SPAIN is a country that has never laid aside the sword, or cast off her armour. Her martial spirit is lulled to rest, but its memory is kept alive in the frowning battlements, the gaunt fortresses that crown each peopled eminence, and guard the approaches of its ancient, war-scarred cities. Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths,” as Padilla describes it, is a rock built upon a rock 1,820 feet above the sea. It is a mighty citadel, almost engirdled by the rushing Tagus, and armed at every point by massive Moorish masonry—solid, venerable, invincible. Toledo, in the heyday of its history, contained, beside the cathedral, one hundred and ten churches, thirty-four hospitals, a university, and four colleges. Toledo, or Toledoth, the Hebrew “city of generations,” has now only fifty-nine churches; its hospitals have been reduced to four; its fame as a seat of learning is a tale that is told. John Lomas, who wrote of this city that it “never had rest until it entered into the tomb; blighted, but not destroyed. There is the old Toledo yet, simply fossilised—a theatre with the actors gone and the scenery left. But the curtain will never be drawn up again, or the music re-commence. Rome may play the wanton with each succeeding age, and deck herself out in obedience to every passing fashion. But Toledo—? She is at least faithful to the dead past. The liveliest imagination cannot picture her as a creature of to-day, a receptive pupil of nineteenth century science and improvement. And so she keeps her old ways: her old tongue, thank heaven! knowing nothing of the mixed dialects and slang that mark off progress; her old narrow streets and solid buildings that are so beautifully fitted for defence, intrigue, and shelter, and would spell ruin to any enterprising company that should attempt to adapt them to the requirements of the new life that has come into the world. She has been poked at—twice—by inquisitive, bustling railroads, without the slightest electrifying results. So she retains her old Soko, and will have nought to do with the correct Plaza de la Constitucion, her old stern inconveniences and her old traditions.”

In many respects the foregoing is a faithful picture of Toledo of to-day. But will the curtain never be drawn up again? Will the music never re-commence? I may be wrong, but I cannot share this opinion. Writing eighteen years after Mr. Lomas, I have been privileged to find his prognostications already proving incorrect. The power and virility upon which Spain built up her greatness may slumber for awhile; but even in the fastnesses

of the Castilian mountains it has never died. The machinery of the curtain of the theatre of Toledo is a trifle rusty, the pulleys are jambed from long disuse; but that curtain is rising steadily if slowly, and already I can hear the tuning up of fiddles in its ancient orchestra. The ancient spirit still burns in the Toledans, and the ancient prosperity of their city is surely recovering itself. Since 1884 much re-building has been done, and more is in progress; whilst new and handsome shops are seen in the principal thoroughfares where an increase of population and traffic is apparent.

But one must live in such a city as Toledo in order to appreciate the changes that are being wrought in her. The casual visitor cannot hope to detect the specks of modernity in this vast temple of the antique. Its ancient grandeur is comparatively impervious to the pretty wiles of modern improvement. One’s eyes wander from the newly-built emporiums to the immensity of its enduring monuments, and one’s mind flings back instinctively into the past, out of which they arose to defy the hand of Time himself. And so the majority of book-makers, who take Spain for their subject, overlook the present condition of the country; the instant life that rushes before their eyes escapes their notice. And, indeed, it requires an effort, even on the part of a shrewd and unemotional observer, to stand beneath the shadow of the ruins of the old AlcÁzar and keep one’s mind from slipping backwards into the history of a city which presents an epitome of the principal arts, religions, and race-lives which have dominated the world for the last two thousand years. This was the theatre in which grim tragedy was ever played, where waves of strife, rapine, and misfortune swept remorselessly across its stage in constant succession; where Jew and Roman, Goth and Moor in turn played their stern parts. Here the voice of the Goth echoes amid Roman ruins, and the step of the Christian treads on the heel of the Moor. Here are palaces without nobles, churches without congregations, walks without people; and over all that silence which is so peculiar to the ancient cities of Spain. Before England was, Toledo had been.

In a city which holds one spellbound by its past, it must be difficult for the present to make headway. WÖrmann has well described Toledo as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock;” and Street has declared: “Few cities I have ever seen can compete in artistic interest with it; and none, perhaps, come up to it in the singular magnificence of its situation, and the endless novelty and picturesqueness of its every corner.” And the grandeur is emphasised by the silence that serves to enhance the awe that the place inspires in the heart of the visitor. Such occasional sounds as are heard echo along the narrow streets, and turn innumerable corners, and the noise of a passing horse reverberates like the clatter of a charging squadron. But horses are few, and carriages are very far between, for the ascents of Toledo are formidable, and its turnings are endless. One must be resident in the city for months in order to learn its topography: the visitor must engage a guide, or be prepared to make a dozen inquiries on a journey from the Hotel de Castilla to the Cathedral. It is a maze built of masonry; an ideal place in which to lose oneself. One can walk for miles through these stone passages and make

but little progress, and zig-zag among the same houses for hours. Without a guide it is possible to live for weeks in Toledo and yet not see one quarter of the city. But, with an obliging cicerone to lead one about, the “Spanish Rome” may be superficially examined in a few days.

Special admirers of ecclesiastic sculpture and architectural detail will find in the famous cathedral of Toledo not one, but several weeks of study and enjoyment laid out for them. To attempt even a general survey of its marvels would be impossible in a volume of this size and design, and I must refer the antiquarian to SeÑor Parro’s exhaustive book on Toledo. In this work of 1,550 pages, one half is devoted to the cathedral, which is justly considered one of the most beautiful in the world. It is situated in the very heart of the city, around which cluster multitudinous churches and convents. So closely do the surrounding buildings press upon it, that no free view of the structure can be obtained, and one passes with a feeling of infinite relief from the congested vicinity of the exterior into the broad quietude, the lonely shade, and the austere gravity of the interior. I am told that it would take a week to minutely examine the high altar; it would take as long to inspect the accumulation of treasures in the sacristy—treasures of silver and gold, of pearls, rubies, and diamonds, sufficient, it is said, to entirely replenish the exchequer of Spain. The frescoed ceiling by Luca Giordano is the best in Spain; while pictures by Francesco Bassano, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Rubens, Goya, Guercino, Van Dyck, and Carlo Maratta are to be seen on every side. Through the beautiful Oriental-looking cloister garden, with its shade of great trees, its grove, and its mass of luxurious verdure, one arrives at the bell-tower, from which one can enjoy a magnificent view of the city and the surrounding country.

But an even finer panoramic view of Toledo is to be obtained from one of the four great towers of the AlcÁzar. Involuntarily one catches one’s breath, and pays a silent tribute of amazed admiration as the spectacle discloses itself to view. From this vantage ground, every street, and turning, and detail of the city is revealed, with the cathedral rising like a mountain of granite in the midst of it. The statues on the terrace of San Juan de los Reyes look like dolls, the houses like dolls’ houses, and the horses like huge beetles climbing the tiny alleys. Towers and fortifications lie below us. A little further off, near the Puente de

AlcÁntara, are the ruins of the old Castillo de San Servando; and beyond and around lies the great green plain, stretching outwards to the distant rocks and mountains. At the foot of the city, and almost surrounding it, runs the River Tagus.

No finer panegyric has been written on this mighty River Tagus than Ford’s description of its poetical and picturesque course: “First green and arrowy, amid the yellow cornfields of New Castile, then freshening the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing the gardens with verdure, and filling the nightingale-tenanted glens with groves: then boiling and rushing around the granite ravines of rock-built Toledo, hurrying to escape from the cold shadow of its deep prison, and dashing joyously into light and liberty, to wander far away into silent plains, and on to Talavera, where its waters were dyed with brave blood, and gladly reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets of England—triumphantly it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of Almaraz, down to desolate Estremadura, and in a stream as tranquil as the azure sky by which it is curtained, yet powerful enough to force the mountains at AlcÁntara. There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a hundred miles to see: it stems the fierce, condensed stream, and ties the rocky gorges together: grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the tender colours of seventeen centuries, it looms like the gray skeleton of Roman power, with all the sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the interest of the past and present. How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No commerce has ever made it its highway—no English steamer has ever civilised its waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have witnessed battles, not peace: have reflected castles and dungeons, not quays, or warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of the Thames and Rhine: it is truly a river of Spain—that isolated and solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life: man has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and independent gambols.”

The old AlcÁzar, which occupies the highest ground in Toledo, is of Roman origin, and was used by the Visigoths as a citadel. The Cid resided here after the capture of the city by Alfonso VI., and it was converted into a palace by the saintly Ferdinand and the learned Alfonso. It was burned down in the war of Spanish Succession in 1710, was restored by Cardinal Lorenzana in 1772, was burned by the French in 1810, and in

1887 it was gutted by a third conflagration. To-day it is utilised as a Military Academy for the education of officers for the Spanish infantry. The Archbishop’s Palace, the Hospital of Santa Cruz, the Moorish Mosque, the Town Hall, the Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca, and the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, which looks more like a royal palace than a church, are but a few of the many sights that Toledo has to offer to the leisured visitor. To the traveller, whose time is limited, as was mine when I stayed there, she leaves an impression of greatness, grandeur, and melancholy which one does not, and would not, lightly lose.

From Toledo I proceeded direct to CÓrdova, because, in my mind, the two cities were linked together by the broad band of longevity, and I desired to see them both in the same mood cycle. So, while the atmosphere of Toledan greatness was still hot in my veins, I hastened across the broad, bare, sandy plains of the celebrated Mancha—the immortal theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote—past Argasamilla—where Don Quixote was born, and died, and where his great creator, Cervantes, was imprisoned for debt—across the Sierra Morena to the land of the valley of the Guadalquiver—“the garden of Spain, the Eden of the Arabs, the paradise of poets and painters”—to Andalucia. Thenceforward there are no more rocks, but fields now studded, now hidden by flowers—flowers, flowers all the way—carpet after carpet of purple, gold, and snow-white flowers, poppies, daisies, lilies, wild mushrooms, and ranunculuses. Then, as we are carried deeper into the bosom of the south, we are met with grain and orange groves, olive groves, and green hillsides, vineyards, and fruit trees. First a few Moorish towers and many-coloured houses, then on the hills of the Sierra Nevada clusters of villas and gardens, then a perfumed air scented with rose leaves, an enchanted garden, and—CÓrdova.

BRIDGE AND CATHEDRAL, CÓRDOVA.