Wanderings in Spain

The Cristina is a superb promenade, on the banks of the Guadalquiver, with a saloon paved with large stone flags, and surrounded by an immense white marble sofa with an iron back. It is shaded by Eastern plane-trees, and has a labyrinth, a Chinese pavilion, and plantations of all kinds of northern trees, such as ashes, cypresses, poplars, and willows, of which the Andalusians are as proud as the Parisians would be of aloe-trees and palms.

At the approaches to the Cristina, pieces of rope, dipped in brimstone, and rolled round posts, are always kept burning in order that the smokers may light their cigars, and not be bored by boys with coals, pursuing them with the cry of Fuego; an annoyance which renders the Prado of Madrid insupportable.

But delightful as this promenade was, I preferred the banks of the river itself, where the prospect was always animated and constantly changing. In the middle of the stream, where the water was deepest, were anchored merchant schooners and brigs, their tapering masts and airy rigging standing out in clear black lines from the light background of the sky. In all directions, smaller craft were seen crossing and recrossing each other. Sometimes a boat would bear down the stream a number of young men and women, playing the guitar and singing coplas, whose rhymes were dispersed by the wanton wind, while the promenaders applauded from the banks. The view was beautifully terminated, on this side, by the Torre del Oro, a kind of octagon tower with three receding stories, and Moorish battlements: it laves its base in the waves of the Guadalquiver, near the landing-place, and shoots up into the blue air from the midst of a forest of masts and cordage. This tower, which the learned pretend to have been constructed by the Romans, was formerly connected with the Alcazar by means of walls, which have been pulled down to make room for the Cristina, and, in the time of the Moors, supported one end of the iron chain which defended the passage of the river, while the other end was fastened to stone piers on the opposite side. It is said to derive its name of Torre del Oro from the fact of the gold which was brought in the galleons from America having been kept there.

We used to go and walk here every evening, looking at the sun as it set behind the Triana suburbs, which are on the other side of the stream. A most noble-looking palm raised in the air its leafy disk, as if to salute the sinking luminary. I was always exceedingly fond of palms, and I can never see one without feeling transported into a patriarchal and poetical world, in the midst of the fairy scenes of the East, and the magnificent pictures of the Bible.

As if to bring us back to a feeling of reality, one evening, as we were returning to the Calle de la Sierpe, where our host, Don Cæsar Bustamente, whose wife had the most beautiful eyes and the longest hair in the world, resided, we were accosted by some fellows very well dressed, with eye-glasses and watch-chains, who asked us to come and rest ourselves and take some refreshment at the house of some persons muy finas, muy decentes, who had deputed them to invite us. These worthy individuals seemed, at first, very much struck at our refusing, and, imagining that we had not understood them, entered more explicitly into details; but, seeing that they were merely losing their time, they contented themselves with offering us cigarettes and Murillos, – for, you must know, Murillo is the pride and also the curse of Seville. You hear nothing but this one name. The smallest tradesman, the most insignificant abbé, possesses, at least, three hundred specimens of Murillo in his best days. What is that daub there? It is a Murillo, vapoury style. And that one. A Murillo, warm style. And the third, yonder? A Murillo, cold style. Like Raphael, Murillo has three styles; a fact which allows of all kinds of pictures being attributed to him, and gives a most delicious scope to amateurs desirous of forming collections. At the corner of every street, you run against the angle of a picture-frame: it is a Murillo worth thirty francs which some Englishman always buys for thirty thousand. "Look, Señor Caballero, what drawing! what colouring! It is the very perla, the perlita of pictures!" How many pearls, not worth the frames and the ornaments, were shown to me! How many originals that were not even copies! This does not, however, prevent Murillo from being one of the first painters in Spain, and in the whole world. But we have wandered rather far from the banks of the Guadalquiver; let us return to them.

A bridge of boats unites the two banks, and connects the suburbs with the town. You cross it in order to visit, near Santi-Pouce, the remains of Italica, the birthplace of the poet Silius Italicus, and the emperors Trajan, Adrian, and Theodosius: there is a ruined circus, whose form is still tolerably distinct. The cellars where the wild beasts were confined, the dressing-rooms of the gladiators, as well as the lobbies and rows of benches, can be made out with the greatest facility. The whole is built of cement, with flint-stones embedded in it. The stone coating has probably been torn away to serve in more modern edifices, for Italica has long been the quarry of Seville. A few chambers have been cleared out, and afford a shelter during the great heat of the day to herds of blue pigs, who run grunting between the visitors' legs, and are now the only inhabitants of the old Roman city. The most perfect and most interesting vestige of all this splendour that has for ever disappeared, is a large mosaic, which has been surrounded by walls, and represents Muses and Nereids. When it is revived with water, its colours are still very brilliant, although the most valuable stones have been torn out from motives of cupidity. Among the rubbish, some fragments of very tolerable statues have likewise been found, and there is no doubt that skilfully directed excavations would lead to important discoveries. Italica is situated about a league and a half from Seville, and the excursion there and back may be easily made with a calessin in an afternoon, unless you are a furious antiquary, and wish to examine, one by one, all the old stones suspected of an inscription.

The Puerta de Triana, also, has pretensions to Roman origin, and derives its name from the emperor Trajan. Its appearance is very stately; it is of the Doric order, with coupled columns, and is ornamented with the royal arms and surmounted by pyramids. It has its own alcade, and serves as a prison for gentlemen.

The Puertas del Carbon and del Aceite are worthy of a visit. On the Puerta de Jeres is the following inscription:

Hercules me edifico,Julio Cesar me coesco,De Muros y torres altasEl rey santo me ganoCon Garci Perez de Vargas.

Seville is surrounded by a continuous line of embattlemented walls, flanked at intervals by large towers, many of which are at present in ruins, and also by ditches, almost entirely choked up. These walls, which would not afford the least protection against modern artillery, produce, with their denticulated Arabic embrasures, a very picturesque effect. They are said to have been begun, like all other walls and camps that ever existed, by Julius Cæsar.

In an open square, near the Puerta de Triana, I beheld rather a singular sight, consisting of a family of gipsies encamped in the open air, and composing a group that would have sent Callop into ecstasies. Three stakes, in the form of a triangle, made a kind of rustic hook, which supported over a large fire, scattered by the wind into tongues of flame and spirals of smoke, a saucepan full of strange and suspicious ingredients, like those which Goya knows so well how to cast into the caldrons of the witches of Barahona. By this apology for a fireplace was seated a bronzed, copper-coloured gitana, with a curved profile, naked to her waist, – a fact which proved her to be completely devoid of anything like coquetry: her long, black hair fell, like a quantity of brushwood, down her thin, yellow back, and over her bistre forehead. Through the dishevelled locks sparkled a pair of those large oriental eyes, of mother-of-pearl and jet, which are so mysterious and contemplative that they elevate into poetry the most degraded and brutal physiognomy. Around her sprawled two or three screeching children, as black as mulattoes, with large bellies and shrunk limbs, which made them look more like quadrumans than bipeds. I do not think that little Hottentots could be more hideous or more dirty. This state of nakedness is nothing uncommon, and shocks nobody. You often meet beggars, whose only covering consists of a piece of old counterpane, or a fragment of very equivocal drawers; I have seen, wandering about the public squares of Granada and Malaga, young rascals of twelve or fourteen years of age, with less clothing on them than Adam had when he left Paradise. The Triana suburbs are particularly frequented by individuals in this costume, for they contain a great number of gitanos, whose opinions with regard to a free and easy style of dress are very advanced; the women pass their time frying different articles of food in the open air, and the men employ themselves in smuggling, clipping mules, horse-jobbing, and the like, when they are doing nothing worse.

The Cristina, the Alameda del Duque, Italica, and the Moorish Alcazar, are, no doubt, all very curious; but the true marvel of Seville is its Cathedral, which is a surprising edifice, even when compared to the Cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, and the Mosque at Cordova. The chapter who ordered it to be erected, summed up their plans in this one phrase: "Let us raise a monument which shall cause Posterity to think we must have been mad." This was, at any rate, a good, broad, sensible way of settling matters, and the consequence was, that the artists, having full scope for the exertion of their talents, worked wonders, while the canons, in order to accelerate the completion of the edifice, gave up all their incomes, only reserving what was barely sufficient to enable them to live. O thrice-sainted canons! may you slumber softly under the shade of your sepulchral flags near your beloved Cathedral!

The most extravagant and most 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 at Paris might walk about erect in the middle nave, which is of a 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 the stalactites in a giant's grotto. The four lateral naves, although less high, would each cover a church, steeple included. The retablo, or high altar, with its stairs, its architectural superpositions, and its rows of statues rising in stories one above the other, is in itself an immense edifice, and almost touches the roof. The Paschal taper is as tall as the mast of a ship, and weighs two thousand and fifty pounds. The bronze candlestick which contains it is a kind of column like that in the Place Vendôme; it is copied from the candlestick of the Temple at Jerusalem, as represented in the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Titus, and everything else is proportionally grand. Twenty thousand pounds of wax and as many pounds of oil are burnt in the cathedral annually, while the wine used in the service of the Sacrament amounts to the frightful quantity of eighteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty French litres. It is true that five hundred masses are said every day at the eighty altars! The catafalque used during the Holy Week, and which is called the monument, is nearly a hundred feet high! The gigantic organs resemble the basaltic colonnades of Fingal's Cave, and yet the tempests and thunder which escape from their pipes, which are as large in the bore as battering cannon, are like melodious murmurs, or the chirping of birds and seraphim under these colossal ogives. There are eighty-three stained glass windows, copied from the cartoons of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Dürer, Peregrino, Tibaldi, and Lucas Cambiaso; the oldest and most beautiful are those executed by Arnold de Flandre, a celebrated painter on glass. The most modern ones, which date from 1819, prove how greatly art has degenerated since the glorious sixteenth century, that climacteric epoch of the world, when the human plant brought forth its most beautiful flowers and its most savoury fruit. The choir, which is Gothic, is decorated with turrets, spires, niche-work, figures, and foliage, forming one immense and delicately minute piece of workmanship that actually confounds the mind, and cannot now-a-days be understood. You are actually struck dumb in the presence of such stupendous efforts of art, and you interrogate yourself with anxiety, as to whether vitality is withdrawing itself more and more, every century, from the world. This prodigy of talent, patience, and genius, has, at least, preserved the name of its author, on whom we are able to bestow our tribute of admiration. On one of the panels to the left of the altar the following inscription is traced: "Este coro fizo Nufro Sanchez entallador que Dios haya año de 1475." (Nufro Sanchez, sculptor, whom may God protect, made this choir in 1475.)

Any attempt to describe, one after the other, all the riches of the cathedral, would be an absurd piece of folly; it would require a whole year to see it thoroughly, and even that would not be sufficient; whole volumes would not so much as contain the catalogue of the various remarkable objects. The sculptures in stone, in wood, and in silver, by Juan de Arfe, Joan Mellan, Montañes, and Roldan; the paintings by Murillo, Zurbaran, Pierre Campana, Roëlas, Don Luiz de Villegas, the two Herreras, Juan Valdes and Goya, completely fill the chapels, sacristies, and chapter-house. You are crushed by all kinds of magnificence, worn out and intoxicated with chefs d'œuvre, and do not know which way to turn; the desire to see everything, and the impossibility of doing so, cause you to experience a sort of feverish giddiness; you wish not to forget a single thing, and you feel every moment, that some name is escaping you, some lineament is becoming confused in your brain, some particular is usurping the place of another. You make the most desperate appeals to your memory, and lay strict injunctions on your eyes not to let slip a single glance; the least rest, even the time necessary for eating and sleeping, appears a robbery you are committing on yourself, for you are hurried on by imperious necessity; you will shortly be obliged to leave the place; the fire is already blazing under the boiler of the steam-boat; the water boils and hisses, and the chimney emits its volumes of white smoke. Tomorrow you will quit all these marvels, which, in all probability, you are not destined ever to behold again!

Being unable to mention everything, I will confine myself to mentioning the Saint Anthony of Padua, by Murillo, which ornaments the chapel of the baptistry. Never was the magic of painting carried to a greater length. The saint is kneeling in a state of ecstasy in the middle of his cell, all the poor details of which are rendered with that vigorous reality which characterises the Spanish school. Through the half-open door is seen one of those long, white, arched cloisters, so favourable to reverie. The upper portion of the picture, which is inundated with white, transparent, vapoury light, is occupied by groups of angels, of the most truly ideal beauty. Attracted by the force of his prayers, the infant Jesus is descending from cloud to cloud, to place himself between the arms of the saint, whose head is surrounded by rays of glory, and who is leaning back in a fit of celestial delight. I think that this divine picture is superior to that of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in the Academy of Madrid, superior to Moses, superior to all the Virgins and Children by the same master, however beautiful and pure they may be. Whoever has not seen the Saint Anthony of Padua, does not know the finest production of the Sevillian painter; he is like those who fancy they know Rubens, and have never beheld the Antwerp Magdalene.

Every style of architecture is to found in the Cathedral of Seville. The severe gothic, the style of the renaissance, that which the Spaniards term plateresco, or jewellery-work, and which is distinguished by a profusion of incredible ornaments and arabesques, the rococo, the Greek and Roman styles, are all there without a single exception, for each age has built its chapel or retablo, after its own peculiar taste, and even now the edifice is not completely finished. Many of the statues which fill the niches of the portals, and represent patriarchs, apostles, saints, and archangels, are made of baked earth only, and placed there temporarily. On the same side as the courtyard de los Naranjeros, on the top of the unfinished portal, rises the iron crane, as a symbol that the edifice is not yet terminated, and that the works will be resumed at some future period. This kind of gallows is also to be seen on the summit of the church at Beauvais, but when will the day come, when the weight of a stone slowly drawn up through the air by the workmen returned to their work, shall cause its pulley, that has for ages been rusting away, once more to creak beneath its load? Never, perhaps; for the ascensional movement of Catholicism has stopped, and the sap which caused this efflorescence of cathedrals to shoot up from the ground, no longer rises from the trunk into the branches. Faith, which doubts nothing, wrote the first strophes of all these great poems of stone and granite; Reason, which doubts everything, has not dared to finish them. The architects of the Middle Ages were a race of religious Titans, as it were, who heaped Pelion on Ossa, not to dethrone the Deity they adored, but to admire more closely the mild countenance of the Virgin-Mother smiling on the Infant Jesus. In our days, when everything is sacrificed to some gross and stupid idea or other of comfort, people no longer understand these sublime yearnings of the soul towards the Infinite, which were rendered by steeples, spires, bell-turrets, and ogives, stretching their arms of stone heavenwards, and joining them, above the heads of the kneeling crowd, like gigantic hands clasped in an attitude of supplication. Political economists shrug their shoulders with pity at all these treasures lying idle without returning anything. Even the people are beginning to calculate how much the gold of the pyx is worth: they who once scarcely dared to raise their eyes on the white sun of the host, whisper to themselves that pieces of glass would do quite as well to decorate the monstrance as the diamonds and precious stones; the church is, at present, hardly frequented by any one save travellers, beggars, and horrible old hags, atrocious dueñas clad in black, with owl-like looks, death's-head smiles, and spider hands, who never move without a rattling, as if of rusty bones, medals and chaplets, and, under pretence of soliciting arms, murmur atrocious propositions concerning raven tresses, rosy complexions, burning glances and ever-budding smiles. Spain itself is no longer Catholic!

The Giralda, which serves as a campanila to the cathedral, and rises above all the spires of the town, is an old Moorish tower, erected by an Arabian architect, named Geber or Guever, who invented algebra, which was called after him. The appearance of the tower is charming and very original; the rose-coloured bricks and the white stone of which it is built, give it an air of gaiety and youth, which forms a strange contrast with the date of its erection, which extends as far back as the year 1000, a very respectable age, at which a tower may well be allowed to have a wrinkle or two, and be excused for not being remarkable for a fresh complexion. The Giralda, in its present state, is not less than three hundred and fifty feet high, while each side is fifty feet broad. Up to a certain height the walls are perfectly even; there are then rows of Moorish windows with balconies, trefoils, and small white marble columns, surrounded by large lozenge-shaped brick panels. The tower formerly ended in a roof of variously coloured varnished tiles, on which was an iron bar, ornamented with four gilt metal balls of a prodigious size. This roof was removed in 1568, by the architect, Francisco Ruiz, who raised the daughter of the Moor Guever, one hundred feet higher in the pure light of heaven, so that his bronze statue might overlook the sierras, and speak with the angels who passed. The feat of building a belfry on a tower was in perfect keeping with the intentions of the members composing that admirable chapter, of whom we have spoken, and who wished posterity to imagine they were mad. The additions of Francisco Ruiz consist of three stories; the first of these is pierced with windows, in whose embrasures are hung the bells; the second, surrounded by an open balustrade, bears on the cornice of each of its sides these words – "Turris fortissima nomen Domini;" and the third is a kind of cupola or lantern, on which turns a gigantic gilt bronze figure of Faith, holding a palm in one hand and a standard in the other, and serving as a weathercock, thereby justifying the name of Giralda given to the tower. This statue is by Bartholomew Morel. It can be seen at a very great distance; and when it glitters through the azure atmosphere, really looks like a seraph lounging in the air.

You ascend the Giralda by a series of inclined ramps, so easy and gentle, that two men on horseback could very well ride up to the summit, whence you enjoy an admirable view. At your feet lies Seville, brilliantly white, with its spires and towers, endeavouring, but in vain, to reach the rose-coloured brick girdle of the Giralda. Beyond these stretches the plain, through which the Guadalquiver flows, like a piece of watered silk, and scattered around are Santi-Pouce, Algaba, and other villages. Quite in the background is the Sierra Morena, with its outlines sharply marked, in spite of the distance, so great is the transparency of the air in this admirable country. On the opposite side, the Sierras de Gibram, Zaara, and Morou, raise their bristling forms, tinged with the richest hues of lapis lazuli and amethyst, and completing this magnificent panorama, which is inundated with light, sunshine, and dazzling splendour.

A great number of fragments of columns, shaped into posts, and connected with each other by chains, except where spaces are left for persons to pass, surround the cathedral. Some of these columns are antique, and come either from the ruins of Italica, or from the remains of the ancient mosque, whose former site is now occupied by the cathedral, and of which the only remaining vestiges are the Giralda, a few old walls, and one or two arches, one of which serves as the entrance to the courtyard de los Nanjeros. The Lonja (Exchange) is a large and perfectly regular edifice, built by the heavy and wearisome Herrera, that architect of ennui, to whom we owe the Escurial, which is decidedly the most melancholy building in the world; the Lonja, also, like the cathedral, is surrounded by the same description of posts. It is completely isolated, and presents four similar façades; it stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar. In it are preserved the archives of America, and the correspondence of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro, and Fernand Cortez; but all these treasures are guarded by such savage dragons, that we were obliged to content ourselves with looking at the outside of the pasteboard boxes and portfolios, which are stowed away in mahogany compartments, like the goods in a draper's shop. It would be a most easy thing to place five or six of the most precious autographs in glass-cases, and thus satisfy the very legitimate curiosity of travellers.

The Alcazar, or ancient palace of the Moorish kings, is very fine and quite worthy of its reputation, but it does not surprise any one who has seen the Alhambra at Granada. You meet the same small white marble columns, the painted and gilt capitals, the heart-shaped arcades, the panels with mottoes from the Koran entwined with arabesques, the doors of larch and cedar wood, the stalactite cupolas, and the fountains ornamented with carving, which may vary in appearance, but of whose endless details and minute delicacy no description can convey an idea. The Hall of Ambassadors, the magnificent doors of which have been preserved in all their integrity, is perhaps more beautiful and rich than that at Granada; unfortunately, the authorities have hit upon the idea of hanging between the slender columns which support the roof, a series of portraits of the kings of Spain from the most ancient times of the monarchy down to the present day. Nothing could be more ridiculous. The old kings, with their breastplates and iron crowns, manage to make a respectable appearance, but the more modern ones, with their powdered hair and uniforms produce a most grotesque effect. I shall never forget a certain queen with a pair of spectacles on her nose and a small dog upon her knees; she must feel very much out of her element. The baths, named after Maria Pedrilla, the mistress of the king, Don Pedro, who resided in the Alcazar, are still in the same state as in the time of the Arabs. The vaulted roof of the bath-room has not undergone the slightest alteration. Charles V. has left far too many marks of his presence in the Alcazar of Seville, as he did in the Alhambra of Granada. This mania of building one palace in another is as frequent as it is deplorable; we must for ever regret the number of historical monuments it has destroyed, to substitute insignificant edifices in their stead. The Alcazar contains gardens laid out in the old French style, with yew-trees tortured into the strangest shapes imaginable.