The Picturesque Antiquities Of Spain Part 12

It was with more than the ordinary excitement of the organ of travelling,--for if phrenology deserves to be called a science, such an organ must exist,--that I approached this great Leviathan of the seas; perhaps, all causes considered, the most remarkable object in Europe.

During the approach the interest is absorbing; and the two or three hours employed in pa.s.sing round the extremity of the rock, and stretching sufficiently far into the Straits, to gain wind and channel for entering the bay, slipped away more rapidly than many a ten minutes I could have called to my recollection. The simultaneous view of Europe and Africa; the eventful positions with which you are surrounded,--Tarifa, Algeciras, and further on Trafalgar; the very depths beneath you too shallow for the recollections which crowd into this limited s.p.a.ce; commencing with history so ancient as to have attained the rank of fable,--and heroes long since promoted to demi-G.o.ds; and reaching to the pa.s.sage of the injured Florinda, so quickly responded to by that of Tharig, followed by a hundred Arab fleets. The s.h.i.+pping of all nations continually diverting the attention from these _souvenirs_; and, crowning all, the stupendous ma.s.s of the now impregnable rock.

Amidst all this, I could not drive from my thoughts the simple and patriotic old Spanish historian de Pisa, and the operation to which he attributes the origin of this mountain. From him may be learned all the details respecting this work of Hercules; as to which, as well as to the motives of its fabricator, the poets of antiquity were in the dark.

Hercules had been induced, by the high reputation of Spain, of her population, and her various natural advantages, to conduct thither an army for the purpose of taking possession of the country. After having put his project in execution, he remained in Spain, and enjoyed a long and prosperous reign. The victory, which gave him possession of the country, took place at Tarifa; and it was in its commemoration and honour that before he established the seat of government at Toledo, he a.s.sembled the conquered population, and compelled them to throw stones into the sea, by which means, in a short time, this monument was completed.

Before we set foot on this imperceptible trophy of a league in length by two thousand feet high the French ensign and myself hailed a steamer as we pa.s.sed by her in the offing, and found she was bound for Cadiz, and we must go on board the following afternoon. On landing, however, my projects underwent a change, as I told you at the commencement of my letter. There is not much to be seen at Gibraltar that would interest you, except indeed the unique aspect and situation of the place. To military men its details offer much interest. There is a large public garden on the side of the mountain, between the town, which occupies the inmost extremity, and the Governor's house near the entrance of the bay.

The batteries constructed in the rock are extremely curious, and calculated to embarra.s.s an enemy whose object should be to dismount them. I thought, however, with deference to those conversant with these subjects, that they were likely to possess an inconvenience--that of exposing to suffocation the gunners employed in the caverns, out of which there does not appear to exist sufficient means of escape for the smoke.

The most amusing sight in Gibraltar is the princ.i.p.al street, filled, as it is, with an infinitely varied population. Here you see, crowded together as in a fair, and distinguished by their various costumes,--the representatives of Europe, Asia, and Africa,--Arabs, Moors, Italians, Turks, Greeks, Russians, English, and Spaniards, Jews, and, occasionally, a holy friar conversing with some Don Basilio, appearing, in his long cylindrical hat, as if blessed with a skull sufficiently hard to have entered the side of a tin chimney-top, precipitated upon it by a gust of wind.

Among all these a successful guess may here and there be risked at the ident.i.ty of the Andalucian leader of banditti, lounging about in search of useful information. The contrabandistas are likewise in great plenty.

LETTER XVII.

CADIZ. ARRIVAL AT SEVILLE.

Seville.

Cadiz is the last town in Europe I should select for a residence, had I the misfortune to become blind. One ought to be all eyes there. It is the prettiest of towns. After this there is no more to be said, with regard, at least, to its external peculiarities. It possesses no prominent objects of curiosity. There is, it is true, a tradition stating it to have possessed a temple dedicated to Hercules; but this has been washed away by the waves of the ocean, as its rites have been by the influx of succeeding populations. Nothing can be more remote from the ideas of the visitor to Cadiz, than the existence of anything antique; unless it be the inclination to prosecute such researches: the whole place is so bright and modern looking, and pretty in a manner peculiar to itself, and unlike any other town,--since, like everything else in Spain, beauty also has its originality. Nothing can be gayer than the perspective of one of the straight, narrow streets. On either side of the blue ribbon of sky, which separates the summits of its lofty houses, is seen a confusion of balconies, and projecting box-windows,--all placed irregularly--each house possessing only one or two, so as not to interfere with each other's view, and some placed on a lower story, others on a higher; their yellow or green hues relieving the glittering white of the facades. Nor could anything improve the elegant effect of the architectural ornaments, consisting of pilasters, vases, and sculpture beneath the balconies, still less, the animated faces--the prettiest of all Spain, after those of Malaga--whose owners shew a preference to the projecting windows, wherever a drawing-room or boudoir possesses one.

The pavement of these elegant little streets, is not out of keeping with the rest. It would be a sacrilege to introduce a cart or carriage into them. A lady may, and often does, traverse the whole town on foot, on her way to a ball. It is a town built as if for the celebration of a continual carnival. Nor does the charge brought against the Gaditanas, of devotion to pleasure, cause any surprise: were they not, they would be misplaced in Cadiz. Hither should the victim of spleen and melancholy direct his steps. Let him choose the season of the carnival. There is reason to suspect that the advertiser in the Herald had this remedy in view, when he promised a certain cure to "clergymen and n.o.blemen, who suffer from blus.h.i.+ng and despondency, delusion, thoughts of self-injury, and groundless fear:" these symptoms being indications of an attack of that northern epidemy, which takes its name from a cla.s.s of fallen angels of a particular hue.

In Cadiz, in fact, does Carnival--that modern Bacchus of fun, give a loose to his wildest eccentricities--nor may those who are least disposed to do homage to the G.o.d escape his all-pervading influence. All laws yield to his, during his three days of Saturnalia. Not the least eccentric of his code is that one, which authorizes the baptism of every pa.s.senger in a street with the contents of jugs, bestowed from the fair hands of vigilant angels who soar on the second-floor balconies. The statute enjoins also the expression of grat.i.tude for these favours, conveyed with more or less precision of aim, in the form of hen's eggs--of which there is consequently a scarcity on breakfast-tables on the mornings of these festive days. At eleven o'clock each night, four s.p.a.cious buildings scarcely suffice for the masquerading population.

But the paddles have been battering for some hours the waters of the Guadalquivir, and we are approaching Seville, a city given to less turbulent propensities--where Pleasure a.s.sumes a more timid gait, nor cares to alarm Devotion--a partner with whom she delights, hand in hand, to tread this marble-paved Paradise. The pa.s.sage between Cadiz and Seville, is composed of two hours of sea, and eight or nine of river.

The beautiful bay, and its white towns, with Cadiz itself, looking in the suns.h.i.+ne like a palace of snow rising out of the sea--have no power now to rivet the attention, nor to occupy feelings already glowing with the antic.i.p.ation of a sail between the banks of the Guadalquivir. A ridge of hidden rocks lengthens the approach, compelling the pilot to describe a large semicircle, before he can make the mouth of the river.

This delay is a violent stimulant to one's impatience. At length we have entered the ancient Betis; and leaving behind the active little town of St. Lucar, celebrated for its wines, and for those of the neighbouring Xeres, of which it embarks large quant.i.ties--we are gliding between these famous sh.o.r.es.

Great, indeed, is the debt they owe to the stirring events that have immortalized these regions, for they are anything but romantic. Nothing can be less picturesque;--all the flatness of Holland, without the cultivation, and the numerous well-peopled villages, which diminish the monotonous effect. On the right are seen at some distance the wooded hills of Xeres; but for scores of miles, on the opposite side, all is either marsh, or half-inundated pasture, with here and there some thinly-scattered olive trees, and herds of oxen for its sole living occupants. At a few leagues from Seville, the increased frequency of the olive grounds--a few villages and convents, and at length the darker green ma.s.ses of the orange groves, give rapidly strengthening indications of approaching civilization; and you are landed a short distance below the town, to reach which, it is necessary to traverse the Christina Gardens. The cathedral occupies this southern extremity of the city; and on your way to the inn, you may make an estimate of the length of one side of its immense quadrangular enclosure. Immediately beyond this you are received into the inevitable labyrinth of crooked lanes, peculiar to an Arab town.

The steam trip from Cadiz is so easy a day's journey, that no necessity for repose or refitting interferes with the impatience of those who arrive to explore the external town. You speedily, therefore, sally forth, and thread a few of the mazy streets; but without venturing too far, on account of the evident risk of losing your way. Should you chance to stumble on the Plaza Mayor,--called Plaza de San Francisco,--you are at once rewarded by the view of the _ayuntamiento_, one of the most elegant edifices in Spain: otherwise the extreme simplicity of the bare, irregular, but monotonous white houses, will create disappointment--you will stare about in the vain search of the magnificence, so much extolled, of this semi-Moorish capital, and discover, that nothing can be plainer, more simple, more ugly, than the exterior of the Seville habitations. At length, however, some open door, or iron grille, placed on a line with an inner court, will operate a sudden change in your ideas, and afford a clue to the mystery. Through this railing, generally of an elegant form, is discovered a delicious vista, in which are visible, fountains, white marble colonnades, pomegranate and sweet lemon-trees, sofas and chairs (if in summer), and two or three steps of a porcelain staircase.

You now first appreciate the utility of the more than plain exteriors of the houses of this town; and you admire an invention, which adds to the already charming objects, composing the interior of these miniature palaces, a beauty still greater than that which they actually possess, lent by the effect of contrast. It is calculated that there are more than eighty thousand white marble pillars in Seville. For this luxury the inhabitants are indebted in a great measure to the Romans, whose town, Italica, seated, in ancient times, on the opposite bank of the river, four miles above Seville, and since entirely buried, furnished the Arab architects with a considerable portion of their decorating materials.

In a future letter I hope to introduce you to the interior of some of these abodes, where we shall discover that their inhabitants prove themselves not unworthy of them, by the perfect taste and conception of civilized life, with which their mode of existence is regulated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HALL OF AMBa.s.sADORS, ALCAZAR, SEVILLE.]

LETTER XVIII.

THE ARABS IN SPAIN. ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE.

Seville.

The chief attraction of this most interesting of the provinces of the Peninsula, consists in the numerous well preserved remains of Arab art.

The most sumptuous of their palaces are, it is true, no longer in existence, nor the princ.i.p.al mosques, with the exception of the metropolitan temple of Cordova: but there remain sufficient specimens to shew, that their architecture had attained the highest excellence in two of the princ.i.p.al requisites for excellence in that science--solidity and beauty.

The superiority of the Arabs in this branch of science and taste is so striking, that all other departments of art, as well as the customs and peculiarities of that race, and the events of their dominion in this country, become at once the subjects of interest and inquiry. It is consequently very satisfactory to discover that one can examine almost face to face that people,--probably the most advanced in science and civilization that ever set foot in Europe; so little are the traces of their influence worn away, and so predominant is the portion of it still discernible in the customs, manners, and race of the population of this province, and even to a considerable extent in their language.

There is something so brilliant in the career of the Arab people, as to justify the interest excited by the romantic and picturesque (if the expression may be allowed), points of their character and customs. Their civilization appears to have advanced abreast with their conquests, and with the same prodigious rapidity; supposing, that is, that previously to their issuing from their peninsula, they were as backward as historians state them to have been: a point not sufficiently established. Sallying forth, under the immediate successors of Mahomet, they commenced, in obedience to the injunction of their new faith, a course of conquest unrivalled in rapidity. Their happy physical and mental organization, enabled them to appropriate whatever was superior in the arts and customs of the conquered nations; and whatever they imitated acquired during the process of adaptation, new and more graceful modifications. It has been a.s.serted that they owed their civilization to the Greeks; and, certainly, the first subjected provinces being Greek, their customs could not but receive some impression from the contact; but it is not probable that the Greeks were altogether their instructors in civilization. Had such been the case their language would probably have undergone a change, instead of continuing totally independent of the Greek, and attaining to greater richness. They are known to have possessed poets of eminence before the appearance of Mahomet, consequently before they had any communication with the Greeks; shortly after the commencement of their intercourse with them, they shewed a marked superiority over them in geometry, in astronomy, architecture, and medicine, and it would probably be found, but for the destruction of so many Arab libraries, that they did not yield to them in eloquence and poetic genius.

Established in Spain, they carried the arts of civilization--the useful no less than the elegant, to the highest perfection. They introduced principles of agriculture adapted to the peculiarities of the country.

The chief requisite for a country, parched by a cloudless sun, being water--they put in practice a complete system of irrigation, to which the Spaniards are still indebted for the extraordinary fertility of their soil. Many other arts that have since been permitted to dwindle into insignificance, and some altogether to disappear, were bequeathed by them. The Morocco preparation of leather is an instance of these last.

Their high chivalry, added to their moderation after victory, would have divested even war of much of its barbarism, had they had to do with a race less impenetrable, and more susceptible of polish than were the iron legions of their Gothic antagonists. The persevering and repeated acts of treachery practised by these, at last drew their civilized adversaries, forcibly into the commission of acts of a similar nature--it being frequently necessary in self-defence to adopt the same weapons as one's enemy. When firmly settled in Spain, the Arabs no longer appear to have taken the field with a view to conquest.

Abderahman the First, Almansor, and other conquerors, returned from their victories to repose in their capital; contenting themselves with founding schools and hospitals to commemorate their successes, without making them instrumental to the increase of their domination. After this time campaigns seem frequently to have been undertaken from motives of emulation, and for the purpose of affording them opportunities for a display of their prowess, and giving vent to their military ardour. They considered an irruption on the hostile territory, or an attack on a town, in the light of a tournament. The Christians, on the contrary, fought with a view to exterminate, and without ever losing sight of their main object--the expulsion of the Arabs and Moors from the Peninsula. It was thus that they ultimately succeeded--a result they probably would not have attained, had the Moorish leaders been actuated by similar views, and displayed less forbearance.

Much of the misapprehension which exists in Europe respecting this race is attributable to the exaggerations of writers; much more to the absence of reflection in readers, and to the almost universal practice of bringing every act related of personages inhabiting remote and half-known climes, to the test of the only customs and manners with which we are familiar, and which we consider, for no other reason, superior to all others--making no allowance for difference of education, climate, tradition, race. An European, subjected to a similar process of criticism, on the part of an inhabitant of the East, would certainly not recognise his own portrait--a new disposition of light bearing upon peculiarities, the existence of which had hitherto been unsuspected by their owner; and he would manifest a surprise as unfeigned, as a Frenchman once expressed in my hearing, on finding himself in a situation almost parallel. Conversing on the subject of a play, acted in Paris, in which an Englishman cut a ridiculous figure--a lady present remarked, that, no doubt, in the London theatres the French were not spared; upon which the Frenchman I allude to--a person possessed of superior intelligence--exclaimed: "How could that be, since there was nothing about a Frenchman that could be laughed at?"

On reading of a reprehensible act attributed to a Mahometan, some will brand Mahometanism in general, and of all times and places, with the commission of the like crimes, placing the event at a distance of a thousand leagues, or of a thousand years from its real place and date: forgetting that power has been abused under all religions; and that we only hear one side of the question with respect to all that relates to the Oriental races--our information only reaching us through the medium of writers of different and hostile faith. It is a singular fact that the popular terror, which so long attached itself to the idea of a Saracen, and which derived its origin from the conquests of the Mahometans, has its equivalent in certain Mahometan countries. In some parts of the empire of Morocco, the idea of a Christian is that of a ruffian of immense stature and terrific features; calculated to inspire the utmost fear in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all who approach him. Such is their notion of his ferocity, that one of the emperors, Muley Ismael, in order to terrify his refractory subjects into obedience, was in the habit of threatening to have them eaten up by the Christians.

From the inferior value set on human life by the races of the East, we accuse them of barbarity: forgetting, that, owing to the absence of all a.n.a.logy between our origin, races, and education, we are incompetent to appreciate their feelings, and the motives of their conduct, and have consequently no right to condemn them. If we abstain from taking our neighbour's life, we set also a proportionate value on our own: a native of the East displays, it is true, less veneration for his own species.

Deeply impressed with the dogmas of his religion, which form the guide of his every day life, the habit of acting up to the doctrines which he has been taught to believe, diminishes his estimate of the value of temporal life, whether that of others, or his own, which he exposes on occasions on which we should not be inclined to do so. He does not take life for cruelty's sake, nor without provocation. Were he to be furnished with Arabian accounts of the treatment of a London or Paris hackney-coach horse, he would think of the n.o.ble and friendly animal which carries him to battle, and turn in disgust from such a page.

The system practised at Constantinople of nailing to his door-post the ear of the culprit detected in the employment of false weights, is, no doubt, very discordant with our customs; but this mode of punishment is said to be attended with such success, as to do away almost entirely with the occasion for it. Were it adopted in some other capitals, it would certainly at first disfigure many a neatly adorned entrance, and give additional occupation to painters; but the result might possibly be a more universal observance of the injunction contained in the eighth commandment. As far as regards the Arabs of Spain, it may be securely affirmed, that, during the course of their triumphs, and long before they had attained their highest civilization, no cruelties were exercised by them, which came near to the barbarity of those practised subsequently by their Christian adversaries on victims of a different creed, when in their power. We may instance the example set by St.

Ferdinand, who, it is said, when burning some Moors, piously stirred up the fire himself in the public place of Palencia.

It cannot, however, be denied that cases of cruelty have occurred, and are related in history of the Arabs, although they are rare among those of Spain; but, if cruel, the Arab never added hypocrisy to his cruelty.

After having ravaged all Andalucia with fire and famine, St. Ferdinand formed the project of proceeding to Africa the following year, in order to attack the inhabitants of that country. His death interrupted the course of these humane projects. Being dropsical, and feeling his end approaching, he called for his son Alphonso, afterwards his successor, to whom this prince--cut off in the midst of his thirsty longings for blood and slaughter--is related to have given "the counsels, which the sentiments of piety, justice, and love for mankind, with which he was filled, inspired so great a monarch."

As for the degenerate modern tribes, descendants of some of the most civilized of former days, we have witnessed their contest, _pro aris et focis_, during the last few years, against a sample of the Christians of to-day: the mode of making war is perfectly similar on both sides.

It is a no less curious _travers_ of human nature, from its being an almost universal one--that of which the modern Spaniards afford an example. They apply the term "barbarians" to the descendants of their Moorish compatriots, although they themselves have scarcely advanced a step in civilization since the day that, in the public place of Granada, Ferdinand the Catholic burned one million five thousand Arab books, being all he could collect throughout Spain; showing what tremendous power may be wielded by a single human hand, when applied to the task of undoing. That King, by a single signature, accomplished an act which may be considered as equivalent to r.e.t.a.r.ding, by several centuries, the civilization of a great country,--perhaps, even, to cutting it off from the only opportunity it was destined to possess, during the present ages, of arriving at the summit which the more privileged nations are permitted to attain; while it influenced injuriously the progress of letters, science, and art throughout Europe. But we will no longer allow digressions to delay our visit to the Alcazar, where we shall find visible proof of Arab superiority, at least, in architectural science and invention.

Pa.s.sing to the east of the cathedral through the large open s.p.a.ce, on the left of which is the Archbishop's palace, and on the right the cathedral and exchange, the embattled outer walls of the Alcazar stop the view in front; varied here and there with square towers, and containing in the centre an arched entrance. The present buildings occupy the south-eastern corner of the ancient enclosure of the royal residence, which comprised all the remaining s.p.a.ce as far as the banks of the river, pa.s.sing round the south side of the cathedral, and, in fact, including it in its precincts--an enclosure of about a mile and a half in circ.u.mference. An old tower, or sc.r.a.p of wall, indicates here and there the position of the ancient buildings, the site of which is now occupied by two or three _plazuelas_, or squares, and several streets communicating between them. The present palace scarcely covers a third of the original extent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF THE ALCAZAR, SEVILLE.]

Having pa.s.sed through the first entrance, you are in a large square, surrounded with buildings without ornament, and used at present as government offices. At the opposite side another archway pa.s.ses under the buildings, and leads to a second large court. This communicates on the left with one or two others; one of these is rather ornamental, and in the Italian style, surrounded by an arcade supported on double columns, and enclosing a garden sunk considerably below the level of the ground. This court is approached by a covered pa.s.sage, leading, as already mentioned, from the left side of the second large square, the south side of which--the side opposite to that on which we entered--consists of the facade and portal of the inner palace of all;--the Arab ornamental portion, the residence of the royal person.

At the right-hand extremity of this front is the entrance to the first floor, approached by a staircase, which occupies part of the building on that side of the square, and which contains the apartments of the governor. The staircase is open to the air, and is visible through a light arcade. The centre portal of this facade is ornamented, from the ground to the roof, with rich tracery, varied by a band of blue and white _azulejos_, and terminating in an advancing roof of carved cedar.

Right and left, the rest of the front consists of a plain wall up to the first floor, on which small arcades, of a graceful design, enclose retreating balconies and windows.

Entering through the centre door, a magnificent apartment has been annihilated by two white part.i.tions, rising from the ground to the ceiling, and dividing it into three portions, the centre one forming the pa.s.sage which leads from the entrance to the princ.i.p.al court. Several of the apartments are thus injured, owing to the palace being occasionally used as a temporary lodging for the court. Pa.s.sing across the degraded hall, a magnificent embroidered arch--for the carving with which it is covered more resembles embroidery than any other ornament--gives access to the great court.

It is difficult to ascertain what portion of this palace belongs to the residence of the Moorish Kings, as Pedro the Cruel had a considerable portion of it rebuilt by Moorish architects in the same style. The still more recent additions are easily distinguished. One of them, in this part of the edifice, is a gallery, erected by Charles the Fifth, over the arcades of the great court. This gallery one would imagine to have been there placed with a view to demonstrate the superiority of Arab art over every other. It is conceived in the most elegant Italian style, and executed in white marble; but, compared with the fairy arcades which support it, it is clumsiness itself. The court is paved with white marble slabs, and contains in the centre a small basin of the same material, of chaste and simple form, once a fountain. The arcades are supported on pairs of columns, measuring about twelve diameters in height, and of equal diameter throughout. The capitals are in imitation of the Corinthian. The entire walls, over and round the arches, are covered with deep tracery in stucco; the design of which consists of diamond-shaped compartments, formed by lines descending from the cornice, and intersecting each other diagonally. These are indented in small curves, four to each side of the diamond. In each centre is a sh.e.l.l, surrounded by fanciful ornaments. The same design is repeated on the inside of the walls, that is, under the arcade, but only on the outer wall; and this portion of the court is covered with a richly-ornamented ceiling of Alerce, in the manner called _artesonado_.

On the opposite side of the court to that on which we entered, another semicircular arch, of equal richness, leads to a room extending the whole length of the court, and similar in form to that situated at the entrance, possessing also an ornamental ceiling, but plainer walls. The left and right sides of the court are shorter than the others. In the centre of the left side, a deep alcove is formed in the wall, probably occupied in former times by a sofa or throne: at present it is empty, with the exception, in one corner, of a dusty collection of _azulejos_ fallen from the walls, and exposing to temptation the itching palms of enthusiasts. At the opposite end a large arch, admirably carved, and containing some superb old cedar doors, leads to the Hall of Amba.s.sadors. This apartment is a square of about thirty-three feet, by nearly sixty in height. It is also called the _media naranja_ (half-orange), from the form of its ceiling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREAT COURT OF THE ALCAZAR, SEVILLE.]