We only saw the flat, commercial district that skirts the bay, not the headland where the old town lies. Slatternly beggars pestered us, bold, bare-legged girls stood mocking at the unaccustomed sight of foreign women traveling; it was with relief we took the diligence that started at noon for Santiago.
I shall never cease regretting that we did not wait till the following day, when an electric diligence makes the journey, for that eight hours"
trip over the hills to the capital was for us the only horrible experience of our tour in Spain. I wish I might blot out its memory, but as I am setting down frankly everything that occurred, this scene of cruelty must be told of, too. In the omnibus with us were but two other people, and there were five horses; there seemed no reason to foresee trouble. For the first relay of twelve miles all went well, and we enjoyed looking back from the hills on the blue Atlantic where the headland of Coruna jutted boldly out. Our drivers treated the horses with consideration and dismounted at every ascent. But, alas, for the second relay, we changed men and changed animals. Two young vagabonds were now on the box, driving four such miserable, bony nags that it tore the heart to see the sores the rope harness had made. We protested at the use of such horses, but in vain. Twelve miles lay behind, twenty-four were ahead, there were no inns, so we hesitated to desert the diligence, but had we realized the two hours of purgatory we were to face, we had dismounted and walked back to Coruna.
One young wretch drove with loud cries and slashing blows; the other alighted to beat the quivering animals up the hills. They guided so recklessly that we were once dashed down the bank into the gutter, and soon after run into a hay-cart and the wheels unlocked with difficulty.
When at length they began to strike the spent beasts over the eyes our anger burst all bounds. In a heat of fury never before experienced, and I hope never again, we attacked those two brutal boys. I do not think they will soon forget that scene. At first they replied with impudence and went on lashing the horses. But impudence soon ceased. When two women are in earnest and are fearless of consequences, and have stout umbrellas, they win the day. The twelve miles of their escort over, and new horses harnessed to the diligence--those four pitiful, bleeding victims led away!--the two scoundrels slunk off, sore on arms and shoulders as well as shamed in spirit, for the country people who gathered round supported our protest. The remaining miles to Santiago finished well, with good drivers and stout horses. But never will the horror of those two hours leave me. In fairness I must add that this was the only scene of cruelty I saw during the eight months in Spain, and again and again I noticed plump happy donkeys who were treated as members of the family. It is far-fetched to account for this unfortunate instance by the bull-fight, since in countries that have no such spectacles, veritable skeletons are made to haul cabs, and poor jades are used for drag horses. But I cannot help seizing on this opening for a little tirade against the national game of Spain, which Fernan Caballero, who loved her home with pa.s.sionate affection called, "inhuman, immoral, an anachronism in this century." The sports of other lands are open to harsh criticism. I do not think a Spaniard is more cruel by nature than an Englishman; in both nations is a certain proportion of coa.r.s.ened characters,--the northern country may keep them better out of sight in the slums.
Northern Europe is to-day more humane to animals than southern Europe, because the women of the north have had greater freedom and have entered into philanthropic interests such as this. Kindness to animals is a modern movement everywhere (may the shade of St. Francis of a.s.sisi forgive this half statement!) Spain need not be too discouraged by being behindhand. The bony exhausted horses used within my own remembrance on our American street-car lines, to drag cars laden each evening to twice the beasts" strength, would not be tolerated to-day, and this change has been wrought by societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, the membership made up chiefly of women and children. Would that Spanish ladies could be p.r.i.c.ked to action by the statement of a living French novelist, made in ignorance of late conditions in America and England, that kindness to animals is a Protestant virtue. It is neither Protestant nor Catholic, but common to all human societies where women are allowed to aid with their gentler instincts in the public welfare of their country. The bull and the man are sport and skill, that part I can understand. It is the agony of the horses that is a disgrace to these shows, worn-out nags who can make no resistance are used, and when the bull gores them, their entrails are thrust back and the dying beasts p.r.i.c.ked on to the fray. Herein lies the great difference between bull-fights to-day, which are debased money-making spectacles only taken part in by professionals, and the more chivalrous sport of earlier times when the hidalgo was _toreador_, and proper steeds that could defend themselves were used.
The bull-fight is found in Spain so early that its origin from the Roman period in the Peninsula, or from the first Mohammedan conquerors, is disputed. The Cid took part in a game, and games celebrated the marriage of Alfonso VII"s daughter Urraca to the king of Navarre. During the reign of Isabella"s father, Juan II, the _corrida de toros_ was much in vogue. Queen Isabella herself disliked the sport, and in one of her letters she vows never to witness it. On the birth of Philip II in Valladolid, Charles V killed a bull in the arena. The _fiestas_ continued under the Hapsburg Philips, until the advent of the French Philip V, in 1700. He so slighted this national sport that gentlemen ceased to take part in it, and it sank to its present level. It is now so well paying an affair that the only way to reform it would be through concerted action on the part of Spanish women. It is a crusade worthy of them.
A night of rest in the hotel at Santiago and the painful scene of the day before was somewhat dimmed. Early in the morning I started out to explore the old pilgrim city. It has a distinct character of its own, seldom have I felt so decided a place-influence. It is very solemn, very gray, very stately and aloof. On many of the houses the pilgrim sh.e.l.l is carved; the streets are paved with granite and the vast hospices are of the same severe stone, moss-grown and damp; gra.s.s also grows between the big granite slabs of the silent, imposing squares. Santiago does not belong to our age. Modern towns do not name their streets after twelfth-century prelates, "Street of Gelmurez, 1st Archbishop of Compostella," makes a novel sign.
Here, as all over the land, the Cathedral was the magnet. I walked along the dark, arcaded streets in a Scotch drizzle, pa.s.sed under Cardinal Fonseca"s college and came out in the plaza before the west entrance.
The west front is a baroque ma.s.s which those who can endure that style say is most successful. I cannot endure that style. It seemed to me doubly a pity that this late front should mask the chief treasure of Galicia, the _Portico de la Gloria_, which stands as an open portico to the church, fifteen feet within this west door.
Enthusiastic description had led us to expect much of what may be called the supreme work of Romanesque sculpture, in fact, it was this portico that had decided us for the long trip to Galicia. We were not disappointed. "_Es la oracion mas sublime que ha elevado al cielo el arte espanol._" Neither photograph nor words can describe it; it is one of those matchless works that body forth the best of an age. The model of South Kensington does not give its n.o.bility, for it is the setting before the lofty dim Romanesque nave that makes it a unique thing. When later, in Constantinople, I saw Alexander"s sarcophagus, the thought of Santiago sprang instantly to my mind. Both bring a feeling of sadness;--one, simple flowing Greek of the best period, the other, crabbed, original, mediaeval,--they are alike in the absolute sincerity with which each embodied the highest then attainable. Over the carvings of both are faded traces of color that give the finishing touch of the exquisite.
The Archbishop, Don Pedro Suarez, in 1180 gave the commission for this portico to a sculptor named Mateo, whether Spanish or foreign is not known; he lived in Santiago till 1217. He must have been a close student of the Bible, for his symbolism is profound and harmonious. Above the central arch is a solemn Christ, of heroic size, at his side the four Evangelists, figures of youthful beauty: the lion and the bull have settled themselves cozily in their patron"s lap. Large angels on either side carry the instruments of the Pa.s.sion. Very fine statues of the Apostles stand against the pillars of the central doorway. In the tympanum are small figures typifying the Holy City of Isaiah, and on its arch are seated, on a rounding bench, the twenty-four ancients of the Apocalypse, with musical instruments and vases of perfume. This is perhaps the most beautiful part of the portico. For hours one can study it. Some of the heads are thrown back in revery, some turned together in conversation. "The four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb having everyone of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints" (St. John, Rev. V, 8). The carvings of that age were somewhat grotesque, but here the types are ideal, as beautiful in their way as Mino da Fiesole or Rossellino. When Master Mateo had finished his work, he made a statue of himself below the central column of the portico, kneeling toward the altar and humbly beating his breast; on this figure was written "architectus." Humility and a consummate profession of faith such as this went hand in hand.
It is anticlimax, after the _Portico de la Gloria_, to speak of the other sights of Santiago. On the plaza before the west end of the Cathedral stands the dignified Hospital Real, founded by Isabella and Ferdinand as a pilgrim inn. Two of the four patios are quaintly carved, and probably amuse the convalescents of the modern hospital lodged now in the building. It was a joy to find so many of Isabella"s good deeds still bearing fruit. The nuns took us down to the big kitchen, white-tiled and spotless, where we saw the four hundred fresh eggs that arrive daily from the country; the tidy patients on the verandas showed clearly that no one suffered privations here. As we were leaving, the old chaplain of the inst.i.tution ran after us to beg us to return to see something of which he was evidently vastly proud. When he ushered us into a tiled bathing room and turned on the water that dashed up and down and round about from every kind of new contrivance, he looked at us with a self-complacency that was adorable, as if he said: "There, you water-loving English, we"re just as fond of it as you!" The excellently managed inst.i.tution reminds one that this province produced Dona Concepcion Arenal, sociologist and political economist, and withal a most tender-hearted Christian, whose books on prison organization and reform have been widely translated, and are quoted as authorities by the leading criminologists of Europe. For thirty years this admirable woman was inspector of prisons. She died at Vigo in 1893, and Spain has since erected statues in her honor.
In Galicia, as in Catalonia, there has been a revival of dialect literature. The Gallego tongue was the first in the Peninsula to reach literary culture, and in the Middle Ages two ideal troubadours wrote in it. Had not Alfonso _el Sabio_ written chiefly in Castilian, thereby fixing that as the leading tongue, as Dante did the Tuscan in Italy, it is probable that the dialect of Galicia had prevailed. Portuguese and Gallego were the same language up to the fifteenth century, hence it is that the great critic Menendez y Pelayo always includes Portuguese writers in his studies of Spanish literature.
Galicia is fortunate in having an able living exponent, the Senora Emilia Pardo Bazan, whose novels are full of the charmed melancholy of the province. The Gallego is derided in other parts of Spain, his name is synonymous with boor, for he is judged by the clumsy _mozo_ who seeks work in the south. "The more unfortunate a country the greater is the love of its sons for it. Greece, Poland, Hungary, Ireland, prove this, and the nostalgia is strongest in those of Celtic origin. Ask the rude Gallegos of South America what is their ambition--"To return to the _terrina_ and there die" is the answer."
In a collection of essays "De mi Tierra," Madam Pardo Bazan has told of the learned Benedictine, Padre Feijoo, the Bacon of Spain, whose caustic pen did away with so many of the superst.i.tions of his age. It may be a bit pedantic for me to give biographies in these slight sketches, but it seems as if a truer idea of the race is conveyed in such lives than could be given in any other way. This native of Galicia, Padre Feijoo, had few equals in the Europe of his time in liberality of view. He was born of hidalgo parents near Orense, where his _casa solar_ stands, still lived in by a Feijoo of to-day. He entered the Benedictine Order and in their cloisters pa.s.sed most of his long life of eighty years, for half a century living in their Oviedo house. His unflagging industry, his clear intellect, and simple uprightness, won the admiration of all who knew him. "After fifteen years" intimate acquaintance with Feijoo,"
wrote a scientist of the day, "never have I met, inside religion or out, a man more sincere, more candid, more declared enemy of fraud and deceit." Not till he was fifty did Feijoo commence to write. In 1731 appeared the beginning of his "Teatro Critico," essays that have been called the first step of Spanish journalism, written as they eminently were to communicate ideas to others. He had the pa.s.sion to know why, a never-tiring love of investigation. Adopting the Baconian experimental method, he attacked the superst.i.tions and pseudo-miracles around him.
_Ay! de mi Inquisicion_! Were you asleep that you did not clap this independent thinker into your capacious dungeons? So strong was Feijoo"s influence that Benedict XIV curtailed the number of feast days on his mere suggestion.
This learned Benedictine monk was ahead of his age in many ideas. Are the stars not inhabited? he asked. Before Washington, he maintained that the Machiavellian theory of government, intrigue and diplomacy, which was then universally accepted in Europe, was inferior to friendly loyalty and honor. He preached compa.s.sion to animals generations before the age of our modern, humanitarian theories. With the painful remembrance of the diligence ride in Galicia, I was glad to find one of her sons advocating this. Feijoo stands out more prominently because of the intellectual desert around him. "The eighteenth century was an erudite, negative, fatigued." The Bourbons brought formality and sterility to spontaneous Spain. A dry soulless learning killed the creative power, and in every branch, art, music, and literature, the artificial rococo flourished. The two exceptions of vitality were Feijoo and the painter Goya. Had Padre Feijoo lived in our age, he might have been that great man hailed by De Maistre: "Attendez que l"affinite naturelle de la science et de la religion les ait reunies l"une et l"autre dans la tete d"un homme de genie! Celui-la sera fameux et mettra fin au dix-huitieme siecle qui dure encore." How much longer are we to wait for him,--this great man!
If the only harrowing scene of the tour in Spain is to be a.s.sociated with Galicia, so is one of the happiest, a day of such kindly chivalry that we felt the spirit of Isabella"s time still endured. It was the chance of railway travel that introduced a modern knight to us. The journey back to Castile from Galicia is a most trying one. Some day perhaps an enterprising ocean line will put in at Vigo and run an express directly across country to Madrid; we were too early for such ease. From Santiago we had to take an afternoon train to Pontevedra, and there spend the night. At 5 A.M. (oh, those unforgettable, dark, cold railway stations of Spain!) we again took the train. It was dawn before Redondela was reached, and exquisite as a dream seemed the _rias_, the fiords of Galicia, with wooded mountains sloping to their sh.o.r.es. It is not hard to prophesy that this will be a great summer resort of the future.
At Redondela we changed trains, getting into the express for Monforte, the only other occupant of the carriage being an elderly man, blue-eyed, very tall and erect, with the air of distinction so frequently found among Don Quixote"s countrymen. We had noticed him the night before in the Pontevedra hotel, and had thought him an Englishman, till in offering some service about our luggage he spoke in Spanish. As we were to spend fifteen hours in the same railway carriage, we soon entered into conversation. He came from Madrid each summer with a family of sons and daughters to spend some months in a castle among the mountains of Galicia. Evidently he was a lover of sport and of country life, for as we ran alongside the Mino River, with Portugal just across on the opposite bank, for hours he sat gazing out in enjoyment, and drew each beautiful thing to our notice. At noon we reached Monforte, where we had dinner in the station buffet. When we called for our account, to our astonishment the waiter told us it was settled already. We could not understand what had been done, till the proprietor himself came to explain. It seems it is a custom all over this generous land, for a man when he is with a lady or has spoken to her, to pay for everything she orders; tea, luncheon, even her shopping purchases. He does this with no offensive ostentation, but so quietly that he often slips away unnoticed and unthanked. Several travelers have since told me that they too met this hospitality; it had at first embarra.s.sed them, but as there was not the slightest impertinence nor even the personal about it, as it was merely an act of chivalrous respect, done with superb detachment, when the confusion of being paid for by a stranger was over, they remembered only the charming courtesy.
The attentions of our kind host, for he seemed to look on two strangers in his land as his guests, did not stop at noontime, at tea he brought us platefuls of hot chestnuts. He tried to while away the hours pleasantly, playing games on paper in French and English; with all his dignified gravity the Spaniard is not blase. Our struggles to learn his tongue rousing sympathy, it was from him we first heard of the pretty high-flown phrases still in daily use, how you bid farewell with, _Beso a V. la mano_ (I kiss your hand), or _A los pies de V._ (I am at your feet); that the _Usted_, shortened to _V._, with which you address high or low, is a corruption of "Your Majesty." Somehow there seems nothing absurd in addressing a Spanish peasant as "Your Majesty." The love of abbreviations is a curious trait in a people with such leisurely ways; thus, a row of cabalistic letters ends a letter: _S. S. S. Q. B. S. M._, which means that your correspondent kisses your hand--_su seguro servidor que besa su mano_.
Then the interest which we evinced in the inst.i.tutions and progress of Spain made him put his cultivated intelligence at our service, and we learned more in a day than in all the previous weeks. When I inquired into the vexed religious question he was able to explain much. As a rule, republicanism in Spain means avowed atheism and socialism; it has been well said that the republicanism of all Latin countries turns to social revolution. The socialists are a small, but well-organized band, international in character since their movements are directed from centers like Paris. They are chiefly in industrial cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Bilbao, where secret societies of anarchists abound, disguised as clubs for scientific study. The majority being of the rabble, repudiating all authority, ("civilization, that is the enemy!") their disorders would be called mob uprisings did they occur in Chicago, but deceived by the term "republicanism," the journals of England and America gave them too lenient a consideration. By no means devout himself, he a.s.sured us that what we saw on every side was for the most part very genuine religion, not sentiment with no result; for in those places where observance had slackened there was a marked difference in moral restraint, so potent a factor for morality was religion still in Spain. That there were faults none denied, but he had traveled enough to know the flaws of other countries too well to be despairing of his own.
He wrote for us a card of introduction to the big hospital of Madrid; he sought out a friend in another carriage, the son of the Admiral in Ferrol, who was rather up in statistics. Had we seen the asylum near Santiago where the insane are treated with such success that noted cures had been obtained? Had we met the archaeologist of the province, a canon in the Cathedral? In short, from the questions and suggestions we realized that the average tourist goes through this reserved country half blind. Glad were we for this chance of insight. When in the dusk of evening it came time to descend at Astorga, our stopping-place for the night, and our fellow-traveler stood there shaking hands, with warm friendliness in his blue eyes, we felt there was no more thoroughbred specimen of manhood than a Spanish hidalgo.
SALAMANCA
"L"homme n"est produit que pour l"infini."
"Il y a des raisons qui pa.s.sent notre raison."
"Se moquer de la philosophie c"est vraiment philosopher."
PASCAL.
Salamanca is in Leon province, and in comparison with the hour of its prime, as it is to-day it too is very like a sleeping city. It is hard to realize that this dull, small town was a _grandeza de Espana_, ranking with Oxford, Paris, and Bologna, that once 10,000 students flocked here from all over Europe, and every young Spaniard turned here as naturally as a modern Englishman to Oxford or Cambridge; Cervantes"
"Novelas Exemplares" give the picture. To-day there are barely a thousand students, chiefly from its own province; among the ten universities of Spain the former leader takes a very lowly place.
Madrid, the continuation of Cardinal Ximenez" University of Alcala, may be called the modern Salamanca in intellectual leadership.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright, 1910, by Underwood & Underwood_
VIEW OF SALAMANCA FROM THE ROMAN BRIDGE]
In the Spanish Oxford one looks in vain for the numerous colleges of the city on the Isis. Alas! Salamanca is half a ruin. The French, in the Napoleonic invasion, destroyed the whole northwest quarter of the town to make fortifications, undoing in a few brutal hours the work of centuries of culture and piety. In his despatches of 1812 the Duke of Wellington wrote: "The French among other acts of violence have destroyed thirteen out of twenty convents and twenty out of the twenty-five colleges which existed in this seat of learning." Twenty out of twenty-five colleges! The thought of Oxford"s tranquil, age-crowned buildings makes one grasp the tragic wreck of the Spanish university; never while in Salamanca could I forget the desolate tract to the west, lying still a heap of ruins, untenanted save by wandering goats, those nomad creatures that give the culminating note of squalor to deserted districts.
Our train approached the city across the plains from Zamora, through plantations of isolated trees and past droves of black sheep whose guardian stood patiently under the rain. For some time in the distance we saw the prominent church towers. Salamanca lay on the old Roman road, the Via Lata, that connected Cadiz with the north, but the Roman a.s.sociations here are slight. As in Zamora, the Cid and his feats dwarf other interests, so here it is the picturesque days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that fill the mind.
Go down to the Roman bridge over the Tormes and while away an hour watching the pa.s.sers-by, and the old times seem to live again. Below in the river bed women wash and chatter from morning till night, spreading the gayly-colored clothes, red, yellow, and purple, over the stones to dry. If it is Sunday, into the city pour the hardy peasants for their one day of rest from the ungrateful work of the fields: girls in pale blue woolen stockings and smart, black pumps sit sideways behind their cavaliers on the long-haired nags whose backs are often shaved into a pattern; now out of the city jogs a brisk old woman on her donkey, laden with a month"s purchases, an unpainted rush-bottom chair topping the pile; she nods to the strangers, _franceses_, she thinks, for a Spaniard takes all foreigners for his neighbors over the frontier: now a cart pa.s.ses, whose shape and hue seem taken out of a romantic watercolor; then a young peasant in wide-brimmed sombrero, leather gaiters, silver b.u.t.tons as big as dollars on his vest, clear-eyed and proud of carriage: then, salt to the picture, rides a burly _cura_, sitting well back on his tiny a.s.s, a ridiculous figure were it not for his sublime unconsciousness, his innate self-respect. Ever the unspoiled, the vigorous, the untamed! Just so they came into Salamanca in the past when students with swords and velvet capes walked the streets, and so I hope they may do some hundred years from now, for such lives of frugal contentment are unequaled. Localism and provinciality have been forced on Spain by nature, and it is this very provincialism which is her charm for the traveler. Fresh from a prosperous, new world, he may often long for certain changes here, for more widely diffused education, for free libraries, a more secure self-government; but such material prosperity is bought with a price. Remember that not in the length or breadth of this land are to be found the degraded human beings, vicious in soul and brutalized in shape of skull and feature, such as exist by the thousands in the slums of industrial countries. If the Spanish peasant must lose his hardy independence, if his frugal contentment, his heroic patience must pa.s.s with the old order of things (that lets a heap of ruins in the heart of a city lie untouched during a hundred years!) I cannot help wondering whether the price is not too high to pay. I am repeating myself, but the words come to one each day--it is beyond human nature to be consistent in Spain; she has the faculty, despite her glaring faults, of battering down one"s Philistine certainty of northern superiority.
The bridge, the plaza, and the cathedral; study your types there and you begin to know the real Spaniard. Not soon shall I forget, at Merida, in wild Estremadura, as I loitered on the bridge, a countryman stepping forward with the dignified, proud look of his cla.s.s: "_Es mas bonita que Paris?_" he asked, the interrogatory note added only in courtesy, so sure was he of my affirmative. Sleepy little Merida, all a ruin, Knights Templars" castle as well as Roman theater and aqueduct, to the fellow _paisano_ of Pizarro and Cortes, was finer than Paris. It is glimpses like this that make the prejudiced stranger judge the so-called backwardness of the country in kinder fashion. Where else could one see stately-moving cream-colored oxen pa.s.s unnoticed through the chief thoroughfare of a capital, a common sight in the Puerta del Sol of Madrid, where else will the customs officer of a big town stand to count with a pointing finger the skipping sheep driven past him, as on the Alcantara bridge at Toledo, where else will groups of goats be milked from door to door in a great commercial city like Barcelona? Salamanca, being the center of an agricultural district and off the express route, presents daily, scenes from the Georgics.
Architecturally the old university city, despite her disasters, is of first importance. She has two Cathedrals, the smaller more perfect one of 1100, finding shelter by the side of its huge successor, to whom it yielded its rights as metropolitan in 1560. The exterior of the new Cathedral is over-rich and meaningless, it promises little for what it holds within, where the lofty Gothic piers and arches have so impressive an air of majesty that architectural flaws are forgotten. It proves how much longer Gothic lasted in Spain than elsewhere in Europe. The triforium here is replaced by an elaborately-carved balcony that runs round the church, and high up are medallions colored with gold and Eastern hues, an enamel-like decoration which has been beautifully and sparingly used; the inner circle of the clearstory window and the round windows of the west end, have jeweled chains of color that modern churches could well imitate. As usual, the side chapels are full of treasures, and the sacristy boasts the very crucifix the Cid carried in battle. There is one bad defect: its apse has not the dim, mysterious curve of a cathedral, the east end being square, like a cold secular hall. Nestling under this gigantic pile is the loveliest thing in all Salamanca, the _catedral vieja_, its t.i.tle in the old Latin proverb "fortis Salmantina." It is a small, Romanesque-transition church, unused, but in good repair, left unchanged by a sensible bishop when the services were removed to its more pretentious rival. The carvings of the capitals are boldly ma.s.sive, there is a noticeably good, painted _retablo_, and among the numerous tombs--a Gregorovius could make a fascinating volume of Spain"s alabaster knights and bishops!--there is one that is specially appealing. It is in a chapel opening off the cloisters; a warrior in armor lies on his sarcophagus, beside him his wife, with a child"s innocence of face, dressed in the nun"s robe worn while her lord was fighting the Moors, with high pattens on her feet, a dainty little Castilian gentlewoman, mother of the prelate whose stately tomb fills the center of the chapel. The old Cathedral is so tucked in among buildings, that only one view of the exterior can be got, from a terrace leading from the south door of the later church, a view that a New Englander will return to often with a homesick feeling, for just such a scaly-tiled tower, window for window, line for line alike, rises in Copley Square, Boston. This cupola shows Byzantine influences since Spanish Romanesque was orientalized through Mediterranean trading.
Of all the memories of a journey in Spain the happiest are the hours spent in her cathedrals, the starting out expectant, often with no map or book, for there are frequent glimpses of the church towers to guide; the first entering the n.o.ble structure which man"s living enthusiasm raised, the first pa.s.sing from one chapel to another in astonishment at the treasures they guard. Pierre Loti has a sketch on Burgos Cathedral, seen once only on a late afternoon, just as the verger was closing it, and he describes how unhappily he was affected by the lavish material wealth. Pure artist that he is in his theory of seizing on a swift impression, the test may be successful for Philae or for the Parthenon, but it will not do for a Spanish cathedral, which is too complex, and can well hide its soul from the hasty tourist. May M. Loti forgive me for saying it, but certainly the way in which he saw Burgos differs little from the lightning-flash method of the Yankee tourist he despises. I think he must have had a cross indigestion that late afternoon, or perhaps it was his Huguenot blood rising in protest.
Another of his countrymen, equally sensitive, "le delicat Joubert,"
gives a less on-the-surface judgment: "The pomp and magnificence with which the Church is reproached are in truth the result and proof of her incomparable excellence. From whence, let me ask, have come this power of hers and these excessive riches except from the enchantment into which she threw all the world? She had the talent of making herself loved, and the talent of making men happy ... it is from thence she drew her power."
Spain is richer than all other lands in church furniture: except for the uprising of 1835 against the monasteries, a movement more political than religious, there has been no terrible iconoclastic mania, such as in France and England; the cities which were looted, like Valladolid and Salamanca, during the French invasion, suffered in a different way.
Then, too, Spanish cathedrals do not part with their art treasures; the gifts of personal and inappropriate jewels when they have acc.u.mulated too needlessly are sometimes sold for the benefit of the church, but the art treasures made for the service of the Altar are not parted with. In Valencia it is told that Rothschild"s agent tried in vain to buy Benvenuto Cellini"s silver pax there: $10,000 $15,000, $20,000, he offered: "_Las cosas de la catedral no se venden_," was the answer.
"$50,000," said the agent. The Cathedral was poor and needed repairs.
"It is useless," was the firm answer of the Chapter, "We do not sell the things of the Altar." In Salamanca the verger told us that an Englishman had offered an immense sum for the iron screen round the tomb of Bishop Anaya (his mother the dainty little lady in pattens) and though the screen was in an unused chapel of the _catedral vieja_, it was refused.
These unsullied temples of the Holy Spirit, where stately ceremonials are still an every-day occurrence, differ in every city, the carven wealth of Burgos, the soaring grace of Leon, the solid grandeur of Santiago, Toledo, a dream of His House, Seville, rising imposing past expectation, the small, dark symmetry of Barcelona, the solemn s.p.a.ce of prayer before Avila"s high altar, Siguenza"s tomb-filled chapels, Saragossa, draped with priceless Flemish tapestries for the feast, Palencia dim and holy at daybreak, worship-bowed Lugo,--indelible memories of beauty and exaltation, the cathedrals of Spain are not mere artistic memorials of the past, their soul is not fled. Such churches cannot but have an influence on the people among whom they rise. If on one of different race they impress themselves with the actuality of a living experience, what must they mean to those whose childhood and old age have known them in solemn moments. I came across an autobiographical bit by the novelist Alacon, describing the influence on him of one of these great churches of the past. He grew up in the small Andalusian city of Gaudix, like many Spanish towns its great day being well over; the only grandeur left, the only palace inhabited, was the _iglesia mayor_: "From the Cathedral I first learned the revealing power of architecture, there first heard music and first grew to admire pictures; there also in solemn feasts, mid incense, lights, and the swell of the organ, I dreamed of poetry and divined a world different from what surrounded me. Thus faith and beauty, religion and inspiration, ambition and piety were born united in my soul."
On the way to the Cathedrals each day we pa.s.sed through the arcaded plaza, which at the noon and evening hours was thronged with an animated crowd; we noticed once more the democratic relation between the cla.s.ses, smart officers in pale blue uniforms strolled up and down chatting with plain countrymen whose capes, tossed over the shoulder, let the gaudy red and green velvet facing be seen. The daily walk brought us past the House of the Sh.e.l.ls, whose walls are studded with the pilgrim emblem, and one day as I paused to look into the lovely inner court, the owner came out, prayer-book in hand, on her way to church, and with the grave courtesy of her race, she invited the stranger in to examine her romantic dwelling. Most of the buildings in the city are a light brown sandstone that suits the gorgeous surface decoration of Isabella"s period, here seen in its full glory. There is no pure early-Gothic in the city; Romanesque-transition is found in the old Cathedral, and late florid-Gothic in the new Cathedral, later still some baroque extravagances, since Salamanca claims a doubtful honor as the birthplace of that exponent of bad taste, Jose Churriguera. But the style that is supreme here is the Plateresque, the silversmith period when late-Gothic and Renaissance met: the facades seem as if molded in clay, so lavish is their work. In one respect Salamanca has been more fortunate than its rival Oxford, in having used a stone soft in appearance, but so durable that the chiseling is almost as finished to-day as when first cut. Everywhere in the town this Plateresque work is found; at times more Renaissance than Gothic, as in Espiritu Santo, a convent like Las Huelgas for n.o.ble ladies, or as in the beautiful patio of the Irish College; the Dominican church of San Esteban is more Gothic than Plateresque.
Like the Jesuits, the second of the monastic orders whose cradle is Spain, may well be proud of the record in its native land. The society of Ignatius can boast besides its saints, scholars like Ripalda, Lainez, Salmeron, Isla, Suarez, Mariana, the great historian, and Hervas y Panduro, "the father of philology," who has been credited by Professor Max Muller with "one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language." And the Dominicans can claim a de Soto, a Melchor Cano, Luis de Granada, Las Casas, defender of the Indians, and, fame of this special monastery of Santo Domingo, a Diego de Deza, the protector of Columbus. With this learned man, tutor to Isabella"s only son, lodged the discoverer years before his memorable voyage, and it was in a room called De Profundis, leading from the cloisters, that he first explained his theories to the community who espoused his cause with perseverance, in opposition to the stupid savants of the University.
They, appointed by the Queen to investigate his claims, found them "vain and unpractical," not worthy of serious notice. On the 400th anniversary of Columbus" discovery, a memorial statue was put up in the square near the mediaeval tower of Clavero: on the pedestal are reliefs of his two patrons, Isabella, and Fray Diego de Deza, "_gloria de la orden de Santo Domingo, protector constante de Cristobal Colon_."
Imposing as is San Esteban, the triumph of the Catholic Kings" heraldic style of architecture is the facade of the University Library, as autobiographic of its age as is Santiago"s _Portico de la Gloria_ of an earlier century. It is one ma.s.s of delicate carving, badges, medalions, and scrolls, increasing in size as it rises, so that an effect of uniformity is obtained. There is the true ring of that chivalrous generation in the inscription, "The Kings to the University, and this to the Kings," you raise your head proudly with a flash of the eye, feeling for a moment that you are almost a Spaniard yourself.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, SALAMANCA]
Opposite the library"s facade is a statue of one of the University"s noted men, that attractive personality, Fray Luis de Leon. Tall, stalwart, for he came of a warrior race of Spanish grandees, ascetic, with intellectual forehead, a man capable of sainthood, of the type n.o.ble, he faces the school where he studied as a youth and pa.s.sed a later life in research and teaching. In Luis de Leon is found an equilibrium of character, a magnanimity united with genius, which often distinguished the men born in the _siglo de oro_. This Augustinian monk was a deep theologian, ahead of his times, as most deep thinkers are; he made a translation of the Songs of Songs too advanced for the age, and his enemies accused his orthodoxy to the Inquisition. For five years he lived in confinement, and it was during this semi-imprisonment that he wrote his great mystic book, "Los Nombres de Cristo," and also some of his lyrics. The University remained loyal to him by refusing to place another lecturer in his seat; then when he had justified himself before the Holy Office, he was set at liberty, and a host of friends accompanied him back to his post. He entered the lecture hall quietly, after his five years of absence, and opened the discourse with rare tact, a generous, high-minded overlooking of personal rancour: "Gentlemen, as we were saying the other day." This famous mot of Luis de Leon, "_como deciamos ayer_," shows a quality unexpected in Spain, but characteristic often of her sons, that of amenity, a kindly tolerance of the world"s foibles, found in Cervantes, and to show it has not died out, this same amenity was a predominating trait of the late distinguished novelist, Don Juan Valera. Luis de Leon, true follower of his patron Augustine, knew that there is no sin that one man commits that all men are not capable of, if not helped by G.o.d. "Even while he aspires, man errs."
Had the erudite monk been merely a scholar, he had been a personality in his own day, but would not be alive for us; but he can claim an enduring fame. Professor Menendez y Pelayo calls him the most exalted of Spanish lyric poets, and names his "Ascension," "Al Apartamiento," "A Salinas,"
"A Felipe Ruiz," "Alma Region Lucient," "La Noche Serena," as the six most beautiful of Spanish lyrics. Learn them by heart, he says, and they will astonish you with each repet.i.tion. Luis de Leon had the Wordsworthian note of simple living and high thinking, of a personal love of nature, long before the Lake School: the "Ode to Retirement"
might have been penned at Grasmere. Everything led his soul to G.o.d; he fed on the mystics and rose to their height and serenity of thought.
From his love of the cla.s.sics came his sobriety of form and purity of phrase; he is a true Horacian, penetrated as well by the spirit of the great Hebrew writers, with the _espiritu cristiano_ added, yet though drawing his culture from many sources he is personal and modern. Such praise from the great critic sends one to an enthusiastic study of Fray Luis, and a knowledge of his poems makes the visit to his tomb in Salamanca more than one of mere curiosity.
Like most of the cities and villages of Leon province, this one too lies asleep, resting on its former honors, though there are hints, such as the new hospital, that she is rousing herself to life. She feels a confidence in her own future, as is subtly shown in the decoration of the plaza, where empty s.p.a.ces are left for the names of coming great men. It is with this city of the past that the most homelike memory of our tour in Spain is a.s.sociated, the happy hour round an English tea-table eating bread and b.u.t.ter, and chatting at last, oh so eagerly, in one"s native tongue. It was the rector of the Irish college who gave us this delightful taste of home, and fresh from six weeks of freezing, stone-paved rooms, of cinnamon-flavored chocolate, how we appreciated his hospitality! The school of young seminarians is housed in one of the five remaining of the University buildings, but only moved here when the original college, founded by Philip II and dedicated to St. Patrick, was demolished by Ney and Marmont"s soldiery.