A vast green meadow, a sort of elephant pasture, separates the Schilluks from their neighbours the Jengähs, concerning whom Mr Werne obtained some particulars from a Tschauss or sergeant, named Marian of Mount Habila, the son of the Mak or King of the mountains of Nuba. His father had been vanquished and murdered by the Turks, and he had been made a slave. This sergeant-prince was of middle height, with a black tatooed countenance, and with ten holes in each ear, out of which his captors had taken the gold rings. He was a sensible, well-behaved man, and had been thirteen years in the service, but was hopeless of promotion, having none to recommend him. Besides this man, there were two Dinkas and a Jengäh on board; but from them it was impossible to extract information with respect to the manners and usages of their countrymen. They held it treachery to divulge such particulars. Many of the soldiers and sailors composing the expedition being natives of the countries through which it sailed, apprehensions of desertion were entertained, and partially realised. On the 30th December, whilst passing through the friendly land of the Keks, everybody slept on shore, and in the night sixteen men on guard deserted. They were from the distant country of Nuba, (a district of Nubia,) which it seemed scarcely possible they should ever reach, with their scanty store of ammunition, and exposed to the assaults of hunger, thirst, and hostile tribes. Hussein Aga went after them with fifty ferocious Egyptians, likely to show little mercy to the runaways, with whom, however, they could not come up. And suddenly the drums beat to call all hands on board, for there was a report that all the negroes were planning escape. During this halt Mr Werne made ornithological observations, ascertaining, amongst other things, the species of certain white birds, which he had observed sitting impudently upon the backs of the elephants, picking the vermin from their thick hides, as crows do in Europe from the backs of pigs. The elephants evidently disapproved the operation, and lashed with their trunks at their tormentors, who then flew away, but instantly returned to recommence what Mr Werne calls their "dry fishing." These birds proved to be small herons. Shortly before this, a large pelican had been shot, and its crop was found to contain twenty-four fresh fish, the size of herrings. Its gluttony had caused its death, the weight it carried impeding its flight. Prodigious swarms of birds and water-fowl find their nourishment in the White Stream, and upon its swampy banks. In some places the trees were white with their excrements, whose accumulation destroyed vegetable life. There is no lack of nourishment for the feathered tribes—water and earth are prolific of vermin. Millions of glow-worms glimmer in the rushes, the air resounds with the shrill cry of myriads of grasshoppers, and with the croaking of countless frogs. But for the birds, which act as scavengers and vermin-destroyers, those shores would be uninhabitable. The scorching sun fecundates the sluggish waters and rank fat marsh, causing a never-ceasing birth of reptiles and insects. Monstrous fish and snakes of all sizes abound. Concerning the latter, the Arabs have strange superstitions. They consider them in some sort supernatural beings, having a king, Shach Maran by name, who is supposed to dwell in Turkish Kurdistan, not far from Adana, where two villages are exempted from tribute on condition of supplying the snakes with milk. Abdul-Elliab, a Kurd officer of the expedition, had himself offered the milk-sacrifice to the snakes; and he swore that he had seen their king, or at any rate one of hisWokils, or vicegerents, of whom his serpentine majestyhas many. He had no sooner poured his milky offering into one of the marble basins nature has there hollowed out, than a great snake, with long hair upon its head, stepped out of a hole in the rocks and drank. It then retired, without, as in some other instances, speaking to the sacrificer, a taciturnity contritely attributed by the latter to his not having yet entirely abjured strong drinks. Two other Kurds vouched for the truth of this statement, adding, that theMaranhad a human face, for that otherwise he could not speak, and that he never showed himself except to a sultan or to a very holy man. To the latter character the said Abdul-Elliab had great pretensions, and his bigotry, hypocrisy, and constant quotations from the Koran procured him from his irreverent shipmates, from Mr Werne amongst the number, the nickname of theParadise-Stormer, it being manifest that he reckoned on taking by assault the blessed abode promised by Mahomet to the faithful. Pending his admission to the society of the houris, he solaced himself with that of a young female slave, who often experienced cruel treatment at the hands of her saintly master. Having one day committed the heinous offence of preparingmerissa, a strong drink made from corn, for part of the crew, the Kurd, formerly, according to his own admission, a stanch toper, beat her with a thong as she knelt half-naked upon the deck. "As he did not attend to my calls from the cabin," says Mr Werne, "but continued striking her so furiously as to cut the skin and draw streams of blood, I jumped out, and pulled him backwards, so that his legs flew up in the air. He sprang to his feet, retreated to the bulwark of the ship, drew his sabre, and shouted, with a menacing countenance, 'Effendi!' instead of calling me Kawagi, which signifies a merchant, and is the usual title for a Frank. I had no sooner returned to the cabin than he seized his slave to throw her overboard, whereupon I caught up my double-barrel and levelled at him, calling out, 'Ana oedrup!' (I fire.) Thereupon he let the girl go, and with a pallid countenance protested she was his property, and he could do as he liked with her. Subsequently he complained of me to the commandant, who, knowing his malicious and hypocritical character, sent him on board the skiff, to the great delight of the whole flotilla. On our return to Chartum, he was cringing enough to ask my pardon, and to want to kiss my hand, (although he was then a captain) because he saw that the Bascha distinguished me. A few days previously to this squabble, I had gained the affection and confidence of our black soldiers, one of whom, a Tokruri or pilgrim from Darfur, had quarrelled with an Arab, and wounded him with his knife. He jumped overboard to drown himself, and, being unable to swim, had nearly accomplished his object, when he drifted to our ship and was lifted on board. They wanted to make him stand on his head, but I had him laid horizontally upon his side, and began to rub him with a woollen cloth, but at first could get no one to help me because he was anAbit, a slave, until I threatened the captain he should be made to pay the Bascha for the loss of his soldier. After long-continued rubbing, the Tokruri gave signs of life, and they raised him into a sitting posture, whilst his head still hung down. One of the soldiers, who, as a Faki, pretended to be a sort of awaker of the dead, seized him from behind under the arms, lifted him, and let him fall thrice violently upon his hinder end, shouting in his ear at the same time passages from the Koran, to which the Tokruri at last replied by similar quotations. The superstition of these people is so gross, that they believe such a pilgrim may be completely and thoroughly drowned, and yet retain power to float to any part of the shore he pleases, and, once on dry land, to resume his vitality."
A credulous traveller would have been misled by some of the strange fables put forward, with great plausibility, by these Arabs and other semi-savages, who have, moreover, a strong tendency to exaggerate, and who, perceiving the avidity with which Mr Werne investigated the animal and vegetable world around him, and his desire for rare and curious specimens, occasionally got up a lie for his benefit. Although kept awake many nights by the merciless midges, his zeal for science would not suffer him to sleepin the day, because he had no one he could trust to note the windings of the river. One sultry noon, however, when the Arab rowers were lazily impelling the craft against unfavourable breezes, and the stream was straight for a long distance ahead, he indulged in a siesta, during which visions of a happy German home hovered above his pillow. On awaking, bathed in perspiration, to the dismal realities of the pestilential Bach'r el Abiat, of incessant gnats and barbarian society, his Arab companions had a yarn cut and dried for him. During my sleep they had seen a swimming-bird as large as a young camel, with a straight beak like a pelican, but without a crop; they had not shot it for fear of awaking me, and because they had no doubt of meeting with some more of these unknown birds. No others appeared, and Mr Werne noted the camel-bird as an Egyptian lie, not as a natural curiosity.
A month's sail carried the expedition into the land of the Keks, a numerous, but not a very prosperous tribe. Theirtokulsor huts were entirely of straw, walls as well as roof. The men were quite naked, and of a bluish-gray colour, from the slime of the Nile, with which they smear themselves as a protection against the gnats. "There was something melancholy in the way in which those poor creatures raised their hands above their heads, and let them slowly fall, by manner of greeting. They had ivory rings upon their arms, and one of them turned towards his hut, as if inviting us in. Another stood apart, lifted his arms, and danced round in a circle. A Dinka on board, who is acquainted with their language, said they wanted us to give them durra, (a sort of corn,) and that their cows were far away and would not return till evening. This Dinka positively asserted, as did also Marian, that the Keks kill no animal, but live entirely on grain and milk. I could not ascertain, with certainty, whether this respect for brute life extended itself to game and fish, but it is universally affirmed that they eat cattle that die a natural death. This is done to some extent in the land of Sudan, although not by the genuine Arabs: it is against the Koran to eat a beast even that has been slain by a bullet, unless its throat has been cut whilst it yet lived, to let the prohibited blood escape. At Chartum I saw, one morning early, two dead camels lying on a public square; men cut off great pieces to roast, and the dogs looked on longingly. I myself, with Dr Fischer and Pruner, helped to consume, in Kahira, a roasted fragment of Clot Bey's beautiful giraffe, which had eaten too much white clover. The meat was very tender, and of tolerably fine grain. The tongue was quite a delicacy. On the other hand, I never could stomach the coarse-grained flesh of camels, even of the young ones." Africa is the land of strong stomachs. The Arabs, when on short rations, eat locusts; and some of the negro tribes devour the fruit of the elephant-tree, an abominable species of pumpkin, coveted by elephants, but rejected even by Arabs, and which Mr Werne found wholly impracticable, although his general rule was to try all the productions of the country. His gastronomical experiments are often connected with curious details of the animals upon which he tried his teeth. On the 12th January, whilst suffering from an attack of Nile-fever, which left him scarcely strength enough to post up his journal, he heard a shot, and was informed that Soliman Kaschef had killed with a single bullet a large crocodile, as it lay basking on a sandy promontory of the bank. The Circassian made a present of the skin to M. Arnaud, an excellent excuse for an hour's pause, that the Frenchman might get possession of the scaly trophy. Upon such trifling pretexts was the valuable time of the expedition frittered away. "Having enough of other meat at that moment, the people neglected cutting off the tail for food. My servants, however, who knew that I had already tasted that sort of meat at Chartum, and that at Taka I had eaten part of a snake, prepared for me by a dervish, brought me a slice of the crocodile. Even had I been in health, I could not have touched it, on account of the strong smell of musk it exhaled; but, ill as I was, they were obliged to throw it overboard immediately. When first I was in crocodile countries, it wasincomprehensible to me how the boatmen scented from afar the presence of these creatures; but on my journey from Kahira to Sennaar, when they offered me in Korusko a young one for sale, I found my own olfactories had become very sensitive to the peculiar odour. When we entered the Blue Stream, I could smell the crocodiles six hundred paces off, before I had seen them. The glands, containing a secretion resembling musk, are situated in the hinder part of the animal, as in the civet cats of Bellet Sudan, which are kept in cages for the collection of the perfume."
As the travellers ascended the river, their intercourse with the natives became much more frequent, inasmuch as these, more remote from Egyptian aggression, had less ground for mistrustful and hostile feelings. Captain Selim had a stock of coloured shirts, and an immense bale of beads, with which he might have purchased the cattle, villages, goods and chattels, and even the bodies, of an entire tribe, had he been so disposed. The value attached by the savages of the White Stream to the most worthless objects of European manufacture, enabled Mr Werne to obtain, in exchange for a few glass beads, a large collection of their arms, ornaments, household utensils, &c., now to be seen in the Royal Museum at Berlin. The stolid simplicity of the natives of those regions exceeds belief. One can hardly make up one's mind to consider them as men. Even as theambakseems the link between useful timber and worthless rushes, so does the Kek appear to partake as much of brute as of human nature. He has at least as much affinity with the big gray ape, whose dying agonies excited Mr Werne's compassion at the commencement of his voyage, as with the civilised and intellectual man who describes their strange appearance and manners. A Kek, who had been sleeping in the ashes of a fire, a common practice with that tribe, was found standing upon the shore by some of the crew, who brought him on board Selim's vessel. "Bending his body forward in an awkward ape-like manner, intended perhaps to express submission, he approached the cabin, and, on finding himself near it, dropped upon his knees and crept forward upon them, uttering, in his gibberish, repeated exclamations of greeting and wonderment. He had numerous holes through the rims of his ears, which contained, however, no other ornament than one little bar. They threw strings of beads over his neck, and there was no end to his joy; he jumped and rolled upon the deck, kissed the planks, doubled himself up, extended his hands over all our heads, as if blessing us, and then began to sing. He was an angular, high-shouldered figure, about thirty years of age. His attitude and gestures were very constrained, which arose, perhaps, from the novelty of his situation; his back was bent, big head hung forward, his long legs, almost calf-less, were as if broken at the knees; in his whole person, in short, he resembled an orang-outang. He was perfectly naked, and his sole ornaments consisted of leathern rings upon the right arm. How low a grade of humanity is this! The poor natural touches one with his childish joy, in which he is assuredly happier than any of us. By the help of the Dinka interpreter, he is instructed to tell his countrymen they have no reason to retreat before suchhonestpeople as those who man the flotilla. Kneeling, jumping, creeping, kissing the ground, he is then led away by the hand like a child, and would assuredly take all he has seen for a dream, but for the beads he bears with him." Many of these tribes are composed of men of gigantic stature. On the 7th January, Mr Werne, being on shore, would have measured some of the taller savages, but they objected. He then gave his servants long reeds and bade them stand beside the natives, thus ascertaining their average height to be from six to seven Rhenish feet. The Egyptians and Europeans looked like pigmies beside them. The women were in proportion with the men. Mr Werne tells of one lady who looked clear away over his head, although he describes himself as above the middle height.
At this date, (7th January) the flotilla reached a large lake, or inlet of the river, near to which a host of elephants grazed, and a multitude of light-brown antelopes stood still and stared at the intruders. The sight ofthe antelopes, which were of a species calledariel, whose flesh is particularly well-flavoured, was too much for Soliman Kaschef to resist. There was no wind; he gave orders to cease towing, and went on shore to shoot his supper. The antelopes retreated when the ships grated against the bank; and as the rush-jungle was by no means safe, beasts of prey being wont to hide there to catch the antelopes as they go to water at sunset, a few soldiers were sent forward to clear the way. Nevertheless, "on our return from the chase, during which not a single shot was fired, we lost twobáltaschi, (carpenters or sappers,) and all our signals were insufficient to bring them back. They were Egyptians, steady fellows, and most unlikely to desert; but their comrades did not trouble themselves to look for them, shrugged their shoulders, and supposed they had been devoured by theassador thenimr—the lion or tiger. The wordnimris here improperly applied, there being no tigers in Africa, but it is the general term for panthers and leopards." Here, at four-and-twenty degrees of latitude south of Alexandria, this extraordinary river was nearly four hundred paces wide. Mr Werne speculates on the origin of this astonishing water-course, and doubts the possibility that the springs of the White Stream supply the innumerable lakes and creeks, and the immense tracts of marsh contiguous to it; that, too, under an African sun, which acts as a powerful and constant pump upon the immense liquid surface. When he started on his voyage, the annual rains had long terminated. What tremendous springs those must be, that could keep this vast watery territory full and overflowing! Then the sluggishness of the current is another puzzle. Were the Nileonestream, Mr Werne observes—referring, of course, to the White Nile—it must flow faster than it does. And he concludes it to have tributaries, which, owing to the level nature of the ground, and to the resistance of the main stream, stagnate to a certain extent, rising and falling with the river, and contributing powerfully to its nourishment. But the notion of exploring all these watery intricacies with a flotilla of heavy-sailing barges, manned by lazy Turks and Arabs, and commanded by men who care more for getting drunk on arrack and going a-birding, than for the great results activity and intelligence might obtain, is essentially absurd. The proper squadron to explore the Bach'r el Abiat, through the continued windings, and up the numerous inlets depicted in Mr Mahlmann's map, is one consisting of three small steamers, drawing very little water, with steady well-disciplined English crews, accustomed to hot climates, and commanded by experienced and scientific officers. With the strongest interest should we watch the departure and anticipate the return of such an expedition as this. "Much might be done by a steam-boat," says Mr Werne; who then enumerates the obstacles to its employment. To bring it over the cataracts of the Nile, (below the junction of the Blue and White Streams,) it would be necessary to take the paddles entirely out, that it might be dragged up with ropes, like a sailing vessel. Or else it might be built at Chartum, but for the want of proper wood; the sunt-tree timber, although very strong, being exceedingly brittle and ill-adapted for ship-building. The greatest difficulty would be the fuel—the establishment and guard of coal stores; and as to burning charcoal, although the lower portion of the White Stream has forests enough, they are wanting on its middle and upper banks; to say nothing of the loss of time in felling and preparing the wood, of the danger of attacks from natives, &c., &c. If some of these difficulties are really formidable, others, on the contrary, might easily be overcome, and none are insuperable. Mr Werne hardly makes sufficient allowance for the difference between Soliman Kaschef and a European naval officer, who would turn to profit the hours and days the gallant Circassian spent in antelope-shooting, in laughing at Abu Haschis the jester, and in a sort of travelling seraglio he had arranged in his inner cabin, a dark nook with closely-shut jalousies, that served as prison to an unfortunate slave-girl, who lay all day upon a carpet, with scarcely space to turn herself, guarded by a eunuch. Not a glimpse of the country did the poor thing obtainduring the whole of the voyage; and, even veiled, she was forbidden to go on deck. Besides these oriental relaxations, an occasional practical joke beguiled for the commodore the tedium of the voyage. Feizulla, the tailor-captain, whose strange passion for thimble and thread made him frequently neglect his nautical duties, chanced one day to bring to before his superior gave the signal. "Soliman Kaschef had no sooner observed this than he fired a couple of shots at Feizulla Capitan, so that I myself, standing before the cabin door, heard the bullets whistle. Feizulla, did not stir, although both he and the sailors in the rigging afterwards affirmed that the balls went within a hand's-breadth of his head: he merely said, 'Malesch—hue billab,' (It is nothing—he jests;) and he shot twice in return, pointing the gun in the opposite direction, that Soliman might understand he took the friendly greeting as a Turkish joke, and that he, as a bad shot, dared not level at him." Soliman, on the other hand, was far too good a shot for such a sharp jest to be pleasant. The Turks account themselves the best marksmen and horsemen in the world, and are never weary of vaunting their prowess. Mr Werne says he saw an Arnaut of Soliman's shoot a running hare with a single ball, which entered in the animal's rear, and came out in front. And it was a common practice, during the voyage, to bring down the fruit from lofty trees by cutting the twigs with bullets. All these pastimes, however retarded the progress of the expedition. The wind was frequently light or unfavourable, and the lazy Africans made little way with the towing rope. Then a convenient place would often tempt to a premature halt; and, notwithstanding Soliman's sharp practice with poor Feizulla, if a leading member of the party felt lazily disposed, inclined for a hunting-party, or for a visit to a negro village, he seldom had much difficulty in bringing the flotilla to an anchor. In a straight line from north to south, the expedition traversed, between its departure from Chartum and its return thither, about sixteen hundred miles. It is difficult to calculate the distance gone over; and probably Mr Werne himself would be puzzled exactly to estimate it; but adding 20 per cent for windings, obliquities, and digressions, (a very liberal allowance,) we get a total of nearly two thousand miles, accomplished in five months, including stoppages, being at the very moderate rate of about 13 miles a day. And this, we must remember, was on no rapid stream, but up a river, whose current, rarely faster than one mile in an hour, was more frequently only half a mile, and sometimes was so feeble that it could not be ascertained. The result is not surprising, bearing in mind the quality of ships, crews, and commanders: but write "British" for "Egyptians," and the tale would be rather different.
The upshot of this ill-conducted expedition was its arrival in the kingdom of Bari, whose capital city, Pelenja, is situated in 4° N. L., and which is inhabited by an exceedingly numerous nation of tall and powerful build; the men six and a-half to seven French feet in height—equal to seven and seven and a-half English feet—athletic, well-proportioned, and, although black, with nothing of the usual negro character in their features. The men go naked, with the exception of sandals and ornaments; the woman wear leathern aprons. They cultivate tobacco and different kinds of grain: from the iron found in their mountains they manufacture weapons and other implements, and barter them with other tribes. They breed cattle and poultry, and are addicted to the chase. About fifteen hundred of these blacks came down to the shore, armed to the teeth—a sight that inspired the Turks with some uneasiness, although they had several of their chiefs on board the flotilla, besides which, the frank cordiality and good-humoured intelligent countenances of the men of Bari forbade the idea of hostile aggression. "It had been a fine opportunity for a painter or sculptor to delineate these colossal figures, admirably proportioned, no fat, all muscle, and magnificently limbed. None of them have beards, and it would seem they use a cosmetic to extirpate them. Captain Selim, whose chin was smooth-shaven, pleased them far better than the long-bearded Soliman Kaschef; and when thelatter showed them his breast, covered with a fell of hair, they exhibited a sort of disgust, as at something more appropriate to a beast than to a man." Like most of the tribes on the banks of the White Nile, they extract the four lower incisors, a custom for which Mr Werne is greatly puzzled to account, and concerning which he hazards many ingenious conjectures. Amongst the ape-like Keks and Dinkas, he fancied it to originate in a desire to distinguish themselves from the beasts of the field—to which they in so many respects assimilate; but he was shaken in this opinion, on finding the practice to prevail amongst the intelligent Bari, who need no such mark to establish their difference from the brute creation. The Dinkas on board confirmed his first hypothesis, saying that the teeth are taken out that they may not resemble the jackass—which in many other respects they certainly do. The Turks take it to be a rite equivalent to Mahomedan circumcision, or to Christian baptism. The Arabs have a much more extravagant supposition, which we refrain from stating, the more so as Mr Werne discredits it. He suggests the possibility of its being an act of incorporation in a great Ethiopian nation, divided into many tribes. The operation is performed at the age of puberty; it is unaccompanied by any particular ceremonies; and women as well as men undergo it. Its motive still remains a matter of doubt to Mr Werne.
Before Lakono, sultan of the Bari, and his favourite sultana Ischok, an ordinary-looking lady with two leathern aprons and a shaven head, came on board Selim's vessel, the Turks made repeated attempts to obtain information from some of the Sheiks concerning the gold mines, whose discovery was the main object of the expedition. A sensible sort of negro, one Lombé, replied to their questions, and extinguished their hopes. There was not even copper, he said, in the land of the Bari, although it was brought thither from a remoter country, and Lakono had several specimens of it in his treasury. On a gold bar being shown to him, he took it for copper, whence it was inferred that the two metals were blended in the specimens possessed by the sultan, and that the mountains of the copper country also yielded the more precious ore. This country, however, lay many days' journey distant from the Nile, and, had it even bordered on the river, there would have been no possibility of reaching it. At a very short distance above Palenja, the expedition encountered a bar of rocks thrown across the stream. And although Mr Werne hints the possibility of having tried the passage, the Turks were sick of the voyage and were heartily glad to turn back. At the period of the floods the river rises eighteen feet; and there then could be no difficulty in surmounting the barrier. Now the waters were falling fast. The six weeks lost by Arnaud's fault were again bitterly deplored by the adventurous German—the only one of the party who really desired to proceed. Twenty days sooner, and the rocks could neither have hindered an advance nor afforded pretext for a retreat. To Mr Werne's proposal, that they should wait two months where they were, when the setting in of the rains would obviate the difficulty, a deaf ear was turned—an insufficient stock of provisions was objected; and although the flotilla had been stored for a ten months' voyage, and had then been little more than two months absent from Chartum, the wastefulness that had prevailed gave some validity to the objection. One-and-twenty guns were fired, as a farewell salute to the beautiful country Mr Werne would so gladly have explored, and which, he is fully convinced, contains so much of interest; and the sluggish Egyptian barks retraced their course down stream.
It is proper here to note a shrewd conjecture of Mr Werne's, that above the point reached by himself and his companions, the difficulties of ascending the river would greatly and rapidly increase. The bed becomes rocky, and the Bach'r el Abiat, assuming in some measure the character of a mountain stream, augments the rapidity of its current: so much so, that Mr Werne insists on the necessity of a strong north wind, believing that towing, however willingly and vigorously attempted, would be found unavailing.This is another strong argument in favour of employing steamboats.
Although the narrative of the homeward voyage is by no means uninteresting, and contains details of the river's course valuable to the geographer and to the future explorer, it has not the attraction of the up-stream narrative. The freshness is worn off; the waters sink, and the writer's spirits seem disposed to follow their example; there is all the difference between attack and retreat—between a cheerful and hopeful advance, and a retrograde movement before the work is half done. But, vexed as an enthusiastic and intrepid man might naturally feel at seeing his hopes frustrated by the indolent indifference of his companions, Mr Werne could hardly deem his five months thrown away. We are quite sure those who read his book will be of opinion that the time was most industriously and profitably employed.
A sorrowful welcome awaited our traveller, after his painful and fatiguing voyage. There dwelt at Chartum a renegade physician, a Palermitan named Pasquali, whose Turkish name was Soliman Effendi, and who was notorious as a poisoner, and for the unscrupulous promptness with which he removed persons in the slightest degree unpleasing to himself or to his patron Achmet Bascha. In Arabia, it was currently believed, he had once poisoned thirty-three soldiers, with the sole view of bringing odium upon the physician and apothecary, two Frenchmen, who attended them. In Chartum he was well known to have committed various murders.
"Although this man," says Mr Werne, "was most friendly and sociable with me, I had everything to fear from him on account of my brother, by whom the Bascha had declared his intention of replacing him in the post of medical inspector of Bellet-Sudàn. It was therefore in the most solemn earnest that I threatened him with death, if upon my return I found my brother dead, and learned that they had come at all in contact. 'Dio guarde, che affronto!' was his reply; and he quietly drank off his glass of rum, the same affront having already been offered him in the Bascha's divan; the reference being naturally to the poisonings laid to his charge in Arabia and here."
At Chartum Mr Werne found his brother alive, but on the eleventh day after his return he died in his arms. The renegade had had no occasion to employ his venomous drugs; the work had been done as surely by the fatal influence of the noxious climate.
The accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some "sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous and deleterious,—from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva, from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and thence to Naples, the English "my lord," with his bear-leader, was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by, generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again, the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances, rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever belonged to "Europe's middle night,"thatthe descendants of Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter, so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land—its weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown to English gardens—remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was that, with rare exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers. Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands, exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends, on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian, or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,—emulating the deeds of Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves into the actual life, and studying the historic manners of Spain, like Carnarvon and Ford. Still, though soldier and statesman, philosopher and littérateur, had put forth their best powers in writing of the country that so worthily interested them, a void was ever left for some new comer to fill; and right well, in his three handsome, elaborate, and most agreeable volumes, has Mr Stirling filled that void. Not one of the goodly band of Spanish painters now lacks a "sacred poet" to inscribe his name in the temple of fame. With indefatigable research, most discriminating taste, and happiest success, has Mr Stirling pursued and completed his pleasant labour of love, and presented to the world "Annals of the Artists of Spain" worthy—can we say more?—of recording the triumphs of El Mudo and El Greco, Murillo and Velasquez.[16]
At least a century and a halfbefore Holbein was limning the burly frame and gorgeous dress of bluff King Hal, and creating at once a school and an appreciation of art in England, were the early painters of Spain enriching their magnificent cathedrals, and religious houses, with pictures displaying as correct a knowledge of art, and as rich a tone of colour, as the works of that great master. There is something singular and mysterious in the contrast afforded by the early history of painting in the two countries. While in poetry, in painting on glass, in science, in manufactures, in architecture, England appears to have kept pace with other countries, in painting and in sculpture she appears always to have lagged far behind. Gower, Chaucer, Friar Bacon, William of Wyckham, Waynfleete, the unknown builders of ten thousand churches and convents, the manufacturers of the glass that still charms our eyes, and baffles the rivalry of our Willements and Wailes, at York and elsewhere—the illuminators of the missals and religious books, whose delicate fancy and lustrous tints are even now teaching our highborn ladies that long-forgotten art—yielded the palm to none of their brethren in Europe; but where and who were our contemporaneous painters and sculptors? In the luxurious and graceful court of Edward IV., who represented that art which Dello and Juan de Castro, under royal and ecclesiastical patronage, had carried to such perfection in Spain? That no English painters of any note flourished at that time, is evident from the silence of all historical documents; nor does it appear that foreign artists were induced, by the hope of gain or fame, to instruct our countrymen in the art to which the discoveries of the Van Eycks had imparted such a lustre. It is true that the desolating Wars of the Roses left scant time and means to the sovereigns and nobility of England for fostering the arts of peace; but still great progress was being made in nearly all those arts, save those of which we speak; and, if we remember rightly, Mr Pugin assigns the triumph of English architecture to this troublous epoch. Nor, although Juan I., Pedro the Cruel, and Juan II., were admirers and patrons of painting, was it to royal or noble favour that Spanish art owed its chiefest obligations. The church—which, after the great iconoclastic struggle of the eighth century, had steadily acted on the Horatian maxim,
"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus"—
"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus"—
in Spain embraced the young and diffident art with an ardour and a munificence which, in its palmiest and most prosperous days, that art never forgot, and was never wearied of requiting. Was it so in England? and do we owe our lack of ancient English pictures to the reforming zeal of our iconoclastic reformers? Did the religious pictures of our Rincons, our Nuñez, and our Borgoñas, share the fate of the libraries that were ruthlessly destroyed by the ignorant myrmidons of royal rapacity? If so, it is almost certain that the records which bewail and denounce the fate of books and manuscripts, would not pass over the destruction of pictures; while it is still more certain that the monarch and his courtiers would have appropriated to themselves the pictured saints, no less than the holy vessels, of monastery and convent. It cannot, therefore, be said that the English Reformation deprived our national school of painting of its most munificent patrons, and most ennobling and purest subjects, in the destruction of the monasteries, and the spoliation of churches. That the Church of England, had she remained unreformed, might, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have emulated her Spanish or Italian sister in her patronage of, and beneficial influence upon, the arts of painting and sculpture, it is needless either to deny or assert; we fear there is no room for contending that, since the Reformation, she has in any way fostered, guided, or exalted either of those religious arts.
In Spain, on the contrary, as Mr Stirling well points out, it was under the august shadow of the church that painting first raised her head, gained her first triumphs, executed her most glorious works, and is even now prolonging her miserable existence.
The venerable cathedral of Toledo was, in effect, the cradle of Spanishpainting. Founded in 1226 by St Ferdinand, it remained, to quote Mr Stirling's words, "for four hundred years a nucleus and gathering-place for genius, where artists swarmed and laboured like bees, and where splendid prelates—the popes of the Peninsula—lavished their princely revenues to make fair and glorious the temple of God intrusted to their care." Here Dolfin introduced, in 1418, painting on glass; here the brothers Rodrigues displayed their forceful skill as sculptors, in figures which still surmount the great portal of that magnificent cathedral; and here Rincon, the first Spanish painter who quitted the stiff mediæval style, loved best to execute his graceful works. Nor when, with the house of Austria, the genius of Spanish art quitted the Bourbon-governed land, did the custodians of this august temple forget to stimulate and reward the detestable conceits, and burlesque sublimities, of such artists as the depraved taste of the eighteenth century delighted to honour. Thus, in 1721, Narciso Tome erected at the back of the choir an immense marble altar-piece, called the Trasparente, by order of Archbishop Diego de Astorgo, for which he received two hundred thousand ducats; and thus, fifty years later, Bayeu and Maella were employed to paint in fresco the cloisters that had once gloried in the venerable paintings of Juan de Borgoña. At Toledo, then, under the auspices of the great Castilian queen, Isabella, may be said to have risen the Castilian school of art. The other great schools of Spanish painting were those of Andalusia, of Valencia, and that of Arragon and Catalonia; but, for the mass of English readers, the main interest lies in the two first, the schools that produced or acquired El Mudo and El Greco, Velasquez and Murillo. The works of the two last-mentioned artists are now so well known, and so highly appreciated in England, that we are tempted to postpone for the present any notice of that most delightful part of Sir Stirling's book which treats of them, and invite our readers to trace the course of art in that stern old city to which we have already referred, Toledo.
Before the grave had closed upon the cold remains of Rincon, Juan de Borgoña had proved himself worthy of wielding the Castilian pencil, and, under the patronage of the great Toledan archbishop, Ximenes de Cisneros, produced works which still adorn the winter chapter-room of that cathedral. These are interesting not only as specimens of art, but as manifestations of the religious ��������� of Spain at the commencement of the sixteenth century: let Mr Stirling describe one of the most remarkable of these early paintings:—"The lower end of the finely-proportioned, but badly-lighted room, is occupied by the 'Last Judgment,' a large and remarkable composition. Immediately beneath the figure of our Lord, a hideous fiend, in the shape of a boar, roots a fair and reluctant woman out of her grave with his snout, as if she were a trufle, twining his tusks in her long amber locks. To the left are drawn up in a line a party of the wicked, each figure being the incarnation of a sin, of which the name is written on a label above in Gothic, letters, as'Soberbia,' and the like. On their shoulders sit little malicious imps, in the likeness of monkeys, and round their lower limbs, flames climb and curl. The forms of the good and faithful, on the right, display far less vigour of fancy." So the good characters in modern works of fiction are more feebly drawn, and excite less interest, than the Rob Roys and Dirk Hattericks, the Conrads and the Manfreds. Nor was Toledo at this time wanting in the sister art of sculpture: while the Rincons, and Berruguete, and Borgoña, were enriching the cathedral with their pictures and their frescoes, Vigarny was elaborating the famous high altar of marble, and the stalls on the epistle side. In concluding his notice of Vigarny, "the first great Castilian sculptor," Mr Stirling gives a sketch of the style of sculpture popular in Spain. Like nearly all the "Cosas d'Espana," it is peculiar, and owes its peculiarity to the same cause that has impressed so marked a character on Spanish painting and Spanish pharmacopeia—religion.
Let not the English lover of the fine arts, invited to view the masterpieces of Spanish sculpture, imagine that his eyes are to be feasted on thenude, though hardly indecent forms of Venuses and Apollos, Ganymedes and Andromedas.
Beautiful, and breathing, and full of imagination, indeed, those Spanish statues are—"idols," as our author generally terms them; but the idolatry they represent or evoke is heavenly, not earthly—spiritual, not sensuous. Chiselled out of a block of cedar or lime-wood, with the most reverential care, the image of the Queen of Heaven enjoyed the most exquisite and delicate services of the rival sister arts, and, "copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers sweetly smiling, and gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold." But we doubt whether any Englishman who has not seen can understand the marvellous beauty of these painted wooden images. Thus Berruguete, who combined both arts in perfection, executed in 1539 the archbishop's throne at Toledo, "over which hovers an airy and graceful figure, carved in dark walnut, representing our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, and remarkable for its fine and floating drapery."
Continuing our list of Toledan artists, "whose whole lives and labours lay within the shadow of that great Toledan church, whose genius was spent in its service, and whose names were hardly known beyond its walls," (vol. i. p. 150,) we come to T. Comontes, who, among other works for that munificent Alma Mater, executed from the designs of Vigarny the retablo (reredos) for the chapel "de los Reyes Nuevos," in 1533. It was at Toledo that El Mudo, the Spanish Titian, died, and at Toledo that Blas del Prado was born. When in 1593 the Emperor of Morocco asked that the best painter of Spain might be sent to his court, Philip II. appointed Blas del Prado to fulfil the Mussulman's artistic desires: previous to this, the chapter of Toledo had named him their second painter, and he had painted a large altar-piece, and other pictures, for their cathedral. But perhaps the Toledan annals of art contain no loftier name than that of El Greco. Domemis Theotocopuli, who, born, it is surmised, at Venice in 1548, is found in 1577 painting at Toledo, for the cathedral, his famous picture of The Parting of our Lord's Garment, on which he bestowed the labour of a decade, and of which we give Mr Stirling's picturesque description.
"The august figure of the Saviour, arrayed in a red robe, occupies the centre of the canvass; the head, with its long dark locks, is superb; and the noble and beautiful countenance seems to mourn for the madness of them who 'knew not what they did;' his right arm is folded on his bosom, seemingly unconscious of the rope which encircles his wrist, and is violently dragged downwards by two executioners in front. Around and behind him appears a throng of priests and warriors, amongst whom the Greek himself figures as the centurion, in black armour. In drawing and composition, this picture is truly admirable, and the colouring is, on the whole, rich and effective—although it is here and there laid on in that spotted streaky manner, which afterwards became the great and prominent defect of El Greco's style."
Summoned from the cathedral to the court, El Greco painted, by royal command, a large altar-piece, for the church at the Escurial, on the martyrdom of St Maurice; "little less extravagant and atrocious," says our lively author, "than the massacre it recorded." Neither king nor court painters could praise this performance, and the effect of his failure at the Escurial appears to have been his return to Toledo. Here, in 1584, he painted, by order of the Archbishop Quiroga, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz," a picture then and now esteemed as his master-piece, and still to be seen in the church of Santo Tomé. Warm is the encomium, and eloquently expressed, which Mr Stirling bestows upon this gem of Toledan art. "The artist, or lover of art, who has once beheld it, will never, as he rambles among the winding streets of the ancient city, pass the pretty brick belfry of that church—full of horse-shoe niches and Moorish reticulations,—without turning aside to gaze upon its superb picture once more. It hangs to your left, on the wall opposite to the high altar. Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz, head of a house famous in romance, rebuilt the fabric of the church, and was in all respects so religious and gracious a grandee, that,when he was buried in 1323, within these very walls, St Stephen and St Augustine came down from heaven, and laid his body in the tomb with their own holy hands—an incident which forms the subject of the picture. St Stephen, a dark-haired youth of noble countenance, and St Augustine, a hoary old man wearing a mitre, both of them arrayed in rich pontifical vestments of golden tissue, support the dead Count in their arms, and gently lower him into the grave, shrouded like a baron of Roslin 'in his iron panoply.' Nothing can be finer than the execution and the contrast of these three heads; never was the image of the peaceful death of 'the just man' more happily conveyed, than in the placid face and powerless form of the warrior: nor did Giorgione or Titian ever excel the splendid colouring of his black armour, rich with gold damascening. To the right of the picture, behind St Stephen, kneels a fair boy in a dark dress, perhaps the son of the Count; beyond rises the stately form of a gray friar; to the left, near St Augustine, stand two priests in gorgeous vestments, holding, the one a book, and the other a taper. Behind this principal group appear the noble company of mourners, hidalgos and old Christians all, with olive faces and beards of formal cut, looking on with true Castilian gravity and phlegm, as if the transaction were an every-day occurrence. As they were mostly portraits, perhaps some of the originals did actually stand, a few years later, with the like awe in their hearts and calm on their cheeks, in the royal presence-chamber, when the news came to court that the proud Armada of Spain had been vanquished by the galleys of Howard, and cast away on the rocks of the Hebrides." We make no apology for thus freely quoting from Mr Stirling's pages his description of this picture; the extract brings vividly before our readers at once the merits of the old Toledan painter, and his accomplished biographer and critic. After embellishing his adopted city, not only with pictures such as this, but with works of sculpture and architecture, and vindicating his graceful profession from the unsparing exactions of the tax-gatherers—a class who appear to have waged an unrelenting though intermittent war against the fine arts in Spain—he died there at a green old age in 1625, and was buried in the church of St Bartolemé. Even the painters most employed at the munificent and art-loving court of the second and third Philips, found time to paint for the venerable cathedral. Thus, in 1615, Vincencio Carducho, the Florentine, painted, with Eugenio Caxes, a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Sagrario; and thus Eugenio Caxes, leaving the works at the Pardo and Madrid, painted for the cathedral of Toledo the Adoration of the Magi, and other independent pictures.
Meanwhile the school of El Greco was producing worthy fruit; from it, in the infancy of the seventeenth century, came forth Luis Tristan, an artist even now almost unknown in London and Edinburgh, but whose style Velasquez did not disdain to imitate, and whose praises he was never tired of sounding. "Born, bred, and sped" in Toledo, or its neighbourhood, as Morales was emphatically the painter of Badajoz, so may Tristan be termed the painter of Toledo. No foreign graces, no classical models, adorned or vitiated his stern Spanish style; yet, in his portrait of Archbishop Sandoval, he is said by Mr Stirling to have united the elaborate execution of Sanchez Coello with much of the spirit of Titian. And of him is the pleasant story recorded, that having, while yet a stripling, painted for the Jeronymite convent at Toledo a Last Supper, for which he asked two hundred ducats, and being denied payment by the frugal friars, he appealed with them to the arbitration of his old master, El Greco, who, having viewed the picture, called the young painter a rogue and a novice, for asking only two for a painting worth five hundred ducats. In the same Toledan church that contains the ashes of his great master, lies the Murcian Pedro Orrente, called by our author "the Bassano, or the Roos—the great sheep and cattle master of Spain:" he too was employed by the art-encouraging chapter, and the cathedral possessed several of his finest pictures. But with Tristan and Orrente the glories of Toledan art paled and waned; and, trusting that ourreaders have not been uninterested in following our brief sketch of the remarkable men who for four hundred years rendered this quaint old Gothic city famous for its artistic splendours, we retrace our steps, halting and perplexed among so many pleasant ways, blooming flowers, and brilliant bowers, to the magnificent, albeit gloomy Escurial, where Philip II lavished the wealth of his mighty empire in calling forth the most vigorous energies of Spanish and of foreign art.
For more than thirty years did the astonished shepherds of the Guadaramas watch the mysterious pile growing under scaffolding alive with armies of workmen; and often, while the cares of the Old World and the New—to say nothing of that other World, which was seldom out of Philip's thoughts, and to which his cruel fanaticism hurried so many wretches before their time—might be supposed to demand his attention at Madrid, were they privileged to see their mighty monarch perched on a lofty ledge of rock, for hours, intently gazing upon the rising walls and towers which were to redeem his vow to St Laurence at the battle of Saint Quentin, and to hand down, through all Spanish time, the name and fame of the royal and religious founder. On the 23d of April 1563, the first stone of this Cyclopean palace was laid, under the direction of Bautiste di Toledo, at whose death, in 1567, the work was continued by Juan de Herrera, and finally perfected by Leoni (as to the interior decorations) in 1597. Built in the quaint unshapely form of St Laurence's gridiron, the Escurial is doubtless open to much severe criticism; but the marvellous grandeur, the stern beauty, and the characteristic effect of the gigantic pile, must for ever enchant the eyes of all beholders, who are not doomed by perverse fate to look through the green spectacles of gentle dulness. But it is not our purpose to describe the Escurial; we only wish to bring before our readers the names and merits of a few of the Spanish artists, who found among its gloomy corridors or sumptuous halls niches in the temple of fame, and in its saturnine founder the most gracious and munificent of patrons. Suffice it, then, to say of the palace-convent, in Mr Stirling's graceful words, that "Italy was ransacked for pictures and statues, models and designs; the mountains of Sicily and Sardinia for jaspers and agates; and every sierra of Spain furnished its contribution of marble. Madrid, Florence, and Milan supplied the sculptures of the altars; Guadalajara and Cuenca, gratings and balconies; Saragossa the gates of brass; Toledo and the Low Countries, lamps, candelabra, and bells; the New World, the finer woods; and the Indies, both East and West, the gold and gems of the custodia, and the five hundred reliquaries. The tapestries were wrought in Flemish looms; and, for the sacerdotal vestments, there was scarce a nunnery in the empire, from the rich and noble orders of Brabant and Lombardy to the poor sisterhoods of the Apulian highlands, but sent an offering of needlework to the honoured fathers of the Escurial."
We could wish to exclude from our paper all notice of the foreign artists, whose genius assisted in decorating the new wonder of the world; but how omit from any Escurialian or Philippian catalogue the names of Titian and Cellini, Cambiaso and Tibaldi? For seven long years did the great Venetian labour at his famous Last Supper, painted for, and placed in the refectory; and countless portraits by his fame-dealing pencil graced the halls and galleries of the Palatian convents. In addition to these, the Pardo boasted eleven of his portraits; among them, one of the hero Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, who has received a second grant of renown—let us hope a more lasting one[17]—from the poetic chisel of Marochetti, and stands now in the great square of Turin, the very impersonation of chivalry, horse and hero alike—����������� �����������.
The magnificent Florentine contributed "the matchless marble crucifix behind the prior's seat in the choir," of which Mr Stirling says—"Neverwas marble shaped into a sublimer image of the great sacrifice for man's atonement." Luca Cambiaso, the Genoese, painted the Martyrdom of St Laurence for the high altar of the church—a picture that must have been regarded, from its subject and position, as the first of all the Escurial's religious pictures,—besides the vault of the choir, and two great frescoes for the grand staircase.
Pellegrino Tibaldi, a native of the Milanese, came at Philip's request to the Escurial in 1586. He, too, painted a Martyrdom of Saint Laurence for the high altar, but apparently with no better success than his immediate predecessor, Zuccaro, whose work his was to replace. But the ceiling of the library was Tibaldi's field of fame; on it he painted a fresco 194 feet long by 30 wide, which still speaks to his skill in composition and brilliancy in colouring. Philip rewarded him with a Milanese marquisate and one hundred thousand crowns.
Morales, the first great devotional painter of Castile, on whom his admiring countrymen bestowed the soubriquet of "divine"—with more propriety, it must be confessed, than their descendants have shown in conferring it upon Arguelles—contributed but one picture to the court, and none to the Escurial; but in Alonzo Sanchez Coello, born at Benifayrô, in Valencia, we find a famous native artist decorating the superb walls of the new palace. While at Madrid he was lodged in the Treasury, a building which communicated with the palace by a door, of which the King kept a key; and often would the royal Mæcenas slip thus, unobserved by the artist, into his studio. Emperors and popes, kings and queens, princes and princesses, were alike his friends and subjects; but we are now only concerned to relate that, in 1582, he painted "five altar-pieces for the Escurial, each containing a pair of saints." Far more of interest, however, attaches itself to the name and memory of Juan Fernandez Navarete, "whose genius was no less remarkable than his infirmities, and whose name—El Mudo, the dumb painter—is as familiar to Europe as his works are unknown," (vol. i. p. 250.) Born at Logroño in 1526, he went in his youth to Italy. Here he attracted the notice of Don Luis Manrique, grand-almoner to Philip, who procured him an invitation to Madrid. He was immediately set to work for the Escurial; and in 1571 four pictures, the Assumption of the Virgin, the Martyrdom of St James the Great, St Philip, and a Repenting St Jerome, were hung in the sacristy of the convent, and brought him five hundred ducats. In 1576 he painted, for the reception-hall of the convent, a large picture representing Abraham receiving the three Angels. "This picture," says Father Andres Ximenes, quoted by Mr Stirling, (vol. i. p. 255) "so appropriate to the place it fills, though the first of the master's works that usually meets the eye, might, for its excellence, be viewed the last, and is well worth coming many a league to see." An agreement, bearing date the same year, between the painter and the prior, by which the former covenanted to paint thirty-two large pictures for the side altars, is preserved by Cean Bermudez; but El Mudo unfortunately died when only eight of the series had been painted. On the 28th of March 1579 this excellent and remarkable painter died in the 53d year of his age. A few years later, Juan Gomez painted from a design of Tibaldi a large picture of St Ursula, which replaced one of Cambiaso's least satisfactory Escurialian performances.
While acres of wall and ceiling were being thus painted in fresco, or covered by large and fine pictures, the Escurial gave a ready home to the most minute of the fine arts: illuminators of missals, and painters of miniatures, embroiderers of vestments, and designers of altar-cloths, found their labours appreciated, and their genius called forth, no less than their more aspiring compeers. Fray Andrez de Leon, and Fray Martin de Palencia, enriched the Escurial with exquisite specimens of their skill in the arts of miniature-painting and illuminating; and under the direction of Fray Lorenzo di Monserrate, and Diego Rutiner, the conventual school of embroidery produced frontals and dalmatics,copes, chasubles, and altar-cloths, of rarest beauty and happiest designs. The goldsmiths and silversmiths, too, lacked not encouragement in this greatest of temples. Curious was the skill, and cunning the hand, which fashioned the tower of gold and jasper to contain the Escurial's holiest relique,—a muscle, singed and charred, of St Laurence—and no doubt that skill was nobly rewarded.
In 1598, clasping to his breast the veil of Our Lady of Monserrat, in a little alcove hard by the church of the Escurial, died its grim, magnificent founder. He had witnessed the completion of his gigantic designs: palace and convent, there it stood—a monument alike of his piety and his pride, and a proof of the grandeur and resources of the mighty empire over which he ruled. But he appears to have thought with the poet—