TOLEDO

SEVILLEALCAZAR.GATE OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.ALCAZAR.GALLERY OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.

SEVILLE

ALCAZAR.GATE OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.ALCAZAR.GALLERY OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.

ALCAZAR.GATE OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.

ALCAZAR.GALLERY OF THE HALL OF SAN FERNANDO.

SEVILLEALCAZAR—HALL IN WHICH KING SAN FERNANDO DIED.

SEVILLE

ALCAZAR—HALL IN WHICH KING SAN FERNANDO DIED.

PLATE XXXVII.Bands. Side of Arches.

PLATE XXXVII.

Bands. Side of Arches.

that of Bib-Ragel, which occupied the north angle of the city; and, in addition to these, it is believed there was a small postern, afterwards called the “atarazanas,” through which it is supposed that Axataf, or “Sakkáf” his Moorish name, went out to receive King Ferdinand, and to deliver up the keys of Seville. The old wharf of Saracen Seville came as far as this; and in all the space, which to-day is called El Barrio de los Humeros, or the Chimney Quarter, the Mohammedans had their arsenal and shipbuilding yard, while the sailors and fishermen of the Guadalquivir were also housed in this district. The Gate of the Triana must have been in the vicinity; and the Gate of Hercules was directly opposite the Ajarafe, which was also called the Garden of Hercules. With the gardens and orchards of the Macarena, which adorned it to the north, the plains and woods of Tablada, which supplied it with corn and wood to the east and south, with an abundant supply of fresh water brought from Carmona by the aqueduct, with the river which was its principal commercial artery to the west, with the castles on the opposite side of the Guadalquivir, protecting the river and its bridge, and occupying all the heights from Azalfarache nearly as far as Italica, Seville was one of the best situated, best supplied, best defended, and most prosperous cities of the Mussulman empire in Andalusia. To attack her she must be cut off from the Ajarafe, and her bridge of boats must be taken. It would have been useless to descend to Italica and be exposed to the assaults of the city and of Triana, as long as the bridge existed, and this task was thought to be beyond the power and ingenuity of any enemy.

The bridge of boats, protected by a great wooden chain, linked by iron rings, kept the communication open between the city and the Ajarafe, that vast and fertile district fromwhich the Sevillians received all sorts of supplies, and where the Saracen magnates had their country villas. This delightful Garden of Hercules, in whose praise many Arab writers have exhausted the treasure of their rich and exalted imagination, has been described in the following manner by an anonymous poet, in some verses dedicated to the Abbadite Sultan Almutamed: “Seville is a young widow, her husband is Abbad, her diadem the Aljarafe, her collar the winding river.” Indeed, says the poet Ibn Saffar, “the Aljarafe surpasses in beauty and fertility all the lands of the world, the oil of its olives goes even to far Alexandria, its farms and orchards are superior to those of other countries on account of their extension and convenience; and, always white and pure, they seem to be so many stars in a sky of olive gardens.” Travelled Arab historians recall with pleasure the delights of Andalus; preferring Seville to either Baghdad or Cairo, saying: “The Aljarafe is a luxuriant wilderness without wild beasts, and its Guadalquivir is a Nile without crocodiles.” One of the authors, quoted by El-Makkari, gives the following exact description of the Aljarafe: “It is an immense district, measuring forty miles long, and almost as many broad, formed of pleasing hills of reddish earth, on which there are woods of olive and fig-trees, which offer a delicious shade to the traveller in the hours of the mid-day heat. This district contains a numerous population, scattered in beautiful farms or collected in villages, none of which are wanting for markets, clean baths, fine buildings, and other conveniences, such as are usually only to be found in cities of the first order.”

This fertile territory, which the Saracens called the “Orchard of Hercules,” rose gradually to the west of Seville, after stretching along the right bank of the river.

SEVILLEALCAZAR—ROOM OF THE PRINCE.

SEVILLE

ALCAZAR—ROOM OF THE PRINCE.

SEVILLEALCAZAR—VIEW OF THE GALLERY FROM THE SECOND FLOOR.

SEVILLE

ALCAZAR—VIEW OF THE GALLERY FROM THE SECOND FLOOR.

Its heights were covered with farmhouses and hamlets, as the Arab writer indicates, which formed, as it were, a continuous population, rich in provisions, from which Seville usually received abundant supplies of all necessaries. There were four principal villages: Aznalfarche (to-day, San Juan de Alfarache), Aznalcazar, Aznalcollar, and Solucar de Albayda, strong walled places, where the Mohammedans collected the revenues of the district. The fringe, formed by the heights of the Aljarafe, was given the name of “Mountain of Mercies” (Jebl arrahmah) by the Mohammedans, on account of its extraordinary fertility, a surprising abundance of figs, known as “Al-kuiti” and “Ash-shari,” being produced there.

The Sevillians faced the Christian attack with boldness, bred of confidence, and a determination to strain every nerve, and exhaust every resource, in repelling the invaders. They were engaging upon their last throw for the sovereignty of Andalusia. Fernando’s warships encountered the Moorish fleet at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and drove them from their position, and the infidels collected their forces to make a last stand on land. But their stubborn front was broken by the Christian host, and the war-worn remnant of the Moorish army prepared to withstand a siege. Even when the bridge of boats was destroyed, and all communications with the suburb of Triana and the surrounding country was cut off, the Moors still fought on within the city walls, and it was not until fifteen months had elapsed that Seville was starved into submission. On the 23rd February, 1235, Fernando entered the city, and Abdul Hassan, rejecting the king’s invitation to become a dependent officer of the Spanish Crown, retired with thousands of his vanquished Almohades to Africa.

Fernando’s first act was to have the mosque purifiedfor the celebration of a high and imposing Mass; he took up his quarters in the alcazar; divided the Moorish possessions among his knights, and rested his army after their long and arduous campaign. Four years later he died of dropsy. He was succeeded by Alfonso X., who founded the University of Seville, devoted his leisure to the study of poetry, history, and ancient laws, and merited the title of “El Sabio,” “the Learned.” But although the beautiful alcazar appealed to the studious temperament of “El Sabio,” the fortress-palace is more closely associated with his son, Pedro I., Pedro, “the Cruel,” the most renowned of all the Christian sovereigns who ruled Andalusia from Seville.

Pedro’s character has been made the study of many biographers and historians, and he has not been without his literary whitewashers, but the “incidents” which illuminate his career do not place him in a favourable light. His Bohemianism endeared him to the people, and a certain sense of justice, in cases in which his own interests were not concerned, has gained for him the title of “The Justiciary.” It may be that the plottings of Albuquerque, his father’s chancellor, and the perfidious behaviour of his relatives, including his own mother, served to warp and embitter his nature; but he had no sooner, at the instigation of his mistress, Maria de Padilla, taken up the reigns of government, than he revealed the cruelty and malignity of his character. Leonora de Guzmar, the mother of Alfonso’s illegitimate son, Enrique, was done to death in his prisons; Abu Said, the King of Granada, was seized by treachery, robbed, and executed; Urraca Osorio, for refusing Pedro’s addresses, was burned to death in the market-square of Seville; his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, was mysteriously murdered; Don Fadrique, his half-brother, was assassinated with Pedro’s dagger; and he himself was eventually defeated

SEVILLETOWER OF THE GIRALDA.

SEVILLE

TOWER OF THE GIRALDA.

SEVILLEDETAILS OF THE GIRALDA TOWER.

SEVILLE

DETAILS OF THE GIRALDA TOWER.

in battle by the troops of his brother Henry and Bertrand du Guesclin, and killed in single combat by Henry.

Pedro wearied of his first wife, Blanche of Bourbon, in forty-eight hours; and, having had his marriage annulled, he espoused the handsome Juaña de Castro, only to desert her a few days later to return to his beautiful mistress, Maria de Padilla. This woman appears to have been the only person who inspired Pedro with more than a transitory passion, and the courtiers testified to the power she wielded by chivalrously drinking the waters of her bath in El Jardin del Crucero. But Pedro’s passion for his mistress, though lasting, was not monopolising, and his amours supply us with an incident which reveals at once the king’s ferocity, his humour, and his alleged respect for justice. It was his custom at night to muffle himself in a cloak and adventure alone into the city in quest of entertainment. On one of these excursions he encountered a hidalgo serenading a lady, whose favours he himself coveted. Cloaked by the dim light, and made secure by the emptiness of the street, the king fought and slew his rival, in defiance of his own order, which made street fighting punishable upon the officers of the city when they failed to bring the disturbers of the peace to justice. He had not bargained for the noise to disturb the rest of an old lady in the vicinity; he had not observed a venerable head protruding through an upper window. Believing the incident to be “wrapped in mystery,” he summoned the alcade of the city to his presence, acquainted him with the fact that the body of a hidalgo, pierced to the heart, had been found in the street, and gave him the option of discovering the murderer within forty-eight hours, or of being hanged in his stead. And hanged he doubtless would have been but for the timely confidence of the old lady who had witnessed the fight. The alcadecame again to the king with the news that the murderer had been found, and would be on view upon the gallows within the time specified by Pedro. Curious to see who had been secured to expiate his sin, or eager to fasten a new dereliction of duty upon the alcade, the king went to the place of execution and found, suspended from the gallows, an effigy of himself. “Good,” said the king, “justice has been done! I am satisfied.” There is a street in Seville which is called the Calle della Cabeza del Rey Don Pedro, to commemorate the duel; and the alley from which the old lady observed the issue is known as the Calle del Candilejo, “the street of the candlestick.”

The alcazar extends along the river as far as the Golden Tower, built during the reign of Yusuf Almotacid Ben Nasir, by the Almohadan governor Abulala. The view of Seville, from the Christina promenade, the famous thoroughfare, which extends from the palace of the Duke of Montpensier to the Golden Tower, is a spectacle of which the Sevillians never tire, and visitors are never weary of praising. The tower itself, which took its present name either from the fact that it held the gold which the Spanish ships brought from America, or because Don Pedro secreted his treasures there, is octagonal in shape, with three receding floors, crowned with battlements, and washed by the Guadalquivir. The shimmering Torre del Oro, reflecting its light upon the broad bosom of the rose-coloured river beneath the setting sun, has inspired poets and painters of every age and nationality. George Borrow believes it probable that it derived its name from the fact that the beams of the setting sun focussed upon it makes it appear to be built of pure gold; and then, carried away by the loveliness of the picture, he cries: “Cold, cold must the heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic

PLATE XXXVIII.Ornaments on Panels.

PLATE XXXVIII.

Ornaments on Panels.

SEVILLECOURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLE

COURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLECOURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLE

COURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

scene, to do justice to which the pencil of Claude himself were barely equal. Often have I shed tears of rapture whilst I beheld it, and listened to the thrush and the nightingale piping forth their melodious songs in the woods, and inhaled the breeze laden with the perfume of the thousand orange gardens of Seville.”

Of the great mosque of Seville, which was built by Abu Yakub Yusuf in 1171, and completed by the addition of the tower in 1196 by his son, only the barest traces now remain. It is impossible to determine who really designed the famous Tower, now called the Giralda; but historians favour the claims of the renowned architect, whose name is variously spelt Gever, Hever, or Djabir, and who is erroneously supposed to have been the inventor of algebra. In its original state this structure was an immense and stately pile, planned on the model of the mosque of Cordova, and decorated with lavish magnificence. In 1235 it was dedicated to the service of God and the Virgin, but it retained all its Moorish characteristics until 1401. The Moors would have destroyed the building and the beautiful Muezzin tower before it fell into the hands of San Fernando’s soldiers, and thus save their sacred temple from desecration by the “infidels,” but the king’s son, Alonso “el Sabio,” threatened to visit such spoliation upon the garrison by sacking the city. This threat had the desired effect, and for nearly two centuries the religious spirit of Seville found expression in a temple which had been built to the glory of Allah. But at the beginning of the fifteenth century the mosque was razed to the ground, and Seville cathedral began to take that huge and splendid form which, in the words of the pious originators, was to inspire succeeding generations with the idea that its designers were mad. It was to be the greatest cathedral inSpain, and it ended in being second only to that of Cordova, but still the third largest Christian church in the world. Its area of 125,000 square feet is 35,000 square feet less than Cordova cathedral, and 105,000 square feet less than St. Peter’s at Rome; but it is 15,000 square feet greater than that of Milan Cathedral, and greater by 41,000 square feet than St. Paul’s in London.

The Moors, in building their mosque, employed the remains of ruined Roman and Gothic structures, and the Spaniards in 1401 used the Arab foundations in the construction of their cathedral, while the Moorish tower was preserved to do duty as a spire. In its original form the Giralda was only 250 feet high, the additional 100 feet which forms the belfry being added by Fernando Ruiz in 1567. In 1506 the cathedral was completed. Five years later the dome collapsed, and was re-erected by Juan Gil de Hontanon. Extensive restoration work was carried out in 1882, under the superintendence of Cassova; but six years after this work was completed, the dome again gave way, and workmen have been constantly employed ever since in reconstructing this part of the vast building.

According to Contreras, the Giralda is the most expressive monument of the Mohammedan dominion; and, despite all that has been said of its Moorish structure and primitive African style, it is in his opinion a perfect work of Arab art. The construction is anterior by four centuries, at least, to that of any tower of Granadian architecture such as that which to-day belongs to the Church of St. John of the Kings, but there is not the slightest difference in the manner of their ornamentation, and the rhomboids of painted bricks, the festoons of terra cotta, the windows with double arches, following the segments of a circle, present all the variety of the alcazar of Granada.

PLATE XXXIX.Ornaments on Panels.

PLATE XXXIX.

Ornaments on Panels.

SEVILLEHOUSE OF PILATOS—VIEW IN THE COURT BY THE DOOR OF THE CHAPEL.

SEVILLE

HOUSE OF PILATOS—VIEW IN THE COURT BY THE DOOR OF THE CHAPEL.

SEVILLEHOUSE OF PILATOS—CHAPEL.

SEVILLE

HOUSE OF PILATOS—CHAPEL.

“Here one sees plainly,” Contreras says, “the origin of the superposed arch of the belvedere of Lindaraja of the Alhambra, of the hanging arch of the three entrances of the Lions’ Court, of the festoons of the Court of the Fountain, and of all those forms, so delicate and so luxurious, that they are without equal in architecture. It is in the Giralda that one finds the beginning of truly decorative art. Built of varnished bricks, with a stout construction, as is demanded by the façade of a very high tower, it is to be regretted that such a beautiful edifice should be crowned by so strange a body as its gilded frontages and painted porcelains.”

With the exception of the Giralda, and part of the lower portions of the walls, the Moorish remains that are to be recognised in the cathedral are few and not remarkable. The Puerta del Perdon in the Calle de Alemanes was reconstructed by Alfonso XI., after the victory of Salado, and the plateresque ornamentations were added by Bartolome Lopez about 1522. But although the bronze-covered doors have been disfigured by paint, their Moorish character is still distinctly traceable. Through the gateway we enter the old Moorish courtyard, the Patio de los Naranjas (Court of Oranges), robbed of its former grandeur, but still distinguished by its beautiful Arabic fountain, with an octagonal basin, which occupies the centre of the court. From this spot we get a splendid view of the cathedral and the massive yet delicate Giralda tower, which has been declared to be even more to Seville than Giotto’s Campanile is to Florence, or that of St. Mark’s to Venice. “Long before the traveller reaches the city,” writes an imaginative admirer, “the Giralda seems to beckon him onwards to his promised land; during all his peregrinations through the intricate streets and lanes it is his trusted guide, always ready to serve him, soaring as it does far above all surroundings, it is a thing of unfailingbeauty and interest as day by day he passes and repasses it, or wanders about its precincts; it tells him even afar off, how the day moves on, and how the night; and it dwells in his thoughts the fairest memory of his sojournings in the queen of the Southern cities.”

From the Court of Oranges to the Giralda the way leads through the Capilla de la Granada of the cathedral. A solitary horseshoe arch reminds us of the Moorish origin of the building; and the huge elephant’s tusk suspended from the roof, a bridle that tradition declares belonged to the Cid’s steed, and a stuffed crocodile, are Oriental rather than Christian relics. And the Giralda, in spite of its added belfry—its surmounting figure symbolic of the Christian faith—and the fact that it is under the special patronage of the two Santas Justa and Rufina, “who are much revered at Seville,” is still a Moorish monument. At its base the tower is a square of fifty feet, and it rises by a series of stages, or cuerpos, which are named after the architecture, decoration or use for which they are designed. At the Cuerpo de Campanas is hung a peal of bells, of which the largest, Santa Maria, eighteen tons in weight, and referred to in the vernacular as “the plump,” was set up in 1588 by the order of the Archbishop Don Gonzola de Mena, at a cost of ten thousand ducats. Above, we come to the cuerpo of the Azucenas, or white lilies, with which it is embellished; and, going still higher, we reach El Cuerpo del Reloj, the clock-tower, in which was erected, in 1400, the first tower-clock ever made in Spain. Portions of this old timepiece were employed by the Monk Jose Cordero in making, in 1765, the clock which is working to this day. The belfry, which is the home of a colony of pigeons and hawks, is girdled with a motto from the proverb, “Nomen Domini fortissima turris”—(“The name of the Lord is a strong tower.”) The

SEVILLEGALLERY OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLE

GALLERY OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLEGALLERY OF THE COURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

SEVILLE

GALLERY OF THE COURT OF THE HOUSE OF PILATOS.

PLATE XL.Ornaments on Panels.

PLATE XL.

Ornaments on Panels.

Moorish summit was crowned with four brazen balls, so large that in order to get them into the building it was necessary to remove the keystone of a door called the Gate of the Muezzin, leading from the mosque to the interior of the tower. The iron bar, which supported the balls, weighed about ten cwt., and the whole was cast by a celebrated alchemist, a Sicilian, named Abu Leyth, at a cost of £50,000 sterling. These particulars were set down by a Mohammedan writer of the period, and their accuracy was proved in 1395 (157 years after the overthrow of the Arab dominion), when the earthquake threw the entire mechanism, balls and supports, to the ground, where they were weighed, and the figures were found to be absolutely correct. The figure of La Fé, “The Faith,” which now tops the Giralda, was cast by Bartolomé Morel in 1568. It stands fourteen feet high, and weighs twenty-five cwts., yet so wonderful is the workmanship that it turns with every breath of the wind. The head of the female figure is crowned with a Roman helmet, the right hand bears the Labaro, or banner, of Constantine, and in the left it holds out a palm branch, symbolical of conquest.

But when we return from this “strange composite fane,” with its Christian summit surmounting a Moslem tower, which again has its foundations in a Roman temple, when we re-cross the Court of Oranges, with its Moorish fountain, flanked by a Christian pulpit, and enter the cathedral, the mind is transported at a bound from the fairy-like beauties of Morisco ornamentation to the sombre, awe-inspiring majesty, which prompted Theophile Gautier to the reflection that “the most extravagant and monstrously prodigious Hindoo pagodas are not to be mentioned in the same century as the Cathedral of Seville. It is a mountain scooped out, a valley turned topsy-turvy; Notre Dame, atParis, might walk erect in the middle nave, which is of frightful height; pillars as large round as towers, and which appear so slender that they make you shudder, rise out of the ground, or descend from the vaulted roof, like stalactites in a giant’s grotto.” Lomas, who finds the exterior of the cathedral “simply beneath criticism,” and deplores that “age after age a great band of glorifiers of self, through self’s handiwork, should have been employed in producing what they determined should be a world’s marvel,” is compelled to admit that “the first view of the interior is one of the supreme moments of a lifetime. The glory and majesty of it are almost terrible. No other building, surely, is so fortunate as this in what may be called its presence.” Even George Borrow, who thought more of his beloved testaments than of Spanish monuments erected to “the spiritual tyranny of the Court of Rome,” was feign to declare that it is impossible to wander through the cathedral of Seville “without experiencing sensations of sacred awe and deep astonishment”; and Caveda describes the general effect as “truly majestic.”

The Italian rhapsodist, Edmondo de Amicis, who always succeeds in conveying a strikingly convincing impression of the spectacles that fascinate his sensitive mind, is at his best in his description of Seville cathedral. “At your first entrance,” he says, “you are bewildered, you feel as if you are wandering in an abyss, and for several moments you do nothing but glance around you in that immense space, almost as if to assure yourself that your eyes are not deceiving you, nor your fancy playing you some trick. Then you approach one of the pillars, measure it, and look at the more distant ones, which, though as large as towers, appear so slender that it makes you tremble to think that the building is resting upon them. You traverse them with

PLATE XLI.Ornaments on Panels.

PLATE XLI.

Ornaments on Panels.

SEVILLECOURT OF THE PALACE OF MEDINA-CŒLI.

SEVILLE

COURT OF THE PALACE OF MEDINA-CŒLI.

a glance from floor to ceiling, and it seems as if you could almost count the moments it would take for the eye to climb them. There are five aisles, each one of which might form a church. In the centre one, another cathedral, with its cupola and bell tower, could easily stand. All of them together form sixty-eight bold vaulted ceilings, which seem to expand and rise slowly as you look at them. Every thing is enormous in this cathedral. The principal chapel, placed in the centre of the great nave, and almost high enough to touch the ceiling, looks like a chapel built for giant priests, to whose knees the ordinary altars would not reach. The paschal candle seems like the mast of a ship, and the bronze candlestick which holds it, like the pillars of a church. The choir is a museum of sculpture and chiselling. The chapels are worthy of the church, for they contain the masterpieces of sixty-seven sculptors and thirty-eight painters.... The chapel of San Ferdinand, which contains the sepulchres of this king and his wife Beatrice, of Alonso the Wise, the celebrated minister, Florida Blanca, and other illustrious personages, is one of the richest and most beautiful of all. The body of Ferdinand, who redeemed Seville from the dominion of the Arabs, clothed in his uniform, with crown and mantle, rests in a crystal casket, covered with a veil. On one side, is his sword which he carried on the day of his entrance into Seville; on the other, a staff of cane, an emblem of command. In that same chapel is preserved a little ivory Virgin, which the holy king carried to war with him, and other relics of great value.” And here also, although De Amicis makes no mention of them, are the keys of Seville which Abdul Hassan handed to Ferdinand at the surrender of the city. One key is of silver, and bears the inscription, “May Allah grant that Islam may rule for ever in this city.” The otherkey is made of iron gilt, and is of Mudejar workmanship. It is inscribed, “The King of Kings will open; the King of the Earth will enter.”

In its churches and its old houses, Seville is rich in Moorish influences, and exhibits abundant traces of Morisco art, which prevailed against the material dominancy of the Christian conquerors. The reconciled Arabs who remained as subjects of Ferdinand became the chief of the most lavishly-remunerated artisans of the city. They pursued their craft in the dwellings of the rich; and in the churches of the “infidel.” Untrammelled by religion and uninspired by faith, they worked for art’s sake, and the substantial pecuniary award that sweetened their labours. The church of San Marco has a beautiful Moorish tower built in imitation of the Giralda, and second only to the minaret tower of the cathedral in point of height; San Gil is a Christianised Mezquita; Santa Catalina reveals the survival of Moorish art in its façade, while its principal chapel is Gothic. In nearly all the sacred edifices of antiquity the combination of Moorish and Renaissance architecture betrays an incongruity of style and sentiment which is only to be found among the Christian churches of Spain. And if the Catholic kings, who were sworn to the extirpation of the Moslems, allowed the Moors to build their churches in the style of temples devoted to Allah, it is not surprising that many of the finest private residences of the city retain a Moorish design, and possess a distinctly Oriental atmosphere.

The Casa de Pilatos, which has been pronounced the fourth great monument of older Seville, was commenced in 1500 by Don Pedro Enriquez, in the then popular decadent Saracenic style, and was completed by his son, Fadrique, in imitation of Pilate’s palace at Jerusalem. In accordance with this scheme, he fashioned a reception-hall, called the

PLATE XLII.Frieze in the Upper Chamber, House of Sanchez.

PLATE XLII.

Frieze in the Upper Chamber, House of Sanchez.

Prætorium, erected an upright column—a gift of Pope Pius V.—copied from the pillar at which Christ was scourged, and made a replica of the basin into which the thirty pieces of silver were counted. When the house came into the possession of the first Duke of Alcalá, he was acting as the Spanish viceroy at Naples, and he filled the rooms and corridors with Roman busts and statuary, gathered from Italy and the ruins of Italica. On every side the art treasures of the Romans adorn the perfect Moorish colonnades, and the shadows of Roman sculptures are thrown upon diapered marble pavements from light that enters through Arab lattices and ajimez windows. It has been described as a great curiosity shop, but to the art lover it is a treasure house of almost infinite beauty and variety.

The Moorish palace of the Duke de Alba, in the Calle de las Dueñas, once consisted of eleven courtyards, nine fountains, and more than a hundred marble pillars, and was surrounded by a garden, which is a forest of orange trees and myrtles. In Seville one wanders through streets which are redolent of Arabia, and peep into countless Oriental patios, cool with fountains, and shaded by palms and Eastern canopies. One “feels the East a-calling”—the colour, the scent, the witchery of it gets into one’s blood—and one recognises the truth that inspired the old Spanish saying: “To whom God loves He gives a house in Seville.”

TOLEDAN history proper, as distinguished from the mixture of fable and tradition which are associated with the story of this ancient and royal city, dates from the invasion of the Goths. Toledo was old when Euric successfully scaled its seven rocks and stormed its battlements—how old, cannot be determined. Legend claims that the town was in existence when God made the sun; less exalted imagination dates its foundation no further back than the days of Tubal, the grandson of Noah. Alphonsus, “the Learned,” and Diego Mossem Valera, the historian of Isabel the Catholic, agree that it was built by Pyrrhus, the son-in-law of King Hispan, and a captain of the army of Cyrus. Hercules has been claimed as the father of Toledo by Rufo Festo Avieno, and Ferecio, one of the companions of Ulysses, is held by some to have retreated to this spot to escape the blood-vengeance of that little band of Greek adventurers. Other legends declare the city to be of Jewish origin; and its builders, the Judians, who fled from Jerusalem before the victorious hosts of Nebuchadnezzar. Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada discovers the founders of Toledo in Tolemon and Brutus, two Roman consuls in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes, and more reasonable supposition favours the theory that it was first settled by nomadic Celtic shepherds, who forsook their flocks to erect walls and fortifications on the rocky eminence above the Tagus. The little that is known of the origin and beginning of Toledo;the very mystery and obscurity of its earliest days, is accepted by the old historian, Alcocer, as a proof of its antiquity and nobility. Rais, the Moorish writer, says that Tago, at Toledo, was one of the eleven governors of Carpetania. Tago was foully murdered by Hasdrubal, the successor of Hamilcar, and the assassination of Hasdrubal was followed by so determined an insurrection that even Hannibal was forced to retreat before the infuriated Carpetanians. But Hannibal retreated, only to return with a reinforced army, and break Carpetania beneath the might of Carthagenian rule. In 191B.C., after the fall of Carthage, Hilermo surrendered Toledo to the Roman forces, under Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. But Toledo held itself sullenly and haughtily aloof from the affairs of Rome. Viriate and Caius Plancius might cut each other’s throats on the banks of the Tagus; Sertorius might nurse his hates within the city; Cæsar and Pompey might be locked in a death struggle—those things mattered nothing to the contemptuous and independent Toledans. The Goth was the first real conqueror of Toledo; and the city, outwearing the scars of Rome, and throwing off the marks of the Moors, is, to-day, as insistently Gothic as Cordova and Seville are unmistakably Moorish.

One sees Toledo from the distance, from the bridges, and from the heart of the city, and recognises that it is as it has always been—that it will go down into the tomb of the centuries unchanged. It grew “out of the night of ages”—its rocky throne has defied the ravages of time and the transforming ingenuity of man. Maurice Barrès, who has felt the majesty and melancholy of this gaunt monument of mediævalism, writes: “The landscape of Toledo, and the banks of the Tagus, are amongst the saddest and most ardent things of this world. Whoever lives here has

PLATE XLIII.Cornice at Springing of Arches in a Window.

PLATE XLIII.

Cornice at Springing of Arches in a Window.

TOLEDOSANTA MARIA LA BLANCA—INTERIOR, 1100-1156.

TOLEDO

SANTA MARIA LA BLANCA—INTERIOR, 1100-1156.

PLATE XLIV.Panels on Walls.

PLATE XLIV.

Panels on Walls.

no need to consider the grave youth, the ‘Penseroso,’ of the Medicis Chapel; he may also do without the biography and the ‘Pensées’ of Blaise Pascal. With the very sentiment realised by these great solitary works he will be filled, if he but give himself up to the tragic fierceness of the magnificences in ruins upon these high rocks. Toledo, on its hillside, with the tiny half circle of the Tagus at its feet, has the colour, the roughness, the haughty poverty of the sierra on which it is built, and whose strong articulations from the very first produce an impression of energy and passion. It is less a town, a noisy affair yielding to the commodities of life, than a significant spot for the soul. Beneath a crude illumination, which gives to each line of its ruins a vigour, a clearness, by which the least energetic characters acquire backbone, at the same time it is mysterious, with its cathedral springing towards the sky, its alcazars and palaces, that only take sight from their invisible patios. Thus, secret and inflexible, in this harsh, overheated land, Toledo appears like an image of exaltation in solitude, a cry in the desert.”

Grim, austere, and forbidding is the general type of the Gothic character; the history of their kings in Spain is a long story of menace, bloodshed, and persecution; and that history covers Toledo as with a suit of battered mail. Christianity without the practice of the Christian virtues, valour divorced from mercy, power disjoined from justice—the religion, the might and majesty of the Gothic sovereigns, is a record of gloomy and revengeful despotism. Hermengildo, the Gothic saint, used his religion as an excuse for attempting to wrest the throne of Toledo from his father, Leovigildo, whom he denounced as a minister of the devil; Recaredo, who has been painted by historians as a model of all the Christian virtues, practiced a rigorous system ofcruelty and vindictive bigotry; and his successors were notorious for their queer morality, and their persecution of the Jews. Yet San Ildephonso, the most famous archbishop of Toledo under the Goths, has enriched the history of Spain with many splendid fables of heavenly manifestations; and the piece he cut from the veil of a visiting saint, and the chasuble, with which the Virgin invested him with her own hands, are still displayed among the treasures of Toledo cathedral. The figures of Wamba and Rodrigo—the warrior king who was offered the alternative of the crown of Toledo, or the thrust of a Toledan dagger, and “the Last of the Goths”—stand out with dominating prominence on the stage of Gothic history, on which warriors and priests are the principal actors.

The doctrine of the Gothic priesthood has been described as the “hardest, meanest, and brutallest imaginable,” and the Gothic warriors as men who were never other than savage tyrants, who “aped a culture which they could not understand, and with whose aims and tendencies their inmost character was powerless to sympathise.” These are the people who gave Toledo its character, a character which the art-adoring Arabs were unable to change or even to greatly modify. It is so important to understand the influence which was at work in the creation of the Toledan character, the atmosphere in which it was reared, and the discipline under which it developed, that I make no excuse for quoting the following illuminating appreciation of the Gothic nature from Mr. Leonard Williams’ chapter on Toledo: “Originally barbaric in their ferocity, the Goths became as their domination approached its inevitable end, barbaric in their effeminacy. So, too, with their religious beliefs. Excepting the clergy, who were men of some education and unlimited unscrupulousness,

PLATE XLV.From one of the centre arches.From the entrance to the Divan.Spandrils of Arches.

PLATE XLV.

From one of the centre arches.From the entrance to the Divan.Spandrils of Arches.

From one of the centre arches.

From the entrance to the Divan.

Spandrils of Arches.

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