THIS, then, is Seville, that “pleasant city, famous for oranges and women.” After all I have heard of its beauty, I am disappointed in finding it less beautiful than my imagination had painted it. The wise saw, —
“Q,uien no lia visto Sevilla,
No ha visto maravilla,” —
He who has not seen Seville has seen no marvel, — is an Andalusian gasconade. This, however, is the judgment of a traveller weary and wayworn with a journey of twelve successive days in a carriage drawn by mules; and I am well aware how much our opinions of men and things are colored by these trivial ills. A sad spirit is like a rainy day; its mists and shadows darken the brightest sky, and clothe the fairest landscape in gloom.
I am, likewise, a disappointed man in another respect. I have come all the way from Madrid to Seville without being robbed! And this, too, when I journeyed at a snail’s pace, and had bought a watch large enough for the clock of a village church, for the express purpose of having it violently torn from me by a fierce-whiskered highwayman, with his blunderbuss and his, “Boca abajo, ladrones!” If I print this in a book, I am undone. What! travel in Spain and not be robbed! To be sure, I came very near it more than once. Almost every village we passed through had its tale to tell of atrocities committed in the neighbourhood. In one place, the stage-coach had been stopped and plundered; in another, a man had been murdered and.thrown into the river; here and there a rude wooden cross and a shapeless pile of stones marked the spot where some unwary traveller had met his fate; and at night, seated around the blazing hearth of the inn-kitchen, my fellow-travellers would converse in a mysterious undertone of the dangers we were to pass through on the morrow. But the morrow came and went, and, alas! neither salteador, nor ratero moved a finger. At one place, we were a day too late; at another, a day too early.
I am now at the Fonda de los Americanos. My chamber-door opens upon a gallery, beneath which is a little court paved with marble, having a fountain in the centre. As I write, I can just distinguish the tinkling of its tiny jet, falling into the circular basin with a murmur so gentle that it scarcely breaks the silence of the night. At day-dawn I start for Cadiz, promising myself a pleasant sail down the Guadalquivir. All I shall be able to say of Seville is what I have written above, — that it is “a pleasant city, famous for oranges and women.”
I AM at length in Cadiz. I came across the bay yesterday morning in an open boat from Santa Maria, and have established myself in very pleasant rooms, which look out upon the Plaza de San Antonio, the public square of the city. The morning sun awakes me, and at evening the sea-breeze comes in at my window. At night the square is lighted by lamps suspended from the trees, and thronged with a brilliant crowd of the young and gay.
Cadiz is beautiful almost beyond imagination. The cities of our dreams are not more enchanting. It lies like a delicate sea-shell upon the brink of the ocean, so wondrous fair that it seems not formed for man. In sooth, the Paphian queen, born of the feathery sea-foam, dwells here. It is the city of beauty and of love.
The women of Cadiz are world-renowned for their loveliness. Surely earth has none more dazzling than a daughter of that bright, burning clime. What a faultless figure! what a dainty foot! what dignity! what matchless grace!
“What eyes, — what lips, — what every thing about her! How like a swan she swims her pace, and bears Her silver breasts!”
The Gaditana is not ignorant of her charms.
She knows full well the necromancy of a smile. You see it in the flourish of her fan, — a magic wand, whose spell is powerful; you see it in her steady gaze, the elastic step,
“The veil,
Thrown back a moment with the glancing hand,
While the o’erpowering eye, that turns you pale,
Flashes into the heart.”
When I am grown old and gray, and sit by the fireside wrapped in flannels, if, in a listless moment, recalling what is now the present, but will then be the distant and almost forgotten past, I turn over the leaves of this journal till my watery eye falls upon the page I have just written, I shall smile at the enthusiasm with which I have sketched this portrait. And where will then be the bright forms that now glance before me, like the heavenly creations of a dream? All gone, — all gone! Or, if perchance a few still linger upon earth, the silver cord will be loosed, — they will be bowed with age and sorrow, saying their paternosters with a tremulous voice.
Old age is a Pharisee; for he makes broad his phylacteries, and wears them upon his brow, inscribed with prayer, but in the “crooked autograph” of a palsied hand. “I see with pain,” says Madame de Pompadour, “that there is nothing durable upon earth. We bring into the world a fair face, and lo! in less than thirty years it is covered with wrinkles; after which a woman is no longer good for any thing.”
Were I to translate these sombre reflections into choice Castilian, and read them to the bright-eyed houri who is now leaning over the balcony opposite, she would laugh, and laughing say, “Cuando el demonio es viejo, se mete frayle.”
THE devotion paid at the shrine of the Virgin is one of the most prominent and characteristic features of the Catholic religion. In Spain it is one of its most attractive features. In the southern provinces, in Granada and in Andalusia, which the inhabitants call “La tierra de Maria Santisima,” — the land of the most holy Mary, — this adoration is ardent and enthusiastic. There is one of its outward observances which struck me as peculiarly beautiful and impressive. I refer to the Ave Maria, an evening service of the Virgin. Just as the evening twilight commences, the bell tolls to prayer. In a moment, throughout the crowded city, the hum of business is hushed, the thronged streets are still; the gay multitudes that crowd the public walks stand 1 motionless; the angry dispute ceases; the laugh of merriment dies away; life seems for a moment to be arrested in its career, and to stand still. The multitude uncover their heads, and, with the sign of the cross, whisper their evening prayer to the Virgin. Then the bells ring a merrier peal; the crowds move again in the streets, and the rush and turmoil of business recommence. I have always listened with feelings of solemn pleasure to the bell that sounded forth the Ave Maria. As it announced the close of day, it seemed also to call the soul from its worldly occupations to repose and devotion. There is something beautiful in thus measuring the march of time. The hour, too, naturally brings the heart into unison with the feelings and sentiments of devotion. The close of the day, the shadows of evening, the calm of twilight, inspire a feeling of tranquillity; and though I may differ from the Catholic in regard to the object of his supplication, yet it seems to me a beautiful and appropriate solemnity, that, at the close of each daily epoch of life, — which, if it have not been fruitful in incidents to ourselves, has, nevertheless, been so to many of the great human family, — the voice of a whole people, and of the whole world, should go up to heaven in praise, and supplication, and thankfulness.
“THE Moorish king rides up and down
Through Granada’s royal town;
From Elvira’s gates to those
Of Bivarambla on he goes.
Woe is me, Alhama!”
Thus commences one of the fine old Spanish ballads, commemorating the downfall of the city of Alhama, where we have stopped to rest our horses on their fatiguing march from Yelez-Mâlaga to Granada. Alhama was one of the last strongholds of the Moslem power in Spain. Its fall opened the way for the Christian army across the Sierra Nevada, and spread consternation and despair through the city of Granada. The description in the old ballad is highly graphic and beautiful; and its beauty is well preserved in the spirited English translation by Lord Byron.
As we crossed the Sierra Nevada, the snowy mountains that look down upon the luxuriant Vega of Granada, we overtook a solitary rider, who was singing a wild national song, to cheer the loneliness of his journey. He was an athletic man, and rode a spiritèd horse of the Arab breed. A black bearskin jacket covered his broad shoulders, and around his waist was wound the crimson fajay so universally worn by
the Spanish peasantry. His velvet breeches reached below his knee, just meeting a pair of leather gaiters of elegant workmanship. A gay silken handkerchief was tied round his head, and over this he wore the little round Andalusian hat, decked out with a profusion of tassels of silk and bugles of silver. The steed he mounted was dressed no less gayly than his rider. There was a silver star upon his forehead, and a bright-colored woollen tassel between his ears; a blanket striped with blue and red covered the saddle, and even the Moorish stirrups were ornamented with brass studs.
This personage was a contrabandista, — a smuggler between Granada and the seaport of Velez-Mâlaga. The song he sung was one of the popular ballads of the country.
Worn with speed is my good steed,
And I march me hurried, worried;
Onward! caballito mio,
With the white star in thy forehead!
Onward! here comes the patrol,
And I hear their rifles crack!
Ay, jaleo! Ay, ay, jaleo!
Ay, jaleo! they cross our track!
The air to which these words are sung is wild and high; and the prolonged and mournful cadence gives it the sound of a funeral wail, or a cry for help. To have its full effect upon the mind, it should be heard by night, in some wild mountain-pass, and from a distance. Then the harsh tones come softened to the ear, and, in unison with the hour and the scene, produce a pleasing melancholy.
The contrabandista accompanied us to Granada. The sun had already set when we entered the Vega, — those luxuriant meadows which stretch away to the south and west of the city, league after league of rich, unbroken verdure. It was Saturday night; and, as the gathering twilight fell around us, and one by one the lamps of the city twinkled in the distance, suddenly kindling here and there, as the stars start to their places in the evening sky, a loud peal of bells rang forth its glad welcome to the day of rest, over the meadows to the distant hills, “swinging slow, with solemn roar.”
Is this reality and not a dream? Am I indeed in Granada? Am I indeed within the walls of that earthly paradise of the Moorish kings? How my spirit is stirred within me! How my heart is lifted up! How my thoughts are rapt away in the visions of other days!
Ave, Maria purissima! It is midnight. The bell has tolled the hour from the watchtower of the Alhambra; and the silent street echoes only to the watchman’s cry, Ave, Maria purissima! I am alone in my chamber, — sleepless, — spell-bound by the genius of the place, — entranced by the beauty of the star-lit night. As I gaze from my window, a sudden /adiance brightens in the east. It is the moon, rising behind the Alhambra. I can faintly discern the dusky and indistinct outline of a massive tower, standing amid the uncertain twilight, like a gigantic shadow. It changes with the rising moon, as a palace in the clouds, and other towers and battlements arise, — every moment more distinct, more palpable, till now they stand between me and the sky, with a sharp outline, distant, and yet so near that I seem to sit within their shadow.
Majestic spirit of the night, I recognize thee! Thou hast conjured up this glorious vision for thy votary. Thou hast baptized me with thy baptism. Thou hast nourished my soul with fervent thoughts and holy aspirations, and ardent longings after the beautiful and the true. Majestic spirit of the past, I recognize thee! Thou hast bid the shadow go back for me upon the dial-plate of time. Thou hast taught me to read in thee the present and the future, — a revelation of man’s destiny on earth. Thou hast taught me to see in thee the principle that unfolds itself from century to century in the progress of our race, — the germ in whose bosom lie unfolded the bud, the leaf, the tree. Generations perish, like the leaves of the forest, passing away when their mission is completed; but at each succeeding spring, broader and higher spreads the human mind unto its perfect stature, unto the fulfilment of its destiny, unto the perfection of its nature. And in these high revelations, thou hast taught me more, — thou hast taught me to feel that I, too, weak, humble, and unknown, feeble of purpose and irresolute of good, have something to accomplish upon earth, — like the falling leaf, like the passing wind, like the drop of rain. O glorious thought! that lifts me above the power of time and chance, and tells me that I cannot pass away, and leave no mark of my existence. I may not know the purpose of my being, — the end for which an all-wise Providence created me as I am, and placed me where I am; but I do know — for in such things faith is knowledge — that my being has a purpose in the omniscience of my Creator, and that all my actions tend to the completion, to the full accomplishment of that purpose. Is this fatality? No. I feel that I am free, though an infinite and invisible power overrules me. Man proposes, and God disposes. This is one of the many mysteries in our being which human reason cannot find out by searching.
Yonder towers, that stand so huge and massive in the mijdnight air, the work of human hands that have long since forgotten their cunning in the grave, and once the home of human beings immortal as ourselves, and filled like us with hopes and fears, and powers of good and ill, — are lasting memorials of their builders; inanimate material forms, yet living with the impress of a creative mind. These are landmarks of other times. Thus from the distant past the history of the human race is telegraphed from generation to generation, through the present to-all succeeding ages. These are manifestations of the human mind at a remote period of its history, and among a people who came from another clime, — the children, of the desert. Their mission is accomplished, and they are gone; yet leaving behind them a thousand records of themselves and of their ministry, not as yet fully manifest, but “seen through a glass darkly,” dimly shadowed forth in the language, and character, and manners, and history of the nation, that was by turns the conquered and the conquering. The Goth sat at the Arab’s feet; and athwart the cloud and storm of war, streamed the light of Oriental learning upon the Western world, —
“As when the autumnal sun,
Through travelling rain and mist,
Shines on the evening hills.”
THIS morning I visited the Alhambra; an enchanted palace, whose exquisite beauty baffles the power of language to describe. Its outlines may be drawn, — its halls and galleries, its courtyards and its fountains, numbered; but what skilful limner shall portray in words its curious architecture, the grotesque ornaments, the quaint devices, the rich tracery of the walls, the ceilings inlaid with pearl and tortoise-shell? what language paint the magic hues of light and shade, the shimmer of the sunbeam as it falls upon the marble pavement, and the brilliant panels inlaid with many-colored stones? Vague recollections fill my mind, — images dazzling but undefined, like the memory of a gorgeous dream. They crowd my brain confusedly, but they will not stay; they change and mingle, like the tremulous sunshine on the wave, till imagination itself is dazzled, — bewildered, — overpowered!
What most arrests the stranger’s foot within the walls of the Alhambra is the refinement of luxury which he sees at every step. He lingers in the deserted bath, — he pauses to gaze upon the now vacant saloon, where, stretched upon his gilded couch, the effeminate monarch of the East was wooed to sleep by softly breathing music. What more delightful than this ser eluded garden, green with the leaf of the myrtle and the orange, and freshened with the gush of fountains, beside whose basin the nightingale still wooes the blushing rose? What more fanciful, more exquisite, more like a creation of Oriental magic, than the lofty tower of the Tocador, — its airy sculpture resembling the fretwork of wintry frost, and its windows overlooking the romantic valley of the Darro; and the city, with its gardens, domes, and spires, far, far below? Cool through this lattice comes the summer wind, from the icy summits of the Sierra Nevada. Softly in yonder fountain falls the crystal water, dripping from its marble vase with never-ceasing sound. On every side comes up the fragrance of a thousand flowers, the murmur of innumerable leaves; and overhead is a sky where not a vapor floats, — as soft, and blue, and radiant as the eye of childhood!
Such is the Alhambra of Granada; a fortress, — a palace, — an earthly paradise, — a ru
in, wonderful in its fallen greatness!
ITALY.
THE JOURNEY INTO ITALY.
What ‘catch is at present only sketch-ways, as it were; but I prepare myself betimes for the Italian journey.
GOETHE’S FAUST.
ON the afternoon of the fifteenth of December, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, I left Marseilles for Genoa, taking the sea-shore road through Toulon, Draguignan, and Nice. This journey is written in my memory with a sunbeam. We were a company whom chance had thrown together, — different in ages, humors, and pursuits, — and yet so merrily the days went by, in sunshine, wind, or rain, that methinks some lucky star must have ruled the hour that brought us five so auspiciously together. But where is now that merry company? One sleeps in his youthful grave; two sit in their fatherland, and “coin their brain for their daily bread” ; and the oth ers, — where are they? If still among the living, I beg them to remember in their prayers the humble historian of their journey from Marseilles to Genoa.
At Toulon we took a private carriage, in order to pursue our journey more leisurely and more at ease. I well remember the strange, outlandish vehicle, and our vetturino Joseph, with his blouse, his short-stemmed pipe, his limping gait, his comical phiz, and the lowland dialect his mother taught him at Avignon. Every scene, every incident of the journey is now before me as if written in a book. The sunny landscapes of the Var, — the peasant girls, with their broad-brimmed hats of straw, — the inn at Draguignan, with its painting of a lady on horseback, underwritten in French and English, “Une jeune dame a la promenade, — A young ladi taking a walk,” — the mouldering arches of the Roman aqueducts at Fréjus, standing in the dim twilight of morning like shadowy apparitions of the past, — the wooded bridge across the Var, — the glorious amphitheatre of hills that half encircle Nice, — the midnight scene at the village inn of Monaco, — the mountain-road overhanging the sea at a dizzy height, and its long, dark passages cut through the solid rock, — the tumbling mountain-torrent, — and a fortress perched on a jutting spur of the Alps; these, and a thousand varied scenes and landscapes of this journey, rise before me, as if still visible to the eye of sense, and not to that of memory only. And yet I will not venture upon a minute description of them. I have riot colors bright enough for such landscapes; and besides, even the most determined lovers of the picturesque grow weary of long descriptions; though, as the French guide-book says of these scenes, “Tout cela fait sans doute un spectacle admirable!”
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 199
