you see patches of sky flecked with thin clouds that sailso lazily you cannot be sure if the blue or the white is moving?Existence without these luxuries would be very much like life in Madrid. 

Yet it is not so dismal as it might seem. The Grande Duchesse ofGerolstein, the cheeriest moralist who ever occupied a throne, announcesjust before the curtain falls, "Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il fautaimer ce qu'on a. " But how much easier it is to love what you have whenyou never imagined anything better! The bulk of the good people ofMadrid have never left their natal city. If they have been, for theirsins, some day to Val-lecas or Carabanchel or any other of the dustyvillages that bake and shiver on the arid plains around them, they givefervid thanks on returning alive, and never wish to go again. Theyshudder when they hear of the summer excursions of other populations, and commiserate them profoundly for living in a place they are soanxious to leave. A lovely girl of Madrid once said to me she neverwished to travel, --some people who had been to France preferred Paris toMadrid; as if that were an inexplicable insanity by which theirwanderings had been punished. The indolent incuriousness of the Spaniardaccepts the utter isolation of his city as rather an advantage. It saveshim the trouble of making up his mind where to go. _Vamonos al Prado!_or, as Browning says, --

 "Let's to the Prado and make the most of time. "

The people of Madrid take more solid comfort in their promenade than anyI know. This is one of the inestimable benefits conferred upon them bythose wise and liberal free-thinkers Charles III. And Aranda. They knewhow important to the moral and physical health of the people a place ofrecreation was. They reduced the hideous waste land on the east side ofthe city to a breathing-space for future generations, turning the meadowinto a promenade and the hill into the Buen Retiro. The people growledterribly at the time, as they did at nearly everything this prematurelyliberal government did for them. The wise king once wittily said: "Mypeople are like bad children that kick the shins of their nurse whenevertheir faces are washed. "

But they soon became reconciled to their Prado, --a name, by the way, which runs through several idioms, --in Paris they had a Pre-aux-clercs, the Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of Vienna is called the Prater. It was originally the favorite scene of duels, and the cherishedtrysting-place of lovers. But in modern times it is too popular for anysuch selfish use. 

The polite world takes its stately promenade in the winter afternoons inthe northern prolongation of the real Prado, called in the officialcourtier style _Las delicias de Isabel Segunda, _ but in common speechthe Castilian Fountain, or _Castellana, _ to save time. So perfect is thesocial discipline in these old countries that people who are not insociety never walk in this long promenade, which is open to all theworld. You shall see there, any pleasant day before the Carnival, thearistocracy of the kingdom, the fast young hopes of the nobility, thediplomatic body resident, and the flexible figures and graceful bearingof the high-born ladies of Castile. Here they take the air as free fromsnobbish competition as the good society of Olympus, while a hundredpaces farther south, just beyond the Mint, the world at large takes itsplebeian constitutional. How long, with a democratic system ofgovernment, this purely conventional respect will be paid to blue-nessof blood cannot be conjectured. Its existence a year after theRevolution was to me one of the most singular of phenomena. 

After Easter Monday the Castellana is left to its own devices for thesummer. With the warm long days of May and June, the evening walk in theSalon begins. Europe affords no scene more original and characteristic. The whole city meets in this starlit drawing-room. It is a vast eveningparty al fresco, stretching from the Alcala to the Course of SanGeronimo. In the wide street beside it every one in town who owns acarriage may be seen moving lazily up and down, and apparently envyingthe gossiping strollers on foot. On three nights in the week there ismusic in the Retiro Garden, --not as in our feverish way beginning soearly that you must sacrifice your dinner to get there, and then turningyou out disconsolate in that seductive hour which John Phoenix used tocall the "shank of the evening, " but opening sensibly at half past nineand going leisurely forward until after midnight. The music is verygood. Sometimes Arban comes down from Paris to recover from his winterfatigues and bewitch the Spains with his wizard _baton. _

In all this vast crowd nobody is in a hurry. They have all night beforethem. They stayed quietly at home in the stress of the noontide when thesunbeams were falling in the glowing streets like javelins, --theyutilized some of the waste hours of the broiling afternoon in sleep, andare fresh as daisies now. The women are not haunted by the thought oflords and babies growling and wailing at home. Their lords are besidethem, the babies are sprawling in the clean gravel by their chairs. Latein the small hours I have seen these family parties in the promenade, the husband tranquilly smoking his hundredth cigarette, his _placensuxor_ dozing in her chair, one baby asleep on the ground, and anotherslumbering in her lap. 

This Madrid climate is a gallant one, and kindlier to the women than themen. The ladies are built on the old-fashioned generous plan. Like aSouthern table in the old times, the only fault is too abundant plenty. They move along with a superb dignity of carriage that Banting wouldlike to banish from the world, their round white shoulders shining inthe starlight, their fine heads elegantly draped in the coquettish andalways graceful mantilla. But you would look in vain among the men ofMadrid for such fulness and liberality of structure. They are thin, eager, sinewy in ap' pearance, --though it is the spareness of the Turk, not of the American. It comes from tobacco and the Guadarrama winds. This still, fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over thetreeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the menof Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it willnot hurt a woman. " This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days ofthe vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, afterall, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulantsof our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitmansays, they loaf and invite their souls. They provide for the banquetonly the most spiritual provender. Their dissipation is confinedprincipally to starlight and zephyrs; the coarser and wealthier spiritsindulge in ice, agraz, and meringues dissolved in water. The climax oftheir luxury is a cool bed. Walking about the city at midnight, I haveseen the fountains all surrounded by luxurious vagabonds asleep or inrevery, dozens of them stretched along the rim of the basins, in thespray of the splashing water, where the least start would plunge themin. But the dreams of these Latin beggars are too peaceful to troubletheir slumber. They lie motionless, amid the roar of wheels and thetramp of a thousand feet, their bed the sculptured marble, theircovering the deep, amethystine vault, warm and cherishing with itsbreath of summer winds, bright with its trooping stars. The Providenceof the worthless watches and guards them!

The chief commerce of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water, bane and antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders tolive anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On everyblock you will find a wandering merchant dolefully announcing paper andphosphorus, --the one to construct cigarettes and the other to lightthem. The matches are little waxen tapers very neatly made and enclosedin pasteboard boxes, which are sold for a cent and contain about ahundred _fosforos. _ These boxes are ornamented with portraits of thepopular favorites of the day, and afford a very fair test of theprogress and decline of parties. The queen has disappeared from themexcept in caricature, and the chivalrous face of Castelar and the heavyBourbon mouth of Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madridsmoker of average industry will use a box a day. They smoke morecigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of conversation allow theirfire to go out every minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a_senorito_ light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentallycomparing it with the volcano volume and _kern-deutsch_ integrity ofpurpose of the meerschaums of his native land, said to me: "What can youexpect of a people who trifle in that way with the only work of theirlives?"

It is this habit of constant smoking that makes the Madrilenos thethirstiest people in the world; so that, alternating with the cry of"Fire, lord-lings! Matches, chevaliers!" you hear continually the droneso tempting to parched throats, "Water! who wants water? freezing water!colder than snow!" This is the daily song of the Gallician who marchesalong in his irrigating mission, with his brown blouse, his shortbreeches, and pointed hat, like that Aladdin wears in the cheapeditions; a little varied by the Valentian in his party-colored mantleand his tow trousers, showing the bronzed leg from the knee to theblue-bordered sandals. Numerous as they are, they all seem to haveenough to do. They carry their scriptural-looking water-jars on theirbacks, and a smart tray of tin and burnished brass, with meringues andglasses, in front. The glasses are of enormous but not extravagantproportions. These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it were nostronger than beer. In the winter-time, while the cheerful invitationrings out to the same effect, --that the beverage is cold as thesnow, --the merchant prudently carries a little pot of hot water over aspirit-lamp to take the chill off for shivery customers. 

Madrid is one of those cities where strangers fear the climate less thanresidents. Nothing is too bad for the Castilian to say of his nativeair. Before you have been a day in the city some kind soul will warn youagainst everything you have been in the habit of doing as leading tosudden and severe death in this subtle air. You will hear in a dozendifferent tones the favorite proverb, which may be translated, --

 The air of Madrid is as sharp as a knife, -- It will spare a candle and blow out your life:--

and another where the truth, as in many Spanish proverbs, is sacrificedto the rhyme, saying that the climate is _tres meses invierno y nueveinfierno, --_three months winter and nine months Tophet. At the firstcoming of the winter frosts the genuine son of Madrid gets out his capa, the national full round cloak, and never leaves it off till late in thehot spring days. They have a way of throwing one corner over the leftshoulder, so that a bright strip of gay lining falls outward andpleasantly relieves the sombre monotony of the streets. In this way theface is completely covered by the heavy woollen folds, only the eyesbeing visible under the sombrero. The true Spaniard breathes noout-of-doors air all winter except through his cloak, and they stare atstrangers who go about with uncovered faces enjoying the brisk air as ifthey were lunatics. But what makes the custom absurdly incongruous isthat the women have no such terror of fresh air. While the hidalgo goessmothered in his wrappings his wife and daughter wear nothing on theirnecks and faces but their pretty complexions, and the gallant breeze, grateful for this generous confidence, repays them in roses. I havesometimes fancied that in this land of traditions this difference mighthave arisen in those days of adventure when the cavaliers had goodreasons for keeping their faces concealed, while the senoras, we arebound to believe, have never done anything for which their own beautywas not the best excuse. 

Nearly all there is of interest in Madrid consists in the faces and thelife of its people. There is but one portion of the city which appealsto the tourist's ordinary set of emotions. This is the old Moors'quarter, --the intricate jumble of streets and places on the western edgeof the town, overlooking the bankrupt river. Here is St. Andrew's, theparish church where Isabella the Catholic and her pious husband used tooffer their stiff and dutiful prayers. Behind it a market-place of themost primitive kind runs precipitately down to the Street of. Segovia, at such an angle that you wonder the turnips and carrots can ever bebrought to keep their places on the rocky slope. If you will wanderthrough the dark alleys and hilly streets of this quarter when twilightis softening the tall tenement-houses to a softer purpose, and thedoorways are all full of gossiping groups, and here and there in thelittle courts you can hear the tinkling of a guitar and the drone ofballads, and see the idlers lounging by the fountains, and everywhereagainst the purple sky the crosses of old convents, while the eveningair is musical with slow chimes from the full-arched belfries, it willnot be hard to imagine you are in the Spain you have read and dreamedof. And, climbing out of this labyrinth of slums, you pass under thegloomy gates that lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent squareis now as squalid and forsaken as the Place Royale of Paris, though itdates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so instinctivelyrevolts at the contemplation of those orgies of priestly brutality whichhave made the very name of this place redolent with a fragrance ofscorched Christians, that we naturally assign it an immemorialantiquity. But a glance at the booby face of Philip III. On hisround-bellied charger in the centre of the square will remind us thatthis place was built at the same time the Mayflower's passengers werelaying the massive foundations of the great Republic. The Autos-da-Fe, the plays of Lope de Vega, and the bull-fights went on for many yearswith impartial frequency under the approving eyes of royalty, whichoccupied a convenient balcony in the Panaderia, that overdressedbuilding with the two extinguisher towers. Down to a perioddisgracefully near us, those balconies were occupied by the dull-eyed, pendulous-lipped tyrants who have sat on the throne of St. Ferdinand, while there in the spacious court below the varied sports wenton, --to-day a comedy of Master Lope, to-morrow the gentle and joyousslaying of bulls, and the next day, with greater pomp and ceremony, withbanners hung from the windows, and my lord the king surrounded by hiswomen and his courtiers in their bravest gear, and the august presenceof the chief priests and their idol in the form of wine and wafers, --thejudg-ment and fiery sentence of the thinking men of Spain. 

Let us remember as we leave this accursed spot that the old palace ofthe Inquisition is now the Ministry of Justice, where a liberalstatesman has just drawn up the bill of civil marriage; and that in theconvent of the Trinitarians a Spanish Rationalist, the Minister ofFomento, is laboring to secularize education in the Peninsula. There ismuch coiling and hissing, but the fangs of the ser-pent are much lessprompt and effective than of old. 

The wide Calle Mayor brings you in a moment out of these mouldy shadowsand into the broad light of nowadays which shines in the Puerta del Sol. Here, under the walls of the Ministry of the Interior, the quick, restless heart of Madrid beats with the new life it has lately earned. The flags of the pavement have been often stained with blood, but ofblood shed in combat, in the assertion of individual freedom. Althoughthe government holds that fortress-palace with a grasp of iron, it canexercise no control over the free speech that asserts itself on the verysidewalk of the Principal. At every step you see news-stands filled withthe sharp critical journalism of Spain, --often ignorant and unjust, butgenerally courteous in expression and independent in thought. Every dayat noon the northern mails bring hither the word of all Europe to theawaking Spanish mind, and within that massive building the converginglines of the telegraph are whispering every hour their persuasivelessons of the world's essential unity. 

The movement of life and growth is bearing the population gradually awayfrom that dark mediaeval Madrid of the Catholic kings through the Puertadel Sol to the airy heights beyond, and the new, fresh quarter built bythe philosopher Bourbon Charles III. Is becoming the most important partof the city. I think we may be permitted to hope that the long reign ofsavage faith and repression is broken at last, and that this abused andsuffering people is about to enter into its rightful inheritance ofmodern freedom and progress. 

SPANISH LIVING AND DYING

Nowhere is the sentiment of home stronger than in Spain. Strangers, whose ideas of the Spanish character have been gained from romance andcomedy, are apt to note with some surprise the strength and prevalenceof the domestic affections. But a moment's reflection shows us thatnothing is more natural. It is the result of all their history. The oldCeltic population had scarcely any religion but that of the family. TheGoths brought in the pure Teutonic regard for woman and marriage. TheMoors were distinguished by the patriarchal structure of their society. The Spaniards have thus learned the lesson of home in the school ofhistory and tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, which sostrongly marks the Spanish character, and which in the political worldis so fatal an element of strife and obstruction, favors this peculiardomesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his king and his priest, haughty and inflexible with his equals. But his own house is a refugefrom the contests of out of doors. The reflex of absolute authority ishere observed, it is true. The Spanish father is absolute king and lordby his own hearthstone, but his sway is so mild and so readilyacquiesced in that it is hardly felt. The evils of tyranny are rarelyseen but by him who resists it, and the Spanish family seldom calls forthe harsh exercise of parental authority. 

This is the rule. I do not mean to say there are no exceptions. Thepride and jealousy inherent in the race make family quarrels, when theydo arise, the bitterest and the fiercest in the world. In every grade oflife these vindictive feuds among kindred are seen from time to time. Twice at least the steps of the throne have been splashed with royalblood shed by a princely hand. Duels between noble cousins and stabbingaffrays between peasant brothers alike attest the unbending sense ofpersonal dignity that still infects this people. 

A light word between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, andthe rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where thewife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meeton the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof theyhave lived for years and have not spoken. One word would heal alldiscord, and that word will never be spoken by either. They cannot bedivorced, --the Church is inexorable. They will not incur the scandal ofa public separation. So they pass lives of lonely isolation in adjoiningapartments, both thinking rather better of each other and of themselvesfor this devilish persistence. 

An infraction of parental discipline is never forgiven. I knew a generalwhose daughter fell in love with his adjutant, a clever and amiableyoung officer. He had positively no objection to the suitor, but wassurprised that there should be any love-making in his house without hisprevious suggestion. He refused his consent, and the young people weremarried without it. The father and son-in-law went off on a campaign, fought, and were wounded in the same battle. The general was asked torecommend his son-in-law for promotion. "I have no son-in-law!" "I meanyour daughter's husband. " "I have no daughter. " "I refer to LieutenantDon Fulano de Tal. He is a good officer. He distinguished himselfgreatly in the recent affair. " "Ah! otra cosa!" said the grimfather-in-law. His hate could not overcome his sense of justice. Theyouth got his promotion, but his general will not recognize him at theclub. It is in the middle and lower classes that the most perfectpictures of the true Spanish family are to be found. The aristocracy ismore or less infected with the contagion of Continental manners andmorals. You will find there the usual proportion of wives who despisetheir husbands, and men who neglect their wives, and children who do nothonor their parents. The smartness of American "pickles" has even madeits appearance among the little countesses of Madrid. A lady was eatingan ice one day, hungrily watched by the wide eyes of the infant heiressof the house. As the latter saw the last hope vanishing before thedestroying spoon, she cried out, "Thou eatest all and givest menone, --maldita sea tu alma!" (accursed be thy soul). This dreadfulimprecation was greeted with roars of laughter from admiring friends, and the profane little innocent was smothered in kisses and cream. 

Passing at noon by any of the squares or shady places of Madrid, youwill see dozens of laboring-people at their meals. They sit on theground, around the steaming and savory _cocido_ that forms the peasantSpaniard's unvaried dinner. The foundation is of _garbanzos, _ the largechick-pea of the country, brought originally to Europe by theCarthaginians, --the Roman _cicer, _ which gave its name to the greatestof the Latin orators. All other available vegetables are thrown in; ondays of high gala a piece of meat is added, and some forehandedhousewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring the compound with alink of sausage. The mother brings the dinner and her tawny brood ofnestlings. A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father dips hiswooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, and mother and babes followwith grave decorum. Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, ontheir way to a vapid French breakfast at a restaurant, catch thefragrance of the _olla_ and the chatter of the family, and envy thedinner of herbs with love. 

There is no people so frugal. We often wonder how a Washington clerk canlive on twelve hundred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensiveMadrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. Foreigners arenever weary decrying its high prices for poor fare; but Castilians livein good houses, dress well, receive their intimate friends, and holdtheir own with the best in the promenade, upon incomes that would seempenury to any country parson in America. There are few of the nobilitywho retain the great fortunes of former days. You can almost tell onyour fingers the tale of the grandees in Madrid who can live withoutcounting the cost. The army and navy are crowded with general officerswhose political services have obliged their promotion. The state is toomuch impoverished to pay liberal salaries, and yet the rank of theseofficers requires the maintenance of a certain social position. Few ofthem are men of fortune. The result is that necessity has taught them tolive well upon little, I knew widows who went everywhere in society, whose daughters were always charmingly dressed, who lived in a decentquarter of the town, and who had no resources whatever but a husband'spension. 

The best proof of the capacity of Spaniards to spread a little gold overas much space as a goldbeater could is the enormous competition forpub-lic employment. Half the young men in Spain are candidates forplaces under government ranging from $250 to $1000. Places of $1500 to$2000 are considered objects of legitimate ambition even to deputies andleading politicians. Expressed in reals these sums have a large andsatisfying sound. Fifty dollars seems little enough for a month's work, but a thousand reals has the look of a most respectable salary. InPortugal, however, you can have all the delightful sensations ofprodigality at a contemptible cost. You can pay, without serious damageto your purse, five thousand reis for your breakfast. 

It is the smallness of incomes and the necessity of looking sharply tothe means of life that makes the young people of Madrid so prudent intheir love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir-esses are suchbelles, and where young men with handsome incomes are so universallyesteemed by all who know them. The stars on the sleeves of youngofficers are more regarded than their dancing, and the red belt of afield officer is as winning in the eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus. A. Subaltern offered his hand and heart to a black-eyed girl of Castile. She said kindly but firmly that the night was too cloudy. "What, " saidthe stupefied lover, "the sky is full of stars. " "I see but one, " saidthe prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pensively upon his cuff, whereone lone luminary indicated his rank. 

This spirit is really one of forethought, and not avarice. People whohave enough for two almost always marry from inclination, and frequentlytake partners for life without a penny. 

If men were never henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be theplace of all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright, vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely anyeducation whatever. They never know the difference between _b_ and _v. _They throw themselves in orthography entirely upon your benevolence. They know a little music and a little French, but they have nevercrossed, even in a school-day excursion, the border line of the ologies. They do not even read novels. They are regarded as injurious, andcannot be trusted to the daughters until mamma has read them. Mammanever has time to read them, and so they are condemned by default. Fernan Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to thisilliterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chiefcharm, --that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to knowanything beyond her cookery-book and her missal. There is-an old proverbwhich coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman thattalks Latin never come to any good. 

There is a contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fairSpaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will become ofthe language when male words are crowded out of the dictionary!)

It must be the innocence which springs from ignorance that induces anoccasional coarseness of expression which surprises you in theconversation of those lovely young girls. They will speak with perfectfreedom of the _etat-civil_ of a young unmarried mother. A maiden offifteen said to me: "I must go to a party this evening _decolletee, _ andI hate it. Benigno is getting old enough to marry, and he wants to seeall the girls in low neck before he makes up his mind. " They all swearlike troopers, without a thought of profanity. Their mildest expressionof surprise is Jesus Maria! They change their oaths with the season. Atthe feast of the Immaculate Conception, the favorite oath is MariaPurissima. This is a time of especial interest to young girls. It is aperiod of compulsory confession, --conscience-cleaning, as they call it. They are all very pious in their way. They attend to their religiousduties with the same interest which they displayed a few years before indressing and undressing their dolls, and will display a few years laterin putting the lessons they learned with their dolls to a more practicaluse. 

The visible concrete symbols and observances of religion have greatinfluence with them. They are fond of making vows in tight places andfaithfully observing them afterwards. In an hour's walk in the streetsof Madrid you will see a dozen ladies with a leather strap buckled abouttheir slender waists and hanging nearly to the ground. Others wear aknotted cord and tassels. These are worn as the fulfilment of vows, orpenances. 

I am afraid they give rise to much worldly conjecture on the part ofidle youth as to what amiable sins these pretty penitents can have beenguilty of. It is not prudent to ask an explanation of the peculiarmercy, or remorse, which this purgatorial strap commemorates. You willprobably not enlarge your stock of knowledge further than to learn thatthe lady in question considers you a great nuisance. 

The graceful lady who, in ascending the throne of France, has not ceasedto be a thorough Spaniard, still preserves these pretty weaknesses ofher youth. She vowed a chapel to her patron saint if her firstborn was aman-child, and paid it. She has hung a vestal lamp in the Church ofNotre Dame des Victoires, in pursuance of a vow she keeps rigidlysecret. She is a firm believer in relics also, and keeps a choiceassortment on hand in the Tuileries for sudden emergencies. When oldBaciocchi lay near his death, worn out by a horrible nervous disorderwhich would not let him sleep, the empress told the doctors, with greatmystery, that she would cure him. After a few preliminary masses, shecame into his room and hung on his bedpost a little gold-embroideredsachet containing (if the evidence of holy men is to be believed) a fewthreads of the swaddling-clothes of John the Baptist. Her simplechildlike faith wrung the last grim smile from the tortured lips of thedying courtier. 

The very names of the Spanish women are a constant reminder of theirworship. They are all named out of the calendar of saints and virginmartyrs. A large majority are christened Mary; but as this sacred nameby much use has lost all distinctive meaning, some attribute, someespecial invocation of the Virgin, is always coupled with it. The namesof Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall Our Lady of the Sorrows, of theGifts, of the Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little gypsy who bore thetearful name of Lagrimas. The most appropriate name I heard for theselarge-eyed, soft-voiced beauties was Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. Whocould resist the comforting assurance of "Consuelo"? "Blessed, " says myLord Lytton, "is woman who consoles. " What an image of maiden puritygoes with the name of Nieves, the Virgin of the Snows! From a singlecotillon of Castilian girls you can construct the whole history of OurLady; Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Solitude, Assumption. As youngladies are never called by their family names, but always by theirbaptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening in a Spanish_tertulia_ without being reminded of every stage in the life of theImmaculate Mother, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond. 

The common use of sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, butnowhere so striking as in Spain. There is a little solemnity in theFrench adieu. But the Spaniard says adios instead of "good-morning. " Noletter closes without the prayer, "God guard your Grace many years!"They say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence of death with thesacramental wish of length of days. There is something a little shockingto a Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha theycall fritters the Grace of God. 

The piety of the Spanish women does not prevent them from seeing somethings clearly enough with their bright eyes. One of the most bigotedwomen in Spain recently said: "I hesitate to let my child go toconfession. The priests ask young girls such infamous questions, that mycheeks burn when I think of them, after all these years. " I stood oneChristmas Eve in the cold midnight wind, waiting for the church doors toopen for the night mass, the famous _misa del gallo. _ On the stepsbeside me sat a decent old woman with her two daughters. At last sherose and said, "Girls, it is no use waiting any longer. The priestswon't leave their housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's soul. "In these two cases, taken from the two extremes of the Catholic society, there was no disrespect for the Church or for religion. Both these womenbelieved with a blind faith. But they could not help seeing how uncleanwere the hands that dispensed the bread of life. 

The respect shown to the priesthood as a body is marvellous, in view ofthe profligate lives of many. The general progress of the age has forcedmost of the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their cynicalimmorality is still the bane of many families. And it needs but a glanceat the vile manual of confession, called the Golden Key, the author ofwhich is the too well known Padre Claret, confessor to the queen, to seethe systematic moral poisoning the minds of Spanish women must undergowho pay due attention to what is called their religious duties. If aconfessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical authority, his fair penitents will have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal ofFaublas or Casanova. It would, however, be unjust to the priesthood toconsider them all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires acombination of convent and palace life to produce these finishedspecimens of mitred infamy. 

It is to be regretted that the Spanish women are kept in such systematicignorance. They have a quicker and more active intelligence than themen. With a fair degree of education, much might be hoped from them inthe intellectual development of the country. In society, you will atonce be struck with the superiority of the women to their husbands andbrothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wifealways comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befoggedin a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about yourjourney. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "_Quien sabe?"_but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. Ican imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud theirbrains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the women do not. 

The personality of the woman is not so entirely merged in that of thehusband as among us. She retains her own baptismal and family namethrough life. If Miss Matilda Smith marries Mr. Jonathan Jones, allvestige of the former gentle being vanishes at once from the earth, andMrs. Jonathan Jones alone remains. But in Spain she would become Mrs. Matilda Smith de Jones, and her eldest-born would be called Don JuanJones y Smith. You ask the name of a married lady in society, and youhear as often her own name as that of her husband. 

Even among titled people, the family name seems more highly valued thanthe titular designation. Everybody knows Narvaez, but how few have heardof the Duke of Valencia! The Regent Serrano has a name known and honoredover the world, but most people must think twice before they rememberthe Duke de la Torre. Juan Prim is better known than the Marques de losCastillejos ever will be. It is perhaps due to the prodigality withwhich titles have been scattered in late years that the older titles aremore regarded than the new, although of inferior grade. Thus Prim callshimself almost invariably the Conde de Reus, though his grandeeship camewith his investiture as marquis. 

There is something quite noticeable about this easy way of treatingone's name. We are accustomed to think a man can have but one name, andcan sign it but in one way. Lord Derby can no more call himself Mr. Stanley than President Grant can sign a bill as U. Simpson. Yet boththese signatures would be perfectly valid according to Spanish analogy. The Marquis of Santa Marta signs himself Guzman; the Marquis of Albaidauses no signature but Orense; both of these gentlemen being Republicandeputies. I have seen General Prim's name signed officially, Conde deReus, Marques de los Castillejos, Prim, J. Prim, Juan Prim, and JeanPrim, changing the style as often as the humor strikes him. 

Their forms of courtesy are, however, invariable. You can never visit aSpaniard without his informing you that you are in your own house. If, walking with him, you pass his residence, he asks you to enter yourhouse and unfatigue yourself a moment. If you happen upon any Spaniard, of whatever class, at the hour of repast, he always offers you hisdinner; if you decline, it must be with polite wishes for his digestion. With the Spaniards, no news is good news; it is therefore civil to ask aSpaniard if his lady-wife goes on without novelty, and to express yourprofound gratification on being assured that she does. Their forms ofhospitality are evidently Moorish, derived from the genuine open handand open tent of the children of the desert; now nothing is left of thembut grave and decorous words. In the old times, one who would haverefused such offers would have been held a churl; now one who wouldaccept them would be regarded as a boor. 

There is still something primitive about the Spanish servants. A flavorof the old romances and the old comedy still hangs about them. They arechatty and confidential to a degree that appalls a stiff and formalEnglishman of the upper middle class. The British servant is a chillyand statuesque image of propriety. The French is an intelligent andsympathizing friend. You can make of him what you like. But the Italian, and still more the Spaniard, is as gay as a child, and as incapable ofintentional disrespect. The Castilian grandee does not regard hisdignity as in danger from a moment's chat with a waiter. He has noconception of that ferocious decorum we Anglo-Saxons require from ourmanservants and our maidservants. The Spanish servant seems to regard itas part of his duty to keep your spirits gently excited while you dineby the gossip of the day. He joins also in your discussions, whetherthey touch lightly on the politics of the hour or plunge profoundly intothe depths of philosophic research. He laughs at your wit, and swingshis napkin with convulsions of mirth at your good stories. He tells youthe history of his life while you are breaking your egg, and lays thestory of his loves before you with your coffee. Yet he is not intrusive. He will chatter on without waiting for a reply, and when you are tiredof him you can shut him off with a word. There are few Spanish servantsso uninteresting but that you can find in them from time to time somesparks of that ineffable light which shines forever in Sancho andFigaro. 

The traditions of subordination, which are the result of long centuriesof tyranny, have prevented the development of that feeling ofindependence among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds itsexpression in ill manners and discourtesy to superiors. I knew agentleman in the West whose circumstances had forced him to become awaiter in a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly grudge at theprofession that kept him from starving, and asserted his unconquerednobility of soul by scowling at his customers and swearing at the viandshe dispensed. I remember the deep sense of wrong with which he wouldgrowl, "Two buckwheats, begawd!" You see nothing of this defiant spiritin Spanish servants. They are heartily glad to find employment, and askno higher good-fortune than to serve acceptably. As to drawingcomparisons between themselves and their masters, they never seem tothink they belong to the same race. I saw a pretty grisette once stop tolook at a show-window where there was a lay-figure completely coveredwith all manner of trusses. She gazed at it long and earnestly, evidently thinking it was some new fashion just introduced into the gayworld. At last she tripped away with all the grace of her unfetteredlimbs, saying, "If the fine ladies have to wear all those machines, I amglad I am not made like them. "

Whether it be from their more regular and active lives, or from theirbeing unable to pay for medical attendance, the poorer classes sufferless from sickness than their betters. An ordinary Spaniard is sick butonce in his life, and that once is enough, --'twill serve. The traditionsof the old satires which represented the doctor and death as alwayshunting in couples still survive in Spain. It is taken as so entirely amatter of course that a patient must die that the law of the landimposed a heavy fine upon physicians who did not bring a priest on theirsecond visit. His labor of exhortation and confession was rarely wasted. There were few sufferers who recovered from the shock of that solemnceremony in their chambers. Medical science still labors in Spain underthe ban of ostracism, imposed in the days when all research was impiety. The Inquisition clamored for the blood of Vesalius, who had committedthe crime of a demonstration in anatomy. He was forced into a pilgrimageof expiation, and died on the way to Palestine. The Church has alwayslooked with a jealous eye upon the inquirers, the innovators. Why theseprobes, these lancets, these multifarious drugs, when the object in viewcould be so much more easily obtained by the judicious application ofmasses and prayers?

So it has come about that the doctor is a Pariah, and miracles flourishin the Peninsula. At every considerable shrine you will see the wallscovered with waxen models of feet, legs, hands, and arms secured by themiraculous interposition of the _genius loci, _ and scores of littlecrutches attesting the marvellous hour when they became useless. Eachshrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial virtue. A Santiagomedal was better than quinine for ague. St. Veronica's handkerchief issovereign for sore eyes. A bone of St. Magin supersedes the use ofmercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos cured at Segovia a case ofcongenital idiocy. The Virgin of Ona acted as a vermifuge on royalinfantas, and her girdle at Tortosa smooths their passage into thisworld. In this age of unfaith relics have lost much of their power. Theyturn out their score or so of miracles every feast-day, it is true, butare no longer capable of the _tours de force_ of earlier days. Cardinalde Retz saw with his eyes a man whose wooden legs were turned tocapering flesh and blood by the image of the Pillar of Saragossa. Butthis was in the good old times before newspapers and telegraphs had cometo dispel the twilight of belief. 

Now, it is excessively probable that neither doctor nor priest can domuch if the patient is hit in earnest. He soon succumbs, and is laid outin his best clothes in an improvised chapel and duly sped on his way. The custom of burying the dead in the gown and cowl of monks has greatlypassed into disuse. The mortal relics are treated with growing contempt, as the superstitions of the people gradually lose their concretecharacter. The soul is the important matter which the Church now looksto. So the cold clay is carted off to the cemetery with small ceremony. Even the coffins of the rich are jammed away into receptacles too smallfor them, and hastily plastered out of sight. The poor are carried offon trestles and huddled into their nameless graves, without following orblessing. Children are buried with some regard to the old Orientalcustoms. The coffin is of some gay and cheerful color, pink or blue, andis carried open to the grave by four of the dead child's youngcompanions, a fifth walking behind with the ribboned coffin-lid. I haveoften seen these touching little parties moving through the bustlingstreets, the peaceful small face asleep under the open sky, decked withthe fading roses and withering lilies. In all well-to-do families thehouse of death is deserted immediately after the funeral. The strickenones retire to some other habitation, and there pass eight days instrict and inviolable seclusion. On the ninth day the great masses forthe repose of the soul of the departed are said in the parish church, and all the friends of the family are expected to be present. Thesemasses are the most important and expensive incident of the funeral. They cost from two hundred to one thousand dollars, according to thestrength and fervor of the orisons employed. They are repeated severalyears on the anniversary of the decease, and afford a most sure andnourishing revenue to the Church. They are founded upon those feelingsinseparable from every human heart, vanity and affection. Our deadfriends must be as well prayed for as those of others, and who knows butthat they may be in deadly need of prayers! To shorten their fierypenance by one hour, who would not fast for a week? On theseanniversaries a black-bordered advertisement appears in the newspapers, headed by the sign of the cross and the Requiescat in Pace, announcingthat on this day twelve months Don Fulano de Tal passed from earthgarnished with the holy sacraments, that all the masses this daycelebrated in such and such churches will be applied to the benefit ofhis spirit's repose, and that all Christian friends are hereby requestedto commend his soul this day unto God. These efforts, if they do thedead no good, at least do the living no harm. 

A luxury of grief, in those who can afford it, consists in shutting upthe house where a death has taken place and never suffering it to beopened again. I once saw a beautiful house and wide garden thusabandoned in one of the most fashionable streets of Madrid. I inquiredabout it, and found it was formerly the residence of the Duke of------. His wife had died there many years before, and since that day not a doornor a window had been opened. The garden gates were red and rough withrust. Grass grew tall and rank in the gravelled walks. A thick lushundergrowth had overrun the flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds wererotting over the darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clambered over allthe mossy doors. The stucco was peeling from the walls in unwholesomeblotches. Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There wassomething impressive in this spot of mould and silence, lying there sogreen and implacable in the very heart of a great and noisy city. Theduke lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of a man of the world. Henever would sell or let that Madrid house. Perhaps in his heart also, that battered thoroughfare worn by the pattering boots of Ma-bine andthe Bois, and the Quartier Breda, there was a green spot sacred tomemory and silence, where no footfall should ever light, where no livingvoice should ever be heard, shut out from the world and its cares andits pleasures, where through the gloom of dead days he could catch aglimpse of a white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a trailingrobe, and feel sweeping over him the old magic of love's young dream, softening his fancy to tender regret and his eyes to a happy mist--

 "Like that which kept the heart of Eden green Before the useful trouble of the rain. "

INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE

Intelligent Spaniards with whom I have conversed on political mattershave often exclaimed, "Ah, you Americans are happy! you have notraditions. " The phrase was at first a puzzling one. We Americans areapt to think we have traditions, --a rather clearly marked line ofprecedents. And it is hard to see how a people should be happier withoutthem. It is not anywhere considered a misfortune to have had agrandfather, I believe, and some very good folks take an innocent pridein that very natural fact. It was not easy to conceive why thepossession of a glorious history of many centuries should be regarded asa drawback. But a closer observation of Spanish life and thought revealsthe curious and hurtful effect of tradition upon every phase ofexistence. 

In the commonest events of every day you will find the flavor of pastages lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ageshas left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of obstacles to aman getting into his own house at night. I lived in a pleasant house onthe Prado, with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and railing. This gate was shut and locked by the night watchman of the quarter atmidnight, --so conscientiously that he usually had everything snug byhalf past eleven. As the same man had charge of a dozen or more houses, it was scarcely reasonable to expect him to be always at your own gatewhen you arrived. But by a singular fatality I think no man ever foundhim in sight at any hour. He is always opening some other gate orshutting some other door, or settling the affairs of the nation with afriend in the next block, or carrying on a chronic courtship at thelattice of some olive-cheeked soubrette around the corner. Be that as itmay, no one ever found him on hand; and there is nothing to do but tosit down on the curbstone and lift up your voice and shriek for himuntil he comes. At two o'clock of a morning in January the exercise isnot improving to the larynx or the temper. There is a tradition in thevery name of this worthy. He is called the Sereno, because a century orso ago he used to call the hour and the state of the weather, and as thesky is almost always cloudless here, he got the name of the Sereno, asthe quail is called Bob White, from much iteration. The Sereno opensyour gate and the door of your house. When you come to your own flooryou must ring, and your servant takes a careful survey of you through alatticed peep-hole before he will let you in. You may positively forbidthis every day in the year, but the force of habit is too strong in theSpanish mind to suffer amendment. 

This absurd custom comes evidently down from a time of great lawlessnessand license, when no houses were secure without these precautions, whenpeople rarely stirred from their doors after nightfall, and when a doorwas never opened to a stranger. Now, when no such dangers exist, theannoying and senseless habit still remains, because no one dreams ofchanging anything which their fathers thought proper. Three hundredthousand people in Madrid submit year after year to this nightly cross, and I have never heard a voice raised in protest, nor even in defence ofthe custom. 

There is often a bitterness of opposition to evident improvement whichis hard to explain. In the last century, when the eminent naturalistBowles went down to the Almaden silver-mines, by appointment of thegovernment, to see what was the cause of their exhaustion, he found thatthey had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts instead offollowing the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for workingthem in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could makethe Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this newprocess, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation ratherthan offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had tobe dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, under whose handsthe mines became instantly enormously productive. 

I once asked a very intelligent English contractor why he used nowheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart navviesemployed carrying dirt in small wicker baskets to an embankment. He saidthe men would not use them. Some said it broke their backs. Othersdiscovered a capital way of amusing themselves by putting the barrow ontheir heads and whirling the wheel as rapidly as possible with theirhands. This was a game which never grew stale. The contractor gave up indespair, and went back to the baskets. But it is in the official regionsthat tradition is most powerful. In the budget of 1870 there was acurious chapter called "Charges of Justice. " This consisted of acollection of articles appropriating large sums of money for the paymentof feudal taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom as acompensation for long extinct seigniories. The Duke of Rivas gotthirteen hundred dollars for carrying the mail to Victoria. The Duke ofSan Carlos draws ten thousand dollars for carrying the royalcorrespondence to the Indies. Of course this service ceased to belong tothese families some centuries ago, but the salary is still paid. TheDuke of Almodovar is well paid for supplying the _baton_ of office tothe Alguazil of Cordova. The Duke of Osuna--one of the greatest grandeesof the kingdom, a gentleman who has the right to wear seventeen hats inthe presence of the Queen--receives fifty thousand dollars a year forimaginary feudal services. The Count of Altamira, who, as his nameindicates, is a gentleman of high views, receives as a salve for thesuppression of his fief thirty thousand dollars a year. In considerationof this sum he surrenders, while it is punctually paid, the privilege ofhanging his neighbors. 

When the budget was discussed, a Republican member gently criticisedthis chapter; but his amendment for an investigation of these chargeswas indignantly rejected. He was accused of a shocking want ofEspanolismo. He was thought to have no feeling in his heart for theglories of Spain. The respectability of the Chamber could find but oneword injurious enough to express their contempt for so shameless aproposition; they said it was little better than socialism. The"charges" were all voted. Spain, tottering on the perilous verge ofbankruptcy, her schoolmasters not paid for months, her sinking fundplundered, her credit gone out of sight, borrowing every cent she spendsat thirty per cent. , is proud of the privilege of paying into the handsof her richest and most useless class this gratuity of twelve millionreals simply because they are descended from the robber chiefs of thedarker ages. There is a curious little comedy played by the family ofMedina Celi at every new coronation of a king of Spain. The duke claimsto be the rightful heir to the throne. He is descended from PrinceFerdinand, who, dying before his father, Don Alonso X. , left his babiesexposed to the cruel kindness of their uncle Sancho, who, to save themthe troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and transmitted it to hischildren, --all this some half dozen centuries ago. At every coronationthe duke formally protests; an athletic and sinister-looking courtheadsman comes down to his palace in the Carrera San Geronimo, and bythreats of immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paperabdicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. The duke eats theBourbon leek with inward profanity, and feels that he has done a mostclever and proper thing. This performance is apparently his only objectand mission in life. This one sacrifice to tradition is what he is bornfor. 

The most important part of a Spaniard's signature is the _rubrica_ orflourish with which it closes. The monarch's hand is set to public actsexclusively by this _parafe. _ This evidently dates from the time whennone but priests could write. In Madrid the mule-teams are driven tandemthrough the wide streets, because this was necessary in the ages whenthe streets were narrow. 

There is even a show of argument sometimes to justify an adherence tothings as they are. About a century ago there was an effort made bypeople who had lived abroad, and so become conscious of the possessionof noses, to have the streets of Madrid cleaned. The proposition was atfirst received with apathetic contempt, but when the innovatorspersevered they met the earnest and successful opposition of allclasses. The Cas-tilian _savans_ gravely reported that the air ofMadrid, which blew down from the snowy Guadarra-mas, was so thin andpiercing that it absolutely needed the gentle corrective of theordure-heaps to make it fit for human lungs. 

There is no nation in Europe in which so little washing is done. I donot think it is because the Spaniards do not want to be neat. They are, on the whole, the best-dressed people on the Continent. The hate ofablutions descends from those centuries of warfare with the Moors. Theheathens washed themselves daily; therefore a Christian should not. Themonks, who were too lazy to bathe, taught their followers to be filthyby precept and example. Water was never to be applied externally exceptin baptism. It was a treacherous element, and dallying with it hadgotten Bathsheba and Susanna into no end of trouble. So when the cleanlyinfidels were driven out of Granada, the pious and hydrophobic CardinalXimenez persuaded the Catholic sovereigns to destroy the abomination ofbaths they left behind. Until very recently the Spanish mind has beenunable to separate a certain idea of immorality from bathing. WhenMadame Daunoy, one of the sprightliest of observers, visited the courtof Philip IV. , she found it was considered shocking among the ladies ofthe best society to wash the face and hands. Once or twice a week theywould glaze their pretty visages with the white of an egg. Of late yearsthis prejudice has given way somewhat; but it has lasted longer than anymonument in Spain. 

These, however, are but trivial manifestations of that power oftradition which holds the Spanish intellect imprisoned as in a vice ofiron. The whole life of the nation is fatally influenced by this blindreverence for things that have been. It may be said that by force oftradition Christian morality has been driven from individual life byreligion, and honesty has been supplanted as a rule of public conduct byhonor, --a wretched substitute in either case, and irreconcilably at warwith the spirit of the age. 

The growth of this double fanaticism is easily explained; it is theresult of centuries of religious wars. From the hour when Pelayo, thefirst of the Asturian kings, successfully met and repulsed the hithertovictorious Moors in his rocky fortress of Covadonga, to the day whenBoabdil the Unlucky saw for the last time through streaming tears thevermilion towers of Alhambra crowned with the banner of the cross, therewas not a year of peace in Spain. No other nation has had such anexperience. Seven centuries of constant warfare, with three thousandbattles; this is the startling epitome of Spanish history from theMahometan conquest to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. In this vastwar there was laid the foundation of the national character of to-day. 

Even before the conquering Moslem crossed from Africa, Spain was themost deeply religious country in Europe; and by this I mean the countryin which the Church was most powerful in its relations with the State. When the Council of Toledo, in 633, received the king of Castile, hefell on his face at the feet of the bishops before venturing to addressthem. When the hosts of Islam had overspread the Peninsula, and the lastremnant of Christianity had taken refuge in the inaccessible hills ofthe northwest, the richest possession they carried into these inviolatefastnesses was a chest of relics, --knuckle-bones of apostles andsplinters of true crosses, in which they trusted more than in mortalarms. The Church had thus a favorable material to work upon in the yearsof struggle that followed. The circumstances all lent themselves to thescheme of spiritual domination. The fight was for the cross against thecrescent; the symbol of the quarrel was visible and tangible. TheSpaniards were poor and ignorant and credulous. The priests were enoughsuperior to lead and guide them, and not so far above them as to be outof the reach of their sympathies and their love. They marched with them. They shared their toils and dangers. They stimulated their hate of theenemy. They taught them that their cruel anger was the holy wrath ofGod. They held the keys of eternal weal or woe, and rewardedsubservience to the priestly power with promises of everlastingfelicity; while the least symptom of rebellion in thought or action waspunished with swift death and the doom of endless flames. There wasnothing in the Church which the fighting Spaniard could recognize as areproach to himself. It was as bitter, as brave, as fierce, andrevengeful as he. His credulity regarded it as divine, and worthy ofblind adoration, and his heart went out to it with the sympathy ofperfect love. 

In these centuries of war there was no commerce, no manufactures, nosettled industry of importance among the Spaniards. There wasconsequently no wealth, none of that comfort and ease which is thenatural element of doubt and discussion. Science did not exist. Thelittle learning of the time was exclusively in the hands of thepriesthood. If from time to time an intelligent spirit struggled againstthe chain of unquestioning bigotry that bound him, he was rigorouslysilenced by prompt and bloody punishment. There seemed to be no need ofdiscussion, no need of inculcation of doctrine. The serious work of thetime was the war with the infidel. The clergy managed everything. Thequestion, "What shall I do to be saved?" never entered into those simpleand ignorant minds. The Church would take care of those who did herbidding. 

Thus it was that in the hammering of those struggling ages the nationbecame welded together in one compact mass of unquestioning, unreasoningfaith, which the Church could manage at its own good pleasure. 

It was also in these times that Spanish honor took its rise. Thissentiment is so nearly connected with that of personal loyalty that theymay be regarded as phases of the same monarchical spirit. The rule ofhonor as distinguished from honesty and virtue is the most prominentcharacteristic of monarchy, and for that reason the political theoristsfrom the time of Montesquieu have pronounced in favor of the monarchy asa more practicable form of government than the republic, as requiring aless perfect and delicate machinery, men of honor being far more commonthan men of virtue. As in Spain, owing to special conditions, monarchyattained the most perfect growth and development which the world hasseen, the sentiment of honor, as a rule of personal and politicalaction, has there reached its most exaggerated form. I use this word, ofcourse, in its restricted meaning of an intense sense of personaldignity, and readiness to sacrifice for this all considerations ofinterest and morality. 

This phase of the Spanish character is probably derived in its germ fromthe Gothic blood of their ancestors. Their intense self-assertion hasbeen, in the Northern races, modified by the progress of intelligenceand the restraints of municipal law into a spirit of sturdy self-respectand a disinclination to submit to wrong. The Goths of Spain haveunfortunately never gone through this civilizing process. Their endlesswars never gave an opportunity for the development of the purely civicvirtues of respect and obedience to law. The people at large were toowretched, too harried by constant coming and going of the waves of war, to do more than live, in a shiftless, hand-to-mouth way, from theproceeds of their flocks and herds. There were no cities of importancewithin the Spanish lines. There was no opportunity for the growth of thetrue burgher spirit. 

There was no law to speak of in all these years except the twindespotism of the Church and the king. If there had been dissidencebetween them it might have been better for the people. But up to lateyears there has never been a quarrel between the clergy and the crown. Their interests were so identified that the dual tyranny was strongerthan even a single one could have been. The crown always lending to theChurch when necessary the arm of flesh, and the Church giving to thedespotism of the sceptre the sanction of spiritual authority, anabsolute power was established over body and soul. 

The spirit of individual independence inseparable from Gothic bloodbeing thus forced out of its natural channels of freedom of thought andmunicipal liberty, it remained in the cavaliers of the army of Spain inthe same barbarous form which it had held in the Northern forests, --aphysical self-esteem and a readiness to fight on the slightestprovocation. This did not interfere with the designs of the Church andwas rather a useful engine against its enemies. The absolute power ofthe crown kept the spirit of feudal arrogance in check while thepressure of a common danger existed. The close cohesion which was sonecessary in camp and Church prevented the tendency to disintegration, while the right of life and death was freely exercised by the greatlords on their distant estates without interference. The predominatingpower of the crown was too great and too absolute to result in theestablishment of any fixed principle of obedience to law. The union ofcrozier and sceptre had been, if anything, too successful. The king wasso far above the nobility that there was no virtue in obeying him. Hiscommission was divine, and he was no more confined by human laws thanthe stars and the comets. The obedience they owed and paid him was notrespect to law. It partook of the character of religious worship, andleft untouched and untamed in their savage hearts the instinct ofresistance to all earthly claims of authority. 

Such was the condition of the public spirit of Spain at the beginning ofthat wonderful series of reigns from Ferdinand and Isabella to theirgreat-grandson Philip II. , which in less than a century raised Spain tothe summit of greatness and built up a realm on which the sun never set. All the events of these prodigious reigns contributed to increase andintensify the national traits to which we have referred. The discoveryof America flooded Europe with gold, and making the better class ofSpaniards the richest people in the world naturally heightened theirpride and arrogance. The long and eventful religious wars of Charles V. And Philip II. Gave employment and distinction to thousands of familieswhose vanity was nursed by the royal favor, and whose ferociousself-will was fed and pampered by the blood of heretics and the spoil ofrebels. 

The national qualities of superstition and pride made the whole cavalierclass a wieldy and effective weapon in the hands of the monarch, and theuse he made of them reacted upon these very traits, intensifying andaffirming them. 

So terrible was this absolute command of the spiritual and physicalforces of the kingdom possessed by the monarchs of that day, that whenthe Reformation flashed out, a beacon in the northern sky of politicaland religious freedom to the world, its light could not penetrate intoSpain. There was a momentary struggle there, it is true. But soapathetic was the popular mind that the effort to bring it into sympathywith the vast movement of the age was hopeless from the beginning. Theaxe and the fagot made rapid work of the heresy. After only ten years ofburnings and beheadings Philip II. Could boast that not a heretic livedin his borders. 

Crazed by his success and his unquestioned omnipotence at home, anddrunken with the delirious dream that God's wrath was breathing throughhim upon a revolted world, he essayed to crush heresy throughout Europe;and in this mad and awful crime his people undoubtingly seconded him. Inthis he failed, the stars in their courses fighting against him, the Godthat his worship slandered taking sides against him. But history recordswhat rivers of blood he shed in the long and desperate fight, and howlovingly and adoringly his people sustained him. He killed, in coldblood, some forty thousand harmless people for their faith, besides thevastly greater number whose lives he took in battle. 

Yet this horrible monster, who is blackened with every crime at whichhumanity shudders, who had no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, nogleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy picture of his raveninglife, was beloved and worshipped as few men have been since the worldhas stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuineunpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of hisedifying death, --this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyesfixed on the cross of the mild Nazarene, and tormented with impishdoubts as to whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him for thecompany of the just!

His successors rapidly fooled away the stupendous empire that had filledthe sixteenth century with its glory. Spain sank from the position ofruler of the world and queen of the seas to the place of a second-ratepower, by reason of the weakening power of superstition and badgovernment, and because the people and the chieftains had never learnedthe lesson of law. 

The clergy lost no tittle of their power. They went on, gayly roastingtheir heretics and devouring the substance of the people, moreprosperous than ever in those days of national decadence. Philip III. Gave up the government entirely to the Duke of Lerma, who formed analliance with the Church, and they led together a joyous life. In thesucceeding reign the Church had become such a gnawing cancer upon thestate that the servile Cortes had the pluck to protest against itsinroads. There were in 1626 nine thousand monasteries for men, besidesnunneries. There were thirty-two thousand Dominican and Franciscanfriars. In the diocese of Seville alone there were fourteen thousandchaplains. There was a panic in the land. Every one was rushing to getinto holy orders. The Church had all the bread. Men must be monks orstarve. _Zelus domus tuae come-dit me, _ writes the British ambassador, detailing these facts. 

We must remember that this was the age when the vast modern movement ofinquiry and investigation was beginning. Bacon was laying in England thefoundations of philosophy, casting with his prophetic intelligence thehoroscope of unborn sciences. Descartes was opening new vistas ofthought to the world. But in Spain, while the greatest names of herliterature occur at this time, they aimed at no higher object than toamuse their betters. Cervantes wrote Quixote, but he died in a monk'shood; and Lope de Vega was a familiar of the Inquisition. The sad storyof the mind of Spain in this momentous period may be written in oneword, --everybody believed and nobody inquired. 

The country sank fast into famine and anarchy. The madness of the monksand the folly of the king expelled the Moors in 1609, and the loss of amillion of the best mechanics and farmers of Spain struck the nationwith a torpor like that of death. In 1650 Sir Edward Hyde wrote that"affairs were in huge disorder. " People murdered each other for a loafof bread. The marine perished for want of sailors. In the stricken landnothing flourished but the rabble of monks and the royal authority. 

This is the curious fact. The Church and the Crown had brought them tothis misery, yet better than their lives the Spaniards loved the Churchand the Crown. A word against either would have cost any man his life inthose days. The old alliance still hung together firmly. The Churchbullied and dragooned the king in private, but it valued his despoticpower too highly ever to slight it in public. There was somethingsuperhuman about the faith and veneration with which the people, and thearistocracy as well, regarded the person of the king. There was somewhatof gloomy and ferocious dignity about Philip II. Which might easilybring a courtier to his knees; but how can we account for the equalreverence that was paid to the ninny Philip III. , the debauched triflerPhilip IV. , and the drivelling idiot Charles II. ?

Yet all of these were invested with the same attributes of the divine. Their hands, like those of Midas, had the gift of making anything theytouched too precious for mortal use. A horse they had mounted couldnever be ridden again. A woman they had loved must enter a nunnery whenthey were tired of her. 

When Buckingham came down to Spain with Charles of England, theConde-Duque of Olivares was shocked and scandalized at the relation ofconfidential friendship that existed between the prince and the duke. The world never saw a prouder man than Olivares. His picture byVelazquez hangs side by side with that of his royal master in Madrid. You see at a glance that the count-duke is the better man physically, mentally, morally. But he never dreamed it. He thought in his inmostheart that the best thing about him was the favor of the worthlessfribble whom he governed. 

Through all the vicissitudes of Spanish history the force of thesemarried superstitions--reverence for the Church as distinguished fromthe fear of God, and reverence for the king as distinguished fromrespect for law--have been the ruling characteristics of the Spanishmind. Among the fatal effects of this has been the extinction ofrational piety and rational patriotism. If a man was not a good Catholiche was pretty sure to be an atheist. If he did not honor the king he wasan outlaw. The wretched story of Spanish dissensions beyond seas, andthe loss of the vast American empire, is distinctly traceable to theexaggerated sentiment of personal honor, unrestrained by the absoluteauthority of the crown. It seems impossible for the Spaniard of historyand tradition to obey anything out of his sight. The American provinceshave been lost one by one through petty quarrels and colonial rivalries. At the first word of dispute their notion of honor obliges them to flyto arms, and when blood has been shed reconciliation is impossible. Soweak is the principle of territorial loyalty, that whenever thePeninsula government finds it necessary to overrule some violence of itsown soldiers, these find no difficulty in marching over to theinsurrection, or raising a fresh rebellion of their own. So littleprogress has there been in Spain from the middle ages to to-day in truepolitical science, that we see such butchers as Caballero and Valmasedarepeating to-day the crimes and follies of Cortes and Pamfilo Narvaez, of Pizarro and Almagro, and the revolt of the bloodthirsty volunteers ofthe Havana is only a question of time. 

It is true that in later years there has been the beginning of a bettersystem of thought and discussion in Spain. But the old tradition stillholds its own gallantly in Church and state. Nowhere in the world arethe forms of religion so rigidly observed, and the precepts of Christianmorality less regarded. The most facile beauties in Madrid are severe asMinervas on Holy Thursday. I have seen a dozen fast men at the door of agambling-house fall on their knees in the dust as the Host passed by inthe street. Yet the fair were no less frail and the senoritos were noless profligate for this unfeigned reverence for the outside of the cupand platter. 

In the domain of politics there is still the lamentable disproportionbetween honor and honesty. A high functionary cares nothing if the wholeSalon del Prado talks of his pilferings, but he will risk his life in aninstant if you call him no gentleman. The word "honor" is still used inall legislative assemblies, even in England and America. But the ideahas gone by the board in all democracies, and the word means no morethan the chamberlain's sword or the speaker's mace. The only criterionwhich the statesman of the nineteenth century applies to public acts isthat of expediency and legality. The first question is, "Is it lawful?"the second, "Does it pay?" Both of these are questions of fact, and assuch susceptible of discussion and proof. The question of honor andreligion carries us at once into the realm of sentiment where nodemonstration is possible. But this is where every question is plantedfrom the beginning in Spanish politics. Every public matter presentsitself under this form: "Is it consistent with Spanish honor?" and "Willit be to the advantage of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church?" Now, nothing is consistent with Spanish honor which does not recognize theSpain of to-day as identical with the Spain of the sixteenth century, and the bankrupt government of Madrid as equal in authority to theworld-wide autocracy of Charles V. And nothing is thought to be to theadvantage of the Church which does not tend to the concubinage of thespiritual and temporal power, and to the muzzling of speech and thedrugging of the mind to sleep. 

Let any proposition be made which touches this traditionalsusceptibility of race, no matter how sensible or profitable it may be, and you hear in the Cortes and the press, and, louder than all, amongthe idle cavaliers of the _cafes, _ the wildest denunciations of thetreason that would consent to look at things as they are. The men whohave ventured to support the common-sense view are speedily stormed intosilence or timid self-defence. The sword of Guzman is brandished in theChambers, the name of Pelayo is invoked, the memory of the Cid isawakened, and the proposition goes out in a blaze of patrioticpyrotechnics, to the intense satisfaction of the unthinking and thegrief of the judicious. The senoritos go back to the serious business oftheir lives--coffee and cigarettes--with a genuine glow of pride in acountry which is capable of the noble self-sacrifice of cutting off itsnose to spite somebody else's face. 

But I repeat, the most favorable sign of the times is that this tyrannyof tradition is losing its power. A great deal was done by the singleact of driving out the queen. This was a blow at superstition which gaveto the whole body politic a most salutary shock. Never before in Spainhad a revolution been directed at the throne. Before it was always anobnoxious ministry that was to be driven out. The monarch remained; andthe exiled outlaw of to-day might be premier to-morrow. But the fall ofNovaliches at the Bridge of Alcolea decided the fate not only of theministry but of the dynasty; and while General Concha was waiting forthe train to leave Madrid, Isabel of Bourbon and Divine Right werepassing the Pyrenees. 

Although the moral power of the Church is still so great, theincorporation of freedom of worship in the constitution of 1869 has beenfollowed by a really remarkable development of freedom of thought. Theproposition was regarded by some with horror and by others withcontempt. One of the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once said tome, "The provision for freedom of worship in the constitution is a mereabstract proposition, --it can never have any practical value except forforeigners. I cannot conceive of a Spaniard being anything but aCatholic. " And so powerful was this impression in the minds of thedeputies that the article only accords freedom of worship to foreignersin Spain, and adds, hypothetically, that if any Spaniards should professany other religion than the Catholic, they are entitled to the sameliberty as foreigners. The Inquisition has been dead half a century, but you can see how its ghost still haunts the official mind of Spain. It is touching to see how the broken links of the chain of superstitionstill hang about even those who imagine they are defying it. As in theirChristian burials, following unwittingly the example of the hated Moors, they bear the corpse with uncovered face to the grave, and follow itwith the funeral torch of the Romans, so the formula of the Churchclings even to the mummery of the atheists. Not long ago in Madrid a manand woman who belonged to some fantastic order which rejected religionand law had a child born to them in the course of things, and determinedthat it should begin life free from the taint of superstition. It shouldnot be christened, it should be named, in the Name of Reason. But theycould not break loose from the idea of baptism. They poured a bottle ofwater on the shivering nape of the poor little neophyte, and its fraillife went out in its first wheezing week. 

But in spite of all this a spirit of religious inquiry is growing up inSpain, and the Church sees it and cannot prevent it. It watches theliberal newspapers and the Protestant prayer-meetings much as the oldgiant in Bunyan's dream glared at the passing pilgrims, mumbling andmuttering toothless curses. It looks as if the dead sleep of uniformityof thought were to be broken at last, and Spain were to enter thehealthful and vivifying atmosphere of controversy. 

Symptoms of a similar change may be seen in the world of politics. TheRepublican party is only a year or two old, but what a vigorous andnoisy infant it is! With all its faults and errors, it seems to have thepromise of a sturdy and wholesome future. It refuses to be bound by thememories of the past, but keeps its eyes fixed on the brighterpossibilities to come. Its journals, undeterred by the sword of Guzmanor the honor of all the Caballeros, --the men on horseback, --areadvocating such sensible measures as justice to the Antilles, and thesale of outlying property, which costs more than it produces. EmilioCastelar, casting behind him all the restraints of tradition, announcesas his idea of liberty "the right of all citizens to obey nothing butthe law. " There is no sounder doctrine than this preached in Manchesteror Boston. If the Spanish people can be brought to see that God isgreater than the Church, and that the law is above the king, the day offinal deliverance is at hand. 

TAUROMACHY

The bull-fight is the national festival of Spain. The rigid Britons havehad their fling at it for many years. The effeminate _badaud_ of Parishas declaimed against its barbarity. Even the aristocracy of Spain hasbegun to suspect it of vulgarity and to withdraw from the arena thelight of its noble countenance. But the Spanish people still hold it totheir hearts and refuse to be weaned from it. 

"As Panem et Circenses was the cry Among the Roman populace of old, SoPan y Toros is the cry in Spain. "

It is a tradition which has passed into their national existence. Theyreceived it from nowhere. They have transmitted it nowhither except totheir own colonies. In late years an effort has been made to transplantit, but with small success. There were a few bull-fights four years agoat Havre. There was a sensation of curiosity which soon died away. Thisyear in London the experiment was tried, but was hooted out ofexistence, to the great displeasure of the Spanish journals, who saidthe ferocious Islanders would doubtless greatly prefer baiting to deatha half dozen Irish serfs from the estate of Lord Fritters, --a gentlediversion in which we are led to believe the British peers pass theirleisure hours. 

It is this monopoly of the bull-fight which so endears it to the Spanishheart. It is to them conclusive proof of the vast superiority of boththe human and taurine species in Spain. The eminent torero, Pepe Illo, said: "The love of bulls is inherent in man, especially in the Spaniard, among which glorious people there have been bull-fights ever since bullswere, because, " adds Pepe, with that modesty which forms so charming atrait of the Iberian character, "the Spanish men are as much more bravethan all other men, as the Spanish bull is more savage and valiant thanall other bulls. "

The sport permeates the national life. I have seen it woven into thetapestry of palaces, and rudely stamped on the handkerchief of thepeasant. It is the favorite game of children in the street. Loyal Spainwas thrilled with joy recently on reading in its Paris correspondencethat when the exiled Prince of Asturias went for a half-holiday to visithis imperial comrade at the Tuileries, the urchins had a game of "toro"on the terrace, admirably conducted by the little Bourbon and followedup with great spirit by the little Montijo-Bonaparte. 

The bull-fight has not always enjoyed the royal favor. Isabel theCatholic would fain have abolished bathing and bull-fighting together. The Spaniards, who willingly gave up their ablutions, stood stoutly bytheir bulls, and the energetic queen was baffled. Again when theBourbons came in with Philip V. , the courtiers turned up their thinnoses at the coarse diversion, and induced the king to abolish it. Itwould not stay abolished, however, and Philip's successor built thepresent coliseum in expiation. The spectacle has, nevertheless, lostmuch of its early splendor by the hammering of time. Formerly the gayestand bravest gentlemen of the court, mounted on the best horses in thekingdom, went into the arena and defied the bull in the names of theirlady-loves. Now the bull is baited and slain by hired artists, and thehorses they mount are the sorriest hacks that ever went to the knacker. 

One of the most brilliant shows of the kind that was ever put upon thescene was the Festival of Bulls given by Philip IV. In honor of CharlesI. , "When the Stuart came from far, Led by his love's sweet pain, To Mary, the guiding star That shone in the heaven of Spain. "

And the memory of that dazzling occasion was renewed by Ferdinand VII. In the year of his death, when he called upon his subjects to swearallegiance to his baby Isabel. This festival took place in the PlazaMayor. The king and court occupied the same balconies which Charles andhis royal friend and model had filled two centuries before. Thechampions were poor nobles, of good blood but scanty substance, whofought for glory and pensions, and had quadrilles of well-trainedbull-fighters at their stirrups to prevent the farce from becomingtragedy. The royal life of Isabel of Bourbon was inaugurated by thespilled blood of one hundred bulls save one. The gory prophecy of thatday has been well sustained. Not one year has passed since then freefrom blood shed in her cause. 

But these extraordinary attractions are not necessary to make a festivalof bulls the most seductive of all pleasures to a Spaniard. On anypleasant Sunday afternoon, from Easter to All Souls, you have only to gointo the street to see that there is some great excitement fusing thepopulace into one living mass of sympathy. All faces are turned one way, all minds are filled with one purpose. From the Puerta del Sol down thewide Alcala a vast crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as akaleidoscope. From the grandee in his blazoned carriage to the manola inher calico gown, there is no class unrepresented. Many a red hand graspsthe magic ticket which is to open the realm of enchantment to-day, andwhich represents short commons for a week before. The pawnbrokers' shopshave been very animated for the few preceding days. There is nothing tooprecious to be parted with for the sake of the bulls. Many of thesesmart girls have made the ultimate sacrifice for that coveted scrap ofpaper. They would leave one their mother's cross with the children ofIsrael rather than not go. It is no cheap entertainment. The worstplaces in the broiling sun cost twenty cents, four reals; and the boxesare sold usually at fifteen dollars. These prices are necessary to coverthe heavy expenses of bulls, horses, and gladiators. 

The way to the bull-ring is one of indescribable animation. The cabmendrive furiously this day their broken-kneed nags, who will soon be foundon the horns of the bulls, for this is the natural death of the Madridcab-horse; the omnibus teams dash gayly along with their shrill chime ofbells; there are the rude jests of clowns and the high voices of excitedgirls; the water-venders droning their tempting cry, "Cool as the snow!"the sellers of fans and the merchants of gingerbread picking up theirharvests in the hot and hungry crowd. 

The Plaza de Toros stands just outside the monumental gate of theAlcala. It is a low, squat, prison-like circus of stone, stuccoed andwhitewashed, with no pretence of ornament or architectural effect. Thereis no nonsense whatever about it. It is built for the killing of bullsand for no other purpose. Around it, on a day of battle, you will findencamped great armies of the lower class of Madrilenos, who, being atfinancial ebb-tide, cannot pay to go in. But they come all the same, tobe in the enchanted neighborhood, to hear the shouts and roars of thefavored ones within, and to seize any possible occasion for getting in. Who knows? A caballero may come out and give them his check. An Englishlady may become disgusted and go home, taking away numerous lords whoseplaces will be vacant. The sky may fall, and they may catch four reals'worth of larks. It is worth taking the chances. 

One does not soon forget the first sight of the full coliseum. In thecentre is the sanded arena, surrounded by a high barrier. Around thisrises the graded succession of stone benches for the people; thennumbered seats for the connoisseurs; and above a row of boxes extendingaround the circle. The building holds, when full, some fourteen thousandpersons; and there is rarely any vacant space. For myself I can say thatwhat I vainly strove to imagine in the coliseum at Rome, and in the moresolemn solitude of the amphitheatres of Capua and Pompeii, came upbefore me with the vividness of life on entering the bull-ring ofMadrid. This, and none other, was the classic arena. This was the crowdthat sat expectant, under the blue sky, in the hot glare of the South, while the doomed captives of Dacia or the sectaries of Judea commendedtheir souls to the gods of the Danube, or the Crucified of Galilee. Halfthe sand lay in the blinding sun. Half the seats were illuminated by thefierce light. The other half was in shadow, and the dark crescent creptslowly all the afternoon across the arena as the sun declined in thewest. 

It is hard to conceive a more brilliant scene. The women put on theirgayest finery for this occasion. In the warm light, every bit of colorflashes out, every combination falls naturally into its place. I amafraid the luxuriance of hues in the dress of the fair Iberians would beconsidered shocking in Broadway, but in the vast frame and broad lightof the Plaza the effect was very brilliant. Thousands of party-coloredpaper fans are sold at the ring. The favorite colors are the nationalred and yellow, and the fluttering of these broad, bright disks of coloris dazzlingly attractive. There is a gayety of conversation, a quickfire of repartee, shouts of recognition and salutation, which altogethermake up a bewildering confusion. 

The weary young water-men scream their snow-cold refreshment. Theorange-men walk with their gold-freighted baskets along the barrier, andthrow their oranges with the most marvellous skill and certainty topeople in distant boxes or benches. They never miss their mark. Theywill throw over the heads of a thousand people a dozen oranges into theoutstretched hands of customers, so swiftly that it seems like one lineof gold from the dealer to the buyer. 

At length the blast of a trumpet announces the clearing of the ring. Theidlers who have been lounging in the arena are swept out by thealguaciles, and the hum of conversation gives way to an expectantsilence. When the last loafer has reluctantly retired, the great gate isthrown open, and the procession of the toreros enters. They advance in aglittering line: first the marshals of the day, then the picadors onhorseback, then the matadors on foot surrounded each by his quadrille ofchulos. They walk towards the box which holds the city fathers, underwhose patronage the show is given, and formally salute the authority. This is all very classic, also, recalling the _Ave Caesar, morituri, _etc. , of the gladiators. It lacks, however, the solemnity of the Romansalute, from those splendid fellows who would never all leave the arenaalive. A bullfighter is sometimes killed, it is true, but the percentageof deadly danger is scarcely enough to make a spectator's heart beat asthe bedizened procession comes flashing by in the sun. 

The municipal authority throws the bowing alguacil a key, which hecatches in his hat, or is hissed if he misses it. With this he unlocksthe door through which the bull is to enter, and then scampers off withundignified haste through the opposite entrance. There is a bugleflourish, the door flies open, and the bull rushes out, blind with thestaring light, furious with rage, trembling in every limb. This is themost intense moment of the day. The glorious brute is the target oftwelve thousand pairs of eyes. There is a silence as of death, whileevery one waits to see his first movement. He is doomed from thebeginning; the curtain has risen on a three-act tragedy, which willsurely end with his death, but the incidents which are to fill theinterval are all unknown. The minds and eyes of all that vast assemblyknow nothing for the time but the movements of that brute. He stands foran instant recovering his senses. He has been shot suddenly out of thedarkness into that dazzling light. He sees around him a sight such as henever confronted before, --a wall of living faces lit up by thousands ofstaring eyes. He does not dwell long upon this, however; in his prideand anger he sees a nearer enemy. The horsemen have taken position nearthe gate, where they sit motionless as burlesque statues, their longashen spears, iron-tipped, in rest, their wretched nags standingblindfolded, with trembling knees, and necks like dromedaries, notdreaming of their near fate. The bull rushes, with a snort, at thenearest one. The picador holds firmly, planting his spear-point in theshoulder of the brute. Sometimes the bull flinches at this sharp andsudden punishment, and the picador, by a sudden turn to the left, getsaway unhurt. Then there is applause for the torero and hisses for thebull. Some indignant amateurs go so far as to call him cow, and toinform him that he is the son of his mother. But oftener he rushes in, not caring for the spear, and with one toss of his sharp horns tumbleshorse and rider in one heap against the barrier and upon the sand. Thecapeadores, the cloak-bearers, come fluttering around and divert thebull from his prostrate victims. The picador is lifted to his feet, --hisiron armor not permitting him to rise without help, --and the horse israpidly scanned to see if his wounds are immediately mortal. If not, thepicador mounts again, and provokes the bull to another rush. A horsewill usually endure two or three attacks before dying. Sometimes asingle blow from in front pierces the heart, and the blood spouts forthin a cataract. In this case the picador hastily dismounts, and thebridle and saddle are stripped in an instant from the dying brute. If abull is energetic and rapid in execution, he will clear the arena in afew moments. He rushes at one horse after another, tears them open withhis terrible "spears" ("horns" is a word never used in the ring), andsends them madly galloping over the arena, trampling out their gushingbowels as they fly. The assistants watch their opportunity, from time totime, to take the wounded horses out of the ring, plug up their gapingrents with tow, and sew them roughly up for another sally. It isincredible to see what these poor creatures will endure, --carrying theirriders at a lumbering gallop over the ring, when their thin sides seemempty of entrails. 

Sometimes the bull comes upon the dead body of a horse he has killed. The smell of blood and the unmoving helplessness of the victim excitehim to the highest pitch. He gores and tramples the carcass, and tossesit in the air with evident enjoyment, until diverted by some livingtormentor. You will occasionally see a picador nervous and anxious abouthis personal safety. They are ignorant and superstitious, and subject topresentiments; they often go into the ring with the impression thattheir last hour has come. If one takes counsel of his fears and avoidsthe shock of combat, the hard-hearted crowd immediately discover it andrain maledictions on his head. I saw a picador once enter the ring aspale as death. He kept carefully out of the way of the bull for a fewminutes. The sharp-eyed Spaniards noticed it, and commenced shouting, "Craven! He wants to live forever!" They threw orange-skins at him, andat last, their rage vanquishing their economy, they pelted him withoranges. His pallor gave way to a flush of shame and anger. He attackedthe bull so awkwardly that the animal, killing his horse, threw him alsowith great violence. His hat flew off, his bald head struck the hardsoil. He lay there as one dead, and was borne away lifeless. Thismollified the indignant people, and they desisted from their abuse. 

A cowardly bull is much more dangerous than a courageous one, who lowershis head, shuts his eyes, and goes blindly at everything he sees. Thelast refuge of a bull in trouble is to leap the barrier, where heproduces a lively moment among the water-carriers and orange-boys andstage-carpenters. I once saw a bull, who had done very little executionin the arena, leap the barrier suddenly and toss an unfortunatecarpenter from the gangway sheer into the ring. He picked himself up, laughed, saluted his friends, ran a little distance and fell, and wascarried out dying. Fatal accidents are rarely mentioned in thenewspapers, and it is considered not quite good form to talk about them. 

When the bull has killed enough horses, the first act of the playterminates. But this is an exceedingly delicate matter for theauthorities to decide. The audience will not endure any economy in thisrespect. If the bull is enterprising and "voluntary, " he must have asmany horses as he can dispose of. One day in Madrid the bulls operatedwith such activity that the supply of horses was exhausted before theclose of the show, and the contractors rushed out in a panic and boughta half dozen screws from the nearest cab-stand. If the president ordersout the horses before their time, he will hear remarks by no meanscomplimentary from the austere groundlings. 

The second act is the play of the banderilleros, the flag-men. They arebeautifully dressed and superbly built fellows, principally fromAndalusia, got up precisely like Figaro in the opera. Theirs is the mostdelicate and graceful operation of the bull-fight. They take a pair ofbarbed darts, with little banners fluttering at their ends, and provokethe bull to rush at them. At the instant he reaches them, when it seemsnothing can save them, they step aside and plant the banderillas in theneck of the bull. If the bull has been cowardly and sluggish, and thespectators have called for "fire, " darts are used filled with detonatingpowder at the base, which explode in the flesh of the bull. He dancesand skips like a kid or a colt in his agony, which is very diverting tothe Spanish mind. A prettier conceit is that of confining small birds inpaper cages, which come apart when the banderilla is planted, and setthe little fluttering captives free. 

Decking the bull with these torturing ornaments is the last stage in theapprenticeship of the chulo, before he rises to the dignity of matador, or killer. The matadors themselves on special occasions think it noderogation from their dignity to act as banderilleros. But they usuallyaccompany the act with some exaggeration of difficulty that reaps forthem a harvest of applause. Frascuelo sits in a chair and plants theirritating bannerets. Lagartijo lays his handkerchief on the ground andstands upon it while he coifs the bull. A performance which never failsto bring down the house is for the torero to await the rush of the bull, and when the bellowing monster comes at him with winking eyes andlowered head, to put his slippered foot between the horns, and vaultlightly over his back. 

These chulos exhibit the most wonderful skill and address in evading theassault of the bull. They can almost always trick him by waving theircloaks a little out of the line of their flight. Sometimes, however, thebull runs straight at the man, disregarding the flag, and if thedistance is great to the barrier the danger is imminent; for swift asthese men are, the bulls are swifter. Once I saw the bull strike thetorero at the instant he vaulted over the barrier. He fell sprawlingsome distance the other side, safe, but terribly bruised and stunned. Assoon as he could collect himself he sprang into the arena again, lookingvery seedy; and the crowd roared, "Saved by miracle. " I could but thinkof Basilio, who, when the many cried, "A miracle, " answered, "Industria!Industria!" But these bullfighters are all very pious, and glad to curryfavor with the saints by attributing every success to theirintervention. The famous matador, Paco Montes, fervently believed in anamulet he carried, and in the invocation of Our Lord of the True Cross. He called upon this special name in every tight place, and while otherpeople talked of his luck he stoutly affirmed it was his faith thatsaved him; often he said he saw the veritable picture of the Passioncoming down between him and the bull, in answer to his prayers. At everybull-ring there is a little chapel in the refreshment-room where thesedevout ruffians can toss off a prayer or two in the intervals of work. Apriest is always at hand with a consecrated wafer, to visa the torero'spassport who has to start suddenly for Paradise. It is not exactlyregular, but the ring has built many churches and endowed many chapels, and must not be too rigidly regarded. In many places the chief boxes arereserved for the clergy, and prayers are hurried through an hour earlieron the day of combat. 

The final act is the death of the bull. It must come at last. Hisexploits in the early part of his career afford to the amateur someindication of the manner in which he will meet his end. If he is agenerous, courageous brute, with more heart than brains, he will diegallantly and be easily killed. But if he has shown reflection, forethought, and that saving quality of the oppressed, suspicion, thematador has a serious work before him. The bull is always regarded fromthis objective standpoint. The more power of reason the brute has, theworse opinion the Spaniard has of him. A stupid creature who rushesblindly on the sword of the matador is an animal after his own heart. But if there be one into whose brute brain some glimmer of the awfultruth has come, --and this sometimes happens, --if he feels the solemnquestion at issue between him and his enemy, if he eyes the man and notthe flag, if he refuses to be fooled by the waving lure, but keeps allhis strength and all his faculties for his own defence, the soul of theSpaniard rises up in hate and loathing. He calls on the matador to killhim any way. If he will not rush at the flag, the crowd shouts for thedemi-lune; and the noble brute is houghed from behind, and your soulgrows sick with shame of human nature, at the hellish glee with whichthey watch him hobbling on his severed legs. 

This seldom happens. The final act is usually an admirable study ofcoolness and skill against brute force. When the banderillas are allplanted, and the bugles sound for the third time, the matador, theespada, the sword, steps forward with a modest consciousness ofdistinguished merit, and makes a brief speech to the corregidor, offering in honor of the good city of Madrid to kill the bull. He turnson his heel, throws his hat by a dexterous back-handed movement over thebarrier, and advances, sword and cape in hand, to where his noble enemyawaits him. The bull appears to recognize a more serious foe than any hehas encountered. He stops short and eyes the newcomer curiously. It isalways an impressive picture: the tortured, maddened animal, whose thinflanks are palpitating with his hot breath, his coat one shining mass ofblood from the darts and the spear-thrusts, his massive neck stilldecked as in mockery with the fluttering flags, his fine head and muzzleseeming sharpened by the hour's terrible experience, his formidablehorns crimsoned with onset; in front of this fiery bulk of force andcourage, the slight, sinewy frame of the killer, whose only reliance ison his coolness and his intellect. I never saw a matador come carelesslyto his work. He is usually pale and alert. He studies the bull for amoment with all his eyes. He waves the blood-red engano, or lure, beforehis face. If the bull rushes at it with his eyes shut, the work is easy. He has only to select his own stroke and make it. But if the bull isjealous and sly, it requires the most careful management to kill him. The disposition of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of thered flag. This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nervesof the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd wasaroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreatat the moment of decision. All at once the matador seizes the favorableinstant. He poises his sword as the bull rushes upon him. The pointenters just between the left shoulder and the spine; the long bladeglides in up to the hilt. The bull reels and staggers and dies. Sometimes the matador severs the vertebrae. The effect is like magic. Helays the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as alady who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls dead as astone. 

If the blow is a clean, well-delivered one, the enthusiasm of the peopleis unbounded. Their approval comes up in a thunderous shout of "Welldone! Valiente! Viva!" A brown shower of cigars rains on the sand. Thevictor gathers them up: they fill his hands, his pockets, his hat. Hegives them to his friends, and the aromatic shower continues. Hundredsof hats are flung into the ring. He picks them up and shies them back totheir shouting owners. Sometimes a dollar is mingled with the flyingcompliments; but the enthusiasm of the Spaniard rarely carries him sofar as that. For ten minutes after a good estocada, the matador is themost popular man in Spain. 

But the trumpets sound again, the door of the Toril flies open, anotherbull comes rushing out, and the present interest quenches the past. Theplay begins again, with its sameness of purpose and its infinite varietyof incident. 

It is not quite accurate to say, as is often said, that the bull-fighterruns no risk. El Tato, the first sword of Spain, lost his leg in 1869, and his life was saved by the coolness and courage of Lagartijo, whosucceeded him in the championship, and who was terribly wounded in thefoot the next summer. Arjona killed a bull in the same year, whichtossed and ruptured him after receiving his death-blow. Pepe Illo diedin harness, on the sand. Every year picadors, chulos, and such smalldeer are killed, without gossip. I must copy the inscription on thesword which Tato presented to Lagartijo, as a specimen of tauromachianliterature:--

"If, as philosophers say, gratitude is the tribute of noble souls, accept, dear Lagartijo, this present; preserve it as a sacred relic, forit symbolizes the memory of my glories, and is at the same time the mutewitness of my misfortune. With it I killed my last bull named_Peregrino, _ bred by D. Vicente Martinez, fourth of the fight of the 7thJune, 1869, in which act I received the wound which has caused theamputation of my right leg. The will of man can do nothing against thedesigns of Providence. Nothing but resignation is left to thyaffectionate friend, Antonio Sanchez [Tato]. "

It is in consideration of the mingled skill and danger of the trade, that such enormous fees are paid the principal performers. The leadingswordsmen receive about three hundred dollars for each performance, andthey are eagerly disputed by the direction of all the arenas of Spain. In spite of these large wages, they are rarely rich. They are aswasteful and improvident as gamblers. Tato, when he lost his leg, losthis means of subsistence, and his comrades organized one or two benefitsto keep him from want. Cuchares died in the Havana, and left noprovision for his family. 

There is a curious naivete in the play-bill of a bull-fight, the onlyconscientious public document I have seen in Spain. You know how we ofNorthern blood exaggerate the attractions of all sorts of shows, trusting to the magnanimity of the audience. "He warn't nothing like solittle as that, " confesses Mr. Magsman, "but where's your dwarf whatis?" There are few who have the moral courage to demand their money backbecause they counted but thirty-nine thieves when the bills promisedforty. But the management of the Madrid bull-ring knows its public toowell to promise more than it is sure of performing. It announces sixbulls, and positively no more. It says there will be no use ofbloodhounds. It promises two picadors, with three others in reserve, andwarns the public that if all five become inutilized in the combat, nomore will be issued. With so fair a preliminary statement, what crowd, however inflammable, could mob the management?

Some industrious and ascetic statistician has visited Spain andinterested himself in the bullring. Here are some of the results of hisresearches. In 1864 the number of places in all the taurineestablishments of Spain was 509, 283, of which 246, 813 belonged to thecities, and 262, 470 to the country. 

In the year 1864, there were 427 bull-fights, of which 294 took place inthe cities, and 13 3 in the country towns. The receipts of ninety-eightbullrings in 1864 reached the enormous sum of two hundred and seventeenand a half millions of reals (nearly $11, 000, 000). The 427 bull-fightswhich took place in Spain during the year 1864 caused the death of 2989of these fine animals, and about 7473 horses, --something more than halfthe number of the cavalry of Spain. These wasted victims could haveploughed three hundred thousand hectares of land, which would haveproduced a million and a half hectolitres of grain, worth eightymillions of reals; all this without counting the cost of the slaughteredcattle, worth say seven or eight millions, at a moderate calculation. 

Thus far the Arithmetic Man; to whom responds the tauromachianaficionado: That the bulk of this income goes to purposes of charity;that were there no bull-fights, bulls of good race would cease to bebred; that nobody ever saw a horse in a bull-ring that could plough afurrow of a hundred yards without giving up the ghost; that the nerve, dexterity, and knowledge of brute nature gained in the arena is a goodthing to have in the country; that, in short, it is our way of amusingourselves, and if you don't like it you can go home and cultivateprize-fighters, or kill two-year-old colts on the racecourse, or murderjockeys in hurdle-races, or break your own necks in steeple-chases, orin search of wilder excitement thicken your blood with beer or burn yoursouls out with whiskey. 

And this is all we get by our well-meant effort to convince Spaniards ofthe brutality of bullfights. Must Chicago be virtuous before I canobject to Madrid ale, and say that its cakes are unduly gingered?

Yet even those who most stoutly defend the bull-fight feel that itsglory has departed and that it has entered into the era of fulldecadence. I was talking one evening with a Castilian gentleman, one ofthose who cling with most persistence to the national traditions, and heconfessed that the noble art was wounded to death. "I do not refer, asmany do, to the change from the old times, when gentlemen fought ontheir own horses in the ring. That was nonsense, and could not survivethe time of Cervantes. Life is too short to learn bull-fighting. Agrandee of Spain, if he knows anything else, would make a sorry torero. The good times of the art are more modern. I saw the short day of theglory of the ring when I was a boy. There was a race of gladiators then, such as the world will never see again, --mighty fighters before theking. Pepe Illo and Costillares, Romero and Paco Montes, --the world doesnot contain the stuff to make their counterparts. They were serious, earnest men. They would have let their right arms wither before theywould have courted the applause of the mob by killing a bull outside ofthe severe traditions. Compare them with the men of to-day, with yourRafael Molina, who allows himself to be gored, playing with a heifer;with your frivolous boys like Frascuelo. I have seen the ring convulsedwith laughter as that buffoon strutted across the arena, flirting hismuleta as a manola does her skirts, the bewildered bull not knowing whatto make of it. It was enough to make Illo turn in his bloody grave. 

"Why, my young friend, I remember when bulls were a dignified andserious matter; when we kept account of their progress from theirpasture to the capital. We had accounts of their condition by couriersand carrier-pigeons. On the day when they appeared it was a highfestival in the court. All the sombreros in Spain were there, the ladiesin national dress with white mantillas. The young queen always in herpalco (may God guard her). The fighters of that day were high priests ofart; there was something of veneration in the regard that was paid them. Duchesses threw them bouquets with billets-doux. Gossip and newspapershave destroyed the romance of common life. 

"The only pleasure I take in the Plaza de Toros now is at night. Thecustodians know me and let me moon about in the dark. When all that isignoble and mean has faded away with the daylight, it seems to me theghosts of the old time come back upon the sands. I can fancy the patterof light hoofs, the glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine the agiletread of Romero, the deadly thrust of Montes, the whisper oflong-vanished applause, and the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growingtoo old for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away with a cold in myhead. But you will never see a bull-fight you can enjoy as I do thesevisionary festivals, where memory is the corregidor, and where the onlyspectators are the stars and I. "

RED-LETTER DAYS

No people embrace more readily than the Spaniards the opportunity ofspending a day without work. Their frequent holidays are a relic of thedays when the Church stood between the people and their taskmasters, andfastened more firmly its hold upon the hearts of the ignorant andoverworked masses, by becoming at once the fountain of salvation in thenext world, and of rest in this. The government rather encouraged thisgrowth of play-days, as the Italian Bourbons used to foster mendicancy, by way of keeping the people as unthrifty as possible. Lazzaroni are somuch more easily managed than burghers!

It is only the holy days that are successfully celebrated in Spain. Thestate has tried of late years to consecrate to idle parade a fewrevolutionary dates, but they have no vigorous national life. They growfeebler and more colorless year by year, because they have no depth ofearth. 

The most considerable of these national festivals is the 2d of May, which commemorates the slaughter of patriots in the streets of Madrid byMurat. This is a political holiday which appeals more strongly to thenational character of the Spaniards than any other. The mingled pride ofrace and ignorant hate of everything foreign which constitutes thatsingular passion called Spanish patriotism, or Espanolismo, is fullycalled into play by the recollections of the terrible scenes of theirwar of independence, which drove out a foreign king, and brought backinto Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more injurious. It isan impressive study in national character and thought, thisself-satisfaction of even liberal Spaniards at the reflection that, by avast and supreme effort of the nation, after countless sacrifices andwith the aid of coalesced Europe, they exchanged Joseph Bonaparte forFerdinand VII. And the Inquisition. But the victims of the Dos de Mayofell fighting. Daoiz, Velarde, and Ruiz were bayoneted at their guns, scorning surrender. The alcalde of Mostoles, a petty village of Castile, called on Spain to rise against the tyrant. And Spain obeyed the summonsof this cross-roads justice. The contempt of probabilities, theQuixotism of these successive demonstrations, endear them to the Spanishheart. 

Every 2d of May the city of Madrid gives up the day to funeral honors tothe dead of 1808. The city government, attended by its Maceros, in theirgorgeous robes of gold and scarlet, with silver maces and long whiteplumes; the public institutions of all grades, with invalids andveterans and charity children; a large detachment of the army andnavy, --form a vast procession at the Town Hall, and, headed by theSupreme Government, march to slow music through the Puerta del Sol andthe spacious Alcala street to the granite obelisk in the Prado whichmarks the resting-place of the patriot dead. I saw the regent of thekingdom, surrounded by his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoonunder a blazing sun over the dusty mile that separates the monument fromthe Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in thesematters. The people always fill the line of march, and a rivulet ofprocession meanders feebly through a wilderness of mob. It is fortunatethat the crowd is more entertaining than the show. 

The Church has a very indifferent part in this ceremonial. It doesnothing more than celebrate a mass in the shade of the dark cypresses inthe Place of Loyalty, and then leaves the field clear to the secularpower. But this is the only purely civic ceremony I ever saw in Spain. The Church is lord of the holidays for the rest of the year. 

In the middle of May comes the feast of the ploughboy patron ofMadrid, --San Isidro. He was a true Madrileno in tastes, and spent histime lying in the summer shade or basking in the winter sunshine, seeingvisions, while angels came down from heaven and did his farm chores forhim. The angels are less amiable nowadays, but every true child ofMadrid reveres the example and envies the success of the San Isidromethod of doing business. In the process of years this lazy lout hasbecome a great saint, and his bones have done more extensive andremarkable miracle-work than any equal amount of phosphate in existence. In desperate cases of sufficient rank the doctors throw up the spongeand send for Isidro's urn, and the drugging having ceased, the noblepatient frequently recovers, and much honor and profit comes thereby tothe shrine of the saint. There is something of the toady in Isidro'scomposition. You never hear of his curing any one of less than princelyrank. I read in an old chronicle of Madrid, that once when Queen Isabelthe Catholic was hunting in the hills that overlook the Manzanares, nearwhat is now the oldest and quaintest quarter of the capital, she killeda bear of great size and ferocity; and doubtless thinking it might notbe considered lady-like to have done it unassisted, she gave San Isidrothe credit of the lucky blow and built him a nice new chapel for it nearthe Church of San Andres. If there are any doubters, let them go and seethe chapel, as I did. When the allied armies of the Christian kings ofSpain were seeking for a passage through the hills to the Plains ofTolosa, a shepherd appeared and led them straight to victory and endlessfame. After the battle, which broke the Moorish power forever in CentralSpain, instead of looking for the shepherd and paying him handsomely forhis timely scout-service, they found it more pious and economical to sayit was San Isidro in person who had kindly made himself flesh for thisoccasion. By the great altar in the Cathedral of Toledo stand side byside the statues of Alonso VIIL, the Christian commander, and San Isidrobrazenly swelling in the shepherd garb of that unknown guide who ledAlonso and his chivalry through the tangled defiles of the SierraMorena. 

His fete is the Derby Day of Madrid. The whole town goes out to hisHermitage on the further banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day ortwo of the soft spring weather in noisy frolic. The little church standson a bare brown hill, and all about it is an improvised villageconsisting half of restaurants and the other half of toyshops. Theprincipal traffic is in a pretty sort of glass whistle which forms thestem of an artificial rose, worn in the button-hole in the intervals oftooting, and little earthen pig-bells, whose ringing scares away thelightning. There is but one duty of the day to flavor all its pleasures. The faithful must go into the oratory, pay a penny, and kiss aglass-covered relic of the saint which the attendant ecclesiastic holdsin his hand. The bells are rung violently until the church is full; thenthe doors are shut and the kissing begins. They are very expeditiousabout it. The worshippers drop on their knees by platoons before therailing. The long-robed relic-keeper puts the precious trinket rapidlyto their lips; an acolyte follows with a saucer for the cash. The glassgrows humid with many breaths. The priest wipes it with a dirty napkinfrom time to time. The multitude advances, kisses, pays, and retires, till all have their blessing; then the doors are opened and they allpass out, --the bells ringing furiously for another detachment. Thepleasures of the day are like those of all fairs and public merrymaking. Working-people come to be idle, and idle people come to have somethingto do. There is much eating and little drinking. The milk-stalls arebusier than the wine-shops. The people are gay and jolly, but verydecent and clean and orderly. To the east of the Hermitage, over andbeyond the green cool valley, the city rises on its rocky hills, itsspires shining in the cloudless blue. Below on the emerald meadows thereare the tents and wagons of those who have come from a distance to theRomeria. The sound of guitars and the drone of peasant songs come up thehill, and groups of men are leaping in the wild barbaric dances ofIberia. The scene is of another day and time. The Celt is here, lord ofthe land. You can see these same faces at Donnybrook Fair. Theselarge-mouthed, short-nosed, rosy-cheeked peasant-girls are calledDolores and Catalina, but they might be called Bridget and Kathleen. These strapping fellows, with long simian upper lips, with brownleggings and patched, mud-colored overcoats, who are leaping andswinging their cudgels in that Pyrrhic round are as good Tipperary boysas ever mobbed an agent or pounded, twenty to one, a landlord to death. The same unquestioning, fervent faith, the same superficial good-nature, the same facility to be amused, and at bottom the same cowardly andcruel blood-thirst. What is this mysterious law of race which isstronger than time, or varying climates, or changing institutions? Whichis cause, and which is effect, race or religion?

The great Church holiday of the year is Corpus Christi. On this day theHost is carried in solemn procession through the principal streets, attended by the high officers of state, several battalions of each armof the service in fresh bright uniforms, and a vast array ofecclesiastics in the most gorgeous stoles and chasubles their vestiarycontains. The windows along the line of march are gayly decked withflags and tapestry. Work is absolutely suspended, and the entirepopulation dons its holiday garb. The Puerta del Sol--at this seasonblazing with relentless light--is crowded with patient Madrilenos intheir best clothes, the brown-cheeked maidens with flowing silks as in aball-room, and with no protection against the ardent sky but thefluttering fan they hold in their ungloved hands. As everything isbehind time in this easy-going land, there are two or three hours ofbroiling gossip on the glowing pavement before the Sacred Presence isannounced by the ringing of silver bells. As the superb structure offiligree gold goes by, a movement of reverent worship vibrates throughthe crowd. Forgetful of silks and broadcloth and gossip, they fall ontheir knees in one party-colored mass, and, bowing their heads andbeating their breasts, they mutter their mechanical prayers. There arethinking men who say these shows are necessary; that the Latin mind mustsee with bodily eyes the thing it worships, or the worship will fadeaway from its heart. If there were no cathedrals and masses, they say, there would be no religion; if there were no king, there would be nolaw. But we should not accept too hurriedly this ethnological theory ofnecessity, which would reject all principles of progress and positivegood, and condemn half the human race to perpetual childhood. There wasa time when we Anglo-Saxons built cathedrals and worshipped the king. Look at Salisbury and Lincoln and Ely; read the history of the growth ofparliaments. There is nothing more beautifully sensuous than thereligious spirit that presided over those master works of EnglishGothic; there is nothing in life more abject than the relics of theEnglish love and fear of princes. But the steady growth of centuries hasleft nothing but the outworn shell of the old religion and the oldloyalty. The churches and the castles still exist. The name of the kingstill is extant in the constitution. They remain as objects of taste andtradition, hallowed by a thousand memories of earlier days, but, thanksbe to God who has given us the victory, the English race is nowincapable of making a new cathedral or a new king. 

Let us not in our safe egotism deny to others the possibility of a likeimprovement. 

This summery month of June is rich in saints. The great apostles, John, Peter, and Paul, have their anniversaries on its closing days, and theshortest nights of the year are given up to the riotous eating offritters in their honor. I am afraid that the progress of luxury andlove of ease has wrought a change in the observance of these festivals. The feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of St. John, whichindicates that it was formerly a morning solemnity, as the vervain couldnot be hunted by the youths and maidens of Spain with any success ordecorum at midnight. But of late years it may be that this useful andfragrant herb has disappeared from the tawny hills of Castile. It issure that midsummer has grown too warm for any field work. So that theMadrilenos may be pardoned for spending the day napping, and swarminginto the breezy Prado in the light of moon and stars and gas. The Pradois ordinarily the promenade of the better classes, but every Spanishfamily has its John, Paul, and Peter, and the crowded barrios of Toledoand the Penue-las pour out their ragged hordes to the popular festival. The scene has a strange gypsy wildness. From the round point of Atochato where Cybele, throned among spouting waters, drives southward herspanking team of marble lions, the park is filled with the merryroysterers. At short intervals are the busy groups of fritter merchants;over the crackling fire a great caldron of boiling oil; beside it amighty bowl of dough. The bunolero, with the swift precision ofmachinery, dips his hand into the bowl and makes a delicate ring of thetough dough, which he throws into the bubbling caldron. It remains but afew seconds, and his grimy acolyte picks it out with a long wire andthrows it on the tray for sale. They are eaten warm, the droning crycontinually sounding, "Bunuelos! Calientitos!" There must be millions ofthese oily dainties consumed on every night of the Verbena. For the moregenteel revellers, the Don Juans, Pedros, and Pablos of the better sort, there are improvised restaurants built of pine planks after sunset andgone before sunrise. But the greater number are bought and eaten by theloitering crowd from the tray of the fritterman. It is like a vastgitano-camp. The hurrying crowd which is going nowhere, the blazingfires, the cries of the venders, the songs of the majos under the greattrees of the Paseo, the purposeless hurly-burly, and above, the steam ofthe boiling oil and the dust raised by the myriad feet, form together astriking and vivid picture. The city is more than usually quiet. Thestir of life is localized in the Prado. The only busy men in town arethose who stand by the seething oil-pots and manufacture the brittleforage of the browsing herds. It is a jealous business, and requires theundivided attention of its professors. The _ne sutor ultra crepidam_ ofSpanish proverb is "Bunolero haz tus bunuelos, "--Fritterman, mind thyfritters. With the long days and cooler airs of the autumn begin thedifferent fairs. These are relics of the times of tyranny and exclusiveprivilege, when for a few days each year, by the intervention of theChurch, or as a reward for civic service, full liberty of barter andsale was allowed to all citizens. This custom, more or less modified, may be found in most cities of Europe. The boulevards of Paris swarmwith little booths at Christmas-time, which begin and end their lawlesscommercial life within the week. In Vienna, in Leipsic, and othercities, the same waste-weir of irregular trade is periodically opened. These fairs begin in Madrid with the autumnal equinox, and continue forsome weeks in October. They disappear from the Alcala to break out withrenewed virulence in the avenue of Atocha, and girdle the city at lastwith a belt of booths. While they last they give great animation andspirit to the street life of the town. You can scarcely make your wayamong the heaps of gaudy shawls and handkerchiefs, cheap laces andillegitimate jewels, that cumber the pavement. When the Jews were drivenout of Spain, they left behind the true genius of bargaining. 

A nut-brown maid is attracted by a brilliant red and yellow scarf. Sheasks the sleepy merchant nodding before his wares, "What is this ragworth?"

He answers with profound indifference, "Ten reals. "

"Hombre! Are you dreaming or crazy?" She drops the coveted neck-gear, and moves on, apparently horror-stricken. 

The chapman calls her back peremptorily. "Don't be rash! The scarf isworth twenty reals, but for the sake of Santisima Maria I offered it toyou for half price. Very well! You are not suited. What will you give?"

"Caramba! Am I buyer and seller as well? The thing is worth three reals;more is a robbery. "

"Jesus! Maria! Jose! and all the family! Go thou with God! We cannottrade. Sooner than sell for less than eight reals I will raise the coverof my brains! Go thou! It is eight of the morning, and still thoudreamest. "

She lays down the scarf reluctantly, saying, "Five?"

But the outraged mercer snorts scornfully, "Eight is my last word! Goto!"

She moves away, thinking how well that scarf would look in the ApolloGardens, and casts over her shoulder a Parthian glance and bid, "Six!"

"Take it! It is madness, but I cannot waste my time in bargaining. "

Both congratulate themselves on the operation. He would have taken five, and she would have given seven. How trade would suffer if we had windowsin our breasts!

The first days of November are consecrated to all the saints, and to thesouls of all the blessed dead. They are observed in Spain with greatsolemnity; but as the cemeteries are generally of the dreariestcharacter, bare, bleak, and most forbidding under the ashy sky of thelate autumn, the days are deprived of that exquisite sentiment thatpervades them in countries where the graves of the dead are beautiful. There is nothing more touching than these offerings of memory you seeevery year in Mont Parnasse and Pere-la-Chaise. Apart from all beliefs, there is a mysterious influence for good exerted upon the living by thememory of the beloved dead. On all hearts not utterly corrupt, thethoughts that come by the graves of the departed fall like dew fromheaven, and quicken into life purer and higher resolves. 

In Spain, where there is nothing but desolation in graveyards, thechurches are crowded instead, and the bereaved survivors commend to Godtheir departed friends and their own stricken hearts in the dim andperfumed aisles of temples made with hands. A taint of gloom thus restsupon the recollection and the prayer, far different from the consolationthat comes with the free air and the sunshine, and the infinite bluevault, where Nature conspires with revelation to comfort and cherish andconsole. 

Christmas apparently comes in Spain on no other mission than thatreferred to in the old English couplet, "bringing good cheer. " TheSpaniards are the most frugal of people, but during the days thatprecede their Noche Buena, their Good Night, they seem to be given up ascompletely to cares of the commissariat as the most eupeptic of Germans. Swarms of turkeys are driven in from the surrounding country, and takenabout the streets by their rustic herdsmen, making the roads gay withtheir scarlet wattles, and waking rural memories by their vociferousgobbling. The great market-place of the season is the Plaza Mayor. Theever-fruitful provinces of the South are laid under contribution, andthe result is a wasteful show of tropical luxuriance that seems mostincongruous under the wintry sky. There are mountains of oranges anddates, brown hillocks of nuts of every kind, store of every product ofthis versatile soil. The air is filled with nutty and fruity fragrance. Under the ancient arcades are the stalls of the butchers, rich with themutton of Castile, the hams of Estremadura, and the hero-nourishingbull-beef of Andalusian pastures. 

At night the town is given up to harmless racket. Nowhere has thetradition of the Latin Saturnalia been fitted with less change into theChristian calendar. Men, women, and children of the proletariat--theunemancipated slaves of necessity--go out this night to cheat theirmisery with noisy frolic. The owner of a tambourine is the equal of apeer; the proprietor of a guitar is the captain of his hundred. Theytroop through the dim city with discordant revel and song. They havelittle idea of music. Every one sings and sings ill. Every one dances, without grace or measure. Their music is a modulated howl of the East. Their dancing is the savage leaping of barbarians. There is no lack ofcouplets, religious, political, or amatory. I heard one ragged womanwith a brown baby at her breast go shrieking through the Street of theMagdalen, --

 "This is the eve of Christmas, No sleep from now till morn, The Virgin is in travail, At twelve will the child be born!"

Behind her stumped a crippled beggar, who croaked in a voice rough withfrost and aguardiente his deep disillusion and distrust of the great:--

 "This is the eve of Christmas, But what is that to me? We are ruled by thieves and robbers, As it was and will always be. "

Next comes a shouting band of the youth of Spain, strapping boys withbushy locks, crisp and black almost to blueness, and gay young girlswith flexible forms and dark Arab eyes that shine with a phosphorescentlight in the shadows. They troop on with clacking castinets. Thechallenge of the mozos rings out on the frosty air, --

 "This is the eve of Christmas, Let us drink and love our fill!"

And the saucy antiphon of girlish voices responds, --

 "A man may be bearded and gray, But a woman can fool him still!"

The Christmas and New-Year's holidays continue for a fortnight, endingwith the Epiphany. On the eve of the Day of the Kings a curious farce isperformed by bands of the lowest orders of the people, whichdemonstrates the apparently endless naivete of their class. In everycoterie of water-carriers, or mozos de cordel, there will be one foundinnocent enough to believe that the Magi are coming to Madrid thatnight, and that a proper respect to their rank requires that they mustbe met at the city gate. To perceive the coming of their feet, beautifulupon the mountains, a ladder is necessary, and the poor victim of thecomedy is loaded with this indispensable "property. " He is dragged byhis gay companions, who never tire of the exquisite wit of their jest, from one gate to another, until suspicion supplants faith in the mind ofthe neophyte, and the farce is over. 

In the burgher society of Castile this night is devoted to a verydifferent ceremony. Each little social circle comes together in a houseagreed upon. They take mottoes of gilded paper and write on each thename of some one of the company. The names of the ladies are thrown intoone urn, and those of the cavaliers into another, and they are drawn outby pairs. These couples are thus condemned by fortune to intimacy duringthe year. The gentleman is always to be at the orders of the dame and toserve her faithfully in every knightly fashion. He has all the dutiesand none of the privileges of a lover, unless it be the joy of those"who stand and wait. " The relation is very like that which so astonishedM. De Gramont in his visit to Piedmont, where the cavalier of servicenever left his mistress in public and never approached her in private. 

The true Carnival survives in its naive purity only in Spain. It hasfaded in Rome into a romping day of clown's play. In Paris it is littlemore than a busier season for dreary and professional vice. Elsewhereall over the world the Carnival gayeties are confined to the salon. Butin Madrid the whole city, from grandee to cordwainer, goes withchildlike earnestness into the enjoyment of the hour. The Corso beginsin the Prado on the last Sunday before Lent, and lasts four days. Fromnoon to night the great drive is filled with a double line of carriagestwo miles long, and between them are the landaus of the favored hundredswho have the privilege of driving up and down free from the law of theroad. This right is acquired by the payment of ten dollars a day to citycharities, and produces some fifteen thousand dollars every Carnival. Inthese carriages all the society of Madrid may be seen; and on foot, darting in and out among the hoofs of the horses, are the young men ofCastile in every conceivable variety of absurd and fantastic disguise. There are of course pirates and Indians and Turks, monks, prophets, andkings, but the favorite costumes seem to be the Devil and theEnglishman. Sometimes the Yankee is attempted, with indifferent success. He wears a ribbon-wreathed Italian bandit's hat, an embroidered jacket, slashed buckskin trousers, and a wide crimson belt, --a dress you wouldat once recognize as universal in Boston. 

Most of the maskers know by name at least the occupants of thecarriages. There is always room for a mask in a coach. They leap in, swarming over the back or the sides, and in their shrill monotonousscream they make the most startling revelations of the inmost secrets ofyour soul. There is always something impressive in the talk of anunknown voice, but especially is this so in Madrid, where every onescorns his own business, and devotes himself rigorously to hisneighbor's. These shrieking young monks and devilkins often surprise ahalf-formed thought in the heart of a fair Castilian and drag it outinto day and derision. No one has the right to be offended. Duchessesare called Tu! Isabel! by chin-dimpled school-boys, and the proudestbeauties in Spain accept bonbons from plebeian hands. It is true, mostof the maskers are of the better class. Some of the costumes are veryrich and expensive, of satin and velvet heavy with gold. I have seen adistinguished diplomatist in the guise of a gigantic canary-bird, hopping briskly about in the mud with bedraggled tail-feathers, shrieking well-bred sarcasms with his yellow beak. 

The charm of the Madrid Carnival is this, that it is respected andbelieved in. The best and fairest pass the day in the Corso, and gallantyoung gentlemen think it worth while to dress elaborately for a fewhours of harmless and spirituelle intrigue. A society that enjoys aholiday so thoroughly has something in it better than the blase cynicismof more civilized capitals. These young fellows talk like the lovers ofthe old romances. I have never heard prettier periods of devotion thanfrom some gentle savage, stretched out on the front seat of a landauunder the peering eyes of his lady, safe in his disguise, if notself-betrayed, pouring out his young soul in passionate praise andprayer; around them the laughter and the cries, the cracking of whips, the roll of wheels, the presence of countless thousands, and yet thesetwo young hearts alone under the pale winter sky. The rest of theContinent has outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleasant to see this gayrelic of simpler times, when youth was young. No one here is too "swell"for it. You may find a duke in the disguise of a chimney-sweep, or abutcher-boy in the dress of a Crusader. There are none so great thattheir dignity would suffer by a day's reckless foolery, and there arenone so poor that they cannot take the price of a dinner to buy a maskand cheat their misery by mingling for a time with their betters in thewild license of the Carnival. 

The winter's gayety dies hard. Ash Wednesday is a day of loud merrimentand is devoted to a popular ceremony called the Burial of the Sardine. Avast throng of workingmen carry with great pomp a link of sausage to thebank of the Manzanares and inter it there with great solemnity. On thefollowing Saturday, after three days of death, the Carnival has aresurrection, and the maddest, wildest ball of the year takes place atthe opera. Then the sackcloth and ashes of Lent come down in goodearnest and the town mourns over its scarlet sins. It used to be veryfashionable for the genteel Christians to repair during this season ofmortification to the Church of San Gines, and scourge themselves lustilyin its subterranean chambers. A still more striking demonstration wasfor gentlemen in love to lash themselves on the sidewalks where passedthe ladies of their thoughts. If the blood from the scourges sprinkledthem as they sailed by, it was thought an attention no female heartcould withstand. But these wholesome customs have decayed of lateunbelieving years. 

The Lenten piety increases with the lengthening days. It reaches itsclimax on Holy Thursday. On this day all Spain goes to church: it is oneof the obligatory days. The more you go, the better for you; so the goodpeople spend the whole day from dawn to dusk roaming from one church toanother, and investing an Ave and a Pater-Noster in each. This fillsevery street of the city with the pious crowd. No carriages arepermitted. A silence like that of Venice falls on the rattling capital. With three hundred thousand people in the street, the town seems still. In 1870, a free-thinking cabman dared to drive up the Calle Alcala. Hewas dragged from his box and beaten half to death by the chastenedmourners, who yelled as they kicked and cuffed him, "Que bruto! He willwake our Jesus. "

On Good Friday the gloom deepens. No colors are worn that day by theorthodox. The senoras appear on the street in funeral garb. I saw agroup of fast youths come out of the jockey club, black from hat toboots, with jet studs and sleeve-buttons. The gayest and prettiestladies sit within the church doors and beg in the holy name of charity, and earn large sums for the poor. There are hourly services in thechurches, passionate sermons from all the pulpits. The streets are freefrom the painted haunters of the pavement. The whole people taste theluxury of a sentimental sorrow. 

Yet in these heavy days it is not the Redeemer whose sufferings anddeath most nearly touch the hearts of the faithful. It is SantisimaMaria who is worshipped most. It is the Dolorous Mother who moves themto tears of tenderness. The presiding deity of these final days ofmeditation is Our Lady of Solitude. 

But at last the days of mourning are accomplished. The expiation for sinis finished. The grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in victory. Man can turn from the grief that is natural to the joy that is eternal. From every steeple the bells fling out their happy clangor in gladtidings of great joy. The streets are flooded once more with eagermultitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathenmyth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the newgospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds arepairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the meltingsnow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through thevast frame of things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heartof man love and will mingle into hope. Hail to the new life and theever-new religion! Hail to the resurrection morning!

AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS

As a general thing it is well to distrust a Spaniard's superlatives. Hewill tell you that his people are the most amiable in the world, but youwill do well to carry your revolver into the interior. He will say thereare no wines worth drinking but the Spanish, but you will scarcelyforswear Clicquot and Yquem on the mere faith of his assertion. Adistinguished general once gravely assured me that there was noliterature in the world at all to be compared with the productions ofthe Castilian mind. All others, he said, were but pale imitations ofSpanish master-work. 

Now, though you may be shocked at learning such unfavorable facts of'Shakespeare and Goethe and Hugo, you will hardly condemn them to anAuto da fe, on the testimony even of a grandee of Spain. 

But when a Spaniard assures you that the picture-gallery of Madrid isthe finest in the world, you may believe him without reserve. Heprobably does not know what he is talking about. He may never havecrossed the Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of Dresden, orFlorence, or the Louvre. It is even possible that he has not seen thematchless collection he is boasting of. He crowns it with a sweepingsuperlative simply because it is Spanish. But the statement isnevertheless true. 

The reason of this is found in that gigantic and overshadowing factwhich seems to be an explanation of everything in Spain, --the power andthe tyranny of the House of Austria. The period of the vast increase ofSpanish dominion coincided with that of the meridian glory of Italianart. The conquest of Granada was finished as the divine child Raphaelbegan to meddle with his father's brushes and pallets, and before hisshort life ended Charles, Burgess of Ghent, was emperor and king. 

The dominions he governed and transmitted to his son embraced Spain, theNetherlands, Franche-Comte, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily; that is tosay, those regions where art in that age and the next attained itssupreme development. He was also lord of the New World, whoseinexhaustible mines poured into the lap of Europe a constant stream ofgold. Hence came the riches and the leisure necessary to art. 

Charles V. , as well as his great contemporary and rival, Francis I. , wasa munificent protector of art. He brought from Italy and Antwerp some ofthe most perfect products of their immortal masters. He was the friendand patron of Titian, and when, weary of the world and its vanities, heretired to the lonely monastery of Yuste to spend in devoutcontemplation the evening of his days, the most precious solace of hissolitude was that noble canvas of the great Venetian, where Charles andPhilip are borne, in penitential guise and garb, on luminous clouds intothe visible glory of the Most High. 

These two great kings made a good use of their unbounded opportunities. Spain became illuminated with the glowing canvases of the incomparableItalians. The opening up of the New World beyond seas, the meteoriccareer of European and African conquest in which the emperor had won somuch land and glory, had given an awakening shock to the intelligentyouth of Spain, and sent them forth in every avenue of enterprise. Thisjealously patriotic race, which had remained locked up by the mountainsand the seas for centuries, started suddenly out, seeking adventuresover the earth. The mind of Spain seemed suddenly to have brightened anddeveloped like that of her great king, who, in his first tourney atValladolid, wrote with proud sluggishness _Nondum_--not yet--on hismaiden shield, and a few years later in his young maturity adopted thelegend of arrogant hope and promise, --_Plus Ultra. _ There were seen twoemigrations of the young men of Spain, eastward and westward. The latterwent for gold and material conquest into the American wilds; and theformer, led by the sacred love of art, to that land of beauty andwonder, then, now, and always the spiritual shrine of allpeoples, --Italy. 

A brilliant young army went out from Spain on this new crusade of thebeautiful. From the plains of Castile and the hills of Navarre went, among others, Berruguete, Becerra, and the marvellous deaf-muteNavarrete. The luxurious city of Valentia sent Juan de Juanes andRibalta. Luis de Vargas went out from Seville, and from Cordova thescholar, artist, and thinker, Paul of Cespedes. The schools of Rome andVenice and Florence were thronged with eager pilgrims, speaking an alienLatin and filled with a childlike wonder and appreciation. 

In that stirring age the emigration was not all in one direction. Manydistinguished foreigners came down to Spain, to profit by the new loveof art in the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who carved, withBerruguete, those miracles of skill and patience we admire to-day in thechoir of Toledo. Peter of Champagne painted at Seville the grandaltar-piece that so comforted the eyes and the soul of Murillo. The wildGreek bedouin, George Theotocopouli, built the Mozarabic chapel andfilled the walls of convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, or Moro, came from the Low Countries, and the Carducci brothers from Italy, toseek their fortunes in Madrid. Torrigiani, after breaking MichaelAngelo's nose in Florence, fled to Granada, and died in a prison of theInquisition for smashing the face of a Virgin which a grandee of Spainwanted to steal from him. 

These immigrations, and the refluent tide of Spanish students fromItaly, founded the various schools of Valentia, Toledo, Seville, andMadrid. Madrid soon absorbed the school of Toledo, and the attraction ofSeville was too powerful for Valentia. The Andalusian school countsamong its early illustrations Vargas, Roelas, the Castillos, Herrera, Pacheco, and Moya, and among its later glories Velazquez, Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, and Murillo, last and greatest of the mighty line. The schoolof Madrid begins with Berruguete and Na-varrete, the Italians Caxes, Rizi, and others, who are followed by Sanchez Coello, Pantoja, Collantes. Then comes the great invader Velazquez, followed by hisretainers Pareja and Carreno, and absorbs the whole life of the school. Claudio Coello makes a good fight against the rapid decadence. LucaGiordano comes rattling in from Naples with his whitewash-brush, painting a mile a minute, and classic art is ended in Spain with thebrief and conscientious work of Raphael Mengs. 

There is therefore little distinction of schools in Spain. Murillo, theglory of Seville, studied in Madrid, and the mighty Andalusian, Velazquez, performed his enormous life's work in the capital of Castile. 

It now needs but one word to show how the Museum of Madrid became sorich in masterpieces. During the long and brilliant reigns of Charles V. And Philip II. , when art had arrived at its apogee in Italy, and wasjust beginning its splendid career in Spain, these powerful monarchs hadthe lion's share of all the best work that was done in the world. Therewas no artist so great but he was honored by the commands of these lordsof the two worlds. They thus formed in their various palaces, pleasure-houses, and cloisters a priceless collection of picturesproduced in the dawn of the Spanish and the triumphant hey-day ofItalian genius. Their frivolous successors lost provinces and kingdoms, honor and prestige, but they never lost their royal prerogative northeir taste for the arts. They consoled themselves for the slings andarrows of outrageous fortune by the delights of sensual life, andimagined they preserved some distant likeness to their great forerunnersby encouraging and protecting Velazquez and Lope de Vega and otherintellectual giants of that decaying age. So while, as the result of avicious system of kingly and spiritual thraldom, the intellect of Spainwas forced away from its legitimate channels of thought and action, under the shadow of the royal prerogative, which survived the genuinepower of the older kings, art flourished and bloomed, unsuspected andunpersecuted by the coward jealousy of courtier and monk. 

The palace and the convent divided the product of those marvellous days. Amid all the poverty of the failing state, it was still the king andclergy who were best able to appropriate the works of genius. This mayhave contributed to the decay of art. The immortal canvases passed intooblivion in the salons of palaces and the cells of monasteries. Had theybeen scattered over the land and seen by the people, they might havekept alive the spark that kindled their creators. But exclu-siveness isinevitably followed by barrenness. When the great race of Spanishartists ended, these matchless works were kept in the safe obscurity ofpalaces and religious establishments. History was working in theinterests of this Museum. The pictures were held by the clenched deadhand of the Church and the throne. They could not be sold ordistributed. They made the dark places luminous, patiently biding theirtime. 

It was long enough coming, and it was a despicable hand that broughtthem into the light. Ferdinand VII. Thought his palace would lookfresher if the walls were covered with French paper, and so packed allthe pictures off to the empty building on the Prado, which hisgrandfather had built for a museum. As soon as the glorious collectionwas exposed to the gaze of the world, its incontestable merit was atonce recognized. Especially were the works of Velazquez, hitherto almostan unknown name in Europe, admired and appreciated. Ferdinand, findinghe had done a clever thing unawares, began to put on airs and poser fora patron of art. The gallery was still further immensely enriched on theexclaustra-tion of the monasteries, by the hidden treasures of theEscorial, and other spoils of mortmain. And now, as a collection ofmasterpieces, it has no equal in the world. 

A few figures will prove this. It contains more than two thousandpictures already catalogued, --all of them worth a place on the walls. Among these there are ten by Raphael, forty-three by Titian, thirty-fourby Tintoret, twenty-five by Paul Veronese. Rubens has the enormouscontingent of sixty-four. Of Teniers, whose works are sold for fabuloussums for the square inch, this extraordinary museum possesses no lessthan sixty finished pictures, --the Louvre considers itself rich withfourteen. So much for a few of the foreigners. Among the Spaniards thethree greatest names could alone fill a gallery. There are sixty-fiveVelazquez, forty-six Murillos, and fifty-eight Riberas. Compare thesefigures with those of any other gallery in existence, and you will atonce recognize the hopeless superiority of this collection. It is notonly the greatest collection in the world, but the greatest that canever be made until this is broken up. 

But with all this mass of wealth it is not a complete, nor, properlyspeaking, a representative museum. You cannot trace upon its walls theslow, groping progress of art towards perfection. It contains few ofwhat the book-lovers call _incunabula. _ Spanish art sprang outfull-armed from the mature brain of Rome. Juan de Juanes carne back fromItaly a great artist. The schools of Spain were budded on a full-bearingtree. Charles and Philip bought masterpieces, and cared Jittle for thecrude efforts of the awkward pencils of the necessary men who camebefore Raphael. There is not a Perugino in Madrid. There is nothingByzantine, no trace of Renaissance; nothing of the patient work of theearly Flemings, --the art of Flanders comes blazing in with the fullsplendor of Rubens and Van Dyck. And even among the masters, therepresentation is most unequal. Among the wilderness of Titians andTintorets you find but two Domenichinos and two Correg-gios. Even inSpanish art the gallery is far from complete. There is almost nothingof such genuine painters as Zurbaran and Herrera. 

But recognizing all this, there is, in this glorious temple, enough tofill the least enthusiastic lover of art with delight and adoration forweeks and months together. If one knew he was to be blind in a year, like the young musician in Auerbach's exquisite romance, I know of noplace in the world where he could garner up so precious a store ofmemories for the days of darkness, memories that would haunt the soulwith so divine a light of consolation, as in that graceful Palace of thePrado. 

It would be a hopeless task to attempt to review with any detail thegems of this collection. My memory is filled with the countless canvasesthat adorn the ten great halls. If I refer to my notebook I am equallydiscouraged by the number I have marked for special notice. Themasterpieces are simply innumerable. I will say a word of each room, andso give up the unequal contest. 

As you enter the Museum from the north, you are in a widesturdy-columned vestibule, hung with splashy pictures of Luca Giordano. To your right is the room devoted to the Spanish school; to the left, the Italian. In front is the grand gallery where the greatest works ofboth schools are collected. In the Spanish saloon there is anindefinable air of severity and gloom. It is less perfectly lighted thansome others, and there is something forbidding in the general tone ofthe room. There are prim portraits of queens and princes, monks incontemplation, and holy people in antres vast and deserts idle. Mostvisitors come in from a sense of duty, look hurriedly about, and go outwith a conscience at ease; in fact, there is a dim suggestion of thefagot and the rack about many of the Spanish masters. At one end of thisgallery the Prometheus of Ribera agonizes chained to his rock. Hisgigantic limbs are flung about in the fury of immortal pain. A vulture, almost lost in the blackness of the shadows, is tugging at his vitals. His brow is convulsed with the pride and anguish of a demigod. It is apicture of horrible power. Opposite hangs one of the few Zurbarans ofthe gallery, --also a gloomy and terrible work. A monk kneels in shadowswhich, by the masterly chiaroscuro of this ascetic artist, are made tolook darker than blackness. Before him in a luminous nimbus that burnsits way through the dark, is the image of the crucified Saviour, headdownwards. So remarkable is the vigor of the drawing and the power oflight in this picture that you can imagine you see the resplendentcrucifix suddenly thrust into the shadow by the strong hands ofinvisible spirits, and swayed for a moment only before the dazzled eyesof the ecstatic solitary. 

But after you have made friends with this room it will put off itsforbidding aspect, and you will find it hath a stern look but a gentleheart. It has two lovely little landscapes by Murillo, showing howuniversal was that wholesome genius. Also one of the largest landscapesof Velazquez, which, when you stand near it, seems a confused mass ofbrown daubs, but stepping back a few yards becomes a most perfect viewof the entrance to a royal park. The wide gate swings on its pivotbefore your eyes. A court cortege moves in, --the long, dark alleystretches off for miles directly in front, without any trick of lines orcurves; the artist has painted the shaded air. To the left a patch ofstill water reflects the dark wood, and above there is a distant andtranquil sky. Had Velazquez not done such vastly greater things, his fewlandscapes would alone have won him fame enough. He has in this room alarge number of royal portraits, --one especially worth attention, ofPhilip III. The scene is by the shore, --a cool foreground of sandybeach, --a blue-gray stretch of rippled water, and beyond, a lowpromontory between the curling waves and the cirrus clouds. The kingmounts a magnificent gray horse, with a mane and tail like the brokenrush of a cascade. The keeping is wonderful; a fresh sea breeze blowsout of the canvas. A brilliant bit of color is thrown into the red, gold-fringed scarf of the horseman, fluttering backward over hisshoulder. Yet the face of the king is, as it should be, the principalpoint of the picture, --the small-eyed, heavy-mouthed, red-lipped, fair, self-satisfied face of these Austrian despots. It is a handsomer facethan most of Velazquez, as it was probably painted from memory andlenient tradition. For Philip III. Was gathered to his fathers in theEscorial before Velazquez came up from Andalusia to seek his fortune atthe court. The first work he did in Madrid was to paint the portrait ofthe king, which so pleased his majesty that he had it repeated _adnauseam. _ You see him served up in every form in this gallery, --on foot, on horseback, in full armor, in a shooting-jacket, at picnics, andactually on his knees at his prayers! We wonder if Velazquez ever grewtired of that vacant face with its contented smirk, or if in that loyalage the smile of royalty was not always the sunshine of the court?

There is a most instructive study of faces in the portraits of theAustrian line. First comes Charles V. , the First of Spain, painted byTitian at Augsburg, on horseback, in the armor he wore at Muhl-berg, hislong lance in rest, his visor up over the eager, powerful face, --the eyeand beak of an eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the face of a born ruler, aman of prey. And yet in the converging lines about the eyes, in thepremature gray hair, in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see thepromise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil of superstitionand bigotry. It is the face of a man who could make himself emperor andhermit. In his son, Philip II. , the soldier dies out and the bigot isintensified. In the fine portrait by Pantoja, of Philip in his age, there is scarcely any trace of the fresh, fair youth that Titian paintedas Adonis. It is the face of a living corpse; of a ghastly pallor, heightened by the dull black of his mourning suit, where all passion andfeeling have died out of the livid lips and the icy eyes. Beside himhangs the portrait of his rickety, feebly passionate son, theunfortunate Don Carlos. The forehead of the young prince is narrow andill-formed; the Austrian chin is exaggerated one degree more; he looks apicture of fitful impulse. His brother, Philip III. , we have just seen, fair and inane, --a monster of cruelty, who burned Jews and banishedMoors, not from malice, but purely from vacuity of spirit; his headbroadens like a pine-apple from the blond crest to the plump jowls. Every one knows the head of Philip IV. , --he was fortunate in being thefriend of Velazquez, --the high, narrow brow, the long, weak face, theyellow, curled mustache, the thick, red lips, and the ever lengtheningHapsburg chin. But the line of Austria ends with the utmost limit ofcaricature in the face of Charles the Bewitched! Carreno has given us anadmirable portrait of this unfortunate, --the forehead caved in like thehat of a drunkard, the red-lidded eyes staring vacantly, a long, thinnose absurd as a Carnival disguise, an enormous mouth which he could notshut, the under-jaw projected so prodigiously, --a face incapable of anyemotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic mask you arereminded of another face you have somewhere seen, and are startled toremember it is the resolute face of the warrior and statesman, the kingof men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable being was the descendant ofthe great emperor, and for that sufficient reason, although he was animpotent and shivering idiot, although he could not sleep without afriar in his bed to keep the devils away, for thirty-five years thisscarecrow ruled over Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishmentbathed the Peninsula in blood. It must be confessed this institution ofmonarchy is a luxury that must be paid for. 

We did not intend to talk of politics in this room, but that line ofroyal effigies was too tempting. Before we go, let us look at abeautiful Magdalen in penitence, by an unknown artist of the school ofMurillo. She stands near the entrance of her cave, in a listeningattitude. The bright out-of-door light falls on her bare shoulder andgives the faintest touch of gold to her dishevelled brown hair. Shecasts her eyes upward, the large melting eyes of Andalusia; a chastenedsorrow, through which a trembling hope is shining, softens the somewhatworldly beauty of her exquisite and sensitive face. Through the mouth ofthe cave we catch a glimpse of sunny mountain solitude, and in the rosyair that always travels with Spanish angels a band of celestialserenaders is playing. It is a charming composition, without any depthof sentiment or especial mastery of treatment, but evidently painted bya clever artist in his youth, and this Magdalen is the portrait of thelady of his dreams. None of Murillo's pupils but Tobar could havepainted it, and the manner is precisely the same as that of his DivinaPastora. 

Across the hall is the gallery consecrated to Italian artists. There arenot many pictures of the first rank here. They have been reserved forthe great central gallery, where we are going. But while here, we mustnotice especially two glorious works of Tintoret, --the same subjectdifferently treated, --the Death of Holofernes. Both are placed higherthan they should be, considering their incontestable merit. A full lightis needed to do justice to that magnificence of color which is the prideof Venice. There are two remarkable pictures of Giordano, --one in theRoman style, which would not be unworthy of the great Sanzio himself, aHoly Family, drawn and colored with that scrupulous correctness whichseems so impossible in the ordinary products of this Protean genius; andjust opposite, an apotheosis of Rubens, surrounded by his usual"properties" of fat angels and genii, which could be readily soldanywhere as a specimen of the estimate which the unabashed Flemingplaced upon himself. It is marvellous that any man should so master thehabit and the thought of two artists so widely apart as Raphael andRubens, as to produce just such pictures as they would have painted uponthe same themes. The halls and dark corridors of the Museum are filledwith Giordano's canvases. In less than ten years' residence in Spain hecovered the walls of dozens of churches and palaces with his fatallyfacile work. There are more than three hundred pictures recorded asexecuted by him in that time. They are far from being without merit. There is a singular slap-dash vigor about his drawing. His coloring, except when he is imitating some earlier master, is usually thin andpoor. It is difficult to repress an emotion of regret in looking at hislaborious yet useless life. With great talents, with indefatigableindustry, he deluged Europe with paintings that no one cares for, andpassed into history simply as Luca Fa Presto, --Luke Work-Fast. 

It is not by mere activity that great things are done in art. In thegreat gallery we now enter we see the deathless work of the men whowrought in faith. This is the grandest room in Christendom. It is aboutthree hundred and fifty feet long and thirty-five broad and high. It isbeautifully lighted from above. Its great length is broken here andthere by vases and statues, so placed between doors as nowhere toembarrass the view. The northern half of the gallery is Spanish, and thesouthern half Italian. Halfway down, a door to the left opens into anoval chamber, devoted to an eclectic set of masterpieces of every schooland age. The gallery ends in a circular room of French and Germanpictures, on either side of which there are two great halls of Dutch andFlemish. On the ground floor there are some hundreds more Flemish and ahall of sculpture. 

The first pictures you see to your left are by the early masters ofSpain, --Morales, called in Spain the Divine, whose works are nowextremely rare, the Museum possessing only three or four, long, fleshless faces and stiff figures of Christs and Marys, --and Juan deJuanes, the founder of the Valentian school, who brought back from Italythe lessons of Raphael's studio, that firmness of design and brilliancyof color, and whose genuine merit has survived all vicissitudes ofchanging taste. He has here a superb Last Supper and a spirited seriesof pictures illustrating the martyrdom of Stephen. There is perhaps alittle too much elaboration of detail, even for the Romans. Stephen'srobes are unnecessarily new, and the ground where he is stoned isprofusely covered with convenient round missiles the size of Viennarolls, so exactly suited to the purpose that it looks as if Providencesided with the persecutors. But what a wonderful variety and truth inthe faces and the attitudes of the groups! What mastery of drawing, andwhat honest integrity of color after all these ages! It is reported ofJuanes that he always confessed and prayed before venturing to take uphis pencils to touch the features of the saints and Saviours that shineon his canvas. His conscientious fervor has its reward. 

Across the room are the Murillos. Hung together are two pictures, not oflarge dimensions, but of exquisite perfection, which will serve as fairillustrations of the work of his youth and his age; the frio and thevaporoso manner. In the former manner is this charming picture ofRebecca at the Well; a graceful composition, correct and somewhat severedrawing, the greatest sharpness and clearness of outline. In theMartyrdom of St. Andrew the drawing and the composition are no lessabsolutely perfect, but there hangs over the whole picture a luminoushaze of strangeness and mystery. A light that never was on sea or landbathes the distant hills and battlements, touches the spears of thelegionaries, and shines in full glory on the ecstatic face of the agedsaint. It does not seem a part of the scene. You see the picture throughit. A step further on there is a Holy Family, which seems to me theultimate effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds hisfair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird toattract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The mother, adark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet amusement. Thepicture is absolutely perfect in detail. It seems to be the _consigne_among critics to say it lacks "style. " They say it is a family scene inJudaea, _voila tout. _ Of course, and it is that very truth and naturethat makes this picture so fascinating. The Word was made flesh, and nota phosphorescent apparition; and Murillo knew what he was about when hepainted this view of the interior of St. Joseph's shop. What absurdpresumption to accuse this great thinker of a deficiency of ideality, inface of these two glorious Marys of the Conception that fill the roomwith light and majesty! They hang side by side, so alike and yet sodistinct in character. One is a woman in knowledge and a goddess ofpurity; the other, absolute innocence, startled by the stupendousrevelation and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of the future. It is before this picture that the visitor always lingers longest. Theface is the purest expression of girlish loveliness possible to art. TheVirgin floats upborne by rosy clouds, flocks of pink cherubs flutter ather feet waving palm-branches. The golden air is thick with suggestionsof dim celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing solitude of theQueen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous azure. Surely noman ever understood or interpreted like this grand Andalusian the powerthat the worship of woman exerts on the religions of the world. All thepassionate love that has been poured out in all the ages at the feet ofAshtaroth and Artemis and Aphrodite and Freya found visible form andcolor at last on that immortal canvas where, with his fervor of religionand the full strength of his virile devotion to beauty, he created, forthe adoration of those who should follow him, this type of the perfectFeminine, --

"Thee! standing loveliest in the open heaven! Ave Maria! only Heaven andThee!"

There are some dozens more of Murillo here almost equally remarkable, but I cannot stop to make an unmeaning catalogue of them. There is acharming Gypsy Fortune-teller, whose wheedling voice and smile werecaught and fixed in some happy moment in Seville; an Adoration of theShepherds, wonderful in its happy combination of rigid truth with thewarmest glow of poetry; two Annunciations, rich with the radiance thatstreams through the rent veil of the innermost heaven, --lights paintedboldly upon lights, the White Dove sailing out of the dazzlingbackground of celestial effulgence, --a miracle and mystery of theologyrepeated by a miracle and mystery of art. 

Even when you have exhausted the Murillos of the Museum you have notreached his highest achievements in color and design. You will findthese in the Academy of San Fernando, --the Dream of the Roman Gentleman, and the Founding of the Church of St. Mary the Greater; and the powerfulcomposition of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, in her hospital work. In thefirst, a noble Roman and his wife have suddenly fallen asleep in theirchairs in an elegant apartment. Their slumber is painted with curiousfelicity, --you lower your voice for fear of waking them. On the left ofthe picture is their dream: the Virgin comes in a halo of golden cloudsand designates the spot where her church is to be built. In the nextpicture the happy couple kneel before the pope and expose their highcommission, and outside a brilliant procession moves to the ceremony ofthe laying of the corner-stone. The St. Elizabeth is a triumph of geniusover a most terribly repulsive subject. The wounds and sores of thebeggars are painted with unshrinking fidelity, but every vulgar detailis redeemed by the beauty and majesty of the whole. I think in thesepictures of Murillo the last word of Spanish art was reached. There wasno further progress possible in life, even for him. "Other heights inother lives, God willing. "

Returning to the Museum and to Velazquez, we find ourselves in front ofhis greatest historical work, the Surrender of Breda. This is probablythe most utterly unaffected historical painting in existence. There ispositively no stage business about it. On the right is the Spanishstaff, on the left the deputation of the vanquished Flemings. In thecentre the great Spinola accepts the keys of the city from the governor;his attitude and face are full of dignity softened by generous andaffable grace. He lays his hand upon the shoulder of the Flemishgeneral, and you can see he is paying him some chivalrous compliment onthe gallant fight he has lost. If your eyes wander through the openspace between the two escorts, you see a wonderful widespread landscapein the Netherlands, which would form a fine picture if the figures allwere gone. Opposite this great work is another which artists considergreater, --Las Meninas. When Luca Giordano came from Italy he inquiredfor this picture, and said on seeing it, "This is the theology ofpainting. " If our theology were what it should be, and cannot be, absolute and unquestionable truth, Luca the Quick-worker would have beenright. Velazquez was painting the portrait of a stupid little infantawhen the idea came to him of perpetuating the scene just as it was. Weknow how we have wished to be sure of the exact accessories of pastevents. The modern rage for theatrical local color is an illustration ofthis desire. The great artist, who must have honored his art, determinedto give to future ages an exact picture of one instant of his gloriouslife. It is not too much to say he has done this. He stands before hiseasel, his pencils in his hand. The little princess is stiffly posing inthe centre. Her little maids are grouped about her. Two hideous dwarfson the right are teasing a noble dog who is too drowsy and magnanimousto growl. In the background at the end of a long gallery a gentleman isopening a door to the garden. The presence of royalty is indicated bythe reflection of the faces of the king and queen in a small mirror, where you would expect to see your own. The longer you look upon thismarvellous painting, the less possible does it seem that it is merelythe placing of color on canvas which causes this perfect illusion. Itdoes not seem possible that you are looking at a plane surface. There isa stratum of air before, behind, and beside these figures. You couldwalk on that floor and see how the artist is getting on with theportrait. There is space and light in this picture, as in any room. Every object is detached, as in the common miracle of the stereoscope. If art consist in making a fleeting moment immortal, if the True is ahigher ideal than the Beautiful, then it will be hard to find a greaterpainting than this. It is utterly without beauty; its tone is a coldolive green-gray; there is not one redeeming grace or charm about itexcept the noble figure of Velazquez himself, --yet in its austerefidelity to truth it stands incomparable in the world. It gainedVelazquez his greatest triumph. You see on his breast a sprawling redcross, painted evidently by an unskilful hand. This was the graciousanswer made by Philip IV. When the artist asked him if anything waswanting to the picture. This decoration, daubed by the royal hand, wasthe accolade of the knighthood of Santiago, --an honor beyond the dreamsof an artist of that day. It may be considered the highest complimentever paid to a painter, except the one paid by Courbet to himself, whenhe refused to be decorated by the Man of December. 

Among Velazquez's most admirable studies of life is his picture of theBorrachos. A group of rustic roysterers are admitting a neophyte intothe drunken _confrerie. _ He kneels to receive a crown of ivy from thehands of the king of the revel. A group of older tipplers are fillingtheir cups, or eyeing their brimming glasses, with tipsy, mock-seriousglances. There has never been a chapter written which so clearly showsthe drunkard's nature as this vulgar anacreontic. A thousand men havepainted drunken frolics, but never one with such distinct spiritualinsight as this. To me the finest product of Jordaens' genius is hisBohnen Koenig in the Belvedere, but there you see only the incidents ofthe mad revel; every one is shouting or singing or weeping with maudlinglee or tears. But in this scene of the Borrachos there is nothingscenic or forced. These topers have come together to drink, for the loveof the wine, --the fun is secondary. This wonderful reserve of Velazquezis clearly seen in his conception of the king of the rouse. He is ayoung man, with a heavy, dull, somewhat serious face, fat rather thanbloated, rather pale than flushed. He is naked to the waist to show theplump white arms and shoulders and the satiny skin of the voluptuary;one of those men whose heads and whose stomachs are too loyal ever togive them _Katzenjammer_ or remorse. The others are of the commoner typeof haunters of wine-shops, --with red eyes and coarse hides and grizzledmatted hair, --but every man of them inexorably true, and a predestinedsot. 

We must break away from Velazquez, passing by his marvellous portraitsof kings and dwarfs, saints and poodles, --among whom there is a dwarf oftwo centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve for his twinbrother, --and a portrait of Aesop, which is a flash of intuition, anepitome of all the fables. Before leaving the Spaniards we must look atthe most pleasing of all Ribera's works, --the Ladder-Dream of Jacob. The patriarch lies stretched on the open plain in the deep sleep of theweary. To the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the angels areascending and descending. The picture is remarkable for its mingling themerits of Ribera's first and second manner. It is a Caravaggio in itsstrength and breadth of light and shade, and a Correggio in its delicacyof sentiment and refined beauty of coloring. He was not often sofortunate in his Parmese efforts. They are usually marked by a timidityand an attempt at prettiness inconceivable in the haughty and impulsivemaster of the Neapolitan school. 

Of the three great Spaniards, Ribera is the least sympathetic. He oftendisplays a tumultuous power and energy to which his calmer rivals arestrangers. But you miss in him that steady devotion to truth whichdistinguishes Velazquez, and that spiritual lift which ennobles Murillo. The difference, I conceive, lies in the moral character of the three. Ribera was a great artist, and the others were noble men. Ribera passeda youth of struggle and hunger and toil among the artists of Rome, --astranger and penniless in the magnificent city, --picking up crusts inthe street and sketching on quiet curbstones, with no friend, and noname but that of Spagnoletto, --the little Spaniard. Suddenly rising tofame, he broke loose from his Roman associations and fled to Naples, where he soon became the wealthiest and the most arrogant artist of histime. He held continually at his orders a faction of _bravi_ who drovefrom Naples, with threats and insults and violence, every artist ofeminence who dared visit the city. Car-racci and Guido only saved theirlives by flight, and the blameless and gifted Domenichino, it is said, was foully murdered by his order. It is not to such a heart as this thatis given the ineffable raptures of Murillo or the positive revelationsof Velazquez. These great souls were above cruelty or jealousy. Velazquez never knew the storms of adversity. Safely anchored in theroyal favor, he passed his uneventful life in the calm of his belovedwork. But his hand and home were always open to the struggling artistsof Spain. He was the benefactor of Alonzo Cano; and when Murillo came upto Madrid, weary and footsore with his long tramp from Andalusia, sustained by an innate consciousness of power, all on fire with apicture of Van Dyck he had seen in Seville, the rich and honored painterof the court received with generous kindness the shabby young wanderer, clothed him, and taught him, and watched with noble delight the firstflights of the young eagle whose strong wing was so soon to cleave theempyrean. And when Murillo went back to Seville he paid his debt bydoing as much for others. These magnanimous hearts were fit company forthe saints they drew. 

We have lingered so long with the native artists we shall have little tosay of the rest. There are ten fine Raphaels, but it is needless tospeak of them. They have been endlessly reproduced. Raphael is known andjudged by the world. After some centuries of discussion the scorners andthe critics are dumb. All men have learned the habit of Albani, who, ina frivolous and unappreciative age, always uncovered his head at thename of Raphael Sanzio. We look at his precious work with a mingledfeeling of gratitude for what we have, and of rebellious wonder thatlives like his and Shelley's should be extinguished in their gloriousdawn, while kings and country gentlemen live a hundred years. Whatboundless possibilities of bright achievement these two divine youthsowed us in the forty years more they should have lived! Raphael'sgreatest pictures in Madrid are the Spasimo di Sicilia, and the HolyFamily, called La Perla. The former has a singular history. It waspainted for a convent in Palermo, shipwrecked on the way, and thrownashore on the gulf of Genoa. It was again sent to Sicily, brought toSpain by the Viceroy of Naples, stolen by Napoleon, and in Paris wassubjected to a brilliantly successful operation for transferring thelayer of paint from the worm-eaten wood to canvas. It came back to Spainwith other stolen goods from the Louvre. La Perla was bought by PhilipIV. At the sale of Charles I. 's effects after his decapitation. Philipwas fond of Charles, but could not resist the temptation to profit byhis death. This picture was the richest of the booty. It is, of all thefaces of the Virgin extant, the most perfectly beautiful and one of theleast spiritual. 

There is another fine Madonna, commonly called La Virgen del Pez, from afish which young Tobit holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color, as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserteditself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman'sinevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible thatcritics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank ofRaphael's Virgins in Glory. There are none which can dispute that titlewith Our Lady of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural in beauty andmajesty. 

The school of Florence is represented by a charming Mona Lisa ofLeonardo da Vinci, almost identical with that of the Louvre; and sixadmirable pictures of Andrea del Sarto. But the one which most attractsand holds all those who regard the Faultless Painter with sympathy, andwho admiring his genius regret his errors, is a portrait of his wifeLucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer has said, is a doubleepigram. It was this capricious and wilful beauty who made poor Andreabreak his word and embezzle the money King Francis had given him tospend for works of art. Yet this dangerous face is his best excuse, --theface of a man-snarer, subtle and passionate and cruel in its blindselfishness, and yet so beautiful that any man might yield to it againstthe cry of his own warning conscience. Browning must have seen it beforehe wrote, in his pathetic poem, --

 "Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, You beautiful Lucrezia, that are mine!"

Nowhere, away from the Adriatic, is the Venetian school so richlyrepresented as in Madrid. Charles and Philip were the most munificentfriends and patrons of Titian, and the Royal Museum counts among itstreasures in consequence the enormous number of forty-three pictures bythe wonderful centenarian. Among these are two upon which he set greatvalue, --a Last Supper, which has unfortunately mouldered to ruin in thehumid refectory of the Escorial, equal in merit and destiny with that ofLeonardo; and the Gloria, or apotheosis of the imperial family, which, after the death of Charles, was brought from Yuste to the Escorial, andthence came to swell the treasures of the Museum. It is a grand andmasterly work. The vigorous genius of Titian has grappled with theessential difficulties of a subject that trembles on the balance ofridiculous and sublime, and has come out triumphant. The Father and theSon sit on high. The Operating Spirit hovers above them. The Virgin inrobes of azure stands in the blaze of the Presence. The celestial armyis ranged around. Below, a little lower than the angels, are Charles andPhilip with their wives, on their knees, with white cowls and claspedhands, --Charles in his premature age, with worn face and grizzled beard;and Philip in his youth of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and pinkeyelids, such as Titian painted him in the Adonis. The foreground isfilled with prophets and saints of the first dignity, and a kneelingwoman, whose face is not visible, but whose attitude and drapery aredrawn with the sinuous and undulating grace of that hand which could notfail. Every figure is turned to the enthroned Deity, touched withineffable light. The artist has painted heaven, and is not absurd. Inthat age of substantial faith such achievements were possible. 

There are two Venuses by Titian very like that of Dresden, but the headshave not the same dignity; and a Danae which is a replica of the Viennaone. His Salome bearing the Head of John the Baptist is one of thefinest impersonations of the pride of life conceivable. Sounapproachable are the soft lights and tones on the perfect arms andshoulders of the full-bodied maiden, that Tintoret one day exclaimed indespair before it, "That fellow paints with ground flesh. "

This gallery possesses one of the last works of Titian, --the Battle ofLepanto, which was fought when the artist was ninety-four years of age. It is a courtly allegory, --King Philip holds his little son in his arms, a courier angel brings the news of victory, and to the infant apalm-branch and the scroll _Majora tibi. _ Outside you see the smoke andflash of a naval battle, and a malignant and tur-baned Turk lies boundon the floor. It would seem incredible that this enormous canvas shouldhave been executed at such an age, did we not know that when the pestcut the mighty master off in his hundredth year he was busily at workupon a Descent from the Cross, which Palma the Elder finished on hisknees and dedicated to God: Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit Palmareverenter absolvit Deoque dicavit opus. 

The vast representation of Titian rather injures Veronese and Tintoret. Opposite the Gloria of Yuste hangs the sketch of that stupendousParadise of Tintoret, which we see in the Palace of the Doges, --thebiggest picture ever painted by mortal, thirty feet high andseventy-four long. 

The sketch was secured by Velazquez in his tour through Italy. The mostcharming picture of Veronese is a Venus and Adonis, which is finer thanthat of Titian, --a classic and most exquisite idyl of love and sleep, cool shadow and golden-sifted sunshine. His most considerable work inthe gallery is a Christ teaching the Doctors, magnificent inarrangement, severely correct in drawing, and of a most vivid anddramatic interest. 

We pass through a circular vaulted chamber to reach the Flemish rooms. There is a choice though scanty collection of the German and Frenchschools. Albert Durer has an Adam and Eve, and a priceless portrait ofhimself as perfectly preserved as if it were painted yesterday. He wearsa curious and picturesque costume, --striped black-and-white, --a gracefultasselled cap of the same. The picture is sufficiently like the statueat Nuremberg; a long South-German face, blue-eyed and thin, fair-whiskered, with that expression of quiet confidence you wouldexpect in the man who said one day, with admirable candor, when peoplewere praising a picture of his, "It could not be better done. " In thiscircular room are four great Claudes, two of which, Sunrise and Sunset, otherwise called the Embarcation of Sta. Paula, and Tobit and the Angel, are in his best and richest manner. It is inconceivable to us, whograduate men by a high-school standard, that these refined and mostelegant works could have been produced by a man so imperfectly educatedas Claude Lorrain. 

There remain the pictures of the Dutch and the Flemings. It is due tothe causes we have mentioned in the beginning that neither in Antwerpnor Dresden nor Paris is there such wealth and profusion of theNetherlands art as in this mountain-guarded corner of Western Europe. Ishall have but a word to say of these three vast rooms, for Rubens andVan Dyck and Teniers are known to every one. The first has here arepresentation so complete that if Europe were sunk by a cataclysm fromthe Baltic to the Pyrenees every essential characteristic of the greatFleming could still be studied in this gallery. With the exception ofhis Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral at Antwerp, painted in amoment of full inspiration that never comes twice in a life, everythinghe has done elsewhere may be matched in Madrid. His largest picture hereis an Adoration of the Kings, an overpowering exhibition of wastefulluxuriance of color and _fougue_ of composition. To the left the Virginstands leaning with queenly majesty over the effulgent Child. From thispoint the light flashes out over the kneeling magi, the gorgeouslyrobed attendants, the prodigality of velvet and jewels and gold, to fadeinto the lovely clear-obscure of a starry night peopled with dim camelsand cattle. On the extreme right is a most graceful and gallant portraitof the artist on horseback. We have another fine self-portraiture in theGarden of Love, --a group of lords and ladies in a delicious pleasancewhere the greatest seigneur is Peter Paul Rubens and the finest lady isHelen Forman. These true artists had to paint for money so many ignoblefaces that they could not be blamed for taking their revenge in paintingsometimes their own noble heads. Van Dyck never drew a profile sofaultless in manly beauty as his own which we see on the same canvaswith that of his friend the Earl of Bristol. Look at the two faces sideby side, and say whether God or the king can make the better nobleman. 

Among those mythological subjects in which Rubens delighted, the besthere are his Perseus and Andromeda, where the young hero comesgloriously in a brand-new suit of Milanese armor, while the lovelyprincess, in a costume that never grows old-fashioned, consisting ofsunshine and golden hair, awaits him and deliverance in beautifulresignation; a Judgment of Paris, the Three Graces, --both prodigies ofhis strawberries-and-cream color; and a curious suckling of Hercules, which is the prototype or adumbration of the ecstatic vision of St. Bernard. He has also a copy of Titian's Adam and Eve, in anout-of-the-way place downstairs, which should be hung beside theoriginal, to show the difference of handling of the two mastercolorists. 

Especially happy is this Museum in its Van Dycks. Besides thoseincomparable portraits of Lady Oxford, of Liberti the Organist ofAntwerp, and others better than the best of any other man, there are afew large and elaborate compositions such as I have never seenelsewhere. The principal one is the Capture of Christ by Night in theGarden of Gethsemane, which has all the strength of Rubens, with a morerefined study of attitudes and a greater delicacy of tone and touch. Another is the Crowning with Thorns, --although of less dimensions, ofprofound significance in expression, and a flowing and marrowy softnessof execution. You cannot survey the work of Van Dyck in this collection, so full of deep suggestion, showing an intellect so vivid and sorefined, a mastery of processes so thorough and so intelligent, withoutthe old wonder of what he would have done in that ripe age when Titianand Murillo and Shakespeare wrought their best and fullest, and the oldregret for the dead, --as Edgar Poe sings, the doubly dead in that theydied so young. We are tempted to lift the veil that hides the unknown, at least with the furtive hand of conjecture; to imagine a field ofunquenched activity where the early dead, free from the clogs andtrammels of the lower world, may follow out the impulses of theirdiviner nature, --where Andrea has no wife, and Raphael and Van Dyck nodisease, --where Keats and Shelley have all eternity for their loftyrhyme, --where Ellsworth and Koerner and the Lowell boys can turn theiralert and athletic intelligence to something better than war. 

A CASTLE IN THE AIR

I have sometimes thought that a symptom of the decay of true kinghood inmodern times is the love of monarchs for solitude. In the early dayswhen monarchy was a real power to answer a real want, the king had noneed to hide himself. He was the strongest, the most knowing, the mostcunning. He moved among men their acknowledged chief. He guided andcontrolled them. He never lost his dignity by daily use. He could steala horse like Diomede, he could mend his own breeches like Dagobert, andnever tarnish the lustre of the crown by it. But in later times thethrone has become an anachronism. The wearer of a crown has done nothingto gain it but give himself the trouble to be born. He has no claim tothe reverence or respect of men. Yet he insists upon it, and receivessome show of it. His life is mainly passed in keeping up this battle fora lost dignity and worship. He is given up to shams and ceremonies. 

To a life like this there is something embarrassing in the movement andactivity of a great city. The king cannot join in it without a loss ofprestige. Being outside of it, he is vexed and humiliated by it. Theempty forms become nauseous in the midst of this honest and wholesomereality of out-of-doors. 

Hence the necessity of these quiet retreats in the forests, in thewater-guarded islands, in the cloud-girdled mountains. Here the world isnot seen or heard. Here the king may live with such approach to natureas his false and deformed education will allow. He is surrounded bynothing but the world of servants and courtiers, and it requires littleeffort of the imagination to consider himself chief and lord. 

It was this spirit which in the decaying ripeness of the Bourbon dynastydrove the Louis from Paris to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly. Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity, andwhen it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly from timeto time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he had built an houraway. 

When Philip V. Came down from France to his splendid exile on the throneof Spain, he soon wearied of the interminable ceremonies of theCas-tilian court, and finding one day, while hunting, a pleasant farm onthe territory of the Segovian monks, flourishing in a wrinkle of theGuadarrama Mountains, he bought it, and reared the Palace of La Granja. It is only kings who can build their castles in the air of palpablestones and mortar. This lordly pleasure-house stands four thousand feetabove the sea level. On this commanding height, in this savage Alpineloneliness, in the midst of a scenery once wildly beautiful, but nowshorn and shaven into a smug likeness of a French garden, Philip passedall the later years of his gloomy and inglorious life. 

It has been ever since a most tempting summer-house to all the Bourbons. When the sun is calcining the plains of Castile, and the streets ofMadrid are white with the hot light of midsummer, this palace in theclouds is as cool and shadowy as spring twilights. And besides, as allpublic business is transacted in Madrid, and La Granja is a day'sjourney away, it is too much trouble to send a courier every day for theroyal signature, --or, rather, rubric, for royalty in Spain is abovehandwriting, and gives its majestic approval with a flourish of thepen, --so that everything waits a week or so, and much business goesfinally undone; and this is the highest triumph of Spanish industry andskill. 

We had some formal business with the court of the regent, and were notsorry to learn that his highness would not return to the capital forsome weeks, and that consequently, following the precedent of a certainprophet, we must go to the mountain. 

We found at the Estacion del Norte the state railway carriage of herlate majesty, --a brilliant creation of yellow satin and profuse gilding, a bovidoir on wheels, --not too full of a distinguished company. Some ofthe leading men of New Spain, one or two ministers, were there, and wepassed a pleasant two hours on the road in that most seductive of allhuman occupations, --talking politics. 

It is remarkable that whenever a nation is remodelling its internalstructure, the subject most generally discussed is the constitutionalsystem of the United States. The republicans usually adopt it solid. Themonarchists study it with a jealous interest. I fell into conversationwith Senor------, one of the best minds in Spain, an enlightened thoughconservative statesman. He said: "It is hard for Europe to adopt asettled belief about you. America is a land of wonders, ofcontradictions. One party calls your system freedom, another anarchy. Inall legislative assemblies of Europe, republicans and absolutists alikedraw arguments from America. But what cannot be denied are the effects, the results. These are evident, something vast and grandiose, a life andmovement to which the Old World is stranger. " He afterwards referredwith great interest to the imaginary imperialist movement in America, and raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity when I assured him therewas as much danger of Spain becoming Mohammedan as of America becomingimperialist. 

We stopped at the little station of Villalba, in the midst of the widebrown table-land that stretches from Madrid to the Escorial. At Villalbawe found the inevitable swarm of beggars, who always know by the sureinstinct of wretchedness where a harvest of cuartos is to be achieved. Ihave often passed Villalba and have seen nothing but the station-masterand the water-vender. But to-day, because there were a half dozenexcellencies on the train, the entire mendicant force of the districtwas on parade. They could not have known these gentlemen were coming;they must have scented pennies in the air. 

Awaiting us at the rear of the station were three enormous lumberingdiligences, each furnished with nine superb mules, --four pairs and aleader. They were loaded with gaudy trappings, and their shiny coats, and backs shorn into graceful arabesques, showed that they did notbelong to the working-classes, but enjoyed the gentlemanly leisure ofofficial station. The drivers wore a smart postilion uniform and theroyal crown on their caps. 

We threw some handfuls of copper and bronze among the picturesquemendicants. They gathered them up with grave Castilian decorum, andsaid, "God will repay your graces. " The postilions cracked their whips, the mules shook their bells gayly, the heavy wagons started off at afull gallop, and the beggars said, "May your graces go with God!"

It was the end of July, and the sky was blue and cloudless. The fine, soft light of the afternoon was falling on the tawny slopes and theclose-reaped fields. The harvest was over. In the fields on either sidethey were threshing their grain, not as in the outside world, with thewhirring of loud and swift machinery, nor even with the active andlively swinging of flails; but in the open air, under the warm sky, thecattle were lazily treading out the corn on the bare ground, to bewinnowed by the wandering wind. No change from the time of Solomon. Through an infinity of ages, ever since corn and cattle were, theIberian farmer in this very spot had driven his beasts over his crop, and never dreamed of a better way of doing the work. 

Not only does the Spaniard not seek for improvements, he utterlydespises and rejects them. The poorer classes especially, who wouldfind an enormous advantage in increased production, lightening theirhard lot by a greater plenty of the means of life, regard everyintroduction of improved machinery as a blow at the rights of labor. When many years ago a Dutch vintner went to Valdepenas and so greatlyimproved the manufacture of that excellent but ill-made wine that itsprice immediately rose in the Madrid market, he was mobbed and plunderedby his ignorant neighbors, because, as they said, he was laboring tomake wine dearer. In every attempt which has been made to manufactureimproved machinery in Spain, the greatest care has to be taken toprevent the workmen from maliciously damaging the works, which theyimagine are to take the bread from the mouths of their children. 

So strong is this feeling in every department of national life, that themayoral who drove our spanking nine-in-hand received with very ill humorour suggestion that the time could be greatly shortened by a Fellrailroad over the hills to La Granja. "What would become of nosotros?"he asked. And it really would seem a pity to annihilate so muchpicturesqueness and color at the bidding of mere utility. A gaylyembroidered Andalusian jacket, bright scarlet silk waistcoat, --a richwide belt, into which his long knife, the navaja, was jauntilythrust, --buckskin breeches, with Valentian stockings, which, as they areopen at the bottom, have been aptly likened to a Spaniard's purse, --andshoes made of Murcian matting, composed his natty outfit. By his side onthe box sat the zagal, his assistant, whose especial function seemed tobe to swear at the cattle. I have heard some eloquent imprecation in myday. "Our army swore terribly" at Hilton Head. The objuration of theboatmen of the Mississippi is very vigorous and racy. But I have neverassisted at a session of profanity so loud, so energetic, so original asthat with which this Castilian postilion regaled us. The wonderfulconsistency and perseverance with which the role was sustained wasworthy of a much better cause. 

He began by yelling in a coarse, strident voice, "Arre! arre!" (Get up!)with a vicious emphasis on the final syllable. This is one of theMoorish words that have remained fixed like fossils in the language ofthe conquerors. Its constant use in the mouths of muleteers has giventhem the name of arrieros. This general admonition being addressed tothe team at large, the zagal descended to details, and proceeded tovilipend the galloping beasts separately, beginning with the leader. Heinformed him, still in this wild, jerking scream, that he was a dog, that his mother's character was far from that of Caesar's wife, and thatif more speed was not exhibited on this down grade, he would be forcedto resort to extreme measures. At the mention of a whip, the tall malemule who led the team dashed gallantly off, and the diligence was soonenveloped in a cloud of dust. This seemed to excite our gay charioteerto the highest degree. He screamed lustily at his mules, addressing eachpersonally by its name. "Andaluza, arre! Thou of Arragon, go! Beware thescourge, Manchega!" and every animal acknowledged the special attentionby shaking its ears and bells and whisking its shaven tail, as thediligence rolled furiously over the dull drab plain. 

For three hours the iron lungs of the muleteer knew no rest or pause. Several times in the journey we stopped at a post-station to change ourcattle, but the same brazen throat sufficed for all the threatening andencouragement that kept them at the top of their speed. Before wearrived at our journey's end, however, he was hoarse as a raven, andkept one hand pressed to his jaw to reinforce the exhausted muscles ofspeech. 

When the wide and dusty plain was passed, we began by a slow and windingascent the passage of the Guadarrama. The road is an excellent one, andalthough so seldom used, --a few months only in the year, --it is kept inthe most perfect repair. It is exclusively a summer road, being in thewinter impassable with snow. It affords at every turn the most charmingcompositions of mountain and wooded valley. At intervals we passed amounted guardia civil, who sat as motionless in his saddle as anequestrian statue, and saluted as the coaches rattled by. And once ortwice in a quiet nook by the roadside we came upon the lonely cross thatmarked the spot where a man had been murdered. 

It was nearly sunset when we arrived at the summit of the pass. Wehalted to ask for a glass of water at the hut of a gray-haired woman onthe mountain-top. It was given and received as always in this piouscountry, in the name of God. As we descended, the mules seemed to havegained new vigor from the prospect of an easy stretch of _facilisdescensus, _ and the zagal employed what was left of his voice inprovoking them to speed by insulting remarks upon their lineage. Thequick twilight fell as we entered a vast forest of pines that clothedthe mountain-side. The enormous trees looked in the dim evening lightlike the forms of the Anakim, maimed with lightning but still defyingheaven. Years of battle with the mountain winds had twisted them intoevery conceivable shape of writhing and distorted deformity. I never sawtrees that so nearly conveyed the idea of being the visible prison oftortured dryads. Their trunks, white and glistening with oozing resin, added to the ghostly impression they created in the uncertain andfailing light. 

We reached the valley and rattled by a sleepy village, where we weregreeted by a chorus of outraged curs whose beauty-sleep we haddisturbed, and then began the slow ascent of the hill where St. Ildefonso stands. We had not gone far when we heard a pattering of hoofsand a ringing of sabres coming down the road to meet us. The diligencestopped, and the Introducer of Ambassadors jumped to the ground andannounced, "El Regente del Reino!" It was the regent, the courteous andamiable Marshal Serrano, who had ridden out from the palace to welcomehis guests, and who, after hasty salutations, galloped back to LaGranja, where we soon arrived. 

We were assigned the apartments usually given to the papal nuncio, andslept with an episcopal peace of mind. In the morning, as we werewalking about the gardens, we saw looking from the palace window one ofthe most accomplished gentlemen and diplomatists of the new regime. Hedescended and did the honors of the place. The system of gardens andfountains is enormous. It is evidently modelled upon Versailles, but thecopy is in many respects finer than the original. The peculiarity of thesite, while offering great difficulties, at the same time enhances thetriumph of success. This is a garden taught to bloom upon a barrenmountain-side. The earth in which these trees are planted was broughtfrom those dim plains in the distance on the backs of men and mules. Thepipes that supply these innumerable fountains were laid on the barerocks and the soil was thrown over them. Every tree was guarded andwatched like a baby. There was probably never a garden that grew undersuch circumstances, --but the result is superb. The fountains are fed bya vast reservoir in the mountain, and the water they throw into thebright air is as clear as morning dew. Every alley and avenue is a vistathat ends in a vast picture of shaggy hills or far-off plains, --whilebehind the royal gardens towers the lordly peak of the Penalara, thrusteight thousand feet into the thin blue ether. 

The palace has its share of history. It witnessed the abdication of theuxorious bigot Philip V. In 1724, and his resumption of the crown thenext year at the instance of his proud and turbulent Parmesan wife. Hisbones rest in the church here, as he hated the Austrian line toointensely to share with them the gorgeous crypt of the Escorial. Hiswife, Elizabeth Farnese, lies under the same gravestone with him, as ifunwilling to forego even in death that tremendous influence which hervigorous vitality had always exercised over his wavering and sensualnature. "Das Ewig-Weibliche" masters and guides him still. 

This retreat in the autumn of 1832 was the scene of a prodigiousexhibition of courage and energy on the part of another Italian woman, Dona Louisa Carlota de Borbon. Ferdinand VIL, his mind weakened byillness, and influenced by his ministers, had proclaimed his brother DonCarlos heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own infant daughter. His wife, Queen Christine, broken down by the long conflict, had givenway in despair. But her sister, Dona Louisa Carlota, heard of the newsin the south of Spain, and, leaving her babies at _Cadiz_ (two littleurchins, one of whom was to be king consort, and the other was to fallby his cousin Montpensier's hand in the field of Carabanchel), sheposted without a moment's pause for rest or sleep over mountains andplains from the sea to La Granja. She fought with the lackeys and theministers twenty-four hours before she could see her sister the queen. Having breathed into Christine her own invincible spirit, theysucceeded, after endless pains, in reaching the king. Obstinate as theweak often are, he refused at first to listen to them; but by theirwomanly wiles, their Italian policy, their magnetic force, they at lastbrought him to revoke his decree in favor of Don Carlos and to recognizethe right of his daughter to the crown. Then, terrible in her triumph, Dona Louisa Carlota sent for the Minister Calomarde, overwhelmed himwith the coarsest and most furious abuse, and, unable to confine hervictorious rage and hate to words alone, she slapped the astoundedminister in the face. Calomarde, trembling with rage, bowed and said, "Awhite hand cannot offend. "

There is nothing stronger than a woman's weakness, or weaker than awoman's strength. 

A few years later, when Ferdinand was in his grave, and the baby Isabelreigned under the regency of Christine, a movement in favor of theconstitution of 1812 burst out, where revolutions generally do, in thesouth, and spread rapidly over the contiguous provinces. The infectiongained the troops of the royal guard at La Granja, and they surroundedthe palace bawling for the constitution. The regentess, with a proudreliance upon her own power, ordered them to send a deputation to herapartment. A dozen of the mutineers came in, and demanded theconstitution. 

"What is that?" asked the queen. 

They looked at each other and cudgelled their brains. They had neverthought of that before. 

"Caramba!" said they. "We don't know. They say it is a good thing, andwill raise our pay and make salt cheaper. "

Their political economy was somewhat flimsy, but they had the bayonets, and the queen was compelled to give way and proclaim the constitution. 

I must add one trifling reminiscence more of La Granja, which has alsoits little moral. A friend of mine, a colonel of engineers, in thesummer before the revolution, was standing before the palace with someofficers, when a mean-looking cur ran past. 

"What an ugly dog!" said the colonel. 

"Hush!" replied another, with an awe-struck face. "That is the dog ofhis royal highness the Prince of Asturias. "

The colonel unfortunately had a logical mind, and failed to see thatownership had any bearing on a purely aesthetic question. He defined hisposition. "I do not think the dog is ugly because he belongs to theprince. I only mean the prince has an ugly dog. "

The window just above them slammed, and another officer came up and saidthat the Adversary was to pay. "THE QUEEN was at the window and heardevery word you said. "

An hour after the colonel received an order from the commandant of theplace, revoking his leave of absence and ordering him to duty in Madrid. It is not very surprising that this officer was at the Bridge ofAlcolea. 

At noon the day grew dark with clouds, and the black storm-wreath camedown over the mountains. A terrific fire of artillery resounded for ahalf-hour in the craggy peaks about us, and a driving shower passed overpalace and gardens. Then the sun came out again, the pleasure-groundswere fresher and greener than ever, and the visitors thronged in thecourt of the palace to see the fountains in play. The regent led the wayon foot. The general followed in a pony phaeton, and ministers, adjutants, and the population of the district trooped along in aparty-colored mass. 

It was a good afternoon's work to visit all the fountains. They aretwenty-six in number, strewn over the undulating grounds. People whovisit Paris usually consider a day of Grandes Eaux at Versailles thelast word of this species of costly trifling. But the waters atVersailles bear no comparison with those of La Granja. The sense isfatigued and bewildered here with their magnificence and infinitevariety. The vast reservoir in the bosom of the mountain, filled withthe purest water, gives a possibility of more superb effects than havebeen attained anywhere else in the world. The Fountain of the Winds isone, where a vast mass of water springs into the air from the foot of agreat cavernous rock; there is a succession of exquisite cascades calledthe Race-Course, filled with graceful statuary; a colossal group ofApollo slaying the Python, who in his death agony bleeds a torrent ofwater; the Basket of Flowers, which throws up a system of forty jets;the great single jet called Fame, which leaps one hundred and thirtyfeet into the air, a Niagara reversed; and the crowning glory of thegarden, the Baths of Diana, an immense stage scene in marble and bronze, crowded with nymphs and hunting-parties, wild beasts and birds, andeverywhere the wildest luxuriance of spouting waters. We were told thatit was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant of the palace toemulate her chaste prototype of the silver bow by choosing this artisticbasin for her ablutions, a sufficient number of civil guards beingposted to prevent the approach of Castilian Actaeons. Ford aptly remarksof these extravagant follies: "The yoke of building kings is grievous, and especially when, as St. Simon said of Louis XIV. And his Versailles, 'II se plut a tyranniser la nature. '"

As the bilious Philip paused before this mass of sculpturedextravagance, he looked at it a moment with evident pleasure. Then hethought of the bill, and whined, "Thou hast amused me three minutes andhast cost me three millions. "

To do Philip justice, he did not allow the bills to trouble him much. Hedied owing forty-five million piastres, which his dutiful son refused topay. When you deal with Bourbons, it is well to remember the Spanishproverb, "A sparrow in the hand is better than a bustard on the wing. "

We wasted an hour in walking through the palace. It is, like allpalaces, too fine and dreary to describe. Miles of drawing-rooms andboudoirs, with an infinity of tapestry and gilt chairs, all theapartments haunted by the demon of ennui. All idea of comfort issacrificed to costly glitter and flimsy magnificence. Some finepaintings were pining in exile on the desolate walls. They lookedhomesick for the Museum, where they could be seen of men. 

The next morning we drove down the mountain and over the rolling plainto the fine old city of Segovia. In point of antiquity and historicinterest it is inferior to no town in Spain. It has lost its ancientimportance as a seat of government and a mart of commerce. Itspopulation is now not more than eleven thousand. Its manufactures havegone to decay. Its woollen works, which once employed fourteen thousandpersons and produced annually twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth, nowsustain a sickly existence and turn out not more than two hundred piecesyearly. Its mint, which once spread over Spain a Danaean shower ofounces and dollars, is now reduced to the humble office of strikingcopper cuartos. More than two centuries ago this decline began. Boisel, who was there in 1669, speaks of the city as "presque desert et fortpauvre. " He mentions as a mark of the general unthrift that the day hearrived there was no bread in town until two o'clock in the afternoon, "and no one was astonished at it. "

Yet even in its poverty and rags it has the air of a town that has seenbetter days. Tradition says it was founded by Hercules. It was animportant city of the Roman Empire, and a great capital in the days ofthe Arab monarchy. It was the court of the star-gazing King Alonso theWise. Through a dozen centuries it was the flower of the mountains ofCastile. Each succeeding age and race beautified and embellished it, andeach, departing, left the trace of its passage in the abiding granite ofits monuments. The Romans left the glorious aqueduct, that work ofdemigods who scorned to mention it in their histories; its mediaevalbishops bequeathed to later times their ideas of ecclesiasticalarchitecture; and the Arabs the science of fortification and theindustrial arts. 

Its very ruin and decay makes it only more precious to the traveller. There are here none of the modern and commonplace evidences of life andactivity that shock the artistic sense in other towns. All is old, moribund, and picturesque. It lies here in the heart of the Guadarramas, lost and forgotten by the civilization of the age, muttering in itssenile dream of the glories of an older world. It has not vitalityenough to attract a railroad, and so is only reached by a long andtiresome journey by diligence. Its solitude is rarely intruded upon bythe impertinent curious, and the red back of Murray is a rare apparitionin its winding streets. 

Yet those who come are richly repaid. One does not quickly forget theimpression produced by the first view of the vast aqueduct, as you driveinto the town from La Granja. It comes upon you in an instant, --the twogreat ranges of superimposed arches, over one hundred feet high, spanning the ravine-like suburb from the outer hills to the Alcazar. Youraise your eyes from the market-place, with its dickering crowd, fromthe old and squalid houses clustered like shot rubbish at the foot ofthe chasm, to this grand and soaring wonder of utilitarian architecture, with something of a fancy that it was never made, that it has stoodthere since the morning of the world. It has the lightness and thestrength, the absence of ornament and the essential beauty, the vastnessand the perfection, of a work of nature. 

It is one of those gigantic works of Trajan, so common in thatmagnificent age that Roman authors do not allude to it. It was built tobring the cool mountain water of the Sierra Fonfria a distance of ninemiles through the hills, the gulches, and the pine forests of Valsain, and over the open plain to the thirsty city of Segovia. The aqueductproper runs from the old tower of Caseron three thousand feet to thereservoir where the water deposits its sand and sediment, and thencebegins the series of one hundred and nineteen arches, which traversethree thousand feet more and pass the valley, the arrabal, and reach thecitadel. It is composed of great blocks of granite, so perfectly framedand fitted that not a particle of mortar or cement is employed in theconstruction. 

The wonder of the work is not so much in its vastness or its beauty asin its tremendous solidity and duration. A portion of it had been cutaway by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, and in the reignof Isabella the Catholic the monk-architect of the Parral, JuanEscovedo, the greatest builder of his day in Spain, repaired it. Theserepairs have themselves twice needed repairing since then. Marshal Ney, when he came to this portion of the monument, exclaimed, "Here beginsthe work of men's hands. "

The true Segovian would hoot at you if you assigned any mortal paternityto the aqueduct. He calls it the Devil's Bridge, and tells you thisstory. The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the upper town, and full of protestations of devotion. The fair Segovian listened to himone evening, when her plump arms ached with the work of bringing waterfrom the ravine, and promised eyes of favor if his Infernal Majestywould build an aqueduct to her door before morning. He worked all night, like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, sawhim putting the last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sunlighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decidedthat he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from herpromise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out ofhis sight again. 

The bartizaned keep of the Moorish Alcazar is perched on the westernpromontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams Eresma andClamores. It has been in the changes of the warring times a palace, afortress, a prison (where our friend--everybody's friend--Gil Blas wasonce confined), and of late years a college of artillery. In one of itsrooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for hisorthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once droppeda royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara willseem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "LaFavorita, " who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathlessmusic of Donizetti. 

Driving through a throng of beggars that encumbered the carriage wheelsas grasshoppers sometimes do the locomotives on a Western railway, wecame to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by Gil de Ontanon, father andson, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a delight to theeyes; the rich harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry ofproportion, the profuse opulence and grave finish of the details. It wasbuilt in that happy era of architecture when a builder of taste andculture had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, and beforethe degrading influence of the Jesuits appeared in the churches ofEurope. Within the Cathedral is remarkably airy and graceful in effect. A most judicious use has been made of the exquisite salmon-coloredmarbles of the country in the great altar and the pavement. 

We were met by civil ecclesiastics of the foundation and shown thebeauties and the wonders of the place. Among much that is worthless, there is one very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de Juni, ofwhich that excellent Mr. Madoz says "it is worthy to rank with the bestmasterpieces of Raphael or--Mengs;" as if one should say of a poet thathe was equal to Shakespeare or Southey. 

We walked through the cloisters and looked at the tombs. A flood of warmlight poured through the graceful arches and lit up the trees in thegarden and set the birds to singing, and made these cloisters pleasanterto remember than they usually are. Our attendant priest told us, with anearnest credulity that was very touching, the story of Maria del Salto, Mary of the Leap, whose history was staring at us from the wall. She wasa Jewish lady, whose husband had doubts of her discretion, and so threwher from a local Tarpeian rock. As she fell she invoked the Virgin, andcame down easily, sustained, as you see in the picture, by her faith andher petticoats. 

As we parted from the good fathers and entered our carriages at the doorof the church, the swarm of mendicants had become an army. The word haddoubtless gone through the city of the outlandish men who had gone intothe Cathedral with whole coats, and the result was a _levee en masse_ ofthe needy. Every coin that was thrown to them but increased the clamor, as it confirmed them in their idea of the boundless wealth andmunificence of the givers. We recalled the profound thought of Emerson, "If the rich were only as rich as the poor think them!"

At last we drove desperately away through the ragged and screamingthrong. We passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of theParral, which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later yearshas been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined churches;past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with its round-archedcloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence the Bishop of Segovia, and the elegant tower of St. Esteban, where the Roman is dying and theGothic is dawning; and every step of the route is a study and a joy tothe antiquarian. 

But though enriched by all these legacies of an immemorial past, thereseems no hope, no future for Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of thePlain. Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay company is gone. Its streets are too large for the population, and yet they swarm withbeggars. I had often heard it compared in outline to a ship, --thesunrise astern and the prow pointing westward, --and as we drove awaythat day and I looked back to the receding town, it seemed to me like agrand hulk of some richly laden galleon, aground on the rock that holdsit, alone, abandoned to its fate among the barren billows of thetumbling ridges, its crew tired out with struggling and apathetic indespair, mocked by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that evershone, and gazing always forward to the new world and the new timeshidden in the rosy sunset, which they shall never see. 

THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS

Emilio Castelar said to me one day, "Toledo is the most remarkable cityin Spain. You will find there three strata of glories, --Gothic, Arab, and Castilian, --and an upper crust of beggars and silence. "

I went there in the pleasantest time of the year, the first days ofJune. The early harvest was in progress, and the sunny road ran throughgolden fields which were enlivened by the reapers gathering in theirgrain with shining sickles. The borders of the Tagus were so cool andfresh that it was hard to believe one was in the arid land of Castile. From Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes of dun hillocksand pale-blue vegetation, such as are only seen in nature in CentralSpain, and only seen in art on the matchless canvas of Velazquez. Butfrom the time you cross the tawny flood of the Tagus just north ofAranjuez, the valley is gladdened by its waters all the way to thePrimate City. 

I am glad I am not writing a guide-book, and do not feel anyresponsibility resting upon me of advising the gentle reader to stop atAranjuez or to go by on the other side. There is a most amiable andpraiseworthy class of travellers who feel a certain moral necessityimpelling them to visit every royal abode within their reach. Theyalways see precisely the same things, --some thousand of gilt chairs, some faded tapestry and marvellous satin upholstery, a room inporcelain, and a room in imitation of some other room somewhere else, and a picture or two by that worthy and tedious young man, RaphaelMengs. I knew I would see all these things at Aranjuez, and so contentedmyself with admiring its pretty site, its stone-cornered brick facade, its high-shouldered French roof, and its general air of the PlaceRoyale, from the outside. The gardens are very pleasant, and lonelyenough for the most philosophic stroller. A clever Spanish writer saysof them, "They are sombre as the thoughts of Philip II. , mysterious andgallant as the pleasures of Philip IV. " To a revolutionary mind, it is acertain pleasure to remember that this was the scene of the _emeute_that drove Charles IV. From his throne, and the Prince of Peace from hisqueen's boudoir. Ferdinand VII. , the turbulent and restless Prince ofAsturias, reaped the immediate profit of his father's abdication; butthe two worthless creatures soon called in Napoleon to decide thesquabble, which he did in his leonine way by taking the crown away fromboth of them and handing it over for safe-keeping to his lieutenantbrother Joseph. Honor among thieves!--a silly proverb, as one readilysees if he falls into their hands, or reads the history of kings. 

If Toledo had been built, by some caprice of enlightened power, especially for a show city, it could not be finer in effect. In detail, it is one vast museum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills, with its long lines of palaces and convents terraced around the rockyslope, and on the height the soaring steeples of a swarm of churchespiercing the blue, and the huge cube of the Alcazar crowning the topmostcrest, and domineering the scene. The magnificent zigzag road whichleads up the steep hillside from the bridge of Alcantara gives anindefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of some fortress ofimpossible extent. 

This road is new, and in perfect condition. But do not imagine you canjudge the city by the approaches. When your carriage has mounted thehill and passed the evening promenade of the To-ledans, the quainttriangular Place, --I had nearly called it Square, --"waking laughter inindolent reviewers, " the Zocodover, you are lost in the dae-dalianwindings of the true streets of Toledo, where you can touch the walls oneither side, and where two carriages could no more pass each other thantwo locomotives could salute and go by on the same track. Thisinteresting experiment, which is so common in our favored land, couldnever be tried in Toledo, as I believe there is only one turnout in thecity, a minute omnibus with striped linen hangings at the sides, drivenby a young Castilian whose love of money is the root of much discussionwhen you pay his bill. It is a most remarkable establishment. The horsescan cheerfully do their mile in fifteen or twenty minutes, but they makemore row about it than a high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and thecrazy little trap is noisier in proportion to its size than anything Ihave ever seen, except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make anexcursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable;let it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the better, for every door is a study. 

It is hard to conceive that this was once a great capital with apopulation of two hundred thousand souls. You can easily walk from oneend of the city to the other in less than half an hour, and the housesthat remain seem comfortably filled by eighteen thousand inhabitants. But in this narrow space once swarmed that enormous and busy multitude. The city was walled about by powerful stone ramparts, which yet stand inall their massy perfection. So there could have been no suburbs. Thisgreat aggregation of humanity lived and toiled on the crests and in thewrinkles of the seven hills we see to-day. How important were theindustries of the earlier days we can guess from the single fact thatJohn of Padilla, when he rose in defence of municipal liberty in thetime of Charles V. , drew in one day from the teeming workshops twentythousand fighting men. He met the usual fate of all Spanish patriots, shameful and cruel death. His palace was razed to the ground. Successivegovernments, in shifting fever-fits of liberalism and absolutism, haveset up and pulled down his statue. But his memory is loved and honored, and the example of this noblest of the comuneros impresses powerfullyto-day the ardent young minds of the new Spain. 

Your first walk is of course to the Cathedral, the Primate Church of thekingdom. Besides its ecclesiastical importance, it is well worthy ofnotice in itself. It is one of the purest specimens of Gothicarchitecture in existence, and is kept in an admirable state ofpreservation. Its situation is not the most favorable. It is approachedby a network of descending streets, all narrow and winding, as streetswere always built under the intelligent rule of the Moors. Theypreferred to be cool in summer and sheltered in winter, rather than tolay out great deserts of boulevards, the haunts of sunstroke andpneumonia. The site of the Cathedral was chosen from strategic reasonsby St. Eugene, who built there his first Episcopal Church. The Moorsmade a mosque of it when they conquered Castile, and the fastidiouspiety of St. Ferdinand would not permit him to worship in a shrine thusprofaned. He tore down the old church and laid, in 1227, thefoundations of this magnificent structure, which was two centuries afterhis death in building. There is, however, great unity of purpose andexecution in this Cathedral, due doubtless to the fact that thearchitect Perez gave fifty years of his long life to the superintendenceof the early work. Inside and outside it is marked by a grave andharmonious majesty. The great western facade is enriched with threesplendid portals, --the side ones called the doors of Hell and Judgment;and the central a beautiful ogival arch divided into two smaller ones, and adorned with a lavish profusion of delicately sculptured figures ofsaints and prophets; on the chaste and severe cornice above, a group ofspirited busts represents the Last Supper. There are five other doors tothe temple, of which the door of the Lions is the finest, and justbeside it a heavy Ionic portico in the most detestable taste indicatesthe feeling and culture that survived in the reign of Charles IV. 

To the north of the west facade rises the massive tower. It is not amongthe tallest in the world, being three hundred and twenty-four feet high, but is very symmetrical and impressive. In the preservation of itspyramidal purpose it is scarcely inferior to that most consummate work, the tower of St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of threesuperimposed structures, gradually diminishing in solidity andmassiveness from the square base to the high-springing octagonal spire, garlanded with thorny crowns. It is balanced at the south end of thefacade by the pretty cupola and lantern of the Mozarabic Chapel, thework of the Greek Theotocopouli. 

But we soon grow tired of the hot glare of June, and pass in a momentinto the cool twilight vastness of the interior, refreshing to body andsoul. Five fine naves, with eighty-four pillars formed each of sixteengraceful columns, --the entire edifice measuring four hundred feet inlength and two hundred feet in breadth, --a grand and shadowy templegrove of marble and granite. At all times the light is of an unearthlysoftness and purity, toned by the exquisite windows and rosaces. But asevening draws on, you should linger till the sacristan grows peremptory, to watch the gorgeous glow of the western sunlight on the blazing rosesof the portals, and the marvellous play of rich shadows and faint graylights in the eastern chapels, where the grand aisles sweep in theirperfect curves around the high altar. A singular effect is here createdby the gilded organ pipes thrust out horizontally from the choir. Whenthe powerful choral anthems of the church peal out over the kneelingmultitude, it requires little fancy to imagine them the golden trumpetsof concealed archangels, who would be quite at home in that incomparablechoir. 

If one should speak of all the noteworthy things you meet in thisCathedral, he would find himself in danger of following in the footstepsof Mr. Parro, who wrote a handbook of Toledo, in which seven hundred andforty-five pages are devoted to a hasty sketch of the basilica. For fivehundred years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have worked togetherand in rivalry to beautify this spot. The boundless riches of the Churchand the boundless superstition of the laity have left their traces herein every generation in forms of magnificence and beauty. Each of thechapels--and there are twenty-one of them--is a separate masterpiece inits way. The finest are those of Santiago and St. Ildefonso, --the formerbuilt by the famous Constable Alvaro de Luna as a burial-place forhimself and family, and where he and his wife lie in storied marble; andthe other commemorating that celebrated visit of the Virgin to thebishop, which is the favorite theme of the artists and ecclesiasticalgossips of Spain. 

There was probably never a morning call which gave rise to so much talk. It was not the first time the Virgin had come to Toledo. This was alwaysa favorite excursion of hers. She had come from time to time, escortedby St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. But on the morning in question, which was not long after Bishop Ildefonso had written his clevertreatise, "De Virginitate Stae Mariae, " the Queen of Heaven came down tomatin prayers, and, taking the bishop's seat, listened to the sermonwith great edification. After service she presented him with a nice newchasuble, as his own was getting rather shabby, made of "cloth ofheaven, " in token of her appreciation of his spirited pamphlet in herdefence. This chasuble still exists in a chest in Asturias. If you openthe chest, you will not see it; but this only proves the truth of themiracle, for the chroniclers say the sacred vestment is invisible tomortal eyes. 

But we have another and more palpable proof of the truth of the history. The slab of marble on which the feet of the celestial visitor alightedis still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel built on the veryspot where the avatar took place. The slab is enclosed in red jasper andguarded by an iron grating, and above it these words of the Psalmist areengraved in the stone, _Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus. _

This story is cut in marble and carved in wood and drawn upon brass andpainted upon canvas, in a thousand shapes and forms all over Spain. Yousee in the Museum at Madrid a picture by Murillo devoted to this idlefancy of a cunning or dreaming priest. The subject was unworthy of thepainter, and the result is what might have been expected, --a picture oftrivial and mundane beauty, without the least suggestion ofspirituality. 

But there can be no doubt of the serious, solemn earnestness with whichthe worthy Castilians from that day to this believe the romance. Theycame up in groups and families, touching their fingers to the sacredslab and kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A fatherwould take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated fingeraround among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to thegrating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frailand so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of themediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that prettywhite-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and pulling out ablessing. 

A few feet from this worship-worn stone, a circle drawn on one of themarble flags marks the spot where Santa Leocadia also appeared to thissame favored Ildefonso and made her compliments on his pamphlet. Wasever author so happy in his subject and his gentle readers? The goodbishop evidently thought the story of this second apparition might beconsidered rather a heavy draught on the credulity of his flock, so hewhipped out a convenient knife and cut off a piece of her saint-ship'sveil, which clinched the narrative and struck doubters dumb. That greatking and crazy relic-hunter, Philip II. , saw this rag in his time withprofound emotion, --this tiger heart, who could order the murder of athousand innocent beings without a pang. 

There is another chapel in this Cathedral which preaches forever itssilent condemnation of Spanish bigotry to deaf ears. This is theMozarabic Chapel, sacred to the celebration of the early Christian riteof Spain. During the three centuries of Moorish domination theenlightened and magnanimous conquerors guaranteed to those Christianswho remained within their lines the free exercise of all their rights, including perfect freedom of worship. So that side by side the mosqueand the church worshipped God each in its own way without fear or wrong. But when Alonso VI. Recaptured the city in the eleventh century, hewished to establish uniformity of worship, and forbade the use of theancient liturgy in Toledo. That which the heathen had respected theCatholic outraged. The great Cardinal Ximenez restored the primitiverite and devoted this charming chapel to its service. How ill a returnwas made for Moorish tolerance we see in the infernal treatment theyafterwards received from king and Church. They made them choose betweenconversion and death. They embraced Christianity to save their lives. Then the priests said, "Perhaps this conversion is not genuine! Let ussend the heathen away out of our sight. " One million of the bestcitizens of Spain were thus torn from their homes and landed starving onthe wild African coast. And Te Deums were sung in the churches for thistriumph of Catholic unity. From that hour Spain has never prospered. Itseems as if she were lying ever since under the curse of these breakinghearts. 

Passing by a world of artistic beauties which never tire the eyes, butsoon would tire the chronicler and reader, stepping over the broadbronze slab in the floor which covers the dust of the haughty primatePorto Carrero, but which bears neither name nor date, only thisinscription of arrogant humility, HIC JACET PULVIS CINIS ET NIHIL, wewalk into the verdurous and cheerful Gothic cloisters. They occupy thesite of the ancient Jewish markets, and the zealous prelate Tenorio, cousin to the great lady's man Don Juan, could think of no better way ofacquiring the ground than that of stirring up the mob to burn the housesof the heretics. A fresco that adorns the gate explains the meansemployed, adding insult to the old injury. It is a picture of abeautiful child hanging upon a cross; a fiendish-looking Jew, on aladder beside him, holds in his hand the child's heart, which he hasjust taken from his bleeding breast; he holds the dripping knife in histeeth. This brutal myth was used for centuries with great effect by thepriesthood upon the mob whenever they wanted a Jew's money or his blood. Even to-day the old poison has not lost its power. This very morning Iheard under my window loud and shrill voices. I looked out and saw agroup of brown and ragged women, with babies in their arms, discussingthe news from Madrid. The Protestants, they said, had begun to stealCatholic children. They talked themselves into a fury. Their elf-lockshung about their fierce black eyes. The sinews of their lean necksworked tensely in their voluble rage. Had they seen our mild missionaryat that moment, whom all men respect and all children instinctivelylove, they would have torn him in pieces in their Maenad fury, and wouldhave thought they were doing their duty as mothers and Catholics. 

This absurd and devilish charge was seriously made in a Madrid journal, the organ of the Moderates, and caused great fermentation for severaldays, street rows, and debates in the Cortes, before the excitement diedaway. Last summer, in the old Murcian town of Lorca, an Englishgentleman, who had been several weeks in the place, was attacked andnearly killed by a mob, who insisted that he was engaged in the businessof stealing children, and using their spinal marrow for lubricatingtelegraph wires! What a picture of blind and savage ignorance is herepresented! It reminds us of that sad and pitiful "blood-bath revolt" ofParis, where the wretched mob rose against the wretched tyrant LouisXV. , accusing him of bathing in the blood of children to restore his ownwasted and corrupted energies. 

Toledo is a city where you should eschew guides and trust implicitly tochance in your wanderings. You can never be lost; the town is so smallthat a short walk always brings you to the river or the wall, and thereyou can take a new departure. If you do not know where you are going, you have every moment the delight of some unforeseen pleasure. There isnot a street in Toledo that is not rich in treasures ofarchitecture, --hovels that once were marvels of building, balconies ofcuriously wrought iron, great doors with sculptured posts and lintels, with gracefully finished hinges, and studded with huge nails whosefanciful heads are as large as billiard balls. Some of these are stillhandsome residences, but most have fallen into neglect and abandonment. You may find a beggar installed in the ruined palace of a Moorishprince, a cobbler at work in the pleasure-house of a Castilianconqueror. The graceful carvings are mutilated and destroyed, thedelicate arabesques are smothered and hidden under a triple coat ofwhitewash. The most beautiful Moorish house in the city, the so-calledTaller del Moro, where the grim governor of Huesca invited four hundredinfluential gentlemen of the province to a political dinner, and cut offall their heads as they entered (if we may believe the chronicle, whichwe do not), is now empty and rapidly going to ruin. The exquisitepanelling of the walls, the endlessly varied stucco work that seems tohave been wrought by the deft fingers of ingenious fairies, isshockingly broken and marred. Gigantic cacti look into the windows fromthe outer court. A gay pomegranate-tree flings its scarlet blossoms inon the ruined floor. Rude little birds have built their nests in thebeautiful fretted rafters, and flutter in and out as busy as brokers. But of all the feasting and loving and plotting these lovely wallsbeheld in that strange age that seems like fable now, --the vivid, intelligent, scientific, tolerant age of the Moors, --even the memory hasperished utterly and forever. 

We strolled away aimlessly from this beautiful desolation, and soon cameout upon the bright and airy Paseo del Transito. The afternoon sunshinelay warm on the dull brown suburb, but a breeze blew freshly through thedark river-gorge, and we sat upon the stone benches bordering the bluffand gave ourselves up to the scene. To the right were the ruins of theRoman bridge and the Moorish mills; to the left the airy arch of SanMartin's bridge spanned the bounding torrent, and far beyond stretchedthe vast expanse of the green valley refreshed by the river, and rollingin rank waves of verdure to the blue hills of Guadalupe. Below us on theslippery rocks that lay at the foot of the sheer cliffs, some luxuriousfishermen reclined, idly watching their idle lines. The hills stretchedaway, ragged and rocky, dotted with solitary towers and villas. 

A squad of beggars rapidly gathered, attracted by the gracious faces ofLas Senoras. Begging seems almost the only regular industry of Toledo. Besides the serious professionals, who are real artists in studiedmisery and ingenious deformity, all the children in town occasionallyleave their marbles and their leap-frog to turn an honest penny byamateur mendicancy. 

A chorus of piteous whines went up. But La Senora was firm. She checkedthe ready hands of the juveniles. "Children should not be encouraged topursue this wretched life. We should give only to blind men, becausehere is a great and evident affliction; and to old women, because theylook so lonely about the boots. " The exposition was so subtle andlogical that it admitted no reply. The old women and the blind menshuffled away with their pennies, and we began to chaff the sturdy androsy children. 

A Spanish beggar can bear anything but banter. He is a keenphysiognomist, and selects his victims with unerring acumen. If youstorm or scowl at him, he knows he is making you uncomfortable, andhangs on like a burr. But if you laugh at him, with good humor, he isdisarmed. A friend of mine reduced to confusion one of the mostunabashed mendicants in Castile by replying to his whining petition, politely and with a beaming smile, "No, thank you. I never eat them. "The beggar is far from considering his employment a degrading one. It isrecognized by the Church, and the obligation of this form of charityespecially inculcated. The average Spaniard regards it as a sort of taxto be as readily satisfied as a toll-fee. He will often stop and give abeggar a cent, and wait for the change in maravedises. One day, at therailway station, a muscular rogue approached me and begged for alms. Ioffered him my _sac-de-nuit_ to carry a block or two. He drew himself upproudly and said, "I beg your pardon, sir; I am no Gallician. " An oldwoman came up with a basket on her arm. "Can it be possible in this farcountry, " said La Senora, "or are these--yes, they are, deliberatepeanuts. " With a penny we bought unlimited quantities of this levellingedible, and with them the devoted adherence of the aged merchant. Sheimmediately took charge of our education. We must see Santa Maria laBlanca, --it was a beautiful thing; so was the Transito. Did we see thosemen and women grubbing in the hillside? They were digging bones to sellat the station. Where did the bones come from? Quien sabe? Thosedust-heaps have been there since King Wamba. Come, we must go and seethe Churches of Mary before it grew dark. And the zealous old creaturemarched away with us to the synagogue built by Samuel Ben Levi, treasurer to that crowned panther, Peter the Cruel. This able financierbuilt this fine temple to the God of his fathers out of his own purse. He was murdered for his money by his ungrateful lord, and his synagoguestolen by the Church. It now belongs to the order of Cala-trava. 

But the other and older synagogue, now called Santa Maria la Blanca, ismuch more interesting. It stands in the same quarter, the suburbformerly occupied by the industrious and thriving Hebrews of the MiddleAges until the stupid zeal of the Catholic kings drove them out ofSpain. The synagogue was built in the ninth century under theenlightened domination of the Moors. At the slaughter of the Jews in1405 it became a church. It has passed through varying fortunes sincethen, having been hospital, hermitage, stable, and warehouse; but it isnow under the care of the provincial committee of art, and is somewhatdecently restored. Its architecture is altogether Moorish. It has threeaisles with thick octagonal columns supporting heavy horseshoe arches. The spandrels are curiously adorned with rich circular stucco figures. The soil you tread is sacred, for it was brought from Zion long beforethe Crusades; the cedar rafters above you preserve the memory and theodors of Lebanon. 

A little farther west, on a fine hill overlooking the river, in themidst of the ruined palaces of the early kings, stands the beautifulvotive church of San Juan de los Reyes. It was built by Ferdinand andIsabella, before the Columbus days, to commemorate a victory over theirneighbors the Portuguese. During a prolonged absence of the king, thepious queen, wishing to prepare him a pleasant surprise, instead ofembroidering a pair of impracticable slippers as a faithful young wifewould do nowadays, finished this exquisite church by setting at workupon it some regiments of stone-cutters and builders. It is notdifficult to imagine the beauty of the structure that greeted the kingon his welcome home. For even now, after the storms of four centurieshave beaten upon it, and the malignant hands of invading armies haveused their utmost malice against it, it is still a won-drously perfectwork of the Gothic inspiration. 

We sat on the terrace benches to enjoy the light and graceful lines ofthe building, the delicately ornate door, the unique drapery of ironchains which the freed Christians hung here when delivered from thehands of the Moors. A lovely child, with pensive blue eyes fringed withlong lashes, and the slow sweet smile of a Madonna, sat near us and sangto a soft, monotonous air a war-song of the Carlists. Her beauty soonattracted the artistic eyes of La Senora, and we learned she was namedFrancisca, and her baby brother, whose flaxen head lay heavily on hershoulder, was called Jesus Mary. She asked, Would we like to go into thechurch? She knew the sacristan and would go for him. She ran away like afawn, the tow head of little Jesus tumbling dangerously about. Shereappeared in a moment; she had disposed of mi nino, as she called it, and had found the sacristan. This personage was rather disappointing. Asacristan should be aged and mouldy, clothed in black of a decentshabbiness. This was a Toledan swell in a velvet shooting-jacket, andyellow peg-top trousers. However, he had the wit to confine himself toturning keys, and so we gradually recovered from the shock of theshooting-jacket. 

The church forms one great nave, divided into four vaults enriched withwonderful stone lace-work. A superb frieze surrounds the entire nave, bearing in great Gothic letters an inscription narrating the foundationof the church. Everywhere the arms of Castile and Arragon, and thewedded ciphers of the Catholic kings. Statues of heralds startunexpectedly out from the face of the pillars. Fine as the church is, wecannot linger here long. The glory of San Juan is its cloisters. It maychallenge the world to show anything so fine in the latest bloom andlast development of Gothic art. One of the galleries is in ruins, --a sadwitness of the brutality of armies. But the three others are enough toshow how much of beauty was possible in that final age of pure Gothicbuilding. The arches bear a double garland of leaves, of flowers, and offruits, and among them are ramping and writhing and playing every figureof bird or beast or monster that man has seen or poet imagined. Thereare no two arches alike, and yet a most beautiful harmony pervades themall. In some the leaves are in profile, in others delicately spread uponthe graceful columns and every vein displayed. I saw one window where astone monkey sat reading his prayers, gowned and cowled, --an odd capriceof the tired sculptor. There is in this infinite variety of detail adelight that ends in something like fatigue. You cannot help feelingthat this was naturally and logically the end of Gothic art. It had runits course. There was nothing left but this feverish quest of variety. It was in danger, after having gained such divine heights of invention, of degenerating into prettinesses and affectation. 

But how marvellously fine it was at last! One must see it, as in theseunequalled cloisters, half ruined, silent, and deserted, bearing withsomething of conscious dignity the blows of time and the ruder wrongs ofmen, to appreciate fully its proud superiority to all the accidents ofchanging taste and modified culture. It is only the truest art that canbear that test. The fanes of Paestum will always be more beautiful eventhan the magical shore on which they stand. The Parthenon, fixed like abattered coronet on the brow of the Acropolis, will always be theloveliest sight that Greece can offer to those who come sailing in fromthe blue Aegean. It is scarcely possible to imagine a condition ofthought or feeling in which these master-works shall seem quaint orold-fashioned. They appeal, now and always, with that calm power ofperfection, to the heart and eyes of every man born of woman. 

The cloisters enclose a little garden just enough neglected to allow thelush dark ivy, the passionflowers, and the spreading oleanders to dotheir best in beautifying the place, as men have done their worst inmarring it. The clambering vines seem trying to hide the scars of theirhardly less perfect copies. Every arch is adorned with a soft anddelicious drapery of leaves and tendrils; the fair and outraged child ofart is cherished and caressed by the gracious and bountiful hands ofMother Nature. 

As we came away, little Francisca plucked one of the five-pointed leavesof the passion-flowers and gave it to La Senora, saying reverentially, "This is the Hand of Our Blessed Lord!"

The sun was throned, red as a bacchanal king, upon the purple hills, aswe descended the rocky declivity and crossed the bridge of St. Martin. 

Our little Toledan maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly, like a sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and lookedback at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires aflame, its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level rays, its ruinssoftened in the gathering shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfiguredover the glowing river. Before us the crumbling walls and turrets of theGothic kings ran down from the bluff to the water-side, its terraceoverlooking the baths where, for his woe, Don Roderick saw CountJulian's daughter under the same inflammatory circumstances as those inwhich, from a Judaean housetop, Don David beheld Captain Uriah's wife. There is a great deal of human nature abroad in the world in all ages. 

Little Francisca kept on chattering. "That is St. Martin's bridge. Agirl jumped into the water last year. She was not a lady. She was inservice. She was tired of living because she was in love. They found herthree weeks afterwards; but, Santisima Maria! she was good for nothingthen. "

Our little maid was too young to have sympathy for kings or servantgirls who die for love. She was a pretty picture as she sat there, herblue eyes and Madonna face turned to the rosy west, singing in her sweetchild's voice her fierce little song of sedition and war:--

 "Arriba los valientes! Abajo tirania! Pronto llegara el dia De la Restauracion. 

 Carlistas a caballo! Soldados en Campana! Viva el Rey de Espana, Don Carlos de Borbon!"

I cannot enumerate the churches of Toledo, --you find them in everystreet and by-way. In the palmy days of the absolute theocracy thisnarrow space contained more than a hundred churches and chapels. Theprovince was gnawed by the cancer of sixteen monasteries of monks andtwice as many convents of nuns, all crowded within these city walls. Fully one half the ground of the city was covered by religious buildingsand mortmain property. In that age, when money meant ten times what itsignifies now, the rent-roll of the Church in Toledo was forty millionsof reals. There are even yet portions of the town where you find nothingbut churches and convents. The grass grows green in the silent streets. You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses. You see on every side bolted doors and barred windows, and, gliding overthe mossy pavements, the stealthy-stepping, long-robed priests. 

I will only mention two more churches, and both of these converts fromheathendom; both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracyof the calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced to the levelof the rest. One is the old pretorian temple of the Romans, which wasconverted by King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the seventhcentury. It is a curious structure in brick and mortar, with an apsisand an odd arrangement of round arches sunken in the outer wall andstill deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the resting-place of SaintsIldefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met before. The statue of thelatter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathenmuse. The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. Onone side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with brightmarble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed aflat stone marked _Ossuarium. _ The sacristan told me this covered thepit where the nameless dead reposed, and when the genteel people in thegilt marble vaults neglected to pay their annual rent, they were takenout and tumbled in to moulder with the common clay. 

This San Cristo de la Vega, St. Christ of the Plain, stands on the wideflat below the town, where you find the greater portion of the Romanremains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched in an oval form over themeadow mark the site of the great circus. Green turf and fields ofwaving grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city stood. The Romansbuilt on the plain. The Goths, following their instinct of isolation, fixed their dwelling on the steep and rugged rock. The rapid Tagusgirdling the city like a horseshoe left only the declivity to the westto be defended, and the ruins of King Wamba's wall show with whatjealous care that work was done. But the Moors, after they captured thecity, apparently did little for its defence. A great suburb grew up inthe course of ages outside the wall, and when the Christians recapturedToledo in 1085, the first care of Alonso VI. Was to build another wall, this time nearer the foot of the hill, taking inside all the accretionof these years. From that day to this that wall has held Toledo. Thecity has never reached, perhaps will never reach, the base of the steeprock on which it stands. 

When King Alonso stormed the city, his first thought, in the busy halfhour that follows victory, was to find some convenient place to say hisprayers. Chance led him to a beautiful little Moorish mosque or oratorynear the superb Puerta del Sol. He entered, gave thanks, and hung up hisshield as a votive offering. This is the Church of San Cristo de la Luz. The shield of Alonso hangs there defying time for eight centuries, --agolden cross on a red field, --and the exquisite oratory, not much largerthan a child's toy-house, is to-day one of the most charming specimensof Moorish art in Spain. Four square pillars support the roof, which isdivided into five equal "half-orange" domes, each different from theothers and each equally fascinating in its unexpected simplicity andgrace. You cannot avoid a feeling of personal kindliness and respect forthe refined and genial spirit who left this elegant legacy to an alienrace and a hostile creed. 

The Military College of Santa Cruz is one of the most precious specimensextant of those somewhat confused but beautiful results of thetransition from florid Gothic to the Renaissance. The plateresque isyoung and modest, and seeks to please in this splendid monument byallying the innovating forms with the traditions of a school outgrown. There is an exquisite and touching reminiscence of the Gothic in thesuperb portal and the matchless group of the Invention of the Cross. Allthis fine facade is by that true and genuine artist, Enrique de Egas, the same who carved the grand Gate of the Lions, for which may the gateof paradise be open to him. 

The inner court is surrounded by two stories of airy arcades, supportedby slim Corinthian columns. In one corner is the most elaboratestaircase in Spain. All the elegance and fancy of Arab and Renaissanceart have been lavished upon this masterly work. 

Santa Cruz was built for a hospital by that haughty Cardinal Mendoza, the Tertius Rex of Ferdinand and Isabella. It is now occupied by themilitary school, which receives six hundred cadets. They are under thecharge of an inspector-general and a numerous staff of professors. Theypay forty cents a day for their board. The instruction is gratuitous andcomprehends a curriculum almost identical with that of West Point. Itoccupies, however, only three years. 

The most considerable Renaissance structure in Toledo is the RoyalAlcazar. It covers with its vast bulk the highest hilltop in the city. From the earliest antiquity this spot has been occupied by a royalpalace or fortress. But the present structure was built by Charles V. And completed by Herrera for Philip II. Its north and south facades arevery fine. The Alcazar seems to have been marked by fate. The Portugueseburned it in the last century, and Charles III. Restored it just in timefor the French to destroy it anew. Its indestructible walls aloneremain. Now, after many years of ruinous neglect, the government hasbegun the work of restoration. The vast quadrangle is one mass ofscaffolding and plaster dust. The grand staircase is almost finishedagain. In the course of a few years we may expect to see the Alcazar ina state worthy of its name and history. We would hope it might neveragain shelter a king. They have had their day there. Their line goesback so far into the mists of time that its beginning eludes our utmostsearch. The Roman drove out the unnamed chiefs of Iberia. Thefair-haired Goth dispossessed the Italian. The Berber destroyed theGothic monarchy. Castile and Leon fought their way down inch by inchthrough three centuries from Covadonga to Toledo, halfway in time andterritory to Granada and the Midland Sea. And since then how many royalfeet have trodden this breezy crest, --Sanchos and Henrys andFerdinands, --the line broken now and then by a usurping uncle or afratricide brother, --a red-handed bastard of Trastamara, a star-gazingAlonso, a plotting and praying Charles, and, after Philip, the dwindlingscions of Austria and the nullities of Bourbon. This height has known aswell the rustle of the trailing robes of queens, --Berenguela, Isabel theCatholic, and Juana, --Crazy Jane. It was the prison of the widow ofPhilip IV. And mother of Charles II. What wonder if her life left muchto be desired? With such a husband and such a son, she had no memoriesnor hopes. 

The kings have had a long day here. They did some good in their time. But the world has outgrown them, and the people, here as elsewhere, iscoming of age. This Alcazar is built more strongly than any dynasty. Itwill make a glorious school-house when the repairs are finished and theRepublic is established, and then may both last forever!

One morning at sunrise, I crossed the ancient bridge of Alcantara, andclimbed the steep hill east of the river to the ruined castle of SanCervantes, perched on a high, bold rock, which guards the river andoverlooks the valley. Near as it is to the city, it stands entirelyalone. The instinct of aggregation is so powerful in this people thatthe old towns have no environs, no houses sprinkled in the outlyingcountry, like modern cities. Every one must be huddled inside the walls. If a solitary house, like this castle, is built without, it must be initself an impregnable fortress. This fine old ruin, in obedience to thisinstinct of jealous distrust, has but one entrance, and that so narrowthat Sir John Falstaff would have been embarrassed to accept itshospitalities. In the shade of the broken walls, grass-grown and gaywith scattered poppies, I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear in the earlyday. On the extreme right lay the new spick-and-span bull-ring, then thegreat hospice and Chapel of St. John the Baptist, the Convent of theImmaculate Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel of SantaCruz, whose beautiful fagade lay soft in shadow; the huge arrogant bulkof the Alcazar loomed squarely before me, hiding half the view; to theleft glittered the slender spire of the Cathedral, holding up in thepure air that emblem of august resignation, the triple crown of thorns;then a crowd of cupolas, ending at last near the river-banks with thesharp angular mass of San Cristobal. The field of vision was filled withchurches and chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk. Behindme the waste lands went rolling away untilled to the brown Toledomountains. Below, the vigorous current of the Tagus brawled over itsrocky bed, and the distant valley showed in its deep rich green whatvitality there was in those waters if they were only used. 

A quiet, as of a plague-stricken city, lay on Toledo. A few mules woundup the splendid roads with baskets of vegetables. A few listlessfishermen were preparing their lines. The chimes of sleepy bells floatedsoftly out on the morning air. They seemed like the requiem of municipallife and activity slain centuries ago by the crozier and the crown. 

Thank Heaven, that double despotism is wounded to death. As Chesterfieldpredicted, before the first muttering of the thunders of '89, "thetrades of king and priest have lost half their value. " With the decay ofthis unrighteous power, the false, unwholesome activity it fostered hasalso disappeared. There must be years of toil and leanness, yearsperhaps of struggle and misery, before the new genuine life of thepeople springs up from beneath the dead and withered rubbish of temporaland spiritual tyranny. Freedom is an angel whose blessing is gained bywrestling. 

THE ESCORIAL

The only battle in which Philip II. Was ever engaged was that of St. Quentin, and the only part he took in that memorable fight was to listento the thunder of the captains and the shouting afar off, and pray withgreat unction and fervor to various saints of his acquaintance andparticularly to St. Lawrence of the Gridiron, who, being the celestialofficer of the day, was supposed to have unlimited authority, and towhom he was therefore profuse in vows. While Egmont and his stoutFlemings were capturing the Constable Montmorency and cutting his armyin pieces, this young and chivalrous monarch was beating his breast andpattering his panic-stricken prayers. As soon as the victory was won, however, he lost his nervousness, and divided the entire credit of itbetween himself and his saints. He had his picture painted in fullarmor, as he appeared that day, and sent it to his doting spouse, BloodyMary of England. He even thought he had gained glory enough, and whilehis father, the emperor-monk, was fiercely asking the messenger whobrought the news of victory to Yuste, "Is my son at Paris?" the prudentPhilip was making a treaty of peace, by which his son Don Carlos was tomarry the Princess Elizabeth of France. But Mary obligingly died at thismoment, and the stricken widower thought he needed consolation more thanhis boy, and so married the pretty princess himself. 

He always prided himself greatly on the battle of St. Quentin, andprobably soon came to believe he had done yeoman service there. Thechildlike credulity of the people is a great temptation to kings. It isvery likely that after the coup-d'etat of December, the trembling puppetwho had sat shivering over his fire in the palace of the Elysee whileMorny and Fleury and St. Arnaud and the rest of the cool gamblers wereplaying their last desperate stake on that fatal night, really persuadedhimself that the work was his, and that _he_ had saved society. That thefly should imagine he is moving the coach is natural enough; but thatthe horses, and the wooden lumbering machine, and the passengers shouldtake it for granted that the light gilded insect is carrying themall, --there is the true miracle. 

We must confess to a special fancy for Philip II. He was so true a king, so vain, so superstitious, so mean and cruel, it is probable so great aking never lived. Nothing could be more royal than the way hedistributed his gratitude for the victory on St. Lawrence's day. ToCount Egmont, whose splendid courage and loyalty gained him the battle, he gave ignominy and death on the scaffold; and to exhibit a gratitudeto a myth which he was too mean to feel to a man, he built to SanLorenzo that stupendous mass of granite which is to-day the visibledemonstration of the might and the weakness of Philip and his age. 

He called it the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real, but the nomenclatureof the great has no authority with the people. It was built on a siteonce covered with cinder-heaps from a long abandoned iron-mine, and soit was called in common speech the Escorial. The royal seat of SanIldefonso can gain from the general public no higher name than LaGranja, the Farm. The great palace of Catharine de Medici, the home ofthree dynasties, is simply the Tuileries, the Tile-fields. You cannotmake people call the White House the Executive Mansion. A merchant namedPitti built a palace in Florence, and though kings and grand dukes haveinhabited it since, it is still the Pitti. There is nothing sodemocratic as language. You may alter a name by trick when force isunavailing. A noble lord in Segovia, following the custom of the goodold times, once murdered a Jew, and stole his house. It was a prettyresidence, but the skeleton in his closet was that the stupid commonswould not call it anything but "the Jew's house. " He killed a few ofthem for it, but that did not serve. At last, by advice of hisconfessor, he had the facade ornamented with projecting knobs of stucco, and the work was done. It is called to this day "the knobby house. "

The conscience of Philip did not permit a long delay in theaccomplishment of his vow. Charles V. Had charged him in his will tobuild a mausoleum for the kings of the Austrian race. He bound the twoobligations in one, and added a third destination to the enormous pilehe contemplated. It should be a palace as well as a monastery and aroyal charnel-house. He chose the most appropriate spot in Spain for theerection of the most cheerless monument in existence. He had fixed hiscapital at Madrid because it was the dreariest town in Spain, and toenvelop himself in a still profounder desolation, he built the Escorialout of sight of the city, on a bleak, bare hillside, swept by theglacial gales of the Guadarrama, parched by the vertical suns of summer, and cursed at all seasons with the curse of barrenness. Before it towersthe great chain of mountains separating Old and New Castile. Behind itthe chilled winds sweep down to the Madrid plateau, over rocky hillocksand involved ravines, --a scene in which probably no man ever tookpleasure except the royal recluse who chose it for his home. 

John Baptist of Toledo laid the corner-stone on an April day of 1563, and in the autumn of 1584 John of Herrera looked upon the finished work, so vast and so gloomy that it lay like an incubus upon the breast ofearth. It is a parallelogram measuring from north to south seven hundredand forty-four feet, and five hundred and eighty feet from east to west. It is built, by order of the fantastic bigot, in the form of St. Lawrence's gridiron, the courts representing the interstices of thebars, and the towers at the corners sticking helpless in the air likethe legs of the supine implement. It is composed of a clean graygranite, chiefly in the Doric order, with a severity of facade thatdegenerates into poverty, and defrauds the building of the effect itsgreat bulk merits. The sheer monotonous walls are pierced with eleventhousand windows, which, though really large enough for the rooms, seemon that stupendous surface to shrink into musketry loopholes. In thecentre of the parallelogram stands the great church, surmounted by itssoaring dome. All around the principal building is stretched acircumscribing line of convents, in the same style of dolefulyellowish-gray uniformity, so endless in extent that the inmates mighteasily despair of any world beyond them. 

There are few scenes in the world so depressing as that which greets youas you enter into the wide court before the church, called El Templo. You are shut finally in by these iron-gray walls. The outside day hasgiven you up. Your feet slip on the damp flags. An unhealthy fungustinges the humid corners with a pallid green. You look in vain for anytrace of human sympathy in those blank walls and that severe facade. There is a dismal attempt in that direction in the gilded garments andthe painted faces of the colossal prophets and kings that are perchedabove the lofty doors. But they do not comfort you; they are tinselledstones, not statues. 

Entering the vestibule of the church, and looking up, you observe with asort of horror that the ceiling is of massive granite and flat. Thesacristan has a story that when Philip saw this ceiling, which forms thefloor of the high choir, he remonstrated against it as too audacious, and insisted on a strong pillar being built to support it. The architectcomplied, but when Philip came to see the improvement he burst intolamentation, as the enormous column destroyed the effect of the greataltar. The canny architect, who had built the pillar of pasteboard, removed it with a touch, and his majesty was comforted. Walking forwardto the edge of this shadowy vestibule, you recognize the skill and tastewhich presided at this unique and intelligent arrangement of the choir. If left, as usual, in the body of the church, it would have seriouslyimpaired that solemn and simple grandeur which distinguishes this aboveall other temples. There is nothing to break the effect of the threegreat naves, divided by immense square-clustered columns, and surmountedby the vast dome that rises with all the easy majesty of a mountain morethan three hundred feet from the decent black and white pavement. I knowof nothing so simple and so imposing as this royal chapel, built purelyfor the glory of God and with no thought of mercy or consolation forhuman infirmity. The frescos of Luca Giordano show the attempt of alater and degenerate age to enliven with form and color the sombredignity of this faultless pile. But there is something in the blue andvapory pictures which shows that even the unabashed Luca was not freefrom the impressive influence of the Escorial. 

A flight of veined marble steps leads to the beautiful retable of thehigh altar. The screen, over ninety feet high, cost the Milanese Trezzoseven years of labor. The pictures illustrative of the life of our Lordare by Tibaldi and Zuccaro. The gilt bronze tabernacle of Trezzo andHerrera, which has been likened with the doors of the Baptistery ofFlorence as worthy to figure in the architecture of heaven, no longerexists. It furnished a half hour's amusement to the soldiers of France. On either side of the high altar are the oratories of the royal family, and above them are the kneeling effigies of Charles, with his wife, daughter, and sisters, and Philip with his successive harem of wives. One of the few luxuries this fierce bigot allowed himself was that of anew widowhood every few years. There are forty other altars withpictures good and bad. The best are by the wonderful deaf-mute, Navarrete, of Logrono, and by Sanchez Coello, the favorite of Philip. 

To the right of the high altar in the transept you will find, if yourtastes, unlike Miss Riderhood's, run in a bony direction, the mostremarkable Reliquary in the world. With the exception perhaps of Cuvier, Philip could see more in a bone than any man who ever lived. In his longlife of osseous enthusiasm he collected seven thousand four hundred andtwenty-one genuine relics, --whole skeletons, odd shins, teeth, toe-nails, and skulls of martyrs, --sometimes by a miracle of specialgrace getting duplicate skeletons of the same saint. The prime jewels ofthis royal collection are the grilled bones of San Lorenzo himself, bearing dim traces of his sacred gridiron. 

The sacristan will show you also the retable of the miraculous wafer, which bled when trampled on by Protestant heels at Gorcum in 1525. Thishas always been one of the chief treasures of the Spanish crown. Thedevil-haunted idiot Charles II. Made a sort of idol of it, building itthis superb altar, consecrated "in this miracle of earth to the miracleof heaven. " When the atheist Frenchmen sacked the Escorial and strippedit of silver and gold, the pious monks thought most of hiding thiswonderful wafer, and when the storm passed by, the booby Ferdinand VII. Restored it with much burning of candles, swinging of censers, andchiming of bells. Worthless as it is, it has done one good work in theworld. It inspired the altar-picture of Claudio Coello, the last bestwork of the last of the great school of Spanish painters. He finished itjust before he died of shame and grief at seeing Giordano, the nimbleNeapolitan, emptying his buckets of paint on the ceiling of the grandstaircase, where St. Lawrence and an army of martyrs go sailing with afair wind into glory. 

The great days of art in the Escorial are gone. Once in every nook andcorner it concealed treasures of beauty that the world had nearlyforgotten. The Perla of Raphael hung in the dark sacristy. The Cena ofTitian dropped to pieces in the refectory. The Gloria, which had sunkinto eclipse on the death of Charles V. , was hidden here amongunappreciative monks. But on the secularization of the monasteries, these superb canvases went to swell the riches of the Royal Museum. There are still enough left here, however, to vindicate the ancient fameof the collection. They are perhaps more impressive in their beauty andloneliness than if they were pranking among their kin in the gloriousgalleries and perfect light of that enchanted palace of Charles III. Theinexhaustible old man of Cadora has the Prayer on Mount Olivet, an EcceHomo, an Adoration of the Magi. Velazquez one of his rare scripturalpieces, Jacob and his Children. Tintoretto is rather injured at theMuseo by the number and importance of his pictures left in this monkishtwilight; among them is a lovely Esther, and a masterly Presentation ofChrist to the People. Plenty of Giordanos and Bassanos and one or twoby El Greco, with his weird plague-stricken faces, all chalk andcharcoal. A sense of duty will take you into the crypt where the deadkings are sleeping in brass. This mausoleum, ordered by the greatCharles, was slow in finishing. All of his line had a hand in it down toPhilip IV. , who completed it and gathered in the poor relics of royalmortality from many graves. The key of the vault is the stone where thepriest stands when he elevates the Host in the temple above. The vaultis a graceful octagon about forty feet high, with nearly the samediameter; the flickering light of your torches shows twenty-sixsarcophagi, some occupied and some empty, filling the niches of thepolished marble. On the right sleep the sovereigns, on the left theirconsorts. There is a coffin for Dona Isabel de Bourbon among the kings, and one for her amiable and lady-like husband among the queens. Theywere not lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they shall bedivided. The quaint old church-mouse who showed me the crypt called myattention to the coffin where Maria Louisa, wife of Charles IV. , --thelady who so gallantly bestrides her war-horse, in the uniform of acolonel, in Goya's picture, --coming down those slippery steps with thesure footing of feverish insanity, during a severe illness, scratched_Luisa_ with the point of her scissors and marked the sarcophagus forher own. All there was good of her is interred with her bones. Herfrailties live on in scandalized history. 

Twice, it is said, the coffin of the emperor has been opened by curioushands, --by Philip IV. , who found the corpse of his great ancestorintact, and observed to the courtier at his elbow, "An honest body, DonLuis!" and again by the Ministers of State and Fomento in the spring of1870, who started back aghast when the coffin-lid was lifted anddisclosed the grim face of the Burgess of Ghent, just as Titian paintedhim, --the keen, bold face of a world-stealer. 

I do not know if Philip's funeral urn was ever opened. He stayed aboveground too long as it was, and it is probable that people have nevercared to look upon his face again. All that was human had died out ofhim years before his actual demise, and death seemed not to consider itworth while to carry off a vampire. Go into the little apartment wherehis last days were passed; a wooden table and book-shelf, one arm-chairand two stools--the one upholstered with cloth for winter, the otherwith tin for summer--on which he rested his gouty leg, and a low chairfor a secretary, --this was all the furniture he used. The rooms are notlarger than cupboards, low and dark. The little oratory where he diedlooks out upon the high altar of the Temple. In a living death, as if byan awful anticipation of the common lot it was ordained that in theflesh he should know corruption, he lay waiting his summons hourly forfifty-three days. What tremendous doubts and fears must have assailedhim in that endless agony! He had done more for the Church than anyliving man. He was the author of that sublime utterance of uncalculatingbigotry, "Better not reign than reign over heretics. " He had pursuederror with fire and sword. He had peopled limbo with myriads of rashthinkers. He had impoverished his kingdom in Catholic wars. Yet all thishad not sufficed. He lay there like a leper smitten by the hand of theGod he had so zealously served. Even in his mind there was no peace. Heheld in his clenched hand his father's crucifix, which Charles had heldin his exultant death at Yuste. Yet in his waking hours he was neverfree from the horrible suggestion that he had not done enough forsalvation. He would start in horror from a sleep that was peopled withshapes from torment. Humanity was avenged at last. 

So powerful is the influence of a great personality that in the Escorialyou can think of no one but Philip II. He lived here only fourteenyears, but every corridor and cloister seems to preserve the souvenir ofhis sombre and imperious genius. For two and a half centuries his feeblesuccessors have trod these granite halls; but they flit through yourmind pale and unsubstantial as dreams. The only tradition they preservedof their great descent was their magnificence and their bigotry. Therehas never been one utterance of liberty or free thought inspired by thishaunted ground. The king has always been absolute here, and the monk hasbeen the conscience-keeper of the king. The whole life of the Escorialhas been unwholesomely pervaded by a flavor of holy water and burialvaults. There was enough of the repressive influence of that savageSpanish piety to spoil the freshness and vigor of a natural life, butnot enough to lead the court and the courtiers to a moral walk andconversation. It was as profligate a court in reality, with all itsmasses and monks, as the gay and atheist circle of the Regent ofOrleans. Even Philip, the Inquisitor King, did not confine his royalfavor to his series of wives. A more reckless and profligate youngprodigal than Don Carlos, the hope of Spain and Rome, it would be hardto find to-day at Mabille or Cre-morne. But he was a deeply religiouslad for all that, and asked absolution from his confessors beforeattempting to put in practice his intention of killing his father. Philip, forewarned, shut him up until he died, in an edifying frame ofmind, and then calmly superintended the funeral arrangements from awindow of the palace. The same mingling of vice and superstition is seenin the lessening line down to our day. The last true king of the oldschool was Philip IV. Amid the ruins of his tumbling kingdom he livedroyally here among his priests and his painters and his ladies. Therewas one jealous exigency of Spanish etiquette that made his favor fatal. The object of his adoration, when his errant fancy strayed to another, must go into a convent and nevermore be seen of lesser men. MadameDaunoy, who lodged at court, heard one night an august footstep in thehall and a kingly rap on the bolted door of a lady of honor. But we arehappy to say she heard also the spirited reply from within, "May yourgrace go with God! I do not wish to be a nun!"

There is little in these frivolous lives that is worth knowing, --thelong inglorious reigns of the dwindling Austrians and the parody ofgreater days played by the scions of Bourbon, relieved for a fewcreditable years by the heroic struggle of Charles III. Against thehopeless decadence. You may walk for an hour through the dismal line ofdrawing-rooms in the cheerless palace that forms the gridiron's handle, and not a spirit is evoked from memory among all the tapestry andpanelling and gilding. 

The only cheerful room in this granite wilderness is the library, stillin good and careful keeping. A long, beautiful room, two hundred feet ofbookcases, and tasteful frescos by Tibaldi and Carducho, representingthe march of the liberal sciences. Most of the older folios are bound invellum, with their gilded edges, on which the title is stamped, turnedto the front. A precious collection of old books and older manuscripts, useless to the world as the hoard of a miser. Along the wall are hungthe portraits of the Escorial kings and builders. The hall is furnishedwith marble and porphyry tables, and elaborate glass cases display someof the curiosities of the library, --a copy of the Gospels that belongedto the Emperor Conrad, the Suabian Kurz; a richly illuminatedApocalypse; a gorgeous missal of Charles V. ; a Greek Bible, which oncebelonged to Mrs. Phcebus's ancestor Cantacuzene; Persian and Chinesesacred books; and a Koran, which is said to be the one captured by DonJuan at Lepanto. Mr. Ford says it is spurious; Mr. Madoz says it isgenuine. The ladies with whom I had the happiness to visit the libraryinclined to the latter opinion for two very good reasons, --the book is avery pretty one, and Mr. Madoz's head is much balder than Mr. Ford's. Wandering aimlessly through the frescoed cloisters and looking in at allthe open doors, over each of which a cunning little gridiron is inlaidin the woodwork, we heard the startling and unexpected sound of boyishvoices and laughter. We approached the scene of such agreeable tumult, and found the theatre of the monastery full of young students rehearsinga play for the coming holidays. A clever-looking priest was directingthe drama, and one juvenile Thespis was denouncing tyrants and dying forhis country in hexameters of a shrill treble. His friends wereapplauding more than was necessary or kind, and flourishing their woodenswords with much ferocity of action. All that is left of the onceextensive establishment of the monastery is a boys' school, where sometwo hundred youths are trained in the humanities, and a college where analmost equal number are educated for the priesthood. 

So depressing is the effect of the Escorial's gloom and its memories, that when you issue at last from its massive doors, the trim andterraced gardens seem gay and heartsome, and the bleak wild scene isfull of comfort. For here at least there is light and air and boundlessspace. You have emerged from the twilight of the past into the presentday. The sky above you bends over Paris and Cheyenne. By this lightDarwin is writing, and the merchants are meeting in the Chicago Board ofTrade. Just below you winds the railway which will take you in two hoursto Madrid, --to the city of Philip II. , where the nineteenth century hasarrived; where there are five Protestant churches and fifteen hundredevangelical communicants. Our young crusader, Professor Knapp, holdsnight schools and day schools and prayer meetings, with an activedevotion, a practical and American fervor, that is leavening a greatlump of apathy and death. These Anglo-Saxon missionaries have a largerand more tolerant spirit of propaganda than has been hitherto seen. Theycan differ about the best shape for the cup and the platter, but theyuse what they find to their hand. They are giving a tangible directionand purpose to the vague impulse of reform that was stirring, beforethey came, in many devout hearts. A little while longer of this state offreedom and inquiry, and the shock of controversy will come, and Spainwill be brought to life. 

Already the signs are full of promise. The ancient barriers ofsuperstition have already given way in many places. A Protestant can notonly live in Spain, but, what was once a more important matter, he candie and be buried there. This is one of the conquests of the revolution. So delicate has been the susceptibility of the Spanish mind in regard tothe pollution of its soil by heretic corpses that even Charles I. OfEngland, when he came a-wooing to Spain, could hardly gain permission tobury his page by night in the garden of the embassy; and in later daysthe Prussian Minister was compelled to smuggle his dead child out of thekingdom among his luggage to give it Christian burial. Even since thedays of September the clergy has fought manfully against givingsepulture to Protestants; but Rivero, alcalde of Madrid and president ofthe Cortes, was not inclined to waste time in dialectics, and sent apolice force to protect the heretic funerals and to arrest any priestwho disturbed them. There is freedom of speech and printing. Thehumorous journals are full of blasphemous caricatures that would beimpossible out of a Catholic country, for superstition and blasphemyalways run in couples. It was the Duke de Guise, commanding the pope'sarmy at Civitella, who cried in his rage at a rain which favored Alva, "God has turned Spaniard;" like Quashee, who burns his fetish when theweather is foul. The liberal Spanish papers overflowed with wit at theproclamation of infallibility. They announced that his holiness was nowgoing into the lottery business with brilliant prospects of success;that he could now tell what Father Manterola had done with the thirtythousand dollars' worth of bulls he sold last year and punctuallyneglects to account for, and other levities of the sort, which seemedgreatly relished, and which would have burned the facetious author twocenturies before, and fined and imprisoned him before the fight atAlcolea. The minister having charge of the public instruction haspromised to present a law for the prohibition of dogmatic doctrine inthe national schools. The law of civil registry and civil marriage, after a desperate struggle in the Cortes, has gone into operation withgeneral assent. There is a large party which actively favors the entireseparation of the spiritual from the temporal power, making religionvoluntary, and free, and breaking its long concubinage with the crown. The old superstition, it is true, still hangs like a malarial fog overSpain. But it is invaded by flashes and rays of progress. It cannotresist much longer the sunshine of this tolerant age. 

Far up the mountain-side, in the shade of a cluster of chestnuts, is arude block of stone, called the "King's Chair, " where Philip used to sitin silent revery, watching as from an eyry the progress of the enormouswork below. If you go there, you will see the same scene upon which hisbasilisk glance reposed, --in a changed world, the . Same unchangingscene, --the stricken waste, the shaggy horror of the mountains, thefixed plain wrinkled like a frozen sea, and in the centre of the perfectpicture the vast chill bulk of that granite pile, rising cold, colorless, and stupendous, as if carved from an iceberg by the hand ofNorthern gnomes. It is the palace of vanished royalty, the temple of areligion which is dead. There are kings and priests still, and will befor many coming years. But never again can a power exist which shallrear to the glory of the sceptre and the cowl a monument like this. Itis a page of history deserving to be well pondered, for it never will berepeated. The world which Philip ruled from the foot of the Guadarramahas passed away. A new heaven and a new earth came in with the thundersof 1776 and 1789. There will be no more Pyramids, no more Versailles, nomore Escoriais. The unpublished fiat has gone forth that man is worthmore than the glory of princes. The better religion of the future hasno need of these massive dungeon-temples of superstition and fear. Yetthere is a store of precious teachings in this mass of stone. It is oneof the results of that mysterious law to which the genius of history hassubjected the caprices of kings, to the end that we might not be leftwithout a witness of the past for our warning and example, --the lawwhich induces a judged and sentenced dynasty to build for posterity somemonument of its power, which hastens and commemorates its ruin. Byvirtue of this law we read on the plains of Egypt the pride and the fallof the Pharaohs. Before the fagade of Versailles we see at a glance thegrandeur of the Capetian kings and the necessity of the Revolution. Andthe most vivid picture of that fierce and gloomy religion of thesixteenth century, compounded of a base alloy of worship for an absoluteking and a vengeful God, is to be found in this colossal hermitage inthe flinty heart of the mountains of Castile. 

A MIRACLE PLAY

In the windy month of March a sudden gloom falls upon Madrid, --thereaction after the _folie gaiete_ of the Carnival. The theatres are attheir gayest in February until Prince Carnival and his jolly trainassault the town, and convert the temples of the drama into ball-rooms. They have not yet arrived at the wonderful expedition and despatchobserved in Paris, where a half hour is enough to convert the grandopera into the masked ball. The invention of this process of flooringthe orchestra flush with the stage and making a vast dancing-hall out ofboth is due to an ingenious courtier of the regency, bearing the greatname of De Bouillon, who got much credit and a pension by it. In Madridthey take the afternoon leisurely to the transformation, and theevening's performance is of course sacrificed. So the sock and buskin, not being adapted to the cancan, yielded with February, and the theatreswere closed finally on Ash Wednesday. 

Going by the pleasant little theatre of Lope de Rueda, in the CalleBarquillo, I saw the office-doors open, the posters up, and anunmistakable air of animation among the loungers who mark with a seal sopeculiar the entrance of places of amusement. Struck by this apparentlevity in the midst of the general mortification, I went over to look atthe bills and found the subject announced serious enough for the mostLenten entertainment, --Los Siete Dolores de Maria, --The Seven Sorrows ofMary, --the old mediaeval Miracle of the Life of the Saviour. 

This was bringing suddenly home to me the fact that I was really in aCatholic country. I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, whenreading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing onethan of assisting at an auto-da-fe or a witch-burning. I went to thebox-office to buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestallers hadswept the board. I was never able to determine whether I most pitied ordespised these pests of the theatre. Whenever a popular play ispresented, a dozen ragged and garlic-odorous vagabonds go early in theday and buy as many of the best places as they can pay for. They hangabout the door of the theatre all day, and generally manage to disposeof their purchases at an advance. But it happens very often that theyare disappointed; that the play does not draw, or that the eveningthreatens rain, and the Spaniard is devoted to his hat. He would keepout of a revolution if it rained. So that, at the pleasant hour when theorchestra are giving the last tweak to the key of their fiddles, you maysee these woebegone wretches rushing distractedly from the Piamonte tothe Alcala, offering their tickets at a price which falls rapidly fromdouble to even, and tumbles headlong to half-price at the first note ofthe opening overture. When I see the fore-staller luxuriously basking atthe office-door in the warm sunshine, and scornfully refusing to treatfor less than twice the treasurer's figures, I feel a dividedindignation against the nuisance and the management that permits it. Butwhen in the evening I meet him haggard and feverish, hawking his unsoldplaces in desperate panic on the sidewalk, I cannot but remember thatprobably a half dozen dirty and tawny descendants of Pelayo will eat nobeans to-morrow for those unfortunate tickets, and my wrath melts, and Ibuy his crumpled papers, moist with the sweat of anxiety, and add aslight propina, which I fear will be spent in aguardiente to calm hisshattered nerves. 

This day the sky looked threatening, and my shabby hidalgo listened toreason, and sold me my places at their price and a _petit verre. _

As we entered in the evening the play had just begun. The scene was theinterior of the Temple at Jerusalem, rather well done, --two ranges ofsuperimposed porphyry columns with a good effect of oblique perspective, which is very common in the Spanish theatres. St. Simeon, in a dresssuspiciously resembling that of the modern bishop, was talking with afiery young Hebrew who turns out to be Demas, the Penitent Thief, andwho is destined to play a very noticeable part in the evening'sentertainment. He has received some slight from the governmentauthorities and does not propose to submit to it. The aged andcooler-blooded Simeon advises him to do nothing rash. Here at the veryoutset is a most characteristic Spanish touch. You are expected to beinterested in Demas, and the only crime which could appeal to thesympathies of a Castilian crowd would be one committed at the promptingsof injured dignity. 

There is a soft, gentle strain of music played pianissimo by theorchestra, and, surrounded by a chorus of mothers and maidens, theVirgin Mother enters with the Divine Child in her arms. The Madonna is astrapping young girl named Gutierrez, a very clever actress; and theChild has been bought in the neighboring toy-shop, a most palpable andcynical wax-doll. The doll is handed to Simeon, and the solemn ceremonyof the Presentation is performed to fine and thoughtful music. St. Joseph has come in sheepishly by the flies with his inseparable staffcrowned with a garland of lilies, which remain miraculously fresh duringthirty years or so, and kneels at the altar, on the side opposite toMiss Gutierrez. 

As the music ceases, Simeon starts as from a trance and predicts in afew rapid couplets the sufferings and the crucifixion of the child. Maryfalls overwhelmed into the arms of her attendants, and Simeon exclaims, "Most blessed and most unfortunate among women! thy heart is to bepierced with Seven Sorrows, and this is the first. " Demas rushes in andannounces the massacre of the innocents, concluding with the appropriatereflection, "Perish the kings! always the murderers of the people. " Thissentiment is so much to the taste of the gamins of the paraiso that theyvociferously demand an encore; but the Roman soldiers come in andcommence the pleasing task of prodding the dolls in the arms of thechorus. 

The next act is the Flight into Egypt. The curtain rises on a rockyravine with a tinsel torrent in the background and a group of robbers onthe stage. Gestas, the impenitent thief, stands sulky and glum in acorner, fingering his dagger as you might be sure he would, andinforming himself in a growling soliloquy that his heart is consumedwith envy and hate because he is not captain. The captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly handsome young fellow, named Mario, to my thinkingthe first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides, and announces the arrival of a stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hatesthe world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politelywelcome. No! he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs scornfullyand says _he_ is in the way of that modest aspiration. But Demasspeedily puts him out of the way with an Albacete knife, and becomescaptain, to the profound disgust of the impenitent Gestas, who exclaims, just as the profane villains do nowadays on every well-conducted stage, "Damnation! foiled again!"

The robbers pick up their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinseltorrent. This is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake youngArabs of the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demas indulges in somefifty lines of rhymed reflections, which are interrupted by the approachof the Holy Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of Herod. They stopunder a sycamore tree, which instantly, by very clever machinery, bendsdown its spreading branches and miraculously hides them from thebloodthirsty legionaries. These pass on, and Demas leads the saintlytrio by a secret pass over the torrent, --the Mother and Child mountedupon an ass and St. Joseph trudging on behind with his lily-deckedstaff, looking all as if they were on a short leave of absence fromCorreggio's picture-frame. 

Demas comes back, calls up his merrymen, and has a battle-royal with theenraged legionaries, which puts the critics of the gallery into a frenzyof delight and assures the success of the spectacle. The curtain fallsin a gust of applause, is stormed up again, Demas comes forward andmakes a neat speech, announcing the author. Que salga! roar thegods, --"Trot him out!" A shabby young cripple hobbles to the front, leaning upon a crutch, his sallow face flushed with a hectic glow ofpride and pleasure. He also makes a glib speech, --I have never seen aSpaniard who could not, --disclaiming all credit for himself, but laudingthe sublimity of the acting and the perfection of the scene-painting, and saying that the memory of this unmerited applause will be foreverengraved upon his humble heart. 

Act third, the Lost Child, or Christ in the Temple. The scene is beforethe Temple on a festival day, plenty of chorus-girls, music, andflowers. Demas and the impenitent Gestas and Barabbas, who, I waspleased to see, was after all a very good sort of fellow, with no moremalice than you or I, were down in the city on a sort of lark, theirleopard skins left in the mountains and their daggers hid under thenatty costume of the Judaean dandy of the period. Demas and Gestas havea quarrel, in which Gestas is rather roughly handled, and goes offgrowling like every villain, _qui se respecte, --_"I will haver-revenge. " Barabbas proposes to go around to the cider-cellars, butDemas confides to him that he is enslaved by a dream of a child, whosaid to him, "Follow me--to Paradise;" that he had come down toJerusalem to seek and find the mysterious infant of his vision. Thejovial Barabbas seems imperfectly impressed by these transcendentalfancies, and at this moment Mary comes in dressed like a Madonna ofGuido Reni, and soon after St. Joseph and his staff. They ask each otherwhere is the Child, --a scene of alarm and bustle, which ends by the doorof the Temple flying open and discovering, shrined in ineffable light, Jesus teaching the doctors. 

In the fourth act, Demas meets a beautiful woman by the city gate, inthe loose, graceful dress of the Hetairai, and the most wonderfulluxuriance of black curls I have ever seen falling in dense masses toher knees. After a conversation of amorous banter, he gives her agolden chain, which she assumes, well pleased, and gives him her name, La Magdalena. A motley crowd of street loafers here rushed upon thescene, and I am sure there was no one of Northern blood in the theatrethat did not shudder for an instant at the startling apparition thatformed the central figure of the group. The world has long ago agreedupon a typical face and figure for the Saviour of men; it has beenrepeated on myriads of canvases and reproduced in thousands of statues, till there is scarcely a man living that does not have the same image ofthe Redeemer in his mind. Well, that image walked quietly upon thestage, so perfect in make-up that you longed for some error to break theterrible vraisemblance. I was really relieved when the august appearancespoke, and I recognized the voice of a young actor named Morales, aclever light comedian of the Bressant type. 

The Magdalene is soon converted by the preaching of the NazareneProphet, and the scene closes by the triumphant entry into Jerusalemamid the waving of palm-branches, the strewing of flowers, and "sonorousmetal blowing martial sounds. " The pathetic and sublime lament, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets!" was deliveredwith great 'feeling and power. 

The next act brings us before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate. Thisact is almost solely horrible. The Magdalene in her garb of penitencecomes in to beg the release of Jesus of Nazareth. Pontius, who isrepresented as a gallant old gentleman, says he can refuse nothing to alady. The prisoner is dragged in by two ferocious ruffians, who beat andbuffet him with absurd and exaggerated violence. There is nothing morehideous than the awful concreteness of this show, --the nakedhelplessness of the prisoner, his horrible, cringing, overdone humility, the coarse kicking and cuffing of the deputy sheriffs. The Prophet isstripped and scourged at the pillar until he drops from exhaustion. Heis dragged anew before Pilate and examined, but his only word is, "Thouhast said. " The scene lasts nearly an hour. The theatre was full ofsobbing women and children. At every fresh brutality I could hear theweeping spectators say, "Pobre Jesus!" "How wicked they are!" The bulkof the audience was of people who do not often go to theatres. Theylooked upon the revolting scene as a real and living fact. Onehard-featured man near me clenched his fists and cursed the cruelguards. A pale, delicate-featured girl who was leaning out of her box, with her brown eyes, dilated with horror, fixed upon the scene, suddenlyshrieked as a Roman soldier struck the unresisting Saviour, and fellback fainting in the arms of her friends. 

The Nazarene Prophet was condemned at last. Gestas gives evidenceagainst him, and also delivers Demas to the law, but is himselfdenounced, and shares their sentence. The crowd howled with exultation, and Pilate washed his hands in impotent rage and remorse. The curtaincame down leaving the uncultivated portion of the audience in the frameof mind in which their ancestors a few centuries earlier would have gonefrom the theatre determined to serve God and relieve their feelings bykilling the first Jew they could find. The diversion was all the better, because safer, if they happened to the good luck of meeting a Hebrewwoman or child. 

The Calle de Amargura--the Street of Bitterness--was the next scene. First came a long procession of official Romans, --lictors and swordsmen, and the heralds announcing the day's business. Demas appears, draggedalong with vicious jerks to execution. The Saviour follows, and fallsunder the weight of the cross before the footlights. Another long anddreary scene takes place, of brutalities from the Roman soldiers, theringleader of whom is a sanguinary Andalusian ingeniously encased in atin barrel, a hundred lines of rhymed sorrow from the Madonna, and amost curious scene of the Wandering Jew. This worthy, who in defiance oftradition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on histhreshold. He says churlishly, Anda!--"Begone!" "I will go, but thoushalt go forever until I come. " The Jew's feet begin to twitchconvulsively, as if pulled from under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last is carried off by his legs, which are moved like those ofthe walking dolls with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterlyin contradiction with the picture the Scriptures give us of the meekdignity with which the Redeemer forgave all personal injuries, has takena singular hold upon the imaginations of all peoples. Under varyingnames, ---Ahasuerus, Salathiel, le Juif Errant, der ewige Jude, --hisstory is the delight and edification of many lands; and I have met someworthy people who stoutly insisted that they had read it in the Bible. 

The sinister procession moves on. The audience, which had been somewhatcheered by the prompt and picturesque punishment inflicted upon theinhospitable Samuel, was still further exhilarated by the spectacle ofthe impenitent traitor Gestas, staggering under an enormous cross, hiseyes and teeth glaring with abject fear, with an athletic Roman halinghim up to Calvary with a new hempen halter. 

A long intermission followed, devoted to putting babies to sleep, --forthere were hundreds of them, wide-eyed and strong-lunged, --to smokingthe hasty cigarette, to discussing the next combination of Prim or thelast scandal in the gay world. The carpenters were busy behind thescenes building the mountain. When the curtain rose, it was worthwaiting for. It was an admirable scene. A genuine Spanish mountain, great humpy undulations of rock and sand, gigantic cacti for allvegetation, a lurid sky behind, but not over-colored. A group of Romansoldiers in the foreground, in the rear the hill, and the executionersbusily employed in nailing the three victims to their crosses. Demas wasfastened first; then Gestas, who, when undressed for execution, was asuperb model of a youthful Hercules. But the third cross still lay onthe ground; the hammering and disputing and coming and going werehorribly lifelike and real. 

At last the victim is securely nailed to the wood, and the cross isslowly and clumsily lifted and falls with a shock into its socket. Thesoldiers _huzza. , _ the fiend in the tin barrel and another in a tin hatcome down to the footlights and throw dice for the raiment. "Caramba!curse my luck!" says our friend in the tin case, and the other walks offwith the vestment. 

The Passion begins, and lasts an interminable time. The grouping isadmirable, every shifting of the crowd in the foreground produces a newand finished picture, with always the same background of the three highcrosses and their agonizing burdens against that lurid sky. Theimpenitent Gestas curses and dies; the penitent Demas believes andreceives eternal rest. The Holy Women come in and group themselves inpicturesque despair at the foot of the cross. The awful drama goes onwith no detail omitted, --the thirst the sponge dipped in vinegar, thecry of desolation, the spear-thrust, the giving up of the ghost. Thestage-lights are lowered. A thick darkness--of crape--comes down overthe sky. Horror falls on the impious multitude, and the scene isdeserted save by the faithful. 

The closing act opens with a fine effect of moon and stars. "Que lindaluna!" sighed a young woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted bythe beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed in the fullsplendor that is denied the others. Joseph of Abarimathea (as he is herecalled) comes in with ladders and winding-sheets, and the dead Christ istaken from the cross. The Descent is managed with singular skill andgenuine artistic feeling. The principal actor, who has been suspendedfor an hour in a most painful and constrained posture, has a corpse-likerigidity and numbness. There is one moment when you can almost imagineyourself in Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Rubens. TheEntombment ends, and the last tableau is of the Mater Dolorosa in theSolitude. I have rarely seen an effect so simple, and yet sostriking, --the darkened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy Roodspectral and tall against the starry sky, and the Dolorous Mother, alonein her sublime sorrow, as she will be worshipped and revered for comingaeons. 

A curious observation is made by all foreigners, of the absence of theapostles from the drama. They appear from time to time, but merely assupernumeraries. One would think that the character of Judas wasespecially fitted for dramatic use. I spoke of this to a friend, and hesaid that formerly the false apostle was introduced in the play, butthat the sight of him so fired the Spanish heart that not only his life, but the success of the piece was endangered. This reminds one of Mr. A. Ward's account of a high-handed outrage at "Utiky, " where a younggentleman of good family stove in the wax head of "Jewdas Iscarrit, "characterizing him at the same time as a "pew-serlanimous cuss. "

"To see these Mysteries in their glory, " continued my friend, "youshould go into the small towns in the provinces, uncontaminated withrailroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is thetown, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at thecity hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all theprincipal streets. The leading roles are no joke, --carrying fifty kilosof wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas orGestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets fromtender-hearted spectators, --the curses he accepts willingly as a tributeto his dramatic ability. His proudest boast in the evening is Querianmatarme, --'They wanted to kill me!' I once saw the hero of the dramastop before a wine-shop, sweating like rain, and positively swear by thelife of the Devil, he would not carry his gallows a step farther unlesshe had a drink. They brought him a bottle of Valdepenas, and he drainedit before resuming his way to Golgotha. Some of us laughedthoughtlessly, and narrowly escaped the knives of the orthodox ruffianswho followed the procession. "

The most striking fact in this species of exhibition is the evident andunquestioning faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show is atfirst shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is asermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of personswho attend these spectacles is very different from that which you findat the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, seriousbourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who cometo the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They wouldnot dream of such an indiscretion as reading the Bible. Their doctrinaleducation consists of their catechism, the sermons of the curas, and thetraditions of the Church. The miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping thebrow of the Saviour in the Street of Bitterness, finds his portrait onher handkerchief, is to them as real and reverend as if it were relatedby the evangelist. The spirit of inquiry which has broken so many idols, and opened such new vistas of thought for the minds of all the world, isas yet a stranger to Spain. It is the blind and fatal boast of even thebest of Spaniards that their country is a unit in religious faith. Nuncase disputo en Espana, --"There has never been any discussion inSpain, "--exclaims proudly an eminent Spanish writer. Spectacles likethat which we have just seen were one of the elements which in abarbarous and unenlightened age contributed strongly to theconsolidation of that unthinking and ardent faith which has fused thenation into one torpid and homogeneous mass of superstition. No bettermeans could have been devised for the purpose. Leaving out of view thesublime teachings of the large and tolerant morality of Jesus, theclergy made his personality the sole object of worship and reverence. Bydwelling almost exclusively upon the story of his sufferings, theyexcited the emotional nature of the ignorant, and left their intellectsuntouched and dormant. They aimed to arouse their sympathies, and whenthat was done, to turn their natural resentment against those whom theChurch considered dangerous. To the inflamed and excited worshippers, aheretic was the enemy of the crucified Saviour, a Jew was his murderer, a Moor was his reviler. A Protestant wore to their bloodshot eyes thesemblance of the torturer who had mocked and scourged the meek Redeemer, who had crowned his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced andslain him. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake were not enough to glutthe pious hate this priestly trickery inspired. It was not enough thatthe doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the crackling fagots, but it must be loaded in eternity with the curses of the faithful. 

Is there not food for earnest thought in the fact that faith in Christ, which led the Puritans across the sea to found the purest social andpolitical system which the wit of man has yet evolved from the tangledproblems of time, has dragged this great Spanish people down to a depthof hopeless apathy, from which it may take long years of civil tumult toraise them? May we not find the explanation of this strange phenomenonin the contrast of Catholic unity with Protestant diversity? "Thou thatkillest the prophets!"--the system to which this apostrophe can beapplied is doomed. And it matters little who the prophets may be. 

THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE OF CERVANTES

In Rembrandt Peale's picture of the Court of Death a cadaverous shapelies for judgment at the foot of the throne, touching at eitherextremity the waters of Lethe. There is something similar in the historyof the greatest of Spanish writers. No man knew, for more than a centuryafter the death of Cervantes, the place of his birth and burial. About ahundred years ago the investigations of Rios and Pellicer establishedthe claim of Alcala de Henares to be his native city; and last year theresearches of the Spanish Academy have proved conclusively that he isburied in the Convent of the Trinitarians in Madrid. But the precisespot where he was born is only indicated by vague tradition; and theshadowy conjecture that has so long hallowed the chapel and cloisters ofthe Calle Cantarranas has never settled upon any one slab of theirpavement. 

It is, however, only the beginning and the end of this most chivalrousand genial apparition of the sixteenth century that is concealed fromour view. We know where he was christened and where he died. So thatthere are sufficiently authentic shrines in Alcala and Madrid to satisfythe most sceptical pilgrims. 

I went to Alcala one summer day, when the bare fields were brown and dryin their after-harvest nudity, and the hills that bordered the windingHenares were drab in the light and purple in the shadow. From a distancethe town is one of the most imposing in Castile. It lies in the midst ofa vast plain by the green water-side, and the land approach is fortifiedby a most impressive wall emphasized by sturdy square towers andflanking bastions. But as you come nearer you see this wall is atradition. It is almost in ruins. 

The crenellated towers are good for nothing but to sketch. A short walkfrom the station brings you to the gate, which is well defended by agang of picturesque beggars, who are old enough to have sat for Murillo, and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionaires by this time, ifCastilians had the cowardly habit of sponging out disagreeableimpressions with pennies. At the first charge we rushed in panic into atobacco-shop and filled our pockets with maravedis, and thereafter facedthe ragged battalion with calm. 

It is a fine, handsome, and terribly lonesome town. Its streets arewide, well built, and silent v as avenues in a graveyard. On every handthere are tall and stately churches, a few palaces, and some two dozengreat monasteries turning their long walls, pierced with jealous gratedwindows, to the grass-grown streets. In many quarters there is no signof life, no human habitations among these morose and now empty barracksof a monkish army. Some of them have been turned into military casernes, and the bright red and blue uniforms of the Spanish officers andtroopers now brighten the cloisters that used to see nothing gayer thanthe gowns of cord-girdled friars. A large garrison is always kept here. The convents are convenient for lodging men and horses. The fields inthe vicinity produce great store of grain and alfalfa, --food for beastand rider. It is near enough to the capital to use the garrison on anysudden emergency, such as frequently happens in Peninsular politics. 

The railroad that runs by Alcala has not brought with it any taint ofthe nineteenth century. The army is a corrupting influence, but notmodern. The vice that follows the trail of armies, or sprouts, fungus-like, about the walls of barracks, is as old as war, and linksthe present, with its struggle for a better life, to the old mediaevalworld of wrong. These trim fellows in loose trousers and embroideredjackets are the same race that fought and drank and made prompt love inItaly and Flanders and butchered the Aztecs in the name of religionthree hundred years ago. They have laid off their helmets and hauberks, and use the Berdan rifle instead of the Roman spear. But they are thesame careless, idle, dissolute bread-wasters now as then. 

The town has not changed in the least. It has only shrunk a little. Youthink sometimes it must be a vacation, and that you will come again whenpeople return. The little you see of the people is very attractive. Passing along the desolate streets, you glance in at an open door andsee a most delightful cabinet picture of domestic life. All the doors inthe house are open. You can see through the entry, the front room, intothe cool court beyond, gay with oleanders and vines, where a group ofwomen half dressed are sewing and spinning and cheering their souls withgossip. If you enter under pretence of asking a question, you will bereceived with grave courtesy, your doubts solved, and they will bid yougo with God, with the quaint^ frankness of patriarchal times. 

They do not seem to have been spoiled by overmuch travel. Suchimpressive and Oriental courtesy could not have survived the tramplingfeet of the great army of tourists. On our pilgrim-way to the cradle ofCervantes we came suddenly upon the superb facade of the university. This is one of the most exquisite compositions of plateresque inexistence. The entire front of the central body of the building iscovered with rich and tasteful ornamentation. Over the great door is anenormous escutcheon of the arms of Austria, supported by two finelycarved statues, --on the one side a nearly nude warrior, on the other theNew World as a feather-clad Indian woman. Still above this a fine, boldgroup of statuary, representing, with that reverent naivete of earlyart, God the Father in the work of creation. Surrounding the whole frontas with a frame, and reaching to the ground on either side, is carvedthe knotted cord of the Franciscan monks. No description can convey thecharming impression given by the harmony of proportion and the lovingfinish of detail everywhere seen in this beautifully preserved fagade. While we were admiring it an officer came out of the adjoining cuarteland walked by us with jingling spurs. I asked him if one could goinside. He shrugged his shoulders with a Quien sabe? indicating a doubtas profound as if I had asked him whether chignons were worn in themoon. He had never thought of anything inside. There was no wine norpretty girls there. Why should one want to go in? We entered the coolvestibule, and were ascending the stairs to the first court, when aporter came out of his lodge and inquired our errand. We were wanderingbarbarians with an eye to the picturesque, and would fain see theuniversity, if it were not unlawful. He replied, in a hushed andscholastic tone of voice, and with a succession of confidential winksthat would have inspired confidence in the heart of a Talleyrand, thatif our lordships would give him our cards he had no doubt he couldobtain the required permission from the rector. He showed us into a dim, claustral-looking anteroom, in which, as I was told by my friend, whotrifles in lost moments with the integral calculus, there wereseventy-two chairs and one microscopic table. The wall was decked withportraits of the youth of the college, all from the same artist, whoprobably went mad from the attempt to make fifty beardless faces lookunlike each other. We sat for some time mourning over his failure, untilthe door opened, and not the porter, but the rector himself, a mostcourteous and polished gentleman in the black robe and three-corneredhat of his order, came in and graciously placed himself and theuniversity at our disposition. We had reason to congratulate ourselvesupon this good fortune. He showed us every nook and corner of the vastedifice, where the present and the past elbowed each other at everyturn: here the boys' gymnasium, there the tomb of Valles; here the newpatent cocks of the water-pipes, and there the tri-lingual patio whereAlonso Sanchez lectured in Arabic, Greek, and Chaldean, doubtless makinga choice hash of the three; the airy and graceful paraninfo, or hall ofdegrees, a masterpiece of Moresque architecture, with a gorgeouspanelled roof, a rich profusion of plaster arabesques, and, _horrescoreferens, _ the walls covered with a bright French paper. Our good rectorgroaned at this abomination, but said the Gauls had torn away theglorious carved panelling for firewood in the war of 1808, and thecollege was too poor to restore it. His righteous indignation waxed hotagain when we came to the beautiful sculptured pulpit of the chapel, where all the delicate details are degraded by a thick coating ofwhitewash, which in some places has fallen away and shows the gilding ofthe time of the Catholic kings. 

There is in this chapel a picture of the Virgin appearing to the greatcardinal whom we call Ximenez and the Spaniards Cisneros, which isprecious for two reasons. The portrait of Ximenez was painted from lifeby the nameless artist, who, it is said, came from France for thepurpose, and the face of the Virgin is a portrait of Isabella theCatholic. It is a good wholesome face, such as you would expect. But thethin, powerful profile of Ximenez is very striking, with his red hairand florid tint, his curved beak, and long, nervous lips. He looks notunlike that superb portrait Raphael has left of Cardinal Medici. 

This university is fragrant with the good fame of Ximenez. In theprincipal court there is a fine medallion of the illustrious founder andprotector, as he delighted to be drawn, with a sword in one hand and acrucifix in the other, --twin brother in genius and fortune of thesoldier-priest of France, the Cardinal-Duke Richelieu. On his gorgeoussarcophagus you read the arrogant epitaph with which he revenged himselffor the littleness of kings and courtiers:--

"Praetextam junxi sacco, galeamque galero, Frater, dux, praesul, cardineusque pater. Quin, virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo, Dummihi regnanti patuit Gesperia. "

By a happy chance our visit was made in a holiday time, and the studentswere all away. It was better that there should be perfect solitude andsilence as we walked through the noble system of buildings and strove tore-create the student world of Cervantes's time. The chronicle whichmentions the visit of Francis I. To Alcala, when a prisoner in Spain, says he was received by eleven thousand students. This was only twentyyears before the birth of Cervantes. The world will never see again sobrilliant a throng of ingenuous youth as gathered together in the greatuniversity towns in those years of vivid and impassioned greed forletters that followed the revival of learning. The romance of Oxford orHeidelberg or Harvard is tame compared with that electric life of anew-born world that wrought and flourished in Padua, Paris, and Alcala. Walking with my long-robed scholarly guide through the still, shadowycourts, under Renaissance arches and Moorish roofs, hearing him talkingwith enthusiasm of the glories of the past and never a word of theevents of the present, in his pure, strong, guttural Castilian, noliving thing in view but an occasional Franciscan gliding under thegraceful arcades, it was not difficult to imagine the scenes of theintense young life which filled these noble halls in that fresh day ofaspiration and hope, when this Spanish sunlight fell on the marble andthe granite bright and sharp from the chisel of the builder, and thegreat Ximenez looked proudly on his perfect work and saw that it wasgood. 

The twilight of superstition still hung heavily over Europe. But thiswas nevertheless the breaking of dawn, the herald of the fuller day ofinvestigation and inquiry. 

It was into this rosy morning of the modern world that Cervantes wasushered in the season of the falling leaves of 1547. He was born to alife of poverty and struggle and an immortality of fame. His own citydid not know him while he lived, and now is only known through him. Pilgrims often come from over distant seas to breathe for one day theair that filled his baby lungs, and to muse among the scenes that shapedhis earliest thoughts. 

We strolled away from the university through the still lanes and squaresto the Calle Mayor, the only thoroughfare of the town that yet retainssome vestige of traffic. It is a fine, long street bordered by stonearcades, within which are the shops, and without which in the pleasantafternoon are the rosy and contemplative shopkeepers. It would seem apity to disturb their dreamy repose by offering to trade; and in justiceto Castilian taste and feeling I must say that nobody does it. Halfwaydown the street a side alley runs to the right, called Calle deCervantes, and into this we turned to find the birthplace of theromancer. On one side was a line of squalid, quaint, gabled houses, onthe other a long garden wall. We walked under the shadow of the latterand stared at the house-fronts, looking for an inscription we had heardof. We saw in sunny doorways mothers oiling into obedience the stiffhorse-tail hair of their daughters. By the grated windows we caughtglimpses of the black eyes and nut-brown cheeks of maidens at theirneedles. But we saw nothing to show which of these mansions had beenhonored by tradition as the residence of Roderick Cervantes. 

A brisk and practical-looking man went past us. 

I asked him where was the house of the poet. He smiled in a superiorsort of way, and pointed to the wall above my head: "There is no suchhouse. Some people think it once stood here, and they have placed thatstone in the garden-wall to mark the spot. I believe what I see. It isall child's play anyhow, whether true or false. There is better work tobe done now than to honor Cervantes. He fought for a bigot king, anddied in a monk's hood. "

"You think lightly of a glory of Castile. "

"If we could forget all the glories of Castile it would be better forus. "

"Puede ser, " I assented. "Many thanks. May your grace go with God!"

"Health and fraternity!" he answered, and moved away with a step full ofenergy and dissent. He entered a door under an inscription, "FederalRepublican Club. "

Go your ways, I thought, radical brother. You are not so courteous norso learned as the rector. But this Peninsula has need of men like you. The ages of belief have done their work for good and ill. Let us havesome years of the spirit that denies, and asks for proofs. The power ofthe monk is broken, but the work is not yet done. The convents have beenturned into barracks, which is no improvement. The ringing of spurs inthe streets of Alcala is no better than the rustling of the sandalledfriars. If this Republican party of yours cannot do something to freeSpain from the triple curse of crown, crozier, and sabre, then Spain isin doleful case. They are at last divided, and the first two have beensorely weakened in detail. The last should be the easiest work. 

The scorn of my radical friend did not prevent my copying the modesttablet on the wall:--

"Here was born Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote. Byhis fame and his genius he belongs to the civilized world; by his cradleto Alcala de Henares. "

There is no doubt of the truth of the latter part of this inscription. Eight Spanish towns have claimed to have given birth to Cervantes, thusbeating the blind Scian by one town; every one that can show on itschurch records the baptism of a child so called has made its claim. YetAlcala, who spells his name wrong, calling him Carvantes, is certainlyin the right, as the names of his father, mother, brothers, and sistersare also given in its records, and all doubt is now removed from thematter by the discovery of Cervantes's manuscript statement of hiscaptivity in Algiers and his petition for employment in America, in bothof which he styles himself "Natural de Alcala de Henares. "

Having examined the evidence, we considered ourselves justly entitled toall the usual emotions in visiting the church of the parish, Santa Mariala Mayor. It was evening, and from a dozen belfries in the neighborhoodcame the soft dreamy chime of silver-throated bells. In the littlesquare in front of the church a few families sat in silence on themassive stone benches. A few beggars hurried by, too intent upon gettinghome to supper to beg. A rural and a twilight repose lay on everything. Only in the air, rosy with the level light, flew out and greeted eachother those musical voices of the bells rich with the memories of allthe days of Alcala. The church was not open, but we followed a sacristanin, and he seemed too feeble-minded to forbid. It is a pretty church, not large nor imposing, with a look of cosy comfort about it. Throughthe darkness the high altar loomed before us, dimly lighted by a fewcandles where the sacristans were setting up the properties for thegrand mass of the morrow, --Our Lady of the Snows. There was much talkand hot discussion as to the placing of the boards and the draperies, and the image of Our Lady seemed unmoved by words unsuited to herpresence. We know that every vibration of air makes its own impressionon the world of matter. So that the curses of the sacristans at theirwork, the prayers of penitents at the altar, the wailing of breakinghearts bowed on the pavement through many years, are all recordedmysteriously, in these rocky walls. This church is the illegible historyof the parish. But of all its ringing of bells, and swinging of censers, and droning of psalms, and putting on and off of goodly raiment, theonly show that consecrates it for the world's pilgrimage is that humbleprocession that came on the 9th day of October, in the year of Grace1547, to baptize Roderick Cervantes's youngest child. There could not bean humbler christening. Juan Pardo--John Gray--was the sponsor, and thewitnesses were "Baltazar Vazquez, the sacristan, and I who baptized himand signed with my name, " says Mr. Bachelor Serrano, who never dreamedhe was stumbling into fame when he touched that pink face with the holywater and called the child Miguel. It is my profound conviction thatJuan Pardo brought the baby himself to the church and took it homeagain, screaming wrathfully; Neighbor' Pardo feeling a little sheepishand mentally resolving never to do another good-natured action as longas he lived. 

As for the neophyte, he could not be blamed for screaming and kickingagainst the new existence he was entering, if the instinct of geniusgave him any hint of it. Between the font of St. Mary's and the bier atSt. Ildefonso's there was scarcely an hour of joy waiting him in hislong life, except that which comes from noble and earnest work. 

His youth was passed in the shabby privation of a poor gentleman'shouse; his early talents attracted the attention of my Lord Aquaviva, the papal legate, who took him back to Rome in his service; but thehigh-spirited youth soon left the inglorious ease of the cardinal'shouse to enlist as a private soldier in the sea-war against the Turk. Hefought bravely at Lepanto, where he was three times wounded and his lefthand crippled. Going home for promotion, loaded with praise and kindletters from the generous bastard, Don Juan of Austria, the true son ofthe Emperor Charles and pretty Barbara Blumberg, he was captured withhis brother by the Moors, and passed five miserable years in slavery, never for one instant submitting to his lot, but wearying his hostilefate with constant struggles. He headed a dozen attempts at flight orinsurrection, and yet his thrifty owners would not kill him. Theythought a man who bore letters from a prince, and who continued cock ofhis walk through years of servitude, would one day bring a round ransom. At last the tardy day of his redemption came, but not from thecold-hearted tyrant he had so nobly served. The matter was presented tohim by Cervantes's comrades, but he would do nothing. So that DonRoderick sold his estate and his sisters sacrificed their dowry to buythe freedom of the captive brothers. 

They came back to Spain still young enough to be fond of glory, andsimple-hearted enough to believe in the justice of the great. Theyimmediately joined the army and served in the war with Portugal. Theelder brother made his way and got some little promotion, but Miguel gotmarried and discharged, and wrote verses and plays, and took a smalloffice in Seville, and moved with the Court to Valladolid; and kept hisaccounts badly, and was too honest to steal, and so got into jail, andgrew every year poorer and wittier and better; he was a publicamanuensis, a business agent, a sub-tax-gatherer, --anything to keep hislean larder garnished with scant ammunition against the wolf hunger. Inthese few lines you have the pitiful story of the life of the greatestof Spaniards, up to his return to Madrid in 1606, when he was nearlysixty years old. 

From this point his history becomes clearer and more connected up to thetime of his death. He lived in the new-built suburb, erected on the siteof the gardens of the Duke of Lerma, first minister and favorite ofPhilip III. It was a quarter much affected by artists and men ofletters, and equally so by ecclesiastics. The names of the streetsindicate the traditions of piety and art that still hallow theneighborhood. Jesus Street leads you into the street of Lope de Vega. Quevedo and Saint Augustine run side by side. In the same neighborhoodare the streets called Cervantes, Saint Mary, and Saint Joseph, and justround the corner are the Magdalen and the Love-of-God. The actors andartists of that day were pious and devout madcaps. They did not aboundin morality, but they had of religion enough and to spare. Many of themwere members of religious orders, and it is this fact which has procuredus such accurate records of their history. All the events in the dailylife of the religious establishments were carefully recorded, and themanuscript archives of the convents and brotherhoods of that period arerich in materials for the biographer. 

There was a special reason for the sudden rise of religious brotherhoodsamong the laity. The great schism of England had been fully completedunder Elizabeth. The devout heart of Spain was bursting under thiswrong, and they could think of no way to avenge it. They would fain haveroasted the whole heretical island, but the memory of the Armada wasfresh in men's minds, and the great Philip was dead. There were notenough heretics in Spain to make it worth while to waste time in huntingthem. Philip could say as Narvaez, on his death-bed, said to hisconfessor who urged him to forgive his enemies, "Bless your heart, Ihave none. I have killed them all. " To ease their pious hearts, theyformed confraternities all over Spain, for the worship of the Host. Theycalled themselves "Unworthy Slaves of the Most Holy Sacrament. " Thesegrew at once very popular in all classes. Artisans rushed in, and wastedhalf their working days in processions and meetings. The severe Suarezde Figueroa speaks savagely of the crowd of Narcissuses and petitsmaitres (a word which is delicious in its Spanish dress of petimetres)who entered the congregations simply to flutter about the processions inbrave raiment, to be admired of the multitude. But there were other moreserious members, --the politicians who joined to stand well with thebigot court, and the devout believers who found comfort and edificationin worship. Of this latter class was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, whojoined the brotherhood in the street of the Olivar in 1609. He was nowsixty-two years old, and somewhat infirm, --a time, as he said, when aman's salvation is no joke. From this period to the day of his death heseemed to be laboring, after the fashion of the age, to fortify hisstanding in the other world. He adopted the habit of the Franciscans inAlcala in 1613, and formally professed in the Third Order in 1616, threeweeks before his death. 

There are those who find the mirth and fun of his later works soinconsistent with these ascetic professions, that they have been led tobelieve Cervantes a bit of a hypocrite. But we cannot agree with such. Literature was at that time a diversion of the great, and the chief aimof the writer was to amuse. The best opinion of scholars now is thatRabelais, whose genius illustrated the preceding century, was a man ofserious and severe life, whose gaulish crudeness of style and brilliantwit have been the cause of all the fables that distort his personalhistory. 

No one can read attentively even the Quixote without seeing how powerfulan influence was exerted by his religion even upon the noble and kindlysoul of Cervantes. He was a blind bigot and a devoted royalist, like allthe rest. The mean neglect of the Court never caused his stanch loyaltyto swerve. The expulsion of the Moors, the crowning crime and madness ofthe reign of Philip III. , found in him a hearty advocate and defender. _Non facit monachum cucullus, --_it was not his hood and girdle that madehim a monk; he was thoroughly saturated with their spirit before he putthem on. But he was the noblest courtier and the kindliest bigot thatever flattered or persecuted. 

In 1610, the Count of Lemos, who had in his grand and distant waypatronized the poet, was appointed Viceroy of Naples, and took with himto his kingdom a brilliant following of Spanish wits and scholars. Herefused the petition of the greatest of them all, however, and to softenthe blow gave him a small pension, which he continued during the rest ofCervantes's life. It was a mere pittance, a bone thrown to an old hound, but he took it and gnawed it with a gratitude more generous than thegift. From this time forth all his works were dedicated to the Lord ofLemos, and they form a garland more brilliant and enduring than thecrown of the Spains. Only kind words to disguised fairies have ever beenso munificently repaid, as this young noble's pension to the old genius. 

It certainly eased somewhat his declining years. Relieving him from thenecessity of earning his daily crust, it gave him leisure to completeand bring out in rapid succession the works which have made himimmortal. He had published the first part of Don Quixote in the midst ofhis hungry poverty at Valladolid in 1605. He was then fifty-eight, andall his works that survive are posterior to that date. He built hismonument from the ground up, in his old age. The Persiles andSigis-munda, the Exemplary Novels, and that most masterly and perfectwork, the Second Part of Quixote, were written by the flickering glimmerof a life burnt out. 

It would be incorrect to infer that the scanty dole of his patronsustained him in comfort. Nothing more clearly proves his straitenedcircumstances than his frequent change of lodgings. Old men do not movefor the love of variety. We have traced him through six streets in thelast four years of his life. But a touching fact is that they are all inthe same quarter. It is understood that his natural daughter and onlychild, Isabel de Saavedra, entered the Convent of the Trinitarian nunsin the street of Cantarranas--Singing Frogs--at some date unknown. Allthe shifting and changing which Cervantes made in these embarrassedyears are within a small half-circle, whose centre is his grave and thecell of his child. He fluttered about that little convent like a gauntold eagle about the cage that guards his callow young. 

Like Albert Duerer, like Raphael and Van Dyck, he painted his ownportrait at this time with a force and vigor of touch which leaveslittle to the imagination. As few people ever read the ExemplaryNovels, --more is the pity, --I will translate this passage from thePrologue:--

"He whom you see there with the aquiline face, chestnut hair, a smoothand open brow, merry eyes, a nose curved but well proportioned, a beardof silver which twenty years ago was of gold, long mustaches, a smallmouth, not too full of teeth, seeing he has but six, and these in badcondition, a form of middle height, a lively color, rather fair thanbrown, somewhat round-shouldered and not too light on his feet; this isthe face of the author of Galatea and of Don Quixote de la Mancha, ofhim who made the Voyage to Parnassus, and other works which are strayingabout without the name of the owner: he is commonly called Miguel deCervantes Saavedra. "

There were, after all, compensations in this evening of life. As long ashis dropsy would let him, he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar tosay his prayers in the little oratory. He passed many a cheerful hour ofgossip with Mother Francisca Romero, the independent superior of theTrinitarian Convent, until the time when the Supreme Council, jealous ofthe freedom of the good lady's life, walled up the door which led fromher house to her convent and cut her off from her nuns. He sometimesdropped into the studios of Carducho and Caxes, and one of them made asketch of him one fortunate day. He was friends with many of theeasy-going Bohemians who swarmed in the quarter, --Cristobal de Mesa, Quevedo, and Mendoza, whose writings, Don Miguel says, are distinguishedby the absence of all that would bring a "blush to the cheek of a youngperson, "--

"Por graves, puros, castos y excelentes. "

In the same street where Cervantes lived and died, the great Lope deVega passed his edifying old age. This phenomenon of incrediblefecundity is one of the mysteries of that time. Few men of letters haveever won so marvellous a success in their own lives, few have been solittle read after death. The inscription on Lope's house records that heis the author of two thousand comedies and twenty-one million of verses. Making all possible deductions for Spanish exaggeration, it must stillbe admitted that his activity and fertility of genius were prodigious. In those days a play was rarely acted more than two or three times, andhe wrote nearly all that were produced in Spain. He had driven allcompetitors from the scene. Cervantes, when he published his collectionof plays, admitted the impossibility of getting a hearing in the theatrewhile this "monster of nature" existed. There was a courteousacquaintance between the two great poets. They sometimes wrote sonnetsto each other, and often met in the same oratories. But a grand seigneurlike Frey Lope could not afford to be intimate with a shabby genius likebrother Miguel. In his inmost heart he thought Don Quixote rather low, and wondered what people could see in it. Cervantes, recognizing thegreat gifts of De Vega, and, generously giving him his full meed ofpraise, saw with clearer insight than any man of his time that thisdeluge of prodigal and facile genius would desolate rather than fructifythe drama of Spain. What a contrast in character and destiny between ourdilapidated poet and his brilliant neighbor across the way! The onerich, magnificent, the poet of princes and a prince among poets, the"Phoenix of Spanish Genius, " in whose ashes there is no flame ofresurrection; the other, hounded through life by unmerciful disaster, and using the brief respite of age to achieve an enduring renown; theone, with his twenty millions of verses, has a great name in the historyof literature; but the other, with his volume you can carry in yourpocket, has caused the world to call the Castilian tongue the languageof Cervantes. We will not decide which lot is the more enviable. But itseems a poet must choose. We have the high authority of Sancho forsaying, --

 "Para dar y tener Seso ha menester. "

 He is a bright boy who can eat his cake and have it. 

In some incidents of the closing scenes of these memorable lives thereis a curious parallelism. Lope de Vega and Cervantes lived and died inthe same street, now called the Calle de Cervantes, and were buried inthe same convent of the street now called Calle de Lope de Vega. In thisconvent each had placed a beloved daughter, the fruit of an early andunlawful passion. Isabel de Saavedra, the child of sin and poverty, wasso ignorant she could not sign her name; while Lope's daughter, thelovely and gifted Marcela de Carpio, was rich in the genius of herfather and the beauty of her mother, the high-born Maria de Lujan. Cervantes's child glided from obscurity to oblivion no one knew when, and the name she assumed with her spiritual vows is lost to tradition. But the mystic espousals of the sister Marcela de San Felix to theeldest son of God--the audacious phrase is of the father and priest FreyLope--were celebrated with princely pomp and luxury; grandees of Spainwere her sponsors; the streets were invaded with carriages from thepalace, the verses of the dramatist were sung in the service by theCourt tenor Florian, called the "Canary of Heaven;" and the eventcelebrated in endless rhymes by the genteel poets of the period. 

Rarely has a lovelier sacrifice been offered on the altar ofsuperstition. The father, who had been married twice before he enteredthe priesthood, and who had seen the folly of errant loves withoutnumber, twitters in the most innocent way about the beauty and the charmof his child, without one thought of the crime of quenching in the gloomof the cloister the light of that rich young life. After the lapse ofmore than two centuries we know better than he what the world lost bythat lifelong imprisonment. The Marquis of Mo-lins, director of theSpanish Academy, was shown by the ladies of the convent in this year of1870 a volume of manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, whichprove her to have been one of the most vigorous and original poets ofthe time. They are chiefly mystical and ecstatic, and full of therefined and spiritual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whosepulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. De Molinsis preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present oneof the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardentfantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon thetheme of her wasted prayers:--

 Let them say to my Lover That here I lie! The thing of his pleasure, His slave am I. 

 Say that I seek him Only for love, And welcome are tortures My passion to prove. 

 Love giving gifts Is suspicious and cold; I have _all, _ my Beloved, When thee I hold. 

 Hope and devotion The good may gain, I am but worthy Of passion and pain. 

 So noble a Lord None serves in vain, -- For the pay of my love Is my love's sweet pain. 

 I love thee, to love thee, No more I desire, By faith is nourished My love's strong fire. 

 I kiss thy hands When I feel their blows, In the place of caresses Thou givest me woes. 

 But in thy chastising Is joy and peace, O Master and Love, Let thy blows not cease!

 Thy beauty, Beloved, With scorn is rife! But I know that thou lovest me, Better than life. 

 And because thou lovest me, Lover of mine, Death can but make me Utterly thine!

 I die with longing Thy face to see; Ah! sweet is the anguish Of death to me!

This is a long digression, but it will be forgiven by those who feel howmuch of beautiful and pathetic there is in the memory of this mutenightingale dying with her passionate music all unheard in the silenceand shadows. It is to me the most purely poetic association that clingsabout the grave of Cervantes. 

This vein of mysticism in religion has been made popular by the recentcanonization of Saint Theresa, the ecstatic nun of Avila. In theceremonies that celebrated this event there were three prizes awardedfor odes to the new saint. Lope de Vega was chairman of the committee ofaward, and Cervantes was one of the competitors. The prizes it must beadmitted were very tempting: first, a silver pitcher; second, eightyards of camlet; and third, a pair of silk stockings. We hopeCervantes's poem was not the best. We would rather see him carry homethe stuff for a new cloak and pourpoint, or even those very attractivesilk stockings for his shrunk shank, than that silver pitcher which hewas too Castilian ever to turn to any sensible use. The poems arepublished in a compendium of the time, without indicating the successfulones; and that of Cervantes contained these lines, which would seemhazardous in this colder age, but which then were greatly admired:--

 "Breaking all bolts and bars, Comes the Divine One, sailing from the stars, Full in thy sight to dwell: And those who seek him, shortening the road, Come to thy blest abode, And find him in thy heart or in thy cell. "

The anti-climax is the poet's, and not mine. 

He knew he was nearing his end, but worked desperately to retrieve thelost years of his youth, and leave the world some testimony of hispowers. He was able to finish and publish the Second Part of Quixote, and to give the last touches of the file to his favorite work, the longpondered and cherished Persiles. This, he assures Count Lemos, will beeither the best or the worst work ever produced by mortal man, and hequickly adds that it will not be the worst. The terrible disease gainsupon him, laying its cold hand on his heart. He feels the pulsationsgrowing slower, but bates no jot of his cheerful philosophy. "With onefoot in the stirrup, " he writes a last farewell of noble gratitude tothe viceroy of Naples. He makes his will, commanding that his body belaid in the Convent of the Trinitarians. He had fixed his departure forSunday, the 17th of April, but waited six days for Shakespeare, and thetwo greatest souls of that age went into the unknown together, on the23d of April, 1616. 

The burial of Cervantes was as humble as his christening. His bier wasborne on the shoulders of four brethren of his order. The upper half ofthe coffin-lid was open and displayed the sharpened features to the fewwho cared to see them: his right hand grasped a crucifix with the gripof a soldier. Behind the grating was a sobbing nun whose name in theworld was Isabel de Saavedra. But there was no scenic effort or display, such as a few years later in that same spot witnessed the laying away ofthe mortal part of Vega-Carpio. This is the last of Cervantes uponearth. He had fought a good fight. A long life had been devoted to hiscountry's service. In his youth he had poured out his blood, and draggedthe chains of captivity. In his age he had accomplished a work whichfolds in with Spanish fame the orb of the world. But he was laid in hisgrave like a pauper, and the spot where he lay was quickly forgotten. Atthat very hour a vast multitude was assisting at what the polishedacademician calls a "more solemn ceremony, " the bearing of the Virgin ofthe Atocha to the Convent of San Domingo el Real, to see if peradventurepleased by the airing, she would send rain to the parching fields. 

The world speedily did justice to his name. Even before his death it hadbegun. The gentlemen of the French embassy who came to Madrid in 1615 toarrange the royal marriages asked the chaplain of the Archbishop ofToledo in his first visit many questions of Miguel Cervantes. Thechaplain happened to be a friend of the poet, and so replied, "I knowhim. He is old, a soldier, a gentleman, and poor. " At which theywondered greatly. But after a while, when the whole civilized world hadtrans-lated and knew the Quixote by heart, the Spaniards began to beproud of the genius they had neglected and despised. They quote with acertain fatuity the eulogy of Montesquieu, who says it is the only bookthey have; "a proposition" which Navarrete considers "inexact, " and weagree with Navarrete. He has written a good book himself. The Spaniardshave very frankly accepted the judgment of the world, and although theydo not read Cervantes much, they admire him greatly, and talk about himmore than is amusing. The Spanish Academy has set up a pretty muraltablet on the facade of the convent which shelters the tired bones ofthe unlucky immortal, enjoying now their first and only repose. In thePlaza of the Cortes a fine bronze statue stands facing the Prado, catching on his chiselled curls and forehead the first rays of morningthat leap over the hill of the Retiro. It is a well-poised, energetic, chivalrous figure, and Mr. Ger-mond de Lavigne has criticised it ashaving more of the sabreur than the savant. The objection does not seemwell founded. It is not pleasant for the world to be continuallyreminded of its meannesses. We do not want to see Cervantes's days ofpoverty and struggle eternized in statues. We know that he always lookedback with fondness on his campaigning days, and even in his decrepit agehe called himself a soldier. If there were any period in that troubledhistory that could be called happy, surely it was the time when he hadyouth and valor and hope as the companions of his toil. It would havebeen a precious consolation to his cheerless age to dream that he couldstand in bronze, as we hope he may stand for centuries, in theunchanging bloom of manhood, with the cloak and sword of a gentleman andsoldier, bathing his Olympian brow forever in the light of all themornings, and gazing, at evening, at the rosy reflex flushing theeast, --the memory of the day and the promise of the dawn.