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Title: Historic buildings
as seen and described by great writers
Editor: Esther Singleton
Release date: November 23, 2024 [eBook #74786]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Dodd, Mead & Company
Credits: Karin Spence and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC BUILDINGS ***
[Illustration: THE JUMMA MUSJID, INDIA.]
Historic Buildings
As Seen and Described
by Famous Writers
EDITED AND TRANSLATED
BY ESTHER SINGLETON
AUTHOR OF “TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES,” “GREAT
PICTURES,” “WONDERS OF NATURE,” “FAMOUS PAINTINGS,”
“PARIS,” “LONDON” AND “A GUIDE TO THE OPERA,” ETC.
_With Numerous Illustrations_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1903
_Copyright, 1903_
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
_Published October, 1903_
Preface
Two principles of selection have guided me in the preparation of this
book, the sixth of a series which has met with a cordial reception.
One is the beauty or interest from an artistic standpoint; the other,
the historical associations. If the reader should miss some famous
edifices, he will kindly remember that a small volume cannot contain
a complete collection of all the historic buildings still standing,
and that many other historic buildings have already appeared in my
former books of this series, _Turrets, Towers and Temples_ and
_Romantic Castles and Palaces_.
I have endeavoured to find descriptions that deal with both views,
giving the history of the building itself, and a description of its
architectural features; and as this book contains, in consequence,
a great variety of buildings of all periods and many countries, the
student of both art and history will doubtless find pleasure in
comparing these various styles of architecture and in composing a
mental picture of events that have occurred within their walls.
Some of the buildings will aid him in realizing more fully, perhaps,
than before some of the various influences that have aided in
developing certain races; for instance, a study of the text and
pictures of the cathedrals of Monreale and Palermo will demonstrate
the presence of Norman and Saracen in Sicily. In other instances, it is
not a long vanished race, but the still-felt presence of some strong
personality like that of Shah Jehan, whose mosques and palaces and Taj
Mahal stand as monuments not only to the great conqueror, but to the
magnificence of his taste.
In this book, I have included several towers and fortresses as well
as castles and baronial halls, and the Certosa of Pavia and La Grande
Chartreuse, from which later historic home the Carthusian monks of
France have lately been driven. In addition to the cathedrals and
temples which have been the scenes of memorable historical events,
I have added the particularly sacred shrines of the Holy Sepulchre,
the Holy House of Loretto and the Campo Santo, Pisa, which attract
thousands of the faithful.
Many of the extracts I have translated expressly for this book, and I
have taken no liberties with the text, except a little cutting for the
sake of space limitations.
E. S.
NEW YORK, _September, 1903_.
Contents
THE JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI 1
G. W. STEEVENS.
SAN DONATO, MURANO 5
JOHN RUSKIN.
THE PALACE OF THE POPES, AVIGNON 20
CHARLES DICKENS.
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM 29
PIERRE LOTI.
LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 40
WILLIAM BECKFORD.
THE TEMPLES OF HATCHIMAN, KAMAKOURA 54
AIMÉ HUMBERT.
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS 62
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN.
THE COLISEUM, ROME 75
I. EDWARD GIBBON.
II. CHARLES DICKENS.
GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS, LAHORE 84
G. W. STEEVENS.
THE GIRALDA, SEVILLE 92
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE 95
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE, PARIS 102
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
THE GREAT LAMA TEMPLE, PEKIN 107
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING.
HADDON HALL 112
JOHN LEYLAND.
CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO 125
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE FORTRESS AND PALACE OF GWALIOR 129
LOUIS ROUSSELET.
THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO 135
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
THE ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE 145
EDMUNDO DE AMICIS.
THE TOWER OF BELEM, LISBON 149
ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN.
VENETIAN PALACES 156
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
SAINT OUEN, ROUEN 163
L. DE FOURCAUD.
CARISBROOKE CASTLE, ISLE OF WIGHT 172
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE.
THE PANTHEON, ROME 178
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
ST. LAURENCE, NUREMBERG 182
LINDA VILLARI.
THE TORRE DEL ORO, SEVILLE 190
EDMUNDO DE AMICIS.
CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO 193
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE BUILDINGS OF SHAH JEHAN, AGRA 206
G. W. STEEVENS.
THE PRIORY AND CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, LONDON 216
CHARLES KNIGHT.
KUTB MINAR, DELHI 228
I. G. W. STEEVENS.
II. ANDRÉ CHÉVRILLON.
KENILWORTH CASTLE 234
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE.
SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE 244
JOHN RUSKIN.
THE RAMPARTS OF CARCASSONNE 247
A. MOLINIER.
THE CATHEDRAL OF MODENA 254
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN.
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS 257
LOUIS GONSE.
THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO, ROME 267
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL 276
W. J. LOFTIE.
THE CASTLE OF ANGERS 286
HENRY JOUIN.
THE PAGODA OF TANJORE 294
G. W. STEEVENS.
THE VENDRAMIN-CALERGI, VENICE 300
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
A VISIT TO THE OLD SERAGLIO, CONSTANTINOPLE 303
PIERRE LOTI.
THE DUOMO, LEANING TOWER, THE BAPTISTERY AND THE
CAMPO-SANTO, PISA 310
H. A. TAINE.
ROCHESTER CASTLE 317
ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN.
SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE 326
JOHN RUSKIN.
THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA 336
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
Illustrations
THE JUMMA MUSJID _India_ _Frontispiece_
PAGE
SAN DONATO _Italy_ 5
THE PALACE OF THE POPES _France_ 20
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE _Palestine_ 29
THE DAÏBOUDHS _Kamakoura_ 54
CATHEDRAL OF WELLS _England_ 62
THE COLISEUM _Italy_ 75
GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS _India_ 84
THE GIRALDA _Spain_ 92
THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE _Italy_ 95
THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE _France_ 102
HADDON HALL _England_ 112
CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO _Italy_ 125
FORTRESS AND PALACE OF GWALIOR _India_ 129
THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO _Italy_ 135
THE ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE _Spain_ 145
THE TOWER OF BELEM _Portugal_ 149
THE FOSCARI PALACE _Italy_ 156
SAINT OUEN _France_ 163
CARISBROOKE CASTLE _England_ 172
THE PANTHEON _Italy_ 178
ST. LAURENCE _Germany_ 182
THE TORRE DEL ORO _Spain_ 190
CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO _Italy_ 193
THE PEARL MOSQUE _India_ 206
THE CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW _England_ 216
THE KUTB MINAR _Delhi_ 228
KENILWORTH CASTLE _England_ 234
SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE _Italy_ 244
THE RAMPARTS OF CARCASSONNE _France_ 247
THE CATHEDRAL OF MODENA _Italy_ 254
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS _France_ 257
THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO _Italy_ 267
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL _England_ 276
THE CASTLE OF ANGERS _France_ 286
THE PAGODA OF TANJORE _India_ 294
THE VENDRAMIN-CALERGI _Italy_ 300
FOUNTAIN OF THE OLD SERAGLIO _Turkey_ 303
THE DUOMO, LEANING TOWER,
BAPTISTERY AND CAMPO-SANTO _Italy_ 310
ROCHESTER CASTLE _England_ 317
SANTA CROCE _Italy_ 326
THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA _Italy_ 336
Historic Buildings
THE JUMMA MUSJID
G. W. STEEVENS
Delhi is the most historic city in all historic India.
It may not be the oldest--who shall say which is the oldest among
rivals all coeval with time?--though it puts in a claim for a
respectable middle-age, dating from 1000 B.C. or so. It
has at least one authentic monument which is certainly fourteen or
fifteen hundred years old. At that time Delhi’s master called himself
Emperor of the World, and emperors, at least of India, have ruled
there almost ever since. Mohammed, an Afghan of Ghor, took it in 1193;
Tamerlane, the Mogul, sacked it two hundred years later; Nadir Shah,
the Persian, in 1739; Ahmed Shah Durani, another Afghan, in 1756; the
Marathas took it three years later. Half a century on, in 1803, General
Lake took the capital of India for Britain. And British it has been
ever since--except for those few months in 1857, when Mutiny brought
the ghost of the Mogul empire into the semblance of life again; till
Nicholson stormed the breach in the Kashmir Bastion, and dyed Delhi
British for ever with his blood.
Look from the Ridge, whence the columns marched out to that last
capture: the battered trophy of so many conquerors remains wonderfully
fresh and fair. It seems more like a wood than a city. The rolls of
green are only spangled with white, as if it were a suburb of villas
standing in orchards. Only the snowy domes and tall minarets, the
cupolas and gilded pinnacles, betray the still great and populous city
that nestles below you and takes breath after her thousand troubles.
Let us go back to the city. Here at least is the Jumma Musjid, the
great mosque, saved complete out of the storms--a baby of little more
than two hundred years, to be sure, but still something. It is said to
be the largest mosque in the world--a vast stretch of red sandstone
and white marble and gold upstanding from a platform reached on three
sides by flights of steps so tall, so majestically wide, that they are
like a stone mountain tamed into order and proportion at an emperor’s
will. Above the brass-mounted doors rise red portals so huge that they
almost dwarf the whole--red galleries above them, white marble domes
above them, white marble minarets rising higher yet, with pillars
and cupolas and gilded pinnacles above all. Beside the gateways the
walls of the quadrangle seem to creep along the ground; then, at the
corners, rise towers with more open chambers, more cupolas and gilded
pinnacles. Within, above the cloistered quadrangle, bulge three pure
white domes--not hemispheres, like Western domes, but complete globes,
only sliced away at the base and tapering to a spike at the top--and a
slender minaret flanks each side.
The whole, to Western eyes, has a strange effect. Our own buildings
are tighter together, gripped and focused more in one glance; over the
Jumma Musjid your eye must wander, and then the mind must connect the
views of the different parts. If you look at it near you cannot see it
all; if far, it is low and seems to straggle. The West could hardly
call it beautiful: it has proportion, but not compass. Therefore it
does not abase you, as other great buildings do: somehow you have a
feeling of patronage towards it. Yet it is most light and graceful
with all its bulk: it seems to suit India, thus spread out to get its
fill of the warm sun. It looks rich and lavish, as if space were of no
account to it.
You have passed below the cloud-capped towers, out of the gorgeous
palaces--and here is Silver Street, Delhi’s main thoroughfare. The
pageant fades, and you plunge into the dense squalor which is also
India. Along the houses run balconies and colonnades; here also you see
vistas of pillars and lattice-work, but the stone is dirty, the stucco
peels, the wood lacks paint. The houses totter and lean together. The
street is a mass of squatting, variegated people; bulls, in necklaces
of white and yellow flowers, sleep across the pavements, donkeys stroll
into the shops, goats nibble at the vegetables piled for sale down the
centre of the street, a squirrel is fighting with a caged parrot. Here
is a jeweller’s booth, gay with tawdry paint; next, a baker’s, with the
shopkeeper snoring on his low counter, and everything an inch thick
with dust. At one step you smell incense; at the next, garbage.
Inimitable, incongruous India! And coming out of the walls, still
crumbling from Nicholson’s cannon, you see mill-chimneys blackening
the sky. Delhi, with local cotton, they tell you, can spin as fine as
Manchester. One more incongruity! The iron pillar, the ruined mosque,
the jewelled halls, the shabby street, and now the clacking mill. That
is the last of Delhi’s myriad reincarnations.
[Illustration: SAN DONATO, ITALY.]
SAN DONATO, MURANO
JOHN RUSKIN
We push our way on between large barges laden with fresh water from
Fusina, in round white tubs seven feet across, and complicated
boats full of all manner of nets that look as if they could never
be disentangled, hanging from their masts and over their sides;
and presently pass under a bridge with the lion of St. Mark on its
archivolt, and another on a pillar at the end of the parapet, a small
red lion with much of the puppy in his face, looking vacantly up in
the air (in passing we may note that, instead of feathers, his wings
are covered with hair, and in several other points the manner of his
sculpture is not uninteresting). Presently the canal turns a little
to the left, and thereupon becomes more quiet, the main bustle of
the water-street being usually confined to the first straight reach
of it, some quarter of a mile long, the Cheapside of Murano. We pass
a considerable church on the left, St. Pietro, and a little square
opposite to it with a few acacia trees, and then find our boat suddenly
seized by a strong green eddy, and whirled into the tide-way of one
of the main channels of the lagoon, which divides the town of Murano
into two parts by a deep stream some fifty yards over, crossed only by
one wooden bridge. We let ourselves drift some way down the current,
looking at the low line of cottages on the other side of it, hardly
knowing if there be more cheerfulness or melancholy in the way the
sunshine glows on their ruinous but whitewashed walls, and sparkles
on the rushing of the green water by the grass-grown quay. It needs
a strong stroke of the oar to bring us into the mouth of another
quiet canal on the farther side of the tide-way, and we are still
somewhat giddy when we run the head of the gondola into the sand on the
left-hand side of this more sluggish stream, and land under the east
end of the Church of San Donato, the “Matrice” or “Mother” Church of
Murano.
It stands, it and the heavy campanile detached from it a few yards, in
a small triangular field of somewhat fresher grass than is usual near
Venice, traversed by a paved walk with green mosaic of short grass
between the rude squares of its stones, bounded on one side by ruinous
garden walls, on another by a line of low cottages, on the third,
the base of the triangle, by the shallow canal from which we have
just landed. Near the point of the triangular space is a simple well,
bearing date 1502; in its widest part, between the canal and campanile,
is a four-square hollow pillar, each side formed by a separate slab of
stone, to which the iron hasps are still attached that once secured the
Venetian standard.
The cathedral itself occupies the northern angle of the field,
encumbered with modern buildings, small out-house-like chapels, and
wastes of white wall with blank square windows, and itself utterly
defaced in the whole body of it, nothing but the apse having been
spared; the original plan is only discoverable by careful examination,
and even then but partially. The whole impression and effect of the
building are irretrievably lost, but the fragments of it are still most
precious.
We must first briefly state what is known of its history.
The legends of the Romish Church, though generally more insipid and
less varied than those of Paganism, deserve audience from us on this
ground, if on no other, that they have once been sincerely believed
by good men, and have had no ineffective agency in the foundation of
the existent European mind. The reader must not therefore accuse me of
trifling, when I record for him the first piece of information I have
been able to collect respecting the cathedral of Murano: namely, that
the emperor Otho the Great, being overtaken by a storm on the Adriatic,
vowed, if he were preserved, to build and dedicate a church to the
Virgin, in whatever place might be most pleasing to her; that the storm
thereupon abated; and the Virgin appearing to Otho in a dream showed
him, covered with red lilies, that very triangular field on which we
were but now standing amidst the ragged weeds and shattered pavement.
The emperor obeyed the vision; and the church was consecrated on the
15th of August, 957.
Whatever degree of credence we may feel disposed to attach to this
piece of history, there is no question that a church was built on
this spot before the close of the Tenth Century: since in the year
999 we find the incumbent of the Basilica (note this word, it is of
some importance) di Santa Maria Plebania di Murano taking an oath of
obedience to the Bishop of the Altinat church, and engaging at the same
time to give the said bishop his dinner on the Domenica in Albis, when
the prelate held a confirmation in the mother church, as it was then
commonly called, of Murano. From this period, for more than a century,
I can find no records of any alterations made in the fabric of the
church, but there exist very full details of the quarrels which arose
between its incumbents and those of San Stefano, San Cipriano, San
Salvatore, and the other churches of Murano, touching the due obedience
which their less numerous or less ancient brotherhoods owed to St.
Mary’s.
These differences seem to have been renewed at the election of every
new abbot by each of the fraternities, and must have been growing
serious when the patriarch of Grado, Henry Dandolo, interfered in 1102,
and, in order to seal a peace between the two principal opponents,
ordered that the abbot of St. Stephen’s should be present at the
service in St. Mary’s on the night of the Epiphany, and that the abbot
of St. Mary’s should visit him of St. Stephen’s on St. Stephen’s day;
and that then the two abbots “should eat apples and drink good wine
together, in peace and charity.”[1]
But even this kindly effort seems to have been without result: the
irritated pride of the antagonists remained unsoothed by the love-feast
of St. Stephen’s day; and the breach continued to widen until the
abbot of St. Mary’s obtained a timely accession to his authority in
the year 1125. The Doge Domenico Michele, having in the Second Crusade
secured such substantial advantages for the Venetians as might well
counterbalance the loss of part of their trade with the East, crowned
his successes by obtaining possession in Cephalonia of the body of San
Donato, bishop of Eurœa; which treasure he having presented on his
return to the Murano basilica, that church was thenceforward called
the church of Sts. Mary and Donato. Nor was the body of the saint its
only acquisition: St. Donato’s principal achievement had been the
destruction of a terrible dragon in Epirus; Michele brought home the
bones of the dragon as well as of the saint; the latter were put in a
marble sarcophagus, and the former hung up over the high altar.
But the clergy of St. Stefano were indomitable. At the very moment
when their adversaries had received this formidable accession of
strength, they had the audacity “ad onta de’ replicati giuramenti, e
dell’ inveterata consuetudine,” to refuse to continue in the obedience
which they had vowed to their mother church. The matter was tried in
a provincial council; the votaries of St. Stephen were condemned,
and remained quiet for about twenty years, in wholesome dread of the
authority conferred on the abbot of St. Donato, by the Pope’s legate,
to suspend any of the clergy of the island from their office if they
refused submission. In 1172, however, they appealed to Pope Alexander
III, and were condemned again: and we find the struggle renewed at
every promising opportunity, during the course of the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries; until at last, finding St. Donato and the dragon
together too strong for him, the abbot of St. Stefano “discovered” in
his church the bodies of two hundred martyrs at once!--a discovery,
it is to be remembered, in some sort equivalent in those days to
that of California in ours. The inscription, however, on the façade
of the church recorded it with quiet dignity:--“MCCCLXXIV. a dì XIV,
di Aprile. Furono trovati nella presente chiesa del protomartire San
Stefano, duecento e più corpi de’ Santi Martin, dal Ven. Prete Matteo
Fradello, piovano della chiesa.”[2] Corner, who gives this inscription,
which no longer exists, goes on to explain with infinite gravity, that
the bodies in question, “being of infantile form and stature, are
reported by tradition to have belonged to those fortunate innocents who
suffered martyrdom under King Herod; but that when, or by whom, the
church was enriched with so vast a treasure, is not manifested by any
document.”
The issue of the struggle is not to our present purpose. We have
already arrived at the Fourteenth Century without finding record of any
effort made by the clergy of St. Mary’s to maintain their influence by
restoring or beautifying their basilica; which is the only point at
present of importance to us. That great alterations were made in it
at the time of the acquisition of the body of St. Donato is however
highly probable, the mosaic pavement of the interior, which bears
its date inscribed 1140, being probably the last of the additions.
I believe that no part of the ancient church can be shown to be of
more recent date than this; and I shall not occupy the reader’s time
by any inquiry respecting the epochs or authors of the destructive
modern restorations; the wreck of the old fabric, breaking out from
beneath them here and there, is generally distinguishable from them at
a glance; and it is enough for the reader to know that none of these
truly ancient fragments can be assigned to a more recent date than
1140, and that some of them may with probability be looked upon as
remains of the shell of the first church erected in the course of the
latter half of the Tenth Century.
It is roofed by a concha, or semi-dome; and the external arrangement of
its walls provides for the security of this dome by what is, in fact,
a system of buttresses as effective and definite as that of any of the
northern churches, although the buttresses are obtained entirely by
adaptations of the Roman shaft and arch, the lower story being formed
by a thick mass of wall lightened by ordinary semicircular round-headed
niches, like those used so extensively afterwards in Renaissance
architecture, each niche flanked by a pair of shafts standing clear of
the wall, and bearing deeply moulded arches thrown over the niche. The
walls with its pillars thus forms a series of massy buttresses, on the
top of which is an open gallery, backed by a thinner wall, and roofed
by arches whose shafts are set above the pairs of shafts below. On the
heads of these arches rests the roof. We have, therefore, externally
a heptagonal apse, chiefly of rough and common brick, only with marble
shafts and a few marble ornaments; but for that reason all the more
interesting because it shows us what may be done, and what was done,
with materials such as are now at our own command; and because in its
proportions, and in the use of the few ornaments it possesses, it
displays a delicacy of feeling rendered doubly notable by the roughness
of the work in which laws so subtle are observed, and with which so
thoughtful ornamentation is associated.
We must now see what is left of interest within the walls.
All hope is taken away by our first glance; for it falls on a range
of shafts whose bases are concealed by wooden panelling, and which
sustains arches decorated in the most approved style of Renaissance
upholstery, with stucco roses in squares under the soffits, and egg
and arrow mouldings on the architraves, gilded, on a ground of spotty
black and green, with a small pink-faced and black-eyed cherub on every
keystone; the rest of the church being for the most part concealed
either by dirty hangings, or dirtier whitewash, or dim pictures on
warped and wasting canvas; all vulgar, vain, and foul. Yet let us not
turn back, for in the shadow of the apse our more careful glance shows
us a Greek Madonna, pictured on a field of gold; and we feel giddy
at the first step we make on the pavement, for it, also, is of Greek
mosaic waved like the sea, and dyed like a dove’s neck.
Nor are the original features of the rest of the edifice altogether
indecipherable; the entire series of shafts marked in the ground plan
on each side of the nave, from the western entrance to the apse, are
nearly uninjured; and I believe the stilted arches they sustain are
those of the original fabric, though the masonry is covered by the
Renaissance stucco mouldings. Their capitals, for a wonder, are left
bare, and appear to have sustained no farther injury than has resulted
from the insertion of a large brass chandelier into each of their
abaci, each chandelier carrying a sublime wax candle two inches thick,
fastened with wire to the wall above. The due arrangement of these
appendages, previous to festa days, can only be effected from a ladder
set against the angle of the abacus; and ten minutes before I wrote
this sentence, I had the privilege of watching the candle-lighter at
his work, knocking his ladder about the heads of the capitals as if
they had given him personal offence. He at last succeeded in breaking
away one of the lamps altogether, with a bit of the marble of the
abacus; the whole falling in ruin to the pavement, and causing much
consultation and clamour among a tribe of beggars who were assisting
the sacristan with their wisdom respecting the festal arrangements.
It is fortunate that the capitals themselves, being somewhat rudely
cut, can bear this kind of treatment better than most of those in
Venice. They are all founded on the Corinthian type, but the leaves
are in every one different: those of the easternmost capital of the
southern range are the best, and very beautiful, but presenting no
feature of much interest, their workmanship being inferior to most of
the imitations of Corinthian common at the period; much more to the
rich fantasies which we have seen at Torcello. The apse itself to-day
(12th September, 1851), is not to be described; for just in front of
it, behind the altar, is a magnificent curtain of a new red velvet with
a gilt edge and two golden tassels, held up in a dainty manner by two
angels in the upholsterer’s service; and above all, for concentration
of effect a star or sun, some five feet broad, the spikes of which
conceal the whole of the figure of the Madonna except the head and
hands.
The pavement is however still left open, and it is of infinite
interest, although grievously distorted and defaced. For whenever a new
chapel has been built, or a new altar erected, the pavement has been
broken up and readjusted so as to surround the newly inserted steps or
stones with some appearance of symmetry; portions of it either covered
or carried away, others mercilessly shattered or replaced by modern
imitations, and those of very different periods, with pieces of the
old floor left here and there in the midst of them, and worked round
so as to deceive the eye into acceptance of the whole as ancient. The
portion, however, which occupies the western extremity of the nave, and
the parts immediately adjoining it in the aisles, are, I believe, in
their original positions, and very little injured: they are composed
chiefly of groups of peacocks, lions, stags, and griffins,--two of
each in a group, drinking out of the same vase, or shaking claws
together,--enclosed by interlacing bands, and alternating with chequer
or star patterns, and here and there an attempt at representation
of architecture, all worked in marble mosaic. The floors of Torcello
and of St. Mark’s are executed in the same manner; but what remains
at Murano is finer than either, in the extraordinary play of colour
obtained by the use of variegated marbles. At St. Mark’s the patterns
are more intricate, and the pieces far more skillfully set together;
but each piece is there commonly of one colour: at Murano every
fragment is itself variegated, and all are arranged with a skill and
feeling not to be taught, and to be observed with deep reverence, for
that pavement is not dateless, like the rest of the church; it bears
its date on one of its central circles, 1140, and is, in my mind, one
of the most precious monuments in Italy, showing thus early, and in
those rude chequers which the bared knee of the Murano fisher wears
in its daily bending, the beginning of that mighty spirit of Venetian
colour, which was to be consummated in Titian.
But we must quit the church for the present, for its garnishings are
completed; the candles are all upright in their sockets, and the
curtains are drawn into festoons, and a pasteboard crescent, gay with
artificial flowers, has been attached to the capital of every pillar,
in order, together with the gilt angels, to make the place look as
much like Paradise as possible. If we return to-morrow, we shall
find it filled with woeful groups of aged men and women, wasted and
fever-struck, fixed in paralytic supplication, half kneeling, half
couched upon the pavement; bowed down, partly in feebleness, partly
in a fearful devotion, with their grey clothes cast far over their
faces, ghastly and settled into a gloomy animal misery, all but the
glittering eyes and muttering lips.
Fit inhabitants, these, for what was once the Garden of Venice, “a
terrestrial paradise,--a place of nymphs and demigods!”
We return, yet once again, on the following day. Worshippers and
objects of worship, the sickly crowd and gilded angels, all are gone;
and there far in the apse, is seen the sad Madonna standing in her
folded robe, lifting her hands in vanity of blessing. There is little
else to draw away our thoughts from the solitary image. An old wooden
tablet, carved into a rude effigy of San Donato, which occupies the
central niche in the lower part of the tribune, has an interest of
its own, but is unconnected with the history of the older church. The
faded frescoes of saints, which cover the upper tier of the wall of the
apse, are also of comparatively recent date, much more the piece of
Renaissance workmanship, shaft and entablature, above the altar, which
has been thrust into the midst of all, and has cut away part of the
feet of the Madonna. Nothing remains of the original structure but the
semi-dome itself, the cornice whence it springs, which is the same as
that used on the exterior of the church, and the border and face-arch
which surround it. The ground of the dome is of gold, unbroken except
by the upright Madonna, and usual inscription, M R [symbol] V. The
figure wears a robe of blue, deeply fringed with gold, which seems to
be gathered on the head and thrown back on the shoulders, crossing the
breast, and falling in many folds to the ground. The under robe, shown
beneath it where it opens at the breast, is of the same colour; the
whole, except the deep gold fringe, being simply the dress of the women
of the time. Le donne, anco elle del 1100, vestivano _di turchino con
manti in spalla_, che le coprivano dinanzi e di dietro.[3]
Round the dome there is a colored mosaic border; and on the edge of its
arch, legible by the whole congregation, this inscription:
“Quos Eva contrivit, pia Virgo Maria redemit;
Hanc cuncti laudent, qui Christi munere gaudent.”[4]
The whole edifice is, therefore, simply a temple to the Virgin: to her
is ascribed the fact of Redemption, and to her its praise.
“And is this,” it will be asked of me, “the time, is this the worship,
to which you would have us look back with reverence and regret?”
Inasmuch as redemption is ascribed to the Virgin, No. Inasmuch as
redemption is a thing desired, believed in, rejoiced in, Yes,--and Yes
a thousand times. As far as the Virgin is worshipped in place of God,
No; but as far as there is the evidence of worship itself, and of the
sense of a Divine presence, Yes. For there is a wider division of men
than that into Christian and Pagan: we ask what a man worships, we have
to ask whether he worships at all. Observe Christ’s own words on this
head: “God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in
spirit, _and_ in truth.” The worshipping in spirit comes first,
and does not necessarily imply the worshipping in truth. Therefore,
there is first the broad division of men into Spirit worshippers and
Flesh worshippers; and then, of the Spirit worshippers, the farther
division into Christian and Pagan,--worshippers in Falsehood or in
Truth. I therefore, for the moment, omit all inquiry how far the
Mariolatry of the early church did indeed eclipse Christ, or what
measure of deeper reverence for the Son of God was still felt through
all the grosser forms of Madonna worship. Let that worship be taken at
its worst; let the goddess of this dome of Murano be looked upon as
just in the same sense an idol as the Athene of the Acropolis, or the
Syrian Queen of Heaven; and then, on this darkest assumption, balance
well the difference between those who worship and those who worship
not;--that difference which there is in the sight of God, in all ages,
between the calculating, smiling, self-sustained, self-governed man,
and the believing, weeping, wondering, struggling, Heaven-governed
man;--between the men who say in their hearts “there is no God,” and
those who acknowledge a God at every step, “if haply they might feel
after Him and find Him.” For that is indeed the difference which we
shall find, in the end, between the builders of this day and the
builders on that sand island long ago. They _did_ honour something
out of themselves; they did believe in spiritual presence judging,
animating, redeeming them; they built to its honour and for its
habitation; and were content to pass away in nameless multitudes, so
only that the labour of their hands might fix in the sea-wilderness a
throne for their guardian angel. In this was their strength, and there
was indeed a Spirit walking with them on the waters, though they could
not discern the form thereof, though the Master’s voice came not to
them, “It is I.” What their error cost them, we shall see here-after;
for it remained when the majesty and the sincerity of their worship
had departed, and remains to this day. Mariolatry is no special
characteristic of the Twelfth Century; on the outside of that very
tribune of San Donato, in its central recess, is an image of the Virgin
who receives the reverence once paid to the blue vision upon the inner
dome. With rouged cheeks and painted brows, the frightful doll stands
in wretchedness of rags, blackened with the smoke of the votive lamp at
its feet; and if we would know what has been lost or gained by Italy
in the six hundred years that have worn the marbles of Murano, let us
consider how far the priests who set up this to worship, the populace
who have this to adore, may be nobler than the men who conceived that
lonely figure standing on the golden field, or than those to whom it
seemed to receive their prayer at evening, far away, where they only
saw the blue clouds rising out of the burning sea.
THE PALACE OF THE POPES
CHARLES DICKENS
Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of which
one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy barrack: while
gloomy suites of apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old
state and glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither went
there to see state-rooms, nor soldiers’ quarters, nor a common jail,
though we dropped some money into a prisoners’ box outside, whilst
the prisoners themselves, looked through the iron bars, high up, and
watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in
which the Inquisition used to sit.
[Illustration: THE PALACE OF THE POPES, FRANCE.]
A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes--proof
that the world hadn’t conjured down the devil within her, though it
had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in--came out of the
Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large keys
in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we should go. How she
told us, on the way, that she was a Government Officer (_concierge
du palais apostolique_) and had been for I don’t know how many
years; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes; and how she
was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she had resided in the
palace from an infant--had been born there, if I recollect right--I
needn’t relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic
she-devil I never beheld. She was alight and flaming all the time. Her
action was violent in the extreme. She never spoke without stopping
expressly for the purpose. She stomped her feet, clutched us by the
arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against the walls with
her keys, for mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were
there still: now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had
a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the
remains of some new horror--looking back and walking stealthily, and
making horrible grimaces--that might alone have qualified her to walk
up and down a sick man’s counterpane, to the exclusion of all other
figures, through a whole fever.
Passing through the courtyard, among groups of idle soldiers, we turned
off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission, and
locked again behind us: and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower
by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up the
mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or
is said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of
the river. Close to this courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it,
in another minute--in the dismal tower _des oubliettes_, where
Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that
stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks down into
it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners
of the Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their
capture, without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken,
even before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day
has not got in there yet, they are still small cells, shut in by four
unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively
doored and fastened as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a
vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of the Holy
Office. The place where the tribunal sat was plain. The platform might
have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good
Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition
chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.
High up in the jealous wall are niches where the faltering replies of
the accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought
out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully: along the
same stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when
Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but
the handle of the key, upon her lips. She invites me, with a jerk, to
follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged
room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top to the
bright day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously,
and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to see that all the little
company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her
arms, and yells out, like a fiend, “La Salle de la Question!”
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle
the victim’s cries! Oh, Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile in
silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame
out again.
Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace Clock, when, with
her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up in the middle of the chamber,
describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus it
ran round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy
hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer’s limbs. See the stone
trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat,
burst, for the Redeemer’s honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into
your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw. And when
the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of
God’s own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the
Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle
but to heal: who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness,
dumbness, madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched
His blessed hand out, but to give relief and ease!
See! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they made the irons
red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp stake, on which the tortured
persons hung poised: dangling with their whole weight from the roof.
“But”--and Goblin whispers this--“Monsieur has heard of this tower?
Yes? Let Monsieur look down then!”
A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of
Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the
wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top,
of a steep, dark, lofty tower: very dismal, very dark, very cold. The
Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look
down also, flung those who were past all further torturing down here.
“But look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?” A glance,
over his shoulder, at Goblin’s keen eye, shows Monsieur--and would
without the aid of the directing key--where they are. “What are they?”
“Blood!”
In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here, sixty
persons: men and women (“and priests,” says Goblin, “priests”): were
murdered, and hurled the dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit,
where a quantity of quicklime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those
ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one stone
of the strong building in which the deed was done remains upon another,
there they will lie in the memories of men, as plain to see as the
splashing of their blood upon the wall is now.
Was it a portion of the great schemes of Retribution that the cruel
deed should be committed in this place? That a part of the atrocities
and monstrous institutions, which had been, for scores of years, at
work, to change men’s nature, should in its last service tempt them
with the ready means of gratifying their furious and beastly rage!
Should enable them to show themselves, in the height of their frenzy,
no worse than a great, solemn, legal establishment in the height of
its power? No worse! Much better. They used the Tower of the Forgotten
in the name of Liberty--their liberty; an earth-born creature, nursed
in the black mud of the Bastille moats and dungeons, and necessarily
betraying many evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up--but the
Inquisition used it in the name of Heaven.
Goblin’s finger is lifted; and she steals out again into the Chapel
of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her
great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. She darts at the Brave
Courier, who is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the
hat with the largest key: and bids him be silent. She assembles us all
round a little trap-door in the floor as round a grave. “Voilà!” she
darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her
goblin energy, though it is no light weight. “Voilà les oubliettes!
Voilà les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible! Deadly!
Les oubliettes de l’Inquisition!”
My blood ran cold as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where
these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world outside:
of wives, friends, children, brothers: starved to death, and made
the stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt
on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and broken through, and
the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of
victory and triumph. I felt exalted with the proud delight of living,
in these degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some
high achievement! The light in the doleful vaults was typical of the
light that has streamed in on all persecution in God’s name, but which
is not yet at its noon! It cannot look more lovely to a blind man
newly restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and
majestically, treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well.
Goblin, having shown _les oubliettes_ felt that her great
_coup_ was struck. She let the door fall with a crash, and stood
upon it with her arms akimbo, sniffing prodigiously.
When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the
outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building.
Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the
thick wall--in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney;
its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it;
its household implements and scraps of dress against the wall; and a
sober-looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it with Goblin)
knitting at the door--looked exactly like a picture by OSTADE.
I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream,
and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of
which the light, down in the vaults, had given me the assurance.
The immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous
strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its
gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity,
awaken awe and wonder. The recollection of its opposite old uses; an
impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place
of torture, the court of the Inquisition: at one and the same time,
a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood: gives to every
stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to
its incongruities. I could think of little, however, then, or long
afterwards, but the sun in the dungeons. The palace coming down to be
the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their
rough talk and common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from
its dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something to
rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its
chambers of cruelty--that was its desolation and defeat! If I had seen
it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that not that
light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could waste it,
like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber, and its prisons.
Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from the
little history I mentioned just now a short anecdote, quite appropriate
to itself, connected with its adventures.
“An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de
Lude, the Pope’s legate, seriously insulted some distinguished ladies
of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young man and
horribly mutilated him. For several years the legate kept _his_
revenge within his own breast, but he was not the less resolved upon
its gratification at last. He even made, in the fullness of time,
advances towards a complete reconciliation; and when their apparent
sincerity had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in this
palace, certain families, whom he sought to exterminate. The utmost
gayety animated the repast; but the measures of the legate were
well taken. When the dessert was on the board, a Swiss presented
himself, with the announcement that a strange embassador solicited an
extraordinary audience. The legate, excusing himself for the moment to
his guests, retired, followed by his officers. Within a few moments
afterwards, five hundred persons were reduced to ashes; the whole
of that wing of the building having been blown into the air with a
terrible explosion!”
After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with churches just
now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat being very great, the
roads outside the walls were strewn with people fast asleep in every
little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half asleep and half
awake, who were waiting until the sun should be low enough to admit of
their playing bowls among the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road.
The harvest here was already gathered in, and mules and horses were
treading out the corn in the fields. We came, at dusk, upon a wild and
hilly country, once famous for brigands; and travelled slowly up a
steep ascent. So we went on until eleven at night, when we halted at
the town of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to sleep.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. PALESTINE.]
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
PIERRE LOTI
The rain is nearly over. The sky is drying sadly and shows the first
blue spaces. It is damp and cold, and water runs all along the base of
the old walls.
On foot, with an Arab for a guide, I escape alone from the hôtel to
hurry at last to the Holy Sepulchre. It is in the opposite direction
to that of the Dominicans, almost in the heart of Jerusalem through
narrow winding streets between walls as old as the Crusades, without
windows and without roofs. On the wet pavements and beneath a still
dark sky, circulate Oriental costumes,--Turks, Bedouins, or Jews, and
women draped like phantoms, Musulmans beneath dark veils and Christians
beneath white veils.
The city has remained Saracen. Vaguely I notice that we pass an
Oriental bazaar, where the stalls are occupied by merchants in
turbans; in the shadow of the roofed streets there slowly passes
a string of enormous camels, that obliges us to enter one of the
doors. Now, we must get out of the way for a peculiar and long defile
of Russian women, all sexagenarians at least, who walk rapidly
leaning on walking-sticks; old faded dresses, old parasols, old
_touloupes_ of fur, with faces of fatigue and suffering framed
in black handkerchiefs; a black and sorrowful _ensemble_ in the
midst of this Orient of colour. They walk rapidly with a movement at
once excited and exhausted, all hustling along without seeing anything,
like somnambulists, with anæstheticized eyes wide open in a celestial
dream. And hundreds of moujiks, having the same look of ecstasy follow
them; all of them old, sordid, with long grey beards and long grey hair
escaping from their felt hats; on their breasts many medals, indicating
that they are old soldiers. Having entered the holy city yesterday,
they are returning from their first visit to that sacred spot where I
am going in my turn; poor pilgrims who come here by the thousand, on
foot, sleeping out of doors in the rain or the snow, suffering with
hunger and dying on the way.
In proportion as you approach, the Oriental objects in the stalls give
place to objects of an obscure Christian piety: thousands of chaplets,
crosses, religious lamps, and images or icons. And the crowd is denser,
and other pilgrims, old moujiks and old matouchkas plant themselves to
buy cheap little wooden rosaries and cheap little crucifixes for two
sous, which they will carry from here as relics to be considered as
sacred for ever.
Finally, in an old and defaced wall resembling a rock, there opens a
rude door, very low and narrow, and, by a series of descending steps,
you arrive before a place jutting out from the high sombre walls, in
front of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.
At this spot, it is customary to take off your hat, the very moment the
Holy Sepulchre appears; every one passes bareheaded even if he is only
going by on his way about Jerusalem. It is thronged with poor people
who beg by singing; pilgrims who pray; sellers of crosses and chaplets
who have their little booths on the ground upon the old and venerable
flag-stones. Upon the pavement and among the steps there rise the still
uprooted socles of columns that formally supported the basilicas, and
that were razed, like those of St. Stephen, from far back and doubtful
periods; everything is a collection of rubbish in this city which has
been subjected to twenty sieges and which every kind of fanaticism has
sacked.
The high walls, of reddish brown stone, forming the sides of this
place, are convents or chapels--and it is said fortresses also. In the
background, higher and more sombre than anything else rises that worn
out and broken mass, which is the façade of the Holy Sepulchre and
which has assumed the appearance and irregularities of a large rock; it
has two enormous doors of the Twelfth Century framed with singularly
archaic ornaments; one of them is walled up; the other is wide open
permitting you to see thousands of little flames in the shadowy
interior. Songs, cries and discordant lamentations, lugubrious to hear,
escape through it with the perfume of incense.
Passing through the door, you find yourself in the venerable shadow
of a kind of vestibule that reveals magnificent depths beyond, where
innumerable lamps are burning. Some Turkish guards, armed as if for
a massacre, occupy this entrance in a military fashion; seated like
sovereigns on a large divan, they watch the devotees passing this
place, which is always, from their point of view, the opprobrium of
Musulman Jerusalem and which the most savage of them have never ceased
to call El Komamah (ordure).
Oh! the unexpected and imperishable impression when you enter here for
the first time. A maze of sombre sanctuaries, of all periods and of all
aspects connected by openings, doors and superb columns,--and also by
little gloomy doors, air-holes and cavernous hollowings. Some of these
are elevated like high tribunals, where you perceive, in the remote
distance, groups of women in long veils; others are subterranean, where
you are jostled by shadows, between walls of rock that have remained
intact, dripping and black.--All this, in a twilight where a few rays
of light fall and accentuate the surrounding darkness; all this, starry
with an infinite number of little flames in lamps of silver and gold,
hanging from the vaults by the thousand.--And everywhere a crowd moving
about confusedly as if at Babel, or quite stationary, seeming to be
grouped by nationalities around the golden tabernacles where somebody
is officiating.
Psalmody, lamentations and joyful songs fill the high vaults, or echo
in the sepulchral depths below; the nasal melopœia of the Greeks cut
through by the howlings of the Copts. And, in all these voices, an
exaltation of tears and prayers which produce dissonance and which
unite them; the whole effect becoming I know not what strange thing
that makes this place like a great wail from mankind and the supreme
cry of distress before death.
The rotunda with a very high cupola, which you enter first and which
allows you to divine between its columns the obscure chaos of the
other sanctuaries, is occupied in the centre by the great marble kiosk,
of a luxury that is half barbaric and overcharged with silver lamps,
that encloses the stone of the sepulchre. All around this very sacred
kiosk, the crowd surges or stands still: on the one side hundreds of
moujiks and matouchkas are kneeling on the flag-stones; on the other,
the women of Jerusalem, standing up, in long white veils--groups of
ancient virgins, one would, say, in the dreamlike shadow; elsewhere
Abyssinians and turbaned Arabs prostrated with foreheads to the earth;
Turks with sabre in hand; people of all communions and all languages.
You do not stay long in this habitation of the Holy Sepulchre, which
is really the very heart of this mass of basilicas and chapels, people
pass by one by one; lowering your head you enter it by a very little
door of marble carved and festooned; the sepulchre is within, encased
in marble and surrounded by gold icons and gold lamps. There entered
at the same time as I did a Russian soldier, a poor old woman in rags,
an Oriental woman in rich brocade; all kissed the cover of the tomb
and wept. And others followed, and others eternally follow, to touch,
embrace and wet with tears these same stones.
There is no plan of unity in this collection of churches and chapels
which crowd close around this very holy kiosk; there are some large
ones that are marvellously sumptuous and some little ones that are
humble and primitive, crumbling away with age in these sinister nooks
dug out of the natural rock and dark as night. And, here and there,
the rock of Calvary, left bare, appears in the midst of richness and
archaic gold work. The contrast is strange between so many collected
treasures,--icons of gold, crosses of gold and lamps of gold,--and the
rags of the pilgrims and the decay of the walls and the pillars, worn,
corroded, shapeless and greasy from the rubbing of so many human
bodies.
All the altars and all the different confessionals are so mingled here
that it results in a continual displacing of priests and processions;
they cleave through the crowds, carrying remonstrances and preceded
by armed Janizaries who knock upon the resonant flag-stones with the
hilts of their halberds. Make room! here are some Latins who pass in
golden chasubles. Make room again! here is the Syrian bishop with a
long white beard under a black _cagoule_, who issues from his
little subterranean chapel. Then here are some Greeks still Byzantine
in adornment, and Abyssinians with black faces. Quickly, quickly they
walk by in their sumptuous vestments whilst before them the silver
censers swung by children knock against the crowd which is thrown
into confusion and separates. In this human sea there is a continuous
rumbling and an incessant noise of psalmody and sacred bells. Almost
everywhere it is so dark that in order to walk about, it is necessary
to have a candle in your hand, and, beneath the high columns and in the
dark corridors thousands of little flames follow or cross each other.
Men praying in a loud voice, weeping and sobbing, run from one chapel
to another, here to kiss the rock where the Cross was planted, there
to prostrate themselves where Mary and Magdalen wept; some priests,
crouching in the shadows, beckon to you to lead you through the
funereal little doors in the holes of the tombs; old women with wild
eyes and tears running down their cheeks come up from the subterranean
blackness to kiss the stones of the sepulchres.
In black darkness, you descend to the chapel of Saint-Helena, by a wide
stairway of about thirty steps, worn, broken, dangerous as falling into
ruin and bordered with squatting spectres. In passing, our candles
illumined the vague motionless creatures, of the same colour as the
side of the rock, who are afflicted beggars, lunatics covered with
ulcers, sinister all of them, with their chins in their hands and long
hair falling over their faces.--Among these ghastly creatures, there is
a blind young man, with magnificent blonde curls enveloping him like a
mantle, who is as beautiful as the Christ whom he resembles.
Down below, the chapel of Saint-Helena, after that night, with its
two rows of phantoms that you have passed through, is illumined by
daylight, whose rays arrive pale and bluish through the loop-holes
of the vault. Assuredly this is one of the strangest places in all
that medley that calls itself the Holy Sepulchre; it is there that
one experiences in the most distressing manner, the sentiment of the
terrible Past.
It is silent when I arrive and it is empty, beneath the half dead gaze
of those phantoms that guard the stairway at the entrance; you hear
with difficulty the indistinct noise of bells and chants from above.
Behind the altar, still another stairway, bordered with the same
long-haired individuals, descends lower into a still darker night.
You would think this a heathen temple. Four enormous, dumpy pillars, of
a primitive Byzantine type and exceedingly heavy, sustain the surbased
cupola, from which hang ostrich eggs and a thousand uncouth pendants.
Remains of painting on the walls indicating saints with nimbuses of
gold in naïve and stiff attitudes are being effaced by the dampness and
ancient dust. Everything is decaying through neglect with the sweat of
water and saltpetre.
From the depths of the lower subterranean vaults suddenly ascend some
Abyssinian priests, who suggest the ancient Magi-Kings, issuing from
the bowels of the earth; black faces under large golden tiaras formed
like turbans, long robes of cloth of gold sprinkled with imaginary
red and blue flowers. Quickly, quickly, with that kind of excited
haste which is universal here, they cross the crypts of Saint-Helena
and mount towards the other sanctuaries by the big stairway in
ruins,--illuminated at first by the light falling from the loop-holes
of the vault, splendidly archaic in their golden robes in the midst of
the gnomes squatting against the walls,--then, they suddenly disappear
above in the distant shadows.
Some distance away, in the sanctuaries at the entrance and near the
kiosk of the Sepulchre, the rock of Calvary rises: it supports two
chapels to which you ascend by twenty stone steps and which are the
veritable place of prostrations and sobs for the crowd.
From the peristyle of these chapels, like an elevated balcony the view
commands a confused mass of tabernacles, a maze of churches, where the
hypnotized crowd moves about. The most splendid of the two is that of
the Greeks; under a nimbus of silver, as resplendent as a rainbow,
stand out in human grandeur the pale images of the three crucified
ones, Christ and the two thieves; the walls are hidden by icons of
silver, gold and precious stones. The altar is erected on the very
place of the crucifixion; under the retable a silver lattice lets you
see in the black rock the hole where the Cross was planted,--and it is
there that you walk on your knees, wetting these sombre stones with
tears and kisses, whilst a lulling noise of chants and prayers ascends
incessantly from the churches below.
And, for two thousand years, here it has ever been thus; under divers
forms, in the different basilicas, with interruptions of sieges,
battles, and massacres, but with renewals still more passionate and
universal, here the same concert of prayers, the same great chorus
of desperate supplications or triumphant thanksgiving have always
resounded.
They are somewhat idolatrous, these adorations, for those who say: “God
is a Spirit and those who adore Him should adore Him in spirit and in
truth.” But they are so human, they respond so well to our instincts
and our misery. Surely, the first Christians in the purely spiritual
flight of their faith, and when the teaching of the master was still
fresh in their souls, did not encumber themselves with magnificence,
symbols and images. Above all it was not terrestrial memories--the
place of a martyr and an empty sepulchre--that preoccupied them; their
Redeemer, they did not dream of seeking Him here, as they had seen
Him detached forever from transitory things and hovering above in the
serene light. But we--all of us, people of the West and North--are
some centuries nearer to simple barbarism than the ancient society out
of which the early Christians arose; in the Middle Ages, when the new
faith penetrated our forests, it overshadowed a thousand primitive
beliefs; let us acknowledge it is a small minority that is freed from
those accumulated traditions to come again to an evangelical cult in
spirit and in truth. And, moreover, when faith is extinguished in our
modern souls it is still by that so human veneration for places and
memories, that unbelievers like myself are affected with the touching
regret for the lost Saviour.
Oh! Christ, for whom all these crowds gather and weep; Christ, for whom
this poor old woman, prostrated near me, licks the pavement, leaning
against the flags her miserable heart whilst weeping delicious tears
of hope; Christ, who holds me, me also, in this place, like her, in
a vague, yet very sweet meditation. Oh if He was merely one of our
brothers in suffering, now vanished in death, may His memory be adored,
even so, for His long illusion of love, meeting again, and eternity.
And may this place be also blessed, this unique and strange place which
is called the Holy Sepulchre--even contestable, even fictitious if you
please--but whither, for fifteen centuries afflicted multitudes have
run, where hardened hearts have melted like the snows, and where now my
eyes are ready to veil themselves in a last rapture of prayer--very
illogical I know--but ineffable and infinite.
In the evening, at nightfall, after I have wandered for a long while
in the melancholy little streets, through the Saracen city, where the
crowns of fire of the Ramadan begin to flame around the minarets of the
mosques,--an attraction draws me slowly towards the Holy Sepulchre.
There reigns here a different darkness to that of the daytime; the rays
of white light have ceased to descend by the loop-holes of the vaults;
but the lamps that are lighted are more numerous, lamps of silver and
lamps of gold, and coloured lamps studding the darkness with little
flames of blue, red, or white. A kind of calm rests in this labyrinth
of high vaults, like a rest after the exhausting ardour of the day.
The noises are nothing more than the buzzing of prayers uttered very
low and upon the knee, only the murmurings in the sonorous caves,
where dominate the poor raucous voices of the moujiks, and, every
now and then their deep coughs. It is nearly time to close the doors
and the crowd has melted away; but some groups of people, prostrated
in the shadows with faces to the ground, are still kissing the holy
flag-stones.
LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE
WILLIAM BECKFORD
I rested a moment, and looking against the stout oaken gate, which
closed up the entrance to this unknown region, felt at my heart a
certain awe, that brought to my mind the sacred terror of those in
ancient days going to be admitted into the Eleusinian mysteries.
My guide gave two knocks; after a solemn pause, the gate was slowly
opened, and all our horses having passed through it, was again
carefully closed.
I now found myself in a narrow dell, surrounded on every side by peaks
of the mountains, rising almost beyond my sight, and shelving downwards
till their bases were hidden by the foam and spray of the water, over
which hung a thousand withered and distorted trees. The rocks seemed
crowding upon me, and, by their particular situation, threatened
to obstruct every ray of light; but, notwithstanding the menacing
appearance of the prospect, I still kept following my guide up a craggy
ascent, partly hewn through a rock, and bordered by the trunks of
ancient fir-trees, which formed a fantastic barrier, till we came to a
dreary and exposed promontory, impending directly over the dell.
The woods are here clothed with darkness, and the torrents rushing
with additional violence are lost in the gloom of the caverns below;
every object, as I looked downwards from my path, that hung midway
between the base and the summit of the cliff, was horrid and woeful.
The channel of the torrent sunk deep amidst frightful crags, and the
pale willows and wreathed roots spreading over it, answered my ideas
of those dismal abodes, where, according to the Druidical mythology,
the ghosts of conquered warriors were bound. I shivered whilst I was
regarding these regions of desolation, and, quickly lifting up my eyes
to vary the scene, I perceived a range of whitish cliffs glistening
with the light of the sun, to emerge from these melancholy forests.
On a fragment that projected over the chasm, and concealed for a moment
its terrors, I saw a cross, on which was written _Via coeli_. The
cliffs being the heaven to which I now aspired, we deserted the edge
of the precipice, and, ascending, came to a retired nook of the rocks,
in which several copious rills had worn irregular grottoes. Here we
reposed an instant, and were enlivened with a few sunbeams, piercing
the thickets and gilding the waters that bubbled from the rock, over
which hung another cross, inscribed with this short sentence, which
the situation rendered wonderfully pathetic, _O Spes unica!_ the
fervent exclamation of some wretch disgusted with the world whose only
consolation was found in this retirement.
We quitted this solitary cross to enter a thick forest of beech trees,
that screened in some measure the precipices on which they grew,
catching, however, every instant terrifying glimpses of the torrent
below. Streams gushed from every crevice in the cliffs, and falling
over the mossy roots and branches of the beech, hastened to join the
great torrent, athwart which I every now and then remarked certain
tottering bridges, and sometimes could distinguish a Carthusian
crossing over to his hermitage, that just peeped above the woody
labyrinths on the opposite shore.
It was now about ten o’clock, and my guide assured me I should soon
discover the convent. Upon this information I took new courage, and
continued my route on the edge of the rocks, till we struck into
another gloomy grove. After turning about it for some time, we entered
again into the glare of daylight, and saw a green valley skirted by
ridges of cliffs and sweeps of wood before us. Towards the farther end
of this inclosure, on a gentle acclivity, rose the revered turrets
of the Carthusians, which extend in a long line on the brow of the
hill; beyond them a woody amphitheatre majestically presents itself,
terminated by spires of rock and promontories lost among the clouds.
The roar of the torrent was now but faintly distinguishable, and all
the scenes of horror and confusion I had passed were succeeded by
a sacred and profound calm. I traversed the valley with a thousand
sensations I despair of describing, and stood before the gate of the
convent with as much awe as some novice or candidate newly arrived to
solicit the holy retirement of the order.
As admittance is more readily granted to the English than to almost any
other nation, it was not long before the gates opened, and whilst the
porter ordered our horses to the stable, we entered a court watered by
two fountains and built round with lofty edifices characterized by a
noble simplicity.
The interior portal opening discovered an arched aisle, extending
till the perspective nearly met, along which windows, but scantily
distributed between the pilasters, admitted a pale solemn light, just
sufficient to distinguish the objects with a picturesque uncertainty.
We had scarcely set our feet on the pavement when the monks began
to issue from an arch, about half-way down, and passing in a long
succession from their chapel, bowed reverently with much humility and
meekness, and dispersed in silence, leaving one of their body alone in
the aisle.
The father Coadjutor (for he only remained) advanced towards us with
great courtesy, and welcomed us in a manner which gave me far more
pleasure than all the frivolous salutations and effected greetings so
common in the world below. After asking us a few indifferent questions,
he called one of the lay brothers, who live in the convent under less
severe restrictions than the fathers whom they serve, and ordering him
to prepare our apartment, conducted us to a large square hall with
casement windows, and, what was more comfortable, an enormous chimney
whose hospitable hearth blazed with a fire of dry aromatic fir, on each
side of which were two doors that communicated with the neat little
cells destined for our bed-chambers.
Whilst he was placing us round the fire, a ceremony by no means
unimportant in the cold climate of these upper regions, a bell rang
which summoned him to prayers. After charging the lay brother to set
before us the best fare their desert afforded, he retired, and left us
at full liberty to examine our chambers.
The weather lowered, and the casements permitted very little light to
enter the apartment: but on the other side it was amply enlivened by
the gleams of the fire, that spread all over a certain comfortable air,
which even sunshine but rarely diffuses. Whilst the showers descended
with great violence, the lay brother and another of his companions
were placing an oval table, very neatly carved and covered with the
finest linen in the middle of the hall; and, before we had examined a
number of portraits which were hung in all the panels of the wainscot,
they called us to a dinner widely different from what might have been
expected in so dreary a situation. Our attendant friar was helping
us to some Burgundy, of the happiest growth and vintage, when the
Coadjutor returned, accompanied by two other fathers, the Secretary and
Procurator, whom he presented to us. You would have been both charmed
and surprised with the cheerful resignation that appeared in their
countenances, and with the easy turn of their conversation.
In the course of our conversation they asked me innumerable questions
about England, where formerly, they said, many monasteries had belonged
to their order; and principally that of Witham, which they had learnt
to be now in my possession.
The Secretary, almost with tears in his eyes, beseeched me to revere
these consecrated edifices, and to preserve their remains, for the
sake of St. Hugo, their canonized prior. I replied greatly to his
satisfaction, and then declaimed so much in favour of St. Bruno and the
holy prior of Witham, that the good fathers grew exceedingly delighted
with the conversation, and made me promise to remain some days with
them. I readily complied with their request, and, continuing in the
same strain, that had so agreeably affected their ears, was soon
presented with the works of St. Bruno, whom I so zealously admired.
After we had sat extolling them, and talking upon much the same sort
of subjects for about an hour, the Coadjutor proposed a walk amongst
the cloisters and galleries, as the weather would not admit of any
longer excursion. He leading the way, we ascended a flight of steps,
which brought us to a gallery, on each side of which a vast number of
pictures, representing the dependent convents were ranged; for I was
now in the capital of the order, where the general resides, and from
whence he issues forth his commands to his numerous subjects, who
depute the superiors of their respective convents whether situated
in the wilds of Calabria, the forests of Poland, or in the remotest
districts of Portugal and Spain, to assist at the grand chapter, held
annually under him, a week or two after Easter.
Having amused myself for some time with the pictures, and the
descriptions the Coadjutor gave me of them, we quitted the gallery and
entered a kind of chapel, in which were two altars with lamps burning
before them, on each side of a lofty portal. This opened into a grand
coved hall, adorned with historical paintings of St. Bruno’s life, and
the portraits of the generals of the order since the year of the great
founder’s death (1085) to the present time. Under these portraits are
the stalls for the superiors who assist at the grand convocation. In
front, appears the general’s throne; above, hangs a representation of
the canonized Bruno, crowned with stars.
The Coadjutor seemed charmed with the respect with which I looked
round on these holy objects; and if the hour of vespers had not been
drawing near, we should have spent more time in the contemplation
of Bruno’s miracles, portrayed on the lower panels of the hall. We
left that room to enter a winding passage (lighted by windows in the
roof) that brought us to a cloister six hundred feet in length, from
which branched off two others, joining a fourth of the same most
extraordinary dimensions. Vast ranges of slender pillars extend round
the different courts of the edifice, many of which are thrown into
gardens belonging to particular cells. We continued straying from
cloister to cloister, and wandering along the winding passages and
intricate galleries of this immense edifice, whilst the Coadjutor was
assisting at vespers.
In every part of the structure reigned the most death-like calm: no
sound reached my ears but the “minute drops from off the eaves.” I sat
down in a niche of the cloister, and fell into a profound reverie, from
which I was recalled by the return of our conductor, who, I believe,
was almost tempted to imagine from the cast of my countenance, that I
was deliberating whether I should not remain with them for ever.
But I soon roused myself, and testified some impatience to see the
great chapel, at which we at length arrived after traversing another
labyrinth of cloisters. The gallery immediately before its entrance
appeared quite gay, in comparison with the others I had passed, and
owes its cheerfulness to a large window (ornamented with slabs of
polished marble) that admits the view of a lovely wood, and allows a
full blaze of light to dart on the chapel door, which is also adorned
with marble, in a plain but noble style of architecture.
The father sacristan stood ready on the steps of the portal to grant
us admittance; and, throwing open the valves, we entered the chapel
and were struck by the justness of its proportions, the solemn majesty
of the arched roof and the mild solemn light equally diffused over
every part of the edifice. No tawdry ornaments, no glaring pictures
disgraced the sanctity of the place. The high altar, standing distinct
from the walls which were hung with a rich velvet, was the only object
on which many ornaments were lavished; and, it being a high festival,
was clustered with statues of gold, shrines, and candelabra of the
stateliest shape and most delicate execution. Four of the latter, of a
gigantic size, were placed on the steps; which, together with part of
the inlaid floor within the choir, were spread with beautiful carpets.
The illumination of so many tapers striking on the shrines, censers
and pillars of polished jasper, sustaining the canopy of the altar,
produced a wonderful effect; and, as the rest of the chapel was visible
only by the faint external light admitted from above, the splendour and
dignity of the altar was enhanced by contrast. I retired a moment from
it, and seating myself in one of the furthermost stalls of the choir,
looked towards it, and fancied the whole structure had risen by “subtle
magic,” like an exhalation.
Here I remained several minutes breathing nothing but incense, and
should not have quitted my station soon, had I not been apprehensive
of disturbing the devotions of two aged fathers who had just entered,
and were prostrating themselves before the steps of the altar. These
venerable figures added greatly to the solemnity of the scene; which as
the day declined increased every moment in splendour; for the sparkling
of several lamps of chased silver that hung from the roofs, and the
gleaming of nine huge tapers which I had not before noticed, began to
be visible just as I left the chapel.
Passing through the sacristy, where lay several piles of rich
embroidered vestments, purposely displayed for our inspection, we
regained the cloister which led to our apartment, where the supper was
ready prepared. We had scarcely finished it, when the Coadjutor and the
fathers who had accompanied us before, returned, and ranging themselves
round the fire, resumed the conversation about St. Bruno.
It grew rather late before my kind hosts had finished their narrations
and I was not sorry, after all the exercise I had taken, to return to
my cell, where everything invited to repose. I was charmed with the
neatness and oddity of my little apartment; its cabin-like bed, oratory
and ebony crucifix; in short, everything it contained; not forgetting
the aromatic odour of the pine, with which it was roofed, floored and
wainscoted. The night was luckily dark. Had the moon appeared, I could
not have prevailed upon myself to have quitted her till very late; but,
as it happened, I crept into my cabin, and was by “whispering winds
soon lulled asleep.”
Eight o’clock struck next morning before I awoke; when, to my great
sorrow, I found the peaks, which rose above the convent, veiled in
vapours, and the rain descending with violence.
After we had breakfasted by the light of our fire (for the casements
admitted but a very feeble gleam), I sat down to the works of St.
Bruno; of all medleys one of the strangest. Allegories without end; a
theologico-natural history of birds, beast and fishes; several chapters
on paradise; the delights of solitude; the glory of Solomon’s temple;
the new Jerusalem; and numberless other wonderful subjects, full of the
loftiest enthusiasm.
I had scarcely finished taking extracts from the writings of this
holy and highly-gifted personage when the dinner appeared, consisting
of everything most delicate which a strict adherence to the rules of
meagre could allow. The good fathers returned as usual before our
repast was half over, and resumed as usual their mystic discourse,
looking all the time rather earnestly into my countenance to observe
the sort of effect their most marvellous narrations produced upon it.
Our conversation, which was beginning to take a gloomy and serious
turn, was interrupted, I thought very agreeably, by the sudden
intrusion of the sun, which, escaping from the clouds, shone in full
splendour above the highest peak of the mountains, and the vapours
fleeting by degrees discovered the woods in all the freshness of their
verdure. The pleasure I received from seeing this new creation rising
to view was very lively, and, as the fathers assured me the humidity of
their walks did not often continue longer than the showers, I left my
hall.
Crossing the court, I hastened out of the gates, and running swiftly
along a winding path on the side of the meadow, bordered by the
forests, enjoyed the charms of the prospect, inhaled the perfume of
the woodlands, and now turning towards the summits of the precipices
that encircle this sacred inclosure, admired the glowing colours they
borrowed from the sun, contrasted by the dark hues of the forest. Now,
casting my eyes below, I suffered them to roam from valley to valley,
and from one stream (beset with tall pines and tufted beech trees)
to another. The purity of the air in these exalted regions, and the
lightness of my own spirits, almost seized me with the idea of treading
in that element.
The tranquillity of the region, the verdure of the lawn, environed
by girdles of flourishing wood, and the lowing of the distant herds
filled me with the most pleasing sensations. But when I lifted my eyes
to the towering cliffs and beheld the northern sky streaming with
ruddy light, and the long succession of misty forms hovering over the
space beneath, they became sublime and awful. The dews which began to
descend, and the vapours which were rising from every dell, reminded me
of the lateness of the hour; and it was with great reluctance that I
turned from the scene which had so long engaged my contemplation, and
traversed slowly and silently the solitary meadows, over which I had
hurried with such eagerness an hour ago.
We had hardly supped before the gates of the convent were shut, a
circumstance which disconcerted me not a little, as the full moon
gleamed through the casements, and the stars, sparkling above the
forests of pines, invited me to leave my apartment again, and to give
myself up entirely to the spectacle they offered.
The Coadjutor perceiving that I was often looking earnestly through
the windows, guessed my wishes, and calling a lay-brother, ordered
him to open the gates, and wait at them till my return. It was not
long before I took advantage of this permission, and escaping from
the courts and cloisters of the monastery, all hushed in death-like
stillness, ascended a green knoll, which several ancient pines strongly
marked with their shadows: there, leaning against one of their trunks,
I lifted up my eyes to the awful barrier of the surrounding mountains,
discovered by the trembling silver light of the moon shooting directly
on the woods which fringed their acclivities.
The lawns, the vast woods, the steep descents, the precipices, the
torrents, lay all extended beneath, softened by a pale bluish haze,
that alleviated, in some measure, the stern prospect of the rocky
promontories above, wrapped in dark shadows. The sky was of the deepest
azure, innumerable stars were distinguished with unusual clearness from
this elevation, many of which twinkled behind the fir-trees edging the
promontories. White, grey, and darkish clouds came marching towards the
moon that shone full against a range of cliffs, which lift themselves
far above the others. The hoarse murmur of the torrent, throwing itself
from the distant wilderness into the gloomy vales, was mingled with the
blast that blew from the mountains.
It increased. The forests began to wave, black clouds rose from the
north, and, as they fleeted along, approached the moon whose light they
shortly extinguished. A moment of darkness succeeded; the gust was
chill and melancholy; it swept along the desert, and then subsiding,
the vapours began to pass away, and the moon returned; the grandeur of
the scene was renewed, and its imposing solemnity was increased by her
presence. Inspiration was in every wind.
I followed some impulse, which drove me to the summit of the mountains
before me; and there, casting a look on the whole extent of wild woods
and romantic precipices, thought of the days of St. Bruno. I eagerly
contemplated every rock that formerly might have met his eyes; drank
of the spring which tradition says he was wont to drink of; and ran
to every pine, whose withered appearance bespoke the most remote
antiquity, and beneath which, perhaps, the saint had reposed himself,
when worn with vigils, or possessed with the sacred spirit of his
institutions. It was midnight before I returned to the convent and
retired to my quiet chamber, but my imagination was too much disturbed,
and my spirits far too active, to allow me any rest for some time.
THE TEMPLES OF HATCHIMAN
ΑΙΜÉ HUMBERT
The Temples of Hatchiman are approached by long lines of those great
cedar-trees which form the avenues to all places of worship in Japan.
As we advance along the avenue on the Kanasawa side, chapels multiply
themselves along the road, and to the left, upon the sacred hills, we
also come in sight of the oratories and commemorative stones which
mark the stations of the processions; on the right the horizon is
closed by the mountain, with its grottos, its streams, and its pine
groves. After we have crossed the river by a fine wooden bridge, we
find ourselves suddenly at the entrance of another alley, which leads
from the seaside, and occupies a large street. This is the principal
avenue, intersected by three gigantic toris, and it opens on the grand
square in front of the chief staircase of the main building of the
Temple. The precinct of the sacred place extends into the street, and
is surrounded on three sides by a low wall of solid masonry, surmounted
by a barrier of wood painted red and black. Two steps lead to the
first level. There is nothing to be seen there but the houses of the
bonzes, arranged like the side-scenes of a theatre, amid trees planted
along the barrier-wall, with two great oval ponds occupying the centre
of the square. They are connected with each other by a large canal
crossed by two parallel bridges, each equally remarkable in its way.
That on the right is of white granite, and it describes an almost
perfect semicircle, so that when one sees it for the first time one
supposes that it is intended for some sort of geometrical exercise; but
I suppose that it is in reality a bridge of honour, reserved for the
gods and the good genii who come to visit the Temple. The bridge on
the left is quite flat, constructed of wood covered with red lacquer,
with balusters and other ornaments in old polished copper. The pond
crossed by the stone bridge is covered with magnificent white lotus
flowers,--the pond crossed by the wooden bridge with red lotus flowers.
Among the leaves of the flowers we saw numbers of fish, some red and
others like mother of pearl, with glittering fins, swimming about in
waters of crystal clearness. The black tortoise glides among the great
water-plants and clings to their stems.
[Illustration: THE DAÏBOUDHS OF KAMAKOURA, JAPAN.]
After having thoroughly enjoyed this most attractive spectacle, we go
on towards the second enclosure. It is raised a few steps higher than
the first, and, as it is protected by an additional sanctity, it is
only to be approached through the gate of the divine guardians of the
sanctuary. This building, which stands opposite the bridges, contains
two monstrous idols, placed side by side in the centre of the edifice.
They are sculptured in wood, and are covered from head to foot with a
thick coating of vermilion. Their grinning faces and their enormous
busts are spotted all over with innumerable pieces of chewed paper,
which the native visitors throw at them when passing, without any
more formality than would be used by a number of schoolboys out for a
holiday. Nevertheless, it is considered a very serious act on the part
of the pilgrims. It is the means by which they make the prayer written
on the sheet of chewed paper reach its address, and when they wish to
recommend anything to the gods very strongly indeed, they bring as an
offering a pair of straw slippers plaited with regard to the size of
the feet of the Colossus, and hang them on the iron railings within
which the statues are enclosed. Articles of this kind, suspended by
thousands to the bars, remain there until they fall away in time, and
it may be supposed that this curious ornamentation is anything but
beautiful.
Here a lay brother of the bonzes approached us, and his interested
views were easily enough detected by his bearing. We hastened to
assure him that we required nothing from his good offices, except
access to an enclosed building. With a shake of his head, so as to
make us understand that we were asking for an impossibility, he simply
set himself to follow us about with the mechanical precision of a
subaltern. He was quite superfluous, but we did not allow his presence
to interfere with our admiration. A high terrace, reached by a long
stone staircase, surmounted the second enclosure. It is sustained by a
Cyclopean wall, and in its turn supports the principal Temple as well
as the habitations of the bonzes. The grey roofs of all these different
buildings stand out against the sombre forest of cedars and pines. On
our left are the buildings of the Treasury; one of them has a pyramidal
roof surmounted by a turret of bronze most elegantly worked. At the
foot of the great terrace is the Chapel of the Ablutions. On our right
stands a tall pagoda, constructed on the principle of the Chinese
pagodas, but in a more sober and severe style. The first stage, of a
quadrangular form, is supported by pillars; the second stage consists
of a vast circular gallery which, though extremely massive, seems to
rest simply upon a pivot. A painted roof, terminated by a tall spire of
cast bronze, embellished with pendants of the same metal, completes the
effect of this strange but exquisitely proportioned building.
All the doors of the buildings which I have enumerated are in good
taste. The fine proportions, the rich brown colouring of the wood,
which is almost the only material employed in their construction, is
enhanced by a few touches of red and dragon green, and the effect of
the whole is perfect;--add to the picture a frame of ancient trees and
the extreme brilliancy of the sky, for the atmosphere of Japan is the
most transparent in the world.
We went beyond the pagoda to visit a bell-tower, where we were shown a
large bell beautifully engraved, and an oratory on each side containing
three golden images, a large one in the centre, and two small ones on
either side. Each was surrounded by a nimbus. This beautiful Temple of
Hatchiman is consecrated to a Kami; but it is quite evident that the
religious customs of India have supplanted the ancient worship;--we
had several proofs of this fact. When we were about to turn back we
were solicited by the lay brother to go with him a little further. We
complied, and he stopped us under a tree laden with _ex-votos_,
at the foot of which stands a block of stone, surrounded by a barrier.
This stone, which is probably indebted to the chisels of the bonzes for
its peculiar form, is venerated by the multitude, and largely endowed
with _ex-voto_ offerings. Like all peoples of the extreme East
the Japanese are very superstitious; a fact of which we had abundant
evidence on this and other occasions.
The Temple towards which we directed our steps on leaving the avenue
of the Temple of Hatchiman, immediately diverted our thoughts from the
grandeur of this picture. It is admirably situated on the summit of a
promontory, whence we overlook the whole Bay of Kamakoura; but it is
always sad to come, in the midst of beautiful nature, upon a so-called
holy place which inspires nothing but disgust. The principal sanctuary,
at first sight, did not strike us as remarkable. Insignificant golden
idols stand upon the high altar; and in a side chapel there is an image
of the God of Wealth, armed with a miner’s hammer. But when the bonzes
who received us conducted us behind the high altar, and thence into a
sort of cage as dark as a prison and as high as a tower, they lighted
two lanterns, and stuck them at the end of a long pole. Then, by this
glimmering light, which entirely failed to disperse the shades of the
roof, we perceived that we were standing in front of an enormous idol
of gilt wood, about twelve yards high, holding in its right hand a
sceptre, in its left a lotus, and wearing a tiara composed of three
rows of heads representing the inferior divinities. This gigantic
idol belongs to the religion of the auxiliary gods of the Buddhist
mythology: the Amidas and the Quannons, intercessors who collect
the prayers of men and transmit them to heaven. By means of similar
religious conceptions, the bonzes strike a superstitious terror into
the imaginations of their followers and succeed in keeping them in a
state of perpetual fear and folly.
We then went to see the Daïboudhs, which is the wonder of Kamakoura.
This building is dedicated to the Daïboudhs, that is to say, to the
great Buddha, and may be regarded as the most finished work of Japanese
genius, from the double points of view of art and religious sentiment.
The Temple of Hatchiman had already given us a remarkable example of
the use which native art makes of nature in producing that impression
of religious majesty which in our northern climates is effected by
Gothic architecture. The Temple of Daïboudhs differs considerably from
the first which we had seen. Instead of the great dimensions, instead
of the illimitable space which seemed to stretch from portal to portal
down to the sea, a solitary and mysterious retreat prepares the mind
for some supernatural revelation. The road leads far away from every
habitation; in the direction of the mountain it winds about between
hedges of tall shrubs. Finally, we see nothing before us but the high
road, going up and up in the midst of foliage and flowers; then it
turns in a totally different direction, and all of a sudden, at the
end of the alley, we perceive a gigantic brazen Divinity, squatting
with joined hands, and the head slightly bent forward in an attitude
of contemplative ecstasy. The involuntary amazement produced by the
aspect of this great image soon gives place to admiration. There is
an irresistible charm in the attitude of the Daïboudhs, as well as in
the harmony of its proportions. The noble simplicity of its garments
and the calm purity of its features are in perfect accord with the
sentiment of serenity inspired by its presence. A grove, consisting
of some beautiful groups of trees, forms the enclosure of the sacred
place, whose silence and solitude are never disturbed. The small cell
of the attendant priest can hardly be discerned among the foliage.
The altar, on which a little incense is burning at the feet of the
Divinity, is composed of a small brass table ornamented by two lotus
vases of the same metal, and beautifully wrought. The steps of the
altar are composed of large slabs forming regular lines. The blue of
the sky, the deep shadow of the statue, the sombre colour of the brass,
the brilliancy of the flowers, the varied verdure of the hedges and
the groves, fill this solemn retreat with the richest effect of light
and colour. The idol of the Daïboudhs, with the platform that supports
it, is twenty yards high; it is far from equal in elevation to the
statue of St. Charles Borromeo, which may be seen from Arona on the
borders of Lake Maggiore, but which effects the spectator no more than
a trigonometrical signal-post. The interiors of these two colossal
statues have been utilized. The European tourists seat themselves
in the nose of the holy cardinal. The Japanese descend by a secret
staircase into the foundations of their Daïboudhs, and there they
find a peaceful oratory, whose altar is lighted by a ray of sunshine
admitted through an opening in the folds of the mantle at the back of
the idol’s neck. It would be idle to discuss to what extent the Buddha
of Kamakoura resembles the Buddha of history, but it is important to
remark that he is conformable to the Buddha of tradition.
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
In every place which boasts of a cathedral church, that cathedral
church is commonly the chief object of interest, alike as its present
ornament and as the chief centre of its past history. But in Wells
the cathedral church and its appurtenances are yet more. Their
interest is not only primary, but absorbing. They are not only the
chief ornament of the place; they are the place itself. They are not
only the centre of the past history of the city; their history is the
history of the city. Of our other cities some can trace up a long
history as cities independent of their ecclesiastical foundations. Some
were the dwelling-places of Kings in days before England became one
kingdom. Some have been for ages seats of commerce or manufactures;
their history is the history of burghers striving for and obtaining
their freedom, a history which repeats in small that same tale of
early struggles and later abuses which forms the history of so many
greater commonwealths. Others have a long military history; their
name at once suggests the memory of battles and sieges, and they can
still show walls and castles as the living memorials of the stirring
scenes of bygone times. In others even the ecclesiastical pre-eminence
of the cathedral church may be disputed by some other ecclesiastical
building. The bishoprick and its church may be comparatively modern
institutions, and they may be altogether eclipsed by some other
institution more ancient in date of foundation, perhaps more ancient
in its actual fabric. Thus at Oxford the cathedral church is well-nigh
lost among the buildings of the University and its greatest college.
At Chester its rank may be disputed by the majestic fragments of the
older minster of Saint John. At Bristol the cathedral church, even when
restored to its old proportions, will still have at least an equal
rival in the stateliest parish church in England. In these cities the
bishoprick, its church and its chapter, are institutions of yesterday;
the cities themselves were great and famous for ages before they were
founded. So at Exeter, though the bishoprick is of far earlier date,
yet Exeter was a famous city, which had played its part in history,
long before Bishops of Exeter were heard of. Even at Winchester the
overwhelming greatness of the old minster has to compete with the
earlier and later interests of the royal palace, of the fallen Abbey,
of the unique home of noble poverty and of the oldest of the great
and still living schools of England. Salisbury alone in our own part
of England, and Durham in the far north, have a history which in some
measure resembles that of Wells. Like Wells, Salisbury and Durham are
cities which have grown up around the cathedral church. Wells stands
alone among the cities of England proper as a city which exists only in
and through its cathedral church, whose whole history is that of its
cathedral church. The bishoprick has been to us what the Abbey has been
to our neighbours at Glastonbury, which the church first of Abbots
and then of Bishops has been elsewhere to Ely and Peterborough. The
whole history of Wells is, I say, the history of the bishoprick and of
its church. Of the origin and foundation of the city, as distinguished
from that of the church, nothing is known. The name of Wells is first
heard of as the place where the church of St. Andrew was standing and
its name seldom appears in later history except in connection with
the affairs of its church. It was never a royal dwelling-place; it
was never a place of commercial importance; it was never a place of
military strength. Like other cities, it has its municipal history,
but its municipal history is simply an appendage to its ecclesiastical
history; the franchises of the borough were simply held as grants from
the Bishop. It has its parochial church, a church standing as high
among the buildings of its own class as the cathedral church itself.
This parochial church has a parochial constitution which is in some
points unique. But the parochial church is simply an appendage to
the cathedral church; it is the church of the burghers who had come
to dwell under the shadow of the minster and the protection of its
spiritual lord. And it has ever retained a close, sometimes perhaps
a too close, connexion with the cathedral and its Chapter. Thus the
history of the church is the history of the city; no battles, no
sieges, no parliaments, break the quiet tenor of its way; the name of
the city has hardly found its way into our civil and military history.
Its name does appear among the troubles of the Seventeenth Century,
in the pages of Clarendon and Macaulay, but it appears in connexion
with events whose importance was mainly local. And even here the
ecclesiastical interest comes in; the most striking event connected
with Wells in the story of Monmouth’s rebellion is the mischief done
to the cathedral, and the way in which further damage and desecration
was hindered by Lord Grey. And in our own times, when the parliamentary
existence of this city became the subject of an animated parliamentary
discussion, even then the ecclesiastical interest was still uppermost.
The old battle of the regulars and seculars was fought again over the
bodies of two small parliamentary boroughs. I need not remind you that
the claims of the old secular foundation were stoutly pressed by one of
our own members. But the monastic influence was too strong for us; the
mantle of Dunstan and Æthelwald had fallen on the shoulders of Sir John
Pakington, and the claims of the fallen Abbey of Evesham were preferred
to those of the existing Cathedral of Wells.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF WELLS, ENGLAND.]
The whole interest, then, of the city is ecclesiastical; but its
ecclesiastical interest in one point of view surpasses that of every
church in England,--I am strongly tempted to say, every church in
Europe. The traveller who comes down the hill from Shepton Mallet looks
down, as he draws near the city, on a group of buildings which, as far
as I know, has no rival either in our island or beyond the sea. To
most of these objects, taken singly, it would be easy to find rivals
which would equal or surpass them. The church itself, seen even from
that most favourable point of view, cannot, from mere lack of bulk,
hold its ground against the soaring apse of Amiens, or against the
windows ranging, tier above tier, in the mighty eastern gable of Ely.
The cloister cannot measure itself with Gloucester or Salisbury; the
chapter-house lacks the soaring roofs of York and Lincoln; the palace
itself finds its rival in the ruined pile of St. David’s. The peculiar
charm and glory of Wells lies in the union and harmonious grouping
of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by
incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which
are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, lady
chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible unique
bridge which by a marvel of ingenuity connects the church itself with
the most perfect of buildings of its class, the matchless Vicars’
close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its
gable, its window, or its turret falling in with the style and group
of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general
harmony of all. The whole history of the place is legibly written on
that matchless group of buildings. If we could fancy an ecclesiastical
historian to have dropped from the clouds, the aspect of the place
would at once tell him that he was looking on an English cathedral
church, on a cathedral church which had always been served by secular
canons, on a church of secular canons which had preserved its ancient
buildings and ancient arrangements more perfectly than any other in the
island.
The whole history of Wells before the time of Edward the Elder is
excessively obscure, and much of it is undoubtedly fabulous. There is a
story about King Ine planting a Bishoprick at Congresbury, which was
presently moved to Wells, and a list of Bishops is given between Ine
and Edward. There is also a document which professes to be a charter of
King Cynewulf in 766, which does not speak of any Bishop at Wells, but
which implies the existence of an ecclesiastical establishment of some
kind. But unluckily the Congresbury story rests on no good authority,
and the charter of Cynewulf is undoubtedly spurious. But because a
charter is spurious in form, it does not always follow that its matter
is unhistorical and I am the more inclined to attach some value to
it, because, while implying the existence of some ecclesiastical
establishment, it does not imply the existence of a bishoprick.
Putting all things together, and remembering the strong and consistent
tradition which connects the name of Ine with the church of Wells, I
am inclined to think that there must have been some body of priests,
probably of Ine’s foundation, existing at Wells before the foundation
of the bishoprick by Edward. If then Ine did, somewhere about the year
705, found a church at Wells with a body of priests attached to it, we
can well understand why Wells should be chosen as the seat of the new
bishoprick in 909.
We have here in Wells the finest collection of domestic buildings
surrounding a cathedral church to be seen anywhere. There is no place
where so many ancient houses are preserved and are mainly applied to
their original uses. The Bishop still lives in the Palace; the Dean
still lives in the Deanery; the Canons, Vicars, and other officers
still live very largely in the houses in which they were meant to
live. But this is because at Wells there always were secular priests,
each man living in his own house. In a monastery I need hardly say it
was quite different. The monks did not live each man in his own house;
they lived in common, with a common refectory to dine in and a common
dormitory to sleep in. Thus when, in Henry the Eighth’s time, the monks
were put out and secular canons put in again, the monastic buildings
were no longer of any use, while there were no houses for the new
canons. They had therefore to make houses how they could out of the
common buildings of the monastery. But of course this could be done
without greatly spoiling them as works of architecture. Thus while at
Ely, Peterborough, and other churches which were served by monks, there
are still very fine fragments of the monastic buildings, there is not
the same series of buildings each still applied to its original use
which we have at Wells. I wish that this wonderful series was better
understood and more valued than it is. I can remember, if nobody else
does, how a fine prebendal hall was wantonly pulled down in the North
Liberty not many years ago. Some of those whose duty it was to keep it
up said that they had never seen it. I had seen it, anybody who went
by could see it, and every man of taste knew and regretted it. Well,
that is gone, and I suppose the organist’s house, so often threatened
will soon be gone too. Thus it is that the historical monuments of
our country perish day by day. We must keep a sharp eye about us or
this city of ours may lose, almost without anybody knowing it, the
distinctive character which makes it unique among the cities of
England.
It is then in this way that Wells became, what it still is, the seat of
the Somersetshire Bishoprick. The Bishop had his throne in the church
of St. Andrew, and the clergy attached to church were his special
companions and advisers, in a word his Chapter. We have thus the church
and its ministers, but the church had not yet assumed its present form,
and its ministers had not yet assumed their present constitution. Of
the fabric, as it stood in the Tenth Century, I can tell you nothing.
There is not a trace of building of anything like such early date
remaining: while in other places we have grand buildings of the
Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, at Wells we have little or nothing
earlier than the Thirteenth. But it is quite a mistake to fancy that
our forefathers in the Tenth Century were wholly incapable of building,
or that their buildings were always of wood. We have accounts of
churches of that and of still earlier date which show that we then had
buildings of considerable size and elaboration of plan. And we know
that in the course of the same century Saint Dunstan built a stone
church at Glastonbury to the east of the old wooden church of British
times. The churches both of Wells and Glastonbury must have been built
in the old Romanesque style of England which prevailed before the great
improvements of Norman Romanesque were brought in in the Eleventh
Century. You must conceive this old church of Saint Andrew as very much
smaller, lower, and plainer than the church we now have, with massive
round arches and small round-headed windows, but with one or more tall,
slender, unbuttressed towers, imitating the bell-towers of Italy. I do
not think that we have a single tower of this kind in Somersetshire,
but in other parts of England there are a good many. There is a noble
one at Earls Barton in Northamptonshire, and more than one in the city
of Lincoln.
After about two hundred years from the beginning of the present
building in the days of Jocelin, we may look on the cathedral church
of Saint Andrew as at last finished. It was finished, in a sense,
before the end of the Thirteenth Century, when everything had been
built which was needed for its ecclesiastical completeness. But it was
in the course of the Fifteenth Century that it finally assumed the
shape with which we are all familiar, and which has from that time
remained unchanged. Now then we have reached the point at which we can
estimate the place which fairly belongs to the church of Wells among
the other churches of England and of Christendom. As it seems to me,
that position, as I began by saying, is a special and remarkable one; I
need not say that in point of size and splendour, the church of Wells
has no claim to a place in the first rank of European, or even English
churches. Setting aside the Welsh churches, and the churches which have
become cathedral without being originally meant for this rank, Wells is
one of the very smallest of English episcopal churches. It is hardly
fair to compare it with Carlisle, which is a mere fragment, or with
Hereford, which has lost its western tower, and with it a part of its
nave. But it is, in point of scale, with Carlisle, Hereford, Lincoln,
and Rochester, or again with non-cathedral churches like Southwell,
Beverley, and Tewkesbury, that Wells must fairly be compared, not
with churches like Canterbury and York, or even like Salisbury and
Gloucester. And among churches of its own class it certainly ranks high.
I have seen many fine churches both in our own country and abroad,
many of them of course on a scale which might seem to put Wells out of
all comparison. But I can honestly say that I know of no architectural
group which surpasses the harmony and variety of our own cathedral, as
seen by the traveller as he first enters the city from Shepton Mallet.
From the outside we turn to that of which the outside is after all the
mere shell. When we enter the church we find ourselves in a building
which can fairly hold its own against competitors of its own class.
The nave has a distinct character of its own: there may be differences
of taste as to its merit, but it has a character, and that character
is clearly the result of design. The main lines of the interior are
horizontal rather than vertical. We can hardly say that there is any
division into bays; no vaulting-shafts run up from the ground, nor does
the triforium take, as usual, the form of a distinct composition over
each arch. In short, we cannot, as we can in most churches, take each
arch with the triforium and clerestory over it as a thing existing by
itself. One would rather say that three horizontal ranges, one over
the other, all converged to the centre, without thinking of what was
above or below them. Now tastes may differ as to whether this is a
good arrangement or not, but there is no doubt that it is in its way
an effective arrangement; there is no nave in which the eye is so
irresistibly carried eastward as in that of Wells. And it is worth
notice that this arrangement, in its fullness, is confined to the nave;
in the transepts the bays are much more clearly marked. The idea of
producing this marked horizontal effect was clearly one which came into
the heads of the designers as they were working westwards.
It might have been expected that the marked prominence which is thus
given to the horizontal line might have gone far to destroy all effect
of height in the interior; but it is not so. There is no special
feeling of height in Wells Cathedral--not so much, for instance, as
there is in the church of St. Mary Redcliff; but there is no such
crushing feeling of lowness as there is in Lincoln. This I imagine
to be mainly owing to the form of the arch chosen for the vaulting,
one boldly but not actually pointed, and to the way in which the
lantern-arches fit into the vault. Contrast this with the far larger
and loftier nave of York. In that nave the positive height is second
only to Westminster among English churches, and the design of the
separate bays can hardly be surpassed in its soaring effect. But in
the direct eastern or western view the nave of York loses almost
its whole effect, partly, no doubt, from the excessive breadth, but
partly also from the flat and crushing shape of the vaulting-arch.
The nave of Wells makes the most of its small actual height: so do
the choir and the presbytery also; for, though I cannot at all admire
the kind of vault which is there used, the shape of the arch is as
judiciously chosen as it is in the nave. In the presbytery we also
get the vaulting-shafts rising from the ground, so as to give the
vertical division, and the consequent effect of height, in its highest
perfection. Of the exquisite beauty of the Lady Chapel, looked on, as
it should be, not as a part of the whole, but as a distinct and almost
detached building, I have already spoken. In short, the internal effect
of the church, whether looked at as a whole or taken in its several
parts if not of the highest order, which its comparatively small scale
forbids, may claim a high place among churches of its own class.
I think then on the whole that, even looking at the church by itself,
we have every reason to be thankful for what we have got. We have
not a church of the first order; but we have a church whose several
parts fit very well together, all whose parts have been finished, and
of which no part has been destroyed. And I may add that we may be
thankful for another thing, for the goodness of the stone of which the
greater part of the church is built. The sculpture of the west front
indeed has crumbled away; but elsewhere at Wells, as at Glastonbury,
wherever the work has not been wantonly knocked away, it is as good
as when it was first cut. Now we might have had a church like Chester
or Coventry, where the whole surface of the stone has crumbled away,
and where the whole ornamental design has become unintelligible. I
have said that the church of Wells forms a harmonious whole, that it
was perfectly finished, and that no part has been destroyed; and this
is a great thing to say. Let me compare the good fortune of Wells in
this respect with the cathedral church of a much more famous city at
the other end of England. At Carlisle there is a noble choir, ending
in what is probably the grandest window in England. If that choir only
had transepts, nave, and towers to match it, the church of Carlisle
would be a splendid church indeed. But the choir is built up against a
little paltry transept and central tower, and nothing remains by way
of nave but two bays of the original small Norman church, the rest
having utterly vanished. Here then is a church which does not form a
harmonious whole, a church which remains utterly unfinished, and of
which one essential part has been destroyed. Or, without taking such
an extreme case as this, we may compare our church with some of those
of which I have already spoken, with Hereford, Southwell, Beverley and
Tewkesbury. In all of these some important feature has either never
been finished or has been destroyed at a later time. The Church of
Wells then, simply taken by itself, claims a high place among buildings
of its own class, that is, among minsters of the second order. But the
real charm of Wells does not lie in the church taken by itself, but in
the church surrounded by its accompanying buildings. Some of them are
inseparably connected both with the fabric and with the foundation of
the Cathedral. And it is the preservation of them which gives Wells its
peculiar character. Each part may easily be equalled or surpassed, but
the whole has no rival in England, and I cannot think that it has many
in Christendom.
[Illustration: THE COLISEUM, ITALY.]
THE COLISEUM
EDWARD GIBBON
Whatever is fortified will be attacked: and whatever is attacked may
be destroyed. Could the Romans have wrested from the popes the Castle
of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to annihilate
that monument of servitude. Every building of defence was exposed to
a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of destruction were
laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome,
without a sovereign or a senate, was abandoned six months to the fury
of civil war. “The houses,” says a cardinal and poet of the times,
“were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; the walls
were perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers were
involved in fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by
rapine and revenge.” The work was consummated by the tyranny of the
laws; and the factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and
thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles
they razed to the ground. In comparing the _days_ of foreign,
with the _ages_ of domestic, hostility, we must pronounce, that
the latter have been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is
confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch. “Behold,” says the laureat, “the
relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! neither time,
nor the barbarian, can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction:
it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her
sons, and your ancestors (he writes to a noble Annibaldi) have done
with the battering-ram, what the Punic hero could not accomplish with
the sword.” The influence of the two last principles of decay must in
some degree be multiplied by each other; since the houses and towers,
which were subverted by civil war, required a new and perpetual supply
from the monuments of antiquity.
These general observations may be separately applied to the
amphitheatre of Titus, which has obtained the name of the
COLISEUM, either from its magnitude, or from Nero’s colossal
statue: an edifice, had it been left to time and nature, which might
perhaps have claimed an eternal duration. The curious antiquaries, who
have computed the numbers and seats, are disposed to believe, that
above the upper row of stone steps, the amphitheatre was encircled and
elevated with several stages of wooden galleries, which were repeatedly
consumed by fire, and restored by the emperors. Whatever was precious,
or portable, or profane, the statues of gods and heroes, and the
costly ornaments of sculpture, which were cast in brass, or overspread
with leaves of silver and gold, became the first prey of conquest or
fanaticism, of the avarice of the barbarians or the Christians. In the
massy stones of the Coliseum, many holes are discerned; and the two
most probable conjectures represent the various accidents of its decay.
These stones were connected by solid links of brass or iron, nor had
the eye of rapine overlooked the value of the baser metals; the vacant
space was converted into a fair or market; the artisans of the Coliseum
are mentioned in an ancient survey; and the chasms were perforated or
enlarged to receive the poles that supported the shops or tents of the
mechanic trades. Reduced to its naked majesty, the Flavian amphitheatre
was contemplated with awe and admiration by the pilgrims of the north;
and the rude enthusiasm broke forth in a sublime proverbial expression,
which is recorded in the Eighth Century, in the fragments of the
venerable Bede: “As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when
the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will
fall.” In the modern system of war, a situation commanded by three
hills would not be chosen for a fortress; but the strength of the walls
and arches could resist the engines of assault; a numerous garrison
might be lodged in the enclosure; and while one faction occupied the
Vatican and the Capitol, the other was entrenched in the Lateran and
the Coliseum.
The abolition at Rome of the ancient games must be understood with
some latitude; and the carnival sports, of the Testacean mount and the
Circus Agonalis, were regulated by the law or custom of the city. The
senator presided with dignity and pomp to adjudge and distribute the
prizes, the gold ring, or the _pallium_, as it was styled, of
cloth or silk. A tribute on the Jews supplied the annual expense; and
the races, on foot, on horseback, or in chariots, were ennobled by a
tilt and tournament of seventy-two of the Roman youth. In the year one
thousand three hundred and thirty-two, a bull-feast, after the fashion
of the Moors and Spaniards, was celebrated in the Coliseum itself; and
the living manners are painted in a diary of the times. A convenient
order of benches was restored; and a general proclamation, as far as
Rimini and Ravenna, invited the nobles to exercise their skill and
courage in this perilous adventure. The Roman ladies were marshalled
in three squadrons, and seated in three balconies, which on this day,
the third of September, were lined with scarlet cloth. The fair Jacova
di Rovere led the matrons from beyond the Tiber, a pure and native
race, who still represent the features and character of antiquity. The
remainder of the city was divided as usual between the Colonna and
Ursini: the two factions were proud of the number and beauty of their
female bands: the charms of Savella Ursini are mentioned with praise;
and the Colonna regretted the absence of the youngest of their house,
who had sprained her ancle in the garden of Nero’s tower. The lots of
the champions were drawn by an old and respectable citizen: and they
descended into the arena, or pit, to encounter the wild bulls, on foot
as it should seem, with a single spear. Amidst the crowd, our annalist
has selected the names, colours, and devices, of twenty of the most
conspicuous knights. Several of the names are the most illustrious of
Rome and the ecclesiastical state; Malatesta, Polenta, della Valle,
Cafarello, Savelli, Capoccio, Conti, Annabaldi, Altieri, Corsi; the
colours were adapted to their taste and situation; the devices are
expressive of hope or despair, and breathe the spirit of gallantry and
arms. “I am alone, like the youngest of the Horatii,” the confidence
of an intrepid stranger: “I live disconsolate,” a weeping widower: “I
burn under the ashes,” a discreet lover: “I adore Lavinia or Lucretia,”
the ambiguous declaration of a modern passion: “My faith is as pure,”
the motto of a white livery: “Who is stronger than myself?” of a lion’s
hide: “If I am drowned in blood, what a pleasant death,” the wish of
ferocious courage. The pride or prudence of the Ursini restrained
them from the field, which was occupied by three of their hereditary
rivals, whose inscriptions denoted the lofty greatness of the Colonna
name: “Though sad I am strong:” “Strong as I am great:” “If I fall,”
addressing himself to the spectators, “you fall with me:”--intimating
(says the contemporary writer) that while the other families were the
subjects of the Vatican, they alone were the supporters of the capitol.
The combats of the amphitheatre were dangerous and bloody. Every
champion successively encountered a wild bull; and the victory may be
ascribed to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were left on the
field, with the loss of nine wounded and eighteen killed on the side
of their adversaries. Some of the noblest families might mourn, but
the pomp of the funerals, in the churches of St. John Lateran and St.
Maria Maggiore, afforded a second holiday to the people. Doubtless it
was not in such conflicts that the blood of the Romans should have been
shed; yet, in blaming their rashness we are compelled to applaud their
gallantry; and the noble volunteers, who display their magnificence,
and risk their lives, under the balconies of the fair, excite a more
generous sympathy than the thousands of captives and malefactors who
were reluctantly dragged to the scene of slaughter.
This use of the amphitheatre was a rare, perhaps a singular, festival:
the demand for the materials was a daily and continual want, which the
citizens could gratify without restraint or remorse. In the Fourteenth
Century, a scandalous act of concord secured to both factions the
privilege of extracting stones from the free and common quarry of the
Coliseum; and Poggius laments, that the greater part of these stones
had been burnt to lime by the folly of the Romans. To check this abuse,
and to prevent the nocturnal crimes that might be perpetrated in the
vast and gloomy recess, Eugenius the fourth surrounded it with a wall;
and, by a charter long extant, granted both the ground and edifice
to the monks of an adjacent convent. After his death, the wall was
overthrown in a tumult of the people; and had they themselves respected
the noblest monument of their fathers, they might have justified the
resolve that it should never be degraded to private property. The
inside was damaged; but in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, an
æra of taste and learning, the exterior circumference of one thousand
six hundred and twelve feet was still entire and inviolate; a triple
elevation of fourscore arches, which rose to the height of one hundred
and eight feet. Of the present ruin, the nephews of Paul the Third are
the guilty agents; and every traveller who views the Farnese Palace
may curse the sacrilege and luxury of these upstart princes. A similar
reproach is applied to the Barberini; and the repetition of injury
might be dreaded from every reign, till the Coliseum was placed under
the safeguard of religion by the most liberal of the pontiffs, Benedict
the Fourteenth, who consecrated a spot which persecution and fable had
stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs.
When Petrarch first gratified his eyes with a view of those
monuments, whose scattered fragments so far surpass the most eloquent
descriptions, he was astonished at the supine indifference of the
Romans themselves; he was humbled rather than elated by the discovery,
that, except his friend Rienzi and one of the Colonna, a stranger of
the Rhone was more conversant with these antiquities than the nobles
and natives of the metropolis.
THE COLISEUM
CHARLES DICKENS
When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour staring
up into the dome: and would not have “gone over” the Cathedral then for
any money), we said to the coachman, “Go to the Coliseum.” In a quarter
of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in.
It is no fiction but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so suggestive
and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a moment--actually in
passing in--they who will, may have the whole great pile before them,
as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the
arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust, going on there,
as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its
utter desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a
softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved
and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own
affections and afflictions.
To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches
overgrown with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass
growing in its porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on
its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit: chance produce of the seeds
dropped there by the birds, who build their nests within its chinks
and crannies; to see the Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the
peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb into its upper halls,
and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches
of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the
Palace of the Cæsars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down
and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old
city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the
most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic,
mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the
sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest
life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a
ruin--God be thanked: a ruin!
As it tops the other ruins: standing there, a mountain among graves:
so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of the old
mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and
cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes as the visitor approaches
the city; its beauty becomes devilish; and there is scarcely one
countenance in a hundred, among the common people in the streets, that
would not be at home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.
Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can imagine in
its full and awful grandeur.
GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS
G. W. STEEVENS
The Sikhs are the youngest of the great powers of India. A kind of
Hindu Protestants, their Luther arose about 1500 to fulminate against
caste and the worship of idols. Instead of Shiva and Kali, they worship
their Bible, which is called the Granth. They abhor tobacco, and it is
impiety to shave or cut the hair. Sometimes, when a Sikh plays polo,
you may see it come undone and wave behind him like a horse-tail. From
Puritans they turned to Ironsides, praying and fighting with equal
fervour, wearing an iron quoit in their turbans, partly as a sign of
grace, and partly as a defence against a chance sword-cut.
For some three hundred years they fought the Musulmans, Mogul or
Afghan, for the dominion of the Punjab, and won it in the end. The
Musulmans tortured the Sikh teachers to death with their families; the
Sikhs sacked and massacred in return. The Musulmans took Amritsar, blew
up the temple of the Granth, and washed its foundations in the blood
of sacred cows; the Sikhs took Lahore, blew up the mosques, and washed
their foundations in the blood of unclean swine. Fanatics and heroes,
they lived only for the holy war, and became the barrier of India
against the Musulman tribes of the North-West. At last, in 1823, the
Sikhs were united under Ranjit Singh into the greatest power of India.
But he died in 1839; four wives and seven concubines were burned with
him, and you can see their tombs under marble lotuses in Lahore. Ten
years later the second Sikh War was over, and the Punjab was British.
If the Sikh rule was short, their battles have ever been long.
[Illustration: GOLDEN TEMPLE OF THE SIKHS, INDIA.]
The later history of the Sikhs--how kindly they accepted British rule,
which has still treated their religion with more than tolerant respect;
how they supplied and supply to-day noble regiments to our army; the
splendid services they rendered in the Mutiny, but a decade after
their conquest; the unswerving gallantry and devotion which they have
displayed on every field of honour,--all this is part of the military
history of the Empire. The very officers of Gurkha and Pathan and Dogra
regiments admit that the Sikh is the ideal of all that is soldierly.
Ranjit’s capital was Lahore, but the holy city has ever been Amritsar.
“The Pool of Immortality,” it means, and here in the centre of the
pool is the Golden Temple. In its present form it is not yet a century
old--quite an infant in India. Amritsar, indeed, is full of new things;
for, as it is the Mecca, it is also the Manchester of the Punjab.
Carpets and shawls and silks are manufactured there, or brought in by
merchants from Persia and Tibet, Bokhara and Yarkand. Here you can see
modern native India untainted by Europe.
Amritsar wears an air of solid prosperity. Not in the least like the
manufacturing towns we know, lacking the machinery of Bombay or
Calcutta, it neither shadows its streets with many-storied factories
nor defiles its air with smoke. But it wears a uniform and thriving
aspect, as of a town with a present and a future rather than a past.
The Bond Street of Delhi is a double row of decayed mansions propped up
by tottering booths; the houses of Amritsar are middle-sized, regular,
stably built of burned bricks, neither splendid nor ruinous. The looms
clatter and whir in the factories, and the merchant bargains between
the whiffs of his hookah in his shop, and Amritsar grows rich in a
leisurely Indian way, unfevered by Western improvements.
To the Western eye it is unenterprising and rather shabby. The stable
comfort of Amritsar stops short at the good brick walls; inside,
the shops are bare brick and plaster. There is nothing in the least
imposing about it. “Chunder Buksh, Dealer,” says one placard, and it
would be hard to say what else he could call himself; for his stock
seems to consist of one fine carpet, some brass pots, and a towel.
Above him is “Ali Mohammed, Barrister-at-Law,” in a windowless,
torn-blinded office, which you would otherwise take for the attic
of Chunder Buksh’s assistant. But compared with the rest of India,
Amritsar is a model of wellbeing. It is dusty, but otherwise almost
clean; the streets, of course, are full of bullocks and buffaloes, but
it seems rare that animals share their bed with men; there are plenty
of people all but naked, but it is rather from choice or religious
enthusiasm than of necessity. The trousered ladies, strolling with
trousered babies on their hips or smoking hubble-bubbles on shop
counters, wear silver in their blue-black hair, pearls in their noses,
gold in their ears; they jingle with locked-up capital. Finally, there
is a Jubilee statue of the Queen, and a clock-tower for all the world
like an English borough’s. But besides these and the Government offices
and the railway-station there is hardly a whisper from the West in the
town; and in Amritsar you begin to conceive a new respect for India.
The stream in the streets sets steadily towards the Golden Temple.
From the heavy-browed city gate to the holy pool the winding alleys
are splashed with all the familiar hues--orange outshining lemon
and emerald throttling ultramarine. Following the stalwart, bearded
pilgrims, in the midst of the city of shopkeepers you suddenly break
into a wide square: within it, bordered by a marble pavement--white,
black, and umber--a green lake dances in the sunlight; and in the midst
of that, mirrored in the pool--you look through your eyelashes, for the
hot rays fling back sevenfold-heated, blinding--gleam walls and roofs
and cupolas of sheer gold.
A minute or two you blink and stare, then you see that it is a small
temple on an island with a causeway leading to it from under an arch.
And after the first blink and stare your notions of beauty rise up and
protest against it. The temple is neither imposing by size nor winsome
by proportion. It has two stories--the lower of marble, inlaid, like
the marble of Agra, with birds and beasts and flowers, but with none
of Agra’s grace and refinement; all above it is of copper-gilt. Above
the second story rises something half-cupola, half-dome, but it is not
in the middle; there are smaller cupolas at the side overlooking the
causeway, and others smaller still at the far side. The whole temple
is smaller than St. Clement Danes, and a little building has no right
to be irregular. If the Taj Mahal, you say, which is three times this
size, can take the trouble to be symmetrical--well, if this is the
masterpiece of modern India--as for the gold, it blinds you for the
first moment and amuses you for the second; but you might as well ask
beauty of a heliograph.
Nevertheless, do not go away, for you will hardly see anything more
Indian. Outside the gate they show you a Government ordinance that
everybody must either conform to the religious customs of the place
or forbear to indulge his curiosity; you bow, and a bearded giant,
who might be a high-priest for dignity, takes off your boots and
ties on silk slippers instead. You leave your cigar-case behind you:
tobacco must not defile the holy place. Then, behind a white-bearded
policeman--who performs the triple function of guiding, preventing you
from doing anything impious, and clearing worshippers out of the way
before you--you start forth to see.
The pilgrims shuffle on eagerly round the pavement to the great gate
before the causeway. On a gilt tablet, in English and Punjabi, stands
the record of a miracle: how that a great light from heaven fell before
the holy book, and then was caught up into heaven again, whence the
learned augured much blessing upon the British Raj. Past the gate
they press without turning the head, though it is carved and pictured
over every inch. On one side of the entrance a marble tablet shows the
legend XXXV Sikhs and something in Punjabi. From the gate you issue
on to the causeway. It also is flagged with marble, and lined with
gilded lamp-posts; but the lamps above the gold are that crass-blue
and green-coloured glass of the suburban builder, and more than one
hangs broken. So you come to the sanctuary itself--a lofty chamber
with four open doors of chased silver. Within sit three priests on the
floor, under a canopy of blue and scarlet, before a low ottoman draped
in crimson and green and yellow. The high-priest, eagle-eyed and long
black-bearded, reads continually in a loud voice from the Granth;
beside him sits one with a gilt-handled wisk and fans the sacred book.
At another side sit two musicians: one twangs a sort of one-stringed
mandoline, one thrums a tom-tom. Before the Granth lies a cloth; and
each believer, crouching in, flings on it flowers or cowries or copper
coins for his offering. To the white man they bring what looks like a
dry half-orange or candied citron, only white; it is made of sugar, and
the white man responds with the offering of a rupee. The walls about
this strange worship blaze with blue and red and gold in frets and
scrolls and flower-tendrils; above are chambers and galleries of the
same and studded mirrors; in one more than holy room are brooms made of
peacocks’ feathers wherewith alone it may be swept.
That is the great shrine of all; but there is much else. All round the
lake are palaces of stone and white marble belonging to the great
Sikh chiefs who came here to worship. Before them, on the pavement,
men squatting under canvas screens hawk flowers--lotus, jasmine,
marigold, or scabious--to be offered before the Scripture. In one of
the palaces, which matches the temple with a gilt dome of its own, you
see a glass case; within it, under crimson silk, rest the sword and
mace of some old Sikh Boanerges, mighty in prayer as in battle. Then
there is a tower temple of eight stories, dedicated to a bygone saint
and miracle-worker, the lower chamber aflame with paint and gold. As
the policeman enters he touches the step with his finger; a woman in
violet trousers flings a flower on to a cloth and ottoman like that
of the central shrine; a woman in green-and-gold trousers places a
bread-cake before it and lays her forehead on the marble sill; others
grovel and shampoo it with their hands. The next thing you come to is
a plain shed with a dynamo that supplies the shrines and gardens with
electric light. After that a group of naked fakirs, powdered white with
ashes, with long mud-matted hair and mad eyes. Then a door, fast closed
and seeming to lead nowhither, with a tiny wreath of marigolds hung on
it.
Everywhere the same grotesque contradictions--splendour and squalor,
divinity and dirt, superstition and manliness. The Western mind can
make nothing of it, cannot bring it into a focus. You simply hold your
head, and say that this is the East, and you are of the West. In the
treasury above the gate are silver staves and gilt maces, canopies of
gold and diadems of pearls and diamonds. In the sacred, putrid lake
rot flowers. A fakir standing before an enclosure drones in a full
voice words you do not understand, like a psalm without any end to it:
the refrain, after every half-dozen words, sounds like “Hullah hah
leay.” Inside the shrine the high-priest never ceases to intone the
Granth, nor the other priest to fan it, nor the musicians to tinkle and
thrum; and in and out that holy place fly clouds of pigeons, perching
on the canopy and fouling the growing pile of offerings before the
ottoman. At every turn you come on little shrines with books on silken
cushions and prostrate adorers. A calf, unchecked, is trying to lick
the gold off the great gateway.
THE GIRALDA
ΤΗÉΟΡΗΙLΕ GAUTIER
The Giralda, which serves as a campanila to the cathedral, and rises
above all the spires of the town, is an old Moorish tower, erected by
an Arabian architect, named Geber or Guever, who invented algebra,
which was called after him. The appearance of the tower is charming,
and very original; the rose-coloured bricks and the white stone of
which it is built, give it an air of gaiety and youth, which forms a
strange contrast with the date of its erection, which extends as far
back as the year 1000, a very respectable age, at which a tower may
well be allowed to have a wrinkle or two and be excused for not being
remarkable for a fresh complexion. The Giralda in its present state
is not less than three hundred and fifty feet high, while each side
is fifty feet broad. Up to a certain height the walls are perfectly
even; there are then rows of Moorish windows with balconies, trefoils,
and small white marble columns, surrounded by large lozenge-shaped
brick panels. The tower formerly ended in a roof of variously coloured
varnished tiles, on which was an iron bar, ornamented with four gilt
metal balls of a prodigious size. This roof was removed in 1568 by the
architect Francisco Ruiz, who raised the daughter of the Moor Guever
one hundred feet higher in the pure air of heaven, so that his bronze
statue might overlook the sierras, and speak with the angels who
passed. The feat of building a belfry on a tower was in perfect keeping
with the intentions of the members composing that admirable chapter who
wished posterity to imagine they were mad. The additions of Francisco
Ruiz consist of three stories; the first of these is pierced with
windows, in whose embrasures are hung bells; the second, surrounded by
an open balustrade, bears on the cornice of each of its sides, these
words--_Turris fortissima nomen Domini_; and the third is a kind
of cupola or lantern, on which turns a gigantic gilt bronze figure of
Faith, holding a palm in one hand and a standard in the other, and
serving as a weathercock, thereby justifying the name of Giralda given
to the tower. This statue is by Bartholomew Morel. It can be seen at a
very great distance; and when it glitters through the azure atmosphere,
really looks like a seraph lounging in the air.
[Illustration: THE GIRALDA, SEVILLE, SPAIN.]
You ascend the Giralda by a series of inclined ramps, so easy and
gentle, that two men on horseback could very well ride up to the
summit, whence you enjoy an admirable view. At your feet lies Seville,
brilliantly white, with its spires and towers, endeavouring, but in
vain, to reach the rose-coloured brick girdle of the Giralda. Beyond
these stretches the plain, through which the Guadalquiver flows, like
a piece of watered silk, and scattered around are Santiponce, Algaba,
and other villages. Quite in the background is the Sierra Morena, with
its outlines sharply marked, in spite of the distance, so great is the
transparency of the air in this admirable country. On the opposite
side, the Sierras de Gibram, Zaara and Moron, raise their bristling
forms, tinged with the richest hues of lapis lazuli and amethyst, and
completing this magnificent panorama, which is inundated with light,
sunshine and dazzling splendour.
A great number of fragments of columns, shaped into posts and connected
with each other by chains, except where spaces are left for persons
to pass, surround the cathedral. Some of these columns are antique,
and come either from the ruins of Italica, or from the remains of the
ancient mosque, whose former site is now occupied by the cathedral,
and of which the only remaining vestiges are the Giralda, a few old
walls, and one or two arches, one of which serves as the entrance to
the courtyard _de los Nanjeros_. The _Longa_ (Exchange)
is a large and perfectly regular edifice, built by the heavy and
wearisome Herrera, that architect of _ennui_, to whom we owe
the Escurial, which is decidedly the most melancholy building in the
world; the Longa, also, like the cathedral, is surrounded by the same
description of posts. It is completely isolated and presents four
similar façades; it stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar.
In it are preserved the archives of America, and the correspondence
of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro and Fernando Cortez; but all these
treasures are guarded by such savage dragons, that we were obliged to
content ourselves with looking at the outside of the pasteboard boxes
and portfolios, which are stowed away in mahogany compartments, like
the goods in a drapers’ shop. It would be a most easy thing to place
five or six of the most precious autographs in glass cases, and thus
satisfy the very legitimate curiosity of travellers.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE, ITALY.]
THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly hybrid
civilization. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits and imbibing
the culture of their Musulman subjects, ruled a mixed population of
Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of the princes was
French; that of the Christians in their territory, Greek and Latin;
that of their Mahommedan subjects, Arabic. At the same time the
Scandinavian Sultans of Palermo did not cease to play an active part
in the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of Europe. The children
of the Vikings, though they spent their leisure in harems, exercised,
as hereditary Legates of the Holy See, a peculiar jurisdiction in the
Church of Sicily. They dispensed benefices to the clergy, and assumed
the mitre and dalmatic, together with the sceptre and the crown, as
symbols of their authority in Church as well as State. As a consequence
of this confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and
English ecclesiastics mingling at court with Moorish freedmen and
Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains fraternizing with Greek corsairs,
Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the prince, and
Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The very money with which Roger
subsidized his Italian allies, was stamped with Cuphic letters, and
there is reason to believe that the reproach against Frederick of being
a false coiner arose from his adopting the Eastern device of plating
copper pieces to pass for silver. The commander of Roger’s navies and
his chief minister of state was styled, according to Oriental usage,
Emir or Ammiraglio. George of Antioch, who swept the shores of Africa,
the Morea, and the Black Sea, in his service, was a Christian of the
Greek Church, who had previously held an office of finance under Temim
Prince of Mehdia. The workers in his silk factories were slaves, from
Thebes and Corinth. The pages of his palace were Sicilian or African
eunuchs. His charters ran in Arabic as well as Greek and Latin. His
jewellers engraved the rough gems of the Orient with Christian mottoes
in Semitic characters.[5] His architects were Musulmans who adapted
their native style to the requirements of Christian ritual, and
inscribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic legends in the Cuphic
language. The predominant characteristic of Palermo was Orientalism.
Religious toleration was extended to the Musulmans, so that the two
creeds, Christian and Mahommedan, flourished side by side.
At Palermo, Europe saw the first instance of a court not wholly unlike
that which Versailles afterwards became. The intrigues which endangered
the throne and liberty of William the Bad, and which perplexed the
policy of William the Good, were court-conspiracies of a kind common
enough at Constantinople. In this court life men of letters and
erudition played a part three centuries before Petrarch taught the
princes of Italy to respect the pen of a poet. King Roger, of whom the
court geographer Edrisi writes that “he did more sleeping than any
other man waking,” was surrounded during his leisure moments, beneath
the palm-groves of Favara, with musicians, historians, travellers,
mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of Oriental breeding.
The architectural works of the Normans in Palermo reveal the same
ascendancy of Arab culture. San Giovanni degli Eremiti, with its low
white rounded domes, is nothing more or less than a little mosque
adapted to the rites of Christians. The country palaces of the Zisa
and the Cuba, built by the two Williams, retain their ancient Moorish
character, standing beneath the fretted arches of the hall of the
Zisa, through which a fountain flows within a margin of carved marble,
and looking on the landscape from its open porch, we only need to
reconstruct in fancy the green gardens and orange-groves, where
fair-haired Normans whiled away their hours among black-eyed odalisques
and graceful singing boys from Persia. Amid a wild tangle of olive and
lemon trees overgrown with scarlet passion-flowers the pavilion of the
Cubola, built of hewn stone and open at each of its four sides, still
stands much as it stood when William II paced through flowers from his
palace of the Cuba, to enjoy the freshness of the evening by the side
of its fountain. The views from all these Saracenic villas over the
fruitful valley of the Golden Horn, and the turrets of Palermo, and
the mountains and the distant sea, are ineffably delightful. When the
palaces were new--when the gilding and the frescoes still shone upon
their honeycombed ceilings, when their mosaics glittered in noonday
twilight, and their amber-coloured masonry was set in shade of pines
and palms, and the cool sound of rivulets made music in their courts
and gardens, they must have well deserved their Arab titles of “Sweet
Waters” and “The Glory” and “The Paradise of Earth.”
But the true splendour of Palermo, that which makes this city one of
the most glorious of the South, is to be sought in its churches--in the
mosaics of the Cappella Palatina founded by King Roger, in the vast
aisles and cloisters of Monreale built by King William the Good at the
instance of his Chancellor Matteo,[6] in the Cathedral of Palermo begun
by Offamilio, and in the Martorana dedicated by George the Admiral.
These triumphs of ecclesiastical architecture, none the less splendid
because they cannot be reduced to rule or assigned to any single style,
were the work of Saracen builders assisted by Byzantine, Italian, and
Norman craftsmen. The genius of Latin Christianity determined the
basilica shape of the Cathedral of Monreale. Its bronze doors were
wrought by smiths of Trani and Pisa. Its walls were incrusted with
the mosaics of Constantinople. The woodwork of its roof, and the
emblazoned patterns in porphyry and serpentine and glass and smalto,
which cover its whole surface, were designed by Oriental decorators.
Norman sculptors added their dog-tooth and chevron to the mouldings of
its porches; Greeks, Frenchmen, and Arabs may have tried their skill
in turn upon the multitudinous ornaments of its cloister capitals.
“The like of which church,” says Lucius III in 1182, “hath not been
constructed by any king even from ancient times, and such an one as
must compel all men to admiration.” These words remain literally and
emphatically true. Other cathedrals may surpass that of Monreale in
sublimity, simplicity, bulk, strength, or unity of plan. None can
surpass it in the strange romance with which the memory of its many
artificers invests it. None again can exceed it in richness and glory,
in the gorgeousness of a thousand decorative elements subservient to
one controlling thought. “It is evident,” says Fergusson in his history
of architecture, “that all the architectural features in the building
were subordinate in the eyes of the builders to the mosaic decorations,
which cover every part of the interior, and are in fact the glory and
the pride of the edifice, and alone entitle it to rank among the finest
of mediæval churches.” The whole of the Christian history is depicted
in this series of Mosaics; but on first entering, one form alone
compels attention. The semi-dome of the eastern apse above the high
altar is entirely filled with a gigantic half-length figure of Christ.
He raises His right hand to bless, and with His left holds an open book
on which is written in Greek and Latin, “I am the Light of the World.”
His face is solemn and severe, rather than mild or piteous; and round
His nimbus runs the legend Ἰησους χριστὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ. Below Him on
a smaller scale are ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord,
who holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ appears twice upon this
wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word by whom all things were
made, and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh and dwell
with men. The magnificent image of supreme Deity seems to fill with a
single influence and to dominate the whole building. The house with all
its glory is His. He dwells there like Pallas in her Parthenon or Zeus
in his Olympian temple. To left and right over every square inch of the
cathedral blaze mosaics, which portray the story of God’s dealings with
the human race from the Creation downwards, together with those angelic
beings and saints, who symbolize each in his own degree some special
virtue granted to mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open
book of history, theology, and ethics for all men to read.
The superiority of mosaics over fresco as an architectural adjunct on
this gigantic scale is apparent at a glance at Monreale. Permanency
of splendour and glowing richness of tone are all on the side of the
mosaics. Their true rival is painted glass. The jewelled churches
of the south are constructed for the display of coloured surfaces
illuminated by sunlight falling on them from narrow windows, just as
those of the north--Rheims, for example, or Le Mans--are built for
the transmission of light through a variegated medium of transparent
hues. The painted windows of a northern cathedral find their proper
counterpart in the mosaics of the south. The Gothic architect strove
to obtain the greatest amount of translucent surface. The Byzantine
builder directed his attention to securing just enough light for the
illumination of his glistening walls. The radiance of the northern
church was similar to that of flowers or sunset clouds or jewels.
The glory of the southern temple was that of dusky gold and gorgeous
needlework. The north needed acute brilliancy as a contrast to external
greyness. The south found rest from the glare and glow of noonday in
these sombre splendours. Thus Christianity, both of the south and of
the north, decked her shrines with colour. Not so the Paganism of
Hellas. With the Greeks, colour, though used in architecture, was
severely subordinated to sculpture; toned and modified to a calculated
harmony with actual nature, it did not, as in a Christian church,
create a world beyond the world, a paradise of supersensual ecstasy,
but remained within the limits of the known. Light falling upon
carved forms of gods and heroes, bathing clear-cut columns and sharp
bas-reliefs in simple lustre, was enough for the Phœbian rights of
Hellas. Though we know that red and blue and green and gilding were
employed to accentuate the mouldings of Greek temples, yet neither the
gloomy glory of mosaics nor the gemmed fretwork of storied windows was
needed to attune the souls of Hellenic worshippers to devotion.
THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
The Rue de la Seine will bring us to the Palace of the Luxembourg,
now the Palace of the Senate (open from nine to four in winter, nine
to five in summer), built by Marie de’ Medici on the site of a hotel
erected by Robert de Harlay de Saucy early in the Sixteenth Century,
which was bought by the Duc de Pincy-Luxembourg. The queen employed
Jacques Debrosses as her architect in 1615, and his work was completed
in 1620. The ground floor, in the Tuscan style, was intended to convey
a reminiscence of the Florentine Palazzo Pitti, in which Marie de’
Medici was born: the upper stories are Grecian.
The queen intended to call the palace Palais Medicis, though the name
has always clung to it which is derived from François de Luxembourg,
Prince de Tingry, who owned the site in 1570. The palace was bequeathed
by Marie de’ Medici to her youngest son Gaston, Duc d’Orléans,
from whom it came to his two daughters, who each held half of the
Luxembourg--“La Grande Mademoiselle,” and the pious Duchesse de Guise
(whose mother, sister of the Duc de Lorraine, had clandestinely become
the second wife of Monsieur), who was terribly tyrannized over by her
rich half sister. It was here that Mademoiselle received the visits
of M. de Lauzun, whilst La Fosse was painting the loves of Flore and
Zephyr, and here that she astonished Europe by the announcement of
her intended marriage, to which--for a few days--Louis XIV. was induced
to give his consent.
[Illustration: THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE, FRANCE.]
At her death, Mademoiselle bequeathed her right in the Luxembourg
to her Cousin Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIV. During
the Regency, the palace was the residence of the Duchesse de Berry
(daughter of the Regent Philippe d’Orléans), who by her orgies here
rivalled those of her father at the Palais Royal. The Luxembourg was
bought by Louis XV., and given by Louis XVI. to his brother “Monsieur,”
who resided in it till his escape from Paris at the time of the flight
to Varennes.
Treated as national property during the Revolution, the Luxembourg
became one of the prisons of the Reign of Terror. Amongst other
prisoners, comprising the most illustrious names in France, were the
Vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Josephine, afterwards Empress of
the French: “_De quoi se plaignent donc ces damnés aristocrates?_”
cried Montagnard; “_nons les logeons dans les châteaux royaux._”
David, the painter, designed his picture of the Sabines during his
imprisonment at the Luxembourg, in a little room on the second floor.
Here also in a different category, were imprisoned Hébert, Danton,
Camille Desmoulins, Philippeaux, Lacroix, Hérault de Séchelles, Payne,
Bazire, Chabot, and Fabre d’Eglantine. In 1793, people used to come and
stand for hours in the garden in the hope of being able to have a last
sight of their friends, from their being allowed to show themselves at
the windows.
It was at the Luxembourg that (December 10, 1797), Bonaparte presented
the treaty of the peace of Campo Formio to the Directory, after
returning from his first campaign in Italy. At the end of 1799, the
palace became for a time _Le Palais du Consulat_: _Le Palais du
Sénat_, then _de la Pairie_. Marshal Ney was condemned to death
here, under the Restoration (November 21, 1815), and was executed in
the Allée de l’Observatoire, at the end of the garden on December 7.
The iron wicket still remains in the door of his prison, opening west
at the end of the great gallery of archives. The ministers of Charles
X. were also judged at the Luxembourg, and Fieschi and the other
conspirators of July, 1835, were condemned here; as was Prince Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, after the attempt at Bologne in 1840.
The Luxembourg is only shown when the Senate is not sitting. The
apartments best worth seeing are the Chapel of 1844, decorated with
modern paintings; and _the Ancienne Salle du Livre d’or_, where
the titles and arms of peers were preserved under the Restoration and
Louis Philippe, adorned with the decorations of the apartment of Marie
de’ Medici. The ceiling of the gallery, which forms part of the hall,
represents the Apotheosis of Marie. The arabesques in the principal
hall are attributed to Giovanni da Udine: the ceiling represents
Marie de’ Medici reestablishing the peace and unity of France. The
first floor is reached by a great staircase which occupies the place
of a gallery once filled with the twenty-four great pictures of the
life of the Regent Marie by Rubens, now in the Louvre. The oratory of
the queen and another room are now united to form the _Salle des
Gardes_, her bedroom is the _Salle des Messagers d’état_ and
her reception-room is known as the _Salon de Napoléon I_. The
cupola of the _Salle du Trône_ by Alaux represents the Apotheosis
of the first Emperor.
The _Hôtel du Petit Luxembourg_ is a dependency of the greater
palace, and was erected about the same time by Richelieu, who resided
here till the Palais Royal was built. When he moved thither, he gave
this palace to his niece, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, from whom it
passed to Henri Jules de Bourbon-Condé, after which it received the
name of _Petit Bourbon_. Anne, Palatine of Bavaria, lived here,
and added a hôtel towards the Rue Vaugirard to accommodate her suite.
Under the First Empire the Luxembourg was occupied for some time by
Joseph Bonaparte. It is now the official residence of the President
of the Senate. The cloister of the former convent of the _Filles du
Calvaire_, whom Marie de Medici established near her palace, is now
a winter garden attached to the Petit Luxembourg. The chapel, standing
close to the grill of the Rue de Vaugirard, is an admirable specimen
of the end of the Sixteenth Century; on the summit of its gable is a
symbolical Pelican nourishing its young.
Beyond the Petit Luxembourg is a modern building containing the Musée
du Luxembourg. The collection now in the galleries of the Louvre was
begun at the Luxembourg and only removed in 1779, when Monsieur came to
reside here. In 1802 a new gallery was begun at the Luxembourg, but,
in 1815, its pictures were removed to the Louvre to fill the places of
those restored to their rightful owners by the Allies. It was Louis
XVIII. who ordered that the Luxembourg should receive such works of
living artists as were acquired by the State. The collection, recently
moved from halls in the palace itself, is always interesting, but as
the works of each artist are removed to the Louvre ten years after his
death, the pictures are constantly changing.
THE GREAT LAMA TEMPLE
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING
This morning soon after 5 A. M. Dr. Dudgeon took me to see the
Yung-ho-kung, a very fine old Lama temple, just within the wall, at the
north-east corner of the Tartar city. It contains about 1,300 monks of
all ages, down to small boys six years old, under the headship of a
Lama, who assumes the title of “The Living Buddha.”
These monks are Mongol Tartars of a very bad type, dirty and greedy
of gain; and, moreover, are known to be grossly immoral. They are
generally offensively insolent to all foreigners, many of whom have
vainly endeavoured to obtain access to the monastery,--even the silver
key, which is usually so powerful in China, often failing to unlock the
inhospitable gates.
That I had the privilege of entrance was solely due to the personal
influence of Dr. Dudgeon, whose medical skill has happily proved so
beneficial to the “Living Buddha,” and several of the priests, as to
ensure him a welcome from them. It was not, however, an easy task
to get at these men, as a particularly insolent monk was acting as
door-keeper, and attempted forcibly to prevent our entrance. That,
however, was effected by the judicious pressure of a powerful shoulder,
and after a stormy argument, the wretch was at length overawed, and
finally reduced to abject humility by threats to report his rudeness
to the head Lama.
At long last, after wearisome expostulation and altercation, every
door was thrown open to us, but the priest in charge of each carefully
locked it after us, lest we should avoid giving him an individual tip,
or _kum-sha_, as it is here called. Happily I had a large supply
of five and ten cent silver pieces, which the Doctor’s knowledge of
Chinese custom compelled our extortioners to accept. At the same time,
neither of us could avoid a qualm as each successive door was securely
locked, and a vision presented itself of possible traps into which we
might be decoyed.
Every corner of the great building is full of interest, from the
brilliant yellow china tiles of the roof to the yellow carpet in the
temple. The entrance is adorned with stone carvings of animals, and
the interior is covered with a thousand fantastic figures carved
in wood--birds, beasts, and serpents, flowers and monstrous human
heads mingle in grotesque confusion. It is rich in silken hangings,
gold embroidery, huge picturesque paper lanterns of quaint form,
covered with Chinese characters and grotesque idols, canopied by very
ornamental baldachinos.
Conspicuous amongst these idols is Kwang-ti, who was a distinguished
warrior at the beginning of the Christian era, and who about eight
hundred years later was deified as the God of War, and State temples
were erected in his honour in every city of the Empire. So his
shrine is adorned with all manner of armour, especially bows and
arrows--doubtful votive offerings. He is a very fiercelooking god,
and is attended by two colossal companions, robed in the richest gold
embroidered silk. Another gigantic image is that of a fully armed
warrior leading a horse. I believe he is Kwang-ti’s armour bearer.
In various parts of the temple hang trophies of arms and military
standards, which are singular decorations for a temple wherein Buddha
is the object of supreme worship.
But the fact is, that though Kwang-ti is the God of War, he is also
emphatically “Protector of the Peace,” and his aid is invoked in all
manner of difficulties, domestic or national. For instance, when
the great salt wells in the Province of Shansi dried up, the sorely
perplexed Emperor was recommended by the Taouist High Priest to lay
the case before Kwang-ti. The Emperor, therefore, wrote an official
despatch on the subject, which was solemnly burnt, and thus conveyed
to the spirit-world, when, lo! in answer to the Son of Heaven, the
Warrior-god straightway appeared in the clouds, mounted on his red
war-horse, and directed the Emperor to erect a temple in his honour.
This was done, and the salt springs flowed as before.
Kwang-ti again appeared in 1855, during the Taiping rebellion, to
aid the Imperial troops near Nankin, for which kind interposition,
Hien-feng, the reigning Emperor (whose honour-conferring power extends
to the spirit-world), promoted him to an equal rank with Confucius! So
here we find him reverenced alike by Taouists and Buddhists!
All the altar-vases in this temple are of the finest Pekin
enamel--vases, candlesticks, and incense-burners, from which filmy
clouds of fragrant incense float upward to a ceiling panelled with
green and gold. Fine large scroll paintings tempted me to linger
at every turn, and the walls are encrusted with thousands of small
porcelain images of Buddha.
In the main temple, which is called the Foo-Koo, or Hall of Buddha,
stands a cyclopean image of Matreya, the Buddha of Futurity. It is
seventy feet in height, and is said to be carved from one solid block
of wood, but it is coloured to look like bronze. Ascending a long
flight of steps, we reached a gallery running round the temple about
the level of his shoulders. I found that this gallery led into two
circular buildings, one on each side, constructed for the support of
two immense rotating cylinders, about seventy feet in height, full of
niches, each niche containing the image of a Buddhist saint.
They are rickety old things, and thickly coated with dust, but on
certain days worshippers come and stick on strips of paper, bearing
prayers. To turn these cylinders is apparently an act of homage to the
whole saintly family, and enlists the good-will of the whole lot. Some
Lama monasteries deal thus with their 128 sacred books and 220 volumes
of commentary, placing them in a huge cylindrical bookcase, which they
turn bodily, to save the trouble of turning individual pages--the
understanding having apparently small play in either case.
It was nearly 6 A. M. ere we reached the Lama Temple, so that
we were too late to see the grand morning service, as that commences
at 4 A. M., when upwards of a hundred mats are spread in the
temple, on each of which kneel ten of the subordinate Lamas, all
wearing their yellow robes and a sort of classical helmet of yellow
felt, with a very high crest like that worn by Britannia. They possess
red felt boots, but can only enter the temple barefooted. The Great
Lama wears a violet-coloured robe and a yellow mitre. He bears a sort
of crozier, and occupies a gilded throne before the altar: a cushion is
provided for him to kneel upon. The whole temple is in darkness or dim
twilight save the altar, which is ablaze with many tapers.
When the copper gong sounds its summons to worship, they chant litanies
in monotone, one of the priests reading prayers, from a silken scroll,
and all joining in a low murmur, while clouds of incense fill the
temple. A peculiarity of this chant is, that while a certain number of
the brethren recite the words, the others sing a continuous deep bass
accompaniment. Again the gong marks the change from prayer to sacred
chants, and after these comes a terrible din of instrumental music--a
clatter of gongs, bells, conch-shells, tambourines, and all manner of
ear-splitting abominations. Then follows a silence which may be felt,
so utter is the stillness and so intense the relief.
HADDON HALL
JOHN LEYLAND
When the Derbyshire Wye has pursued its winding way from its source
in the millstone grit, and between the wooded steeps and precipitous
limestone cliffs that curb and shape its course towards Bakewell, the
hills on either bank recede, and the river flows through pleasant
alluvial meadows, overlooked by occasional rocky scars, and by woods
of fir, ash, beech, and oak, to its confluence with the Derwent at
Rowsley. Some two miles below Bakewell, shortly before the stream of
the Lathkil comes down from its enchanting valley on the right, with
its narrow tributary, the Bradford, to swell the waters of the Wye,
the limestone crops out as a platform on the opposite bank, and there,
half-concealed by the umbrageous woodland, stand the time-worn towers
and walls of Haddon. Whether we approach the spot from the direction
of Rowsley or of Bakewell, the prospect can scarcely be surpassed
in its kind, either for the wondrous grouping of the grey towers
and battlements on the slope of the hill, or for the rich beauties
of the varied foliage on the height beyond, and the flower-decked
meads and pellucid stream below. These charms of a truly English
landscape, and an old English mansion, have long had, and must continue
to have, a spell of fascination for the artist and lover of the
picturesque; but it is not only for them that visitors come in a
ceaseless stream to Haddon. What other place can wake such impressions
of old-time greatness touched by the witchery of bygone romance? It
is here--better, perhaps, than any other spot in England--that we can
grasp the conditions of life of the mediæval and Tudor gentlemen. The
long line of the Vernons passes before us. We witness them, generation
by generation adding to the majestic pile; the vacant chambers are
peopled with stately ladies and mail-clad knights, the bowmen are
ranged in the courtyard, and the sentinel keeps watch from the tower.
We see the knight in anxious deliberation on questions of State and
wonder what answer shall be returned to the King-maker’s letter. We
partake of the bounteous hospitality of the Knight of the Peak, as many
strangers have done before, bethinking ourselves anon of his daughter,
fair Dorothy, and how that Manners is concealed in the woods, watching
the light in her chamber. Then the sounds of revelry strike upon the
ear, the door opens and she steals down the steps, and presently we
hear the clang of hoofs upon the road. It is, indeed, such impressions
as these that have given to the external beauties of Haddon Hall the
additional charm of legend, poetry and romance, and have contributed to
make it a place to which visitors from afar will always delight to come.
[Illustration: HADDON HALL. ENGLAND.]
Although the various parts of the celebrated hall have been built
at widely different periods, and upon a sloping and irregular rocky
platform, its plan is very easy to understand, and it may be well, at
the outset, to explain the disposition of the buildings as clearly as
may be. They surround two courtyards--the lower one, to the west, on
the river front, and the upper one, separated from the first by the
great hall and domestic offices, rising up to the east on the hill-side
behind it. The visitor enters the lower quadrangle at its north-western
angle, placing his foot, as he passes the postern, in a hole which has
been worn deeply by unnumbered strangers before him. He notices, on his
right, beneath the archway, the porter’s room, with a bedstead that
may well have kept that functionary wakeful; and beyond it, still on
the right hand and western side, the so-called Chaplain’s Room--with
its hunting-horn, old musket, Seventeenth Century boots, service of
pewter platters, and other miscellaneous contents--as well as two
other chambers, before the domestic chapel is reached. This edifice
occupies the south-western angle, and extends about half-way up the
southern side of the lower courtyard. Being not at right angles with
the other portions of this quadrangle, it gives, with its picturesque
bell-turret, a pleasing variety to the buildings within; and,
externally, its east window and the angles of its chancel and southern
aisle, with the heavy buttress at the western end, add materially to
the picturesque effect of the hall. The chapel, moreover, contains,
with some of the foundation walls, the oldest portions of the edifice,
and the round column and chalice-like font are anterior, perhaps, to
the coming of the Vernons to Haddon. The south side of the western
quadrangle is completed by a range of constructions, including passages
to the private apartments, and a turret stair to the battlemented
wall; and leading up to the doorway is a flight of steps--added in the
Sixteenth Century--which projects into the area of the courtyard. This
space is further broken up by the three steps which extend across it
from north to south, dividing it into an upper and a lower platform.
Standing upon the slight elevation thus gained, the chapel, the
buildings opposite on the western side, the entrance gateway, with the
very curious corbelling and constructive ties over it in the angle, and
the offices on the western side, with the turret, have a most pleasing
and varied effect.
The main block of buildings, lying between the two quadrangles, is now
entered by the porch, which leads into a lobby or passage separating
the great hall on the right from the kitchen and its offices on the
left. This arrangement was general in mediæval dwelling-places, and may
be seen in many of the timber manor-houses of Lancashire and Cheshire,
where, as we see it at Haddon, the Minstrel’s Gallery is usually over
the entrance passage, at the end of the hall opposite to the daïs. At
Haddon, the table at the upper end still remains, supported on its
three pedestal legs, and we think of the time when the King of the
Peak held festival there, as we look upon its time-worn board. It is
to be observed that the constructional conditions of the hall rendered
it impossible to add the great bay, which was a chief feature of
mediæval banqueting-rooms--one that may be seen in its perfection in
the magnificent, but roofless hall of Wingfield, a few miles away. In
the manor-houses of Lancashire and Cheshire, to which allusion has
been made, the withdrawing-room lies in general immediately behind the
great hall, and adjacent to the daïs, but at Haddon we find, in that
position, a private dining-room, with a fine recessed window; and the
drawing-room, which is above it, is approached by a flight of stone
steps. The drawing-room at Haddon is a beautiful tapestried chamber,
with fine views from its bay window over the gardens and down the
valley of the Wye; and from it access is had to the Earl’s Bedroom
and the Page’s Room. On the other side of the lobby from which the
hall is entered is a sloping passage leading down to the kitchen, with
its huge fireplace and curious culinary appliances, and other doors
from the same passage open into the buttery, wine-cellar, add sundry
offices. The great hall, and the domestic offices described, complete
the enclosure of the first courtyard and form the western side of the
second. The northern side of this upper quadrangle is formed of a
series of small chambers; and a staircase from the hall-passage leads
up to the quaint tapestried rooms above them, which, if tradition may
be believed, were the nursery and the rooms of Dorothy Vernon, of Lady
Cranborne, daughter of John Manners, eighth Earl of Rutland, and of
Roger Manners. By the same staircase from the passage, access is had to
the Minstrel’s Gallery, as well as to the gallery on the eastern side
of the hall (a later addition), which brings the visitor to the top of
the stone steps by which the drawing-room is reached. At that place are
the segmental steps of solid oak, whereby the magnificent Long Gallery
or Bedroom is entered. This great chamber, which is a chief glory of
Haddon, will be alluded to later. It occupies the whole length of the
southern side of the upper courtyard, and projects picturesquely at
its eastern end upon the terrace, where a window affords a view of the
winter garden towards Dorothy Vernon’s Walk. From the Long Gallery a
door leads into the range of buildings enclosing the second quadrangle
on its eastern side. These are the anteroom, with Dorothy Vernon’s
Steps leading down to the Terrace; the State Bedroom, with its Gobelin
tapestry, its strange bas-relief of _Orpheus taming the Beasts_;
its huge bed and ancient hangings, and its mirror called “Queen
Elizabeth’s Looking-glass;” the Ancient Stateroom, a chamber coeval
with the angle tower; and the little passage-room over the gateway--the
original entrance to the castle--whence the winding-stair is reached,
leading up to the Peveril Tower, which dominates the whole range of
buildings. From this elevation the visitor sees the two courtyards
below him, with the woods and terraces, and the upper and lower gardens
on the south side, as well as the way leading down to the footbridge
over the Wye, and a fine prospect of the winding vale of that river,
and of many a distant hill.
Having thus before us the general plan of the buildings of Haddon
Hall, we may proceed to consider the historical, legendary, and other
considerations to which the venerable edifice very naturally leads us.
There have been those who have chosen to see, in the lower parts of its
construction, the evidences of Saxon work, and, indeed, very likely
Haddon was a location in Saxon times. However, that may be, we find
it mentioned in Domesday Book as a berewick of the Manor of Bakewell,
and the first possessor of whom we have authentic knowledge was that
same William Peveril, a natural son of the Conqueror, to whom he
granted “Peveril’s Place in the Peke,” and who also had custody of the
Manor of Chatsworth. Thus, at this very early period, we find Haddon
associated in ownership with two of the most interesting places in the
Peak district. The Peverils did not long enjoy their possessions, for
William Peveril, probably a grandson of the first possessor, having,
it was alleged, poisoned Ranulph, Earl of Chester, who supported
Matilda, took to ignominious flight in order to avoid punishment, and
his possessions fell to Henry II. It is possible that some parts of
the foundations of Haddon belong to the time of the Peverils, but,
at any rate, the memory of their association with it is preserved
in the name of the north-eastern tower. At the date of their fall,
Haddon--or, to speak more precisely, Nether Haddon, for Over Haddon
lies some two miles away on the hills--was held by William de Avenell
in knight’s-service, and the King thus became direct lord of his fee.
Towards the close of the Twelfth Century, Haddon came to the Vernons
by the marriage of Richard de Vernon with Avicia, a daughter and one
of the co-heiresses of William de Avenell, the other being married to
Sir Simon Bassett. This Richard de Vernon was descended from the Barons
of Shipbroke, the first of whom, William de Vernon, came over with the
Conqueror, and received his barony at the hands of Hugh Lupus, Earl of
Chester. The Vernon name is derived from the Lordship which the family
held in what is now the Department of the Eure and Arrondissement of
Evreux.
We now reach the celebrated episode of Dorothy Vernon, upon which the
fate of Haddon hung and which has lent the glamour of romance to the
scenes in which she moved. Sir George Vernon, her father, the last heir
male of the Haddon line, was twice married, and his effigy now lies in
Bakewell Church, with those of his two wives, Margaret, daughter of Sir
Gilbert Tayleboys, and Maude, daughter of Sir Ralph Langford. Of his
two daughters, Margaret, the elder, was married to Sir Thomas Stanley
of Winwick, in Lancashire, son of the third Earl of Derby; and Dorothy,
the younger--who ultimately became sole heiress--to John Manners, the
second son of Sir Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland. It is not easy
to say at this date what could have been the strong objection which the
“King of the Peak” is averred to have had to his daughter’s marriage
with John Manners, whose father was of high descent, and died, covered
with honours, in 1543, having had a royal augmentation granted to his
arms, by reason of his descent from Anne Plantagenet, sister of Edward
IV. It may, indeed, be that Sir George had planned some great alliance
for his daughter, and was ill content with a younger son, or perhaps
differences of religion were at the root of his objection, or, we may
suppose again, that some personal antipathy, of which there is no
record, was felt by the knight to his daughter’s lover. However this
may be, tradition tells us that the attachment was a secret one, or, at
least, that the meeting of Manners and Dorothy Vernon was under her
father’s ban. Legend has grown up about the episodes, and it is related
that Manners lingered in the woods of Haddon disguised as a forester or
a hunter, gaining speech at times with the lady, and watching the light
in her window. As to the actual circumstances of the elopement--if
elopement there was, which seems probable--we have tradition alone to
guide us. It is said that, on the occasion of certain festivities at
the Hall--held, as some aver, in honour of the marriage of her elder
sister--Dorothy stole away from the gay scene, ran down to the terrace
by the steps from the anteroom which now bear her name, and joined
her lover, who had horses waiting near. The pair then mounted, and
galloped, as the story goes, all through the night, until they reached
Aylston, in Leicestershire, where they were married on the morrow.
The memory of Dorothy Vernon will linger long about the tapestried
chambers and sweet-scented gardens of Haddon, and whatever there may be
of truth or falsehood in the story of her elopement, the visitor who
passes down the steps and walks beneath the low-hanging boughs of the
yew-trees on the terrace, or is shadowed by the limes and sycamores in
Dorothy Vernon’s Walk, where the banks are carpeted with flowers in
the spring-time, will do well to cherish this legendary history, which
has given an unfailing charm to Haddon. In Bakewell Church, moreover,
where both Dorothy and her husband lie buried, he may see her kneeling
effigy, and, if her features should strike him as homely, and somewhat
unattractive withal, he will bethink him what profound depths of
feeling, and what strange capacities for romance, exist unsuspected in
the life of every day. It will be of interest here to record the fact
that, in the year 1841, when the church of Bakewell was being restored,
excavations were made on the site of the monument of John Manners
and his wife, and remains believed to be theirs were found in wooden
coffins. “The head of the female,” we read, “was still covered with
hair, cut short on the forehead, but long behind, extremely friable,
remarkably soft, and of a beautiful auburn colour, and in it were found
six brass pins.” The wife of John Manners died on Midsummer Day, 1584,
but her husband survived many years, and died on the 4th of June, 1611.
He continued to reside at Haddon, and showed no lack of interest in
the great house that had become his own. There can be no reasonable
doubt that the Long Gallery was built by him, and thus one of the
chief beauties of the Hall is attributed to its first possessor of the
Manners’ name. Both within and without, the three great bays relieve it
from all monotony, and the first impression on entering it is of its
grandeur and dignity. The Long Gallery or Ball-Room was a customary
feature in great houses of Tudor and Stuart times, and may yet be seen
in many places--as, for example, in very stately form at Belvoir, and
characteristically at Astley Hall, in Lancashire, but nowhere more
attractively than at Haddon. There its length is more than one hundred
and nine feet, its width eighteen feet, and its height fifteen feet.
The heavy steps of solid oak by which it is entered, and the whole
flooring of the room are said to have been cut from one gigantic oak
which grew in the woods. The wainscot is divided by fluted pilasters
into panels, which have arched tops, and, above, the boar’s-head crest
of the Vernons, and the Manners’ peacock, with roses and thistles,
are alternated. In the windows also there is blazonry of the arms of
Rutland and Shrewsbury, with the royal shield of England; and over the
mantel hangs a very remarkable picture, representing Thomyris, Queen of
the Massagetae, victorious over Cyrus, whose head is being presented to
her.
The subsequent relation of the Manners family with Haddon Hall need
not occupy us very long, for the building itself was completed, and
the addition of the terraces and some features of the gardens left it
as we see it now, save that its chambers were not yet bare. John, the
eighth Earl, who lived at Belvoir and Haddon alternately, espoused
the cause of the Parliament, and took the Solemn League and Covenant.
Belvoir Castle was captured by the Royalists, and suffered sadly in the
subsequent troubles, the Earl meanwhile living mostly at Haddon, where
his magnificence, it would seem, rivalled that of the “King of the
Peak.” He shared in the Restoration; and, as we read in Lysons, between
1660 and 1670, although the family were then living mostly at Belvoir,
there was a prodigious consumption of beeves and sheep at Haddon, and
particularly that an open Christmas was held there in 1663, when, as
appears by the bailiff’s charges, outlay was made for much work in the
kitchen, and for pipers and dancers to make the guests merry withal.
John, the ninth Earl, was created Marquis of Granby and Duke of Rutland
by Queen Anne, and was succeeded, upon his death at Belvoir in 1711,
by his son John, the second Duke, who died in 1721, and he again by
his son, also named John, the third Duke, who lived occasionally at
Haddon. It was, however, during his lifetime that the family finally
quitted their ancient home by the Wye, and the Hall was dismantled
about the year 1740. Yet, ever since that time, the successive Dukes
of Rutland have safeguarded the venerable edifice, and, without
attempting restoration, by structural supports and careful watching,
have preserved it from decay. It is to them that the public owe the
inestimable privilege of being allowed to linger within the time-worn
walls and chambers, which, besides being of abounding interest in
themselves, awaken so many delightful memories of history and romance.
When the Hall ceased to be a place of residence not all its adornments
were removed. The tapestry deserves special attention, there being, in
several of the rooms, some fine remains of Gobelins and other work.
The graceful drawing-room is partially hung with it, as was customary,
in such manner as to conceal the entrance to the Earl’s dressing-room,
and there are curious iron hooks for holding it back. The Earl’s
bedroom itself is tapestried with representations of the chase. One
of the rooms in the western range, as well as several small chambers
on the north side, including Dorothy Vernon’s room, and others not
usually shown to visitors, contain much good work of Flemish and French
manufacture. In addition to the large picture in the Long Gallery, and
the portraits in the dining-room which have been alluded to, there are
many paintings in various parts of the house. A number of them are
in the anteroom leading from the Long Gallery, including portraits
of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I. There is a portrait, also, in the
drawing-room, of the sixth Earl of Rutland, who died in 1632, and
several of less importance are in the great hall. Many of the pictures
are Italian, and little seems to be known about them; but they are
thought to have been brought or sent to England by Sir Oliver Manners,
a younger brother of Dorothy’s husband.
The visitor to Haddon will notice some other objects of curiosity and
interest, and he will do well not to hurry through the vacant rooms,
for, if the plan of the house be understood, and something of the
several dates of its erection, very much may be learned of the ways,
manners, and surroundings of mediæval and Tudor gentlemen. Then,
passing down through the pleasant gardens, and recrossing the River
Wye, the stranger will look back gratefully upon the grey towers,
lighted perchance by the setting sun, and will bear away with him an
impression of beauty, grandeur, and romance which surely will never
fade.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO, ITALY.]
CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
While treating of Palermo, we are bound to think again of the Emperor
who inherited from his German father the ambition of the Hohenstauffens
and from his Norman mother the fair fields and Oriental traditions
of Sicily. The strange history of Frederick--an intellect of the
Eighteenth Century born out of date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the
age of Saint Louis, the Crusader who conversed with Moslem sages
on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera who
presented Paterini while he respected the superstition of Saracens,
the anointed successor of Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him
to the battle-fields of Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the
provinces of Christ’s Vicar--would be inexplicable, were it not that
Palermo still reveals in all her monuments the _genius loci_
which gave spiritual nurture to this phœnix among kings. From his
Mussulman teachers Frederick derived the philosophy to which he gave
a vogue in Europe. From his Arabian predecessors he learned the arts
of internal administration and finance, which he transmitted to the
princes of Italy. In imitation of Oriental courts, he adopted the
practice of verse composition, which gave the first impulse to Italian
literature. His Grand Vizier, Piero Delle Vigne, set an example to
Petrarch, not only by composing the first sonnet in Italian, but also
by showing to what height a low-born secretary versed in art and law
might rise. In a word, the zeal for liberal studies, the luxury of
life, the religious indifferentism, the bureaucratic system of state
government, which mark the age of the Italian Renaissance, found their
first manifestation within the bosom of the Middle Ages in Frederick.
While our King John was signing the Magna Charta, Frederick had already
lived long enough to comprehend, at least in outline, what is meant by
the spirit of modern culture. It is true that the so-called Renaissance
followed slowly and by tortuous paths upon the death of Frederick. The
Church obtained a complete victory over his family, and succeeded in
extinguishing the civilization of Sicily. Yet the fame of the Emperor
who transmitted questions of sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who
conversed familiarly with men of letters, who loved splendour and
understood the arts of refined living, survived both long and late
in Italy. His power, his wealth, his liberality of soul and lofty
aspirations, formed the theme of many a tale and poem. Dante places
him in hell among the heresiarchs; and truly the splendour of his
supposed infidelity found for him a goodly following. Yet Dante dates
the rise of Italian literature from the blooming period of the Sicilian
Court. Frederick’s unorthodoxy proved no drawback to his intellectual
influence. More than any other man of mediæval times he contributed,
if only as the memory of a mighty name, to the progress of civilized
humanity.
Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo, that centre of
converging influences, which was his cradle, in the cathedral where he
lies gathered to his fathers. This church, though its rich sun-browned
yellow[7] reminds one of the tone of Spanish buildings, is like nothing
one has seen elsewhere. Here even more than at Monreale, the eye is
struck with a fusion of styles. The western towers are grouped into
something like the clustered sheafs of the Caen churches: the windows
present Saracenic arches; the southern porch is covered with foliated
incrustations of a late and decorative Gothic style; the exterior of
the apse combines Arabic inlaid patterns of black and yellow with the
Greek honeysuckle; the western door adds Norman dog-tooth and chevron
to the Saracenic billet. Nowhere is any one tradition firmly followed.
The whole wavers and yet is beautiful--like the immature eclecticism
of the culture which Frederick himself endeavoured to establish in
his southern kingdoms. Inside there is no such harmony of blended
voices: all the strange tongues, which speak together on the outside,
making up a music in which the far North, and ancient Byzance, and the
delicate East sound each a note, are hushed. The frigid silence of the
Palladian style reigns there--simple indeed and dignified, but lifeless
as the century in which it flourished. Yet there, in a side chapel
near the western door, stand the porphyry sarcophagi which shrine the
bones of the Hautevilles and their representatives. There sleeps King
Roger--“_Dux Strenuus et primus Rex Siciliæ_”--with his daughter
Constance in her purple chest beside him. Henry VI. and Frederick
II. and Constance of Aragon complete the group, which surpasses for
interest all sepulchral monuments--even the tombs of the Scaligers at
Verona--except only, perhaps, the statues of the nave of Innsprück.
Very sombre and stately are these porphyry resting-places of princes
born in the purple, assembled here from lands so distant--from the
craggy heights of Hohenstauffen, from the green orchards of Cotentin,
from the dry hills of Aragon. They sleep, and the centuries pass by.
Rude hands break open the granite lids of their sepulchres, to find
tresses of yellow hair and fragments of imperial mantles, embroidered
with the hawks and stags the royal hunter loved. The church in which
they lie, changes with the change of taste in architecture and the
manners of successive ages. But the huge stone arks remain unmoved,
guarding their freight of mouldering dust beneath gloomy canopies of
stone, that temper the sunlight as it streams from the chapel windows.
[Illustration: FORTRESS AND PALACE OF GWALIOR, INDIA.]
THE FORTRESS AND PALACE OF GWALIOR
LOUIS ROUSSELET
The ancient city of Gwalior, which must not be confounded with the
modern town of that name, nor with the Mahratta camp of the Scindias,
is situated on the summit of a steep and isolated rock, 342 feet in
height at the north end, where it is highest, and a mile and a half
in length; its greatest breadth is 300 yards. Its position and the
exterior appearance of its fortifications, behind which rise numerous
monuments, remind one of Chittore, the famous capital of Meywar.
This rock, which is a block of basalt topped with sandstone, stands
like a sentinel at the entrance of a valley; and above the slopes at
its foot rise pointed cliffs, forming natural ramparts, on which are
built the fortifications of the town.
Tradition places the date of the founding of Gwalior several centuries
before the Christian era. The attention of the Aryan colonists from the
valley of the Chumbul probably was early attracted by the admirable
position of this rock. The first to establish themselves here were no
doubt the Anchorites, who were sent forth in such numbers by the Indian
schools of philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries before
the Christian era, as is attested by the numerous caverns, formed by
man, in the sides of the rock. In 773, Rajah Sourya Sena completed
a system of defence round the plateau by constructing ramparts. The
Kâchwas held the fortress until the reign of Tej Pal Doula, who, upon
being expelled by the Chohans in 967, founded the dynasty of Ambîr.
Sultan Shahab Oudin’s generalissimo, Koutub Eibeck, took it from the
Chohans in 1196; and thirty-eight years later it was again taken by
the Emperor Altamsh after a long siege. In 1410, the Touar Rajpoots
got possession of it, and held it until 1519, when it was finally
attached to the crown of Delhi by Ibrahim Lodi. At the dismemberment
of the Mogul Empire, it fell alternately into the hands of the Jâts
and Mahrattas. In 1779, it was garrisoned by Scindia, from whom it was
taken by a British force under Major Popham, and it was again made over
to Scindia by the treaty of 1805.
But the vicissitudes of the ancient fortress did not end here. In
1857, the Maharajah Scindia having refused to countenance the revolt,
the rebels, under the command of one of Nana Sahib’s captains, took
the place; but General Sir Hugh Rose dislodged them by planting
his batteries on the surrounding heights, and, for the purpose of
protecting the young king from his rebellious subjects, the English
kept possession of the plateau.
The present town of Gwalior extends to the north and east of the
fortress, being hemmed in between the rock and the river Sawunrika.
It was a large and handsome settlement, containing thirty or forty
thousand inhabitants; but the founding of a new capital by the
Scindias, at a distance of about two miles was a death-blow to its
grandeur, the higher branches of trade and the nobility having followed
the Court to Lashkar. The architecture of its stone houses is, for the
most part, handsome; but the streets are narrow and crooked. It is
probable that at one time there was a large suburb round the foot of
the ascent leading to the fortress, but it was not until the Sixteenth
Century that the town assumed its present proportions. There are
no monuments to be found of an earlier date; and the two worthy of
remark are the Jummah Musjid, a handsome mosque, flanked by two lofty
minarets, and the Hatti Durwaza, or “Gate of the Elephants,” a curious
triumphal arch, situated on a mound at the entrance to the town.
The bazaars of Gwalior contain several manufactures peculiar to the
place, such as silken fabrics, embroidered in gold, for turbans;
_saris_, or cotton scarfs for women, and curious stuffs in the
most brilliant colours. A very fair trade is carried on in these
articles.
Two flights of steps, one on the east and the other on the west, lead
up to the fortress; of which that on the east is a notable achievement,
since it had to be cut out of the solid rock. It is the more ancient of
the two; and, although on a very steep incline, it is practicable for
horses and elephants.
In order to reach this elevation, you must traverse the whole length
of the lower town; and the entrance to it is guarded by an embattled
fortification and guard-houses. Hidden among the trees, at a short
distance, stands a large palace, the exterior of which is ornamented
with bright blue enamel. Five monumental gates, placed at intervals,
and still armed with portcullis and heavy iron doors, guard the access
to the fortress. From the first, which is a splendid triumphal arch
with a Saracenic archway, and surmounted by a tier of small columns,
commences the causeway, which, although wide and well kept, is a long
and fatiguing ascent; and thence also commences a series of monuments,
bas-reliefs, caverns, and cisterns, forming a natural museum of great
interest to the archæologist. Even the rocks which overhang the road
merit his attention, for they contain numerous chambers, altars and
statues, which are reached by narrow paths, requiring a steady head and
a sure and practised foot.
Between the third and fourth gate are some huge tanks, excavated out
of the solid rock, and fed by springs. The capitals of the pillars
which support the ceiling appear above the water, and one can scarcely
distinguish the bottom in the obscurity. Near these tanks the surface
of the rock, which has been made smooth and even, is covered with
numerous bas-reliefs; one of the largest of which, representing an
elephant and rider, still is easily distinguishable in spite of
considerable mutilation; and further on is a head of Siva.
Opposite the fourth gate is a small monolith of great antiquity,
supposed to date from the Fifteenth Century. It is a temple cut out of
a single block of stone, and consists of a small square room, entered
by a peristyle and crowned with a pyramidal spire. The upper portion
of the latter, having been destroyed, has been replaced by a small
dome in stonework; and a few sculptures surround the entrance to the
sanctuary and the altar.
On the summit of the hill stands King Pal, which springs from the
very brink of the precipice. It is supported by six towers, and
pierced by only a few large windows ornamented with balconies and
pilasters. Sculptured bands, Jaïn arches, and indented cordons relieve
the monotony of the massive exterior, and give it a peculiarly light
and graceful appearance. The spaces between the Jaïn arches of the
gallery are filled in and covered with mosaics in enamelled bricks,
representing palm-trees on a blue ground; and each tower is surmounted
by a lantern with a double row of columns. It is difficult to imagine a
grander or more harmonious effect than that produced by this gigantic
edifice, combining rampart and palace in one.
At the south angle of the palace is a gateway, which gives access to
the interior of the fortress, and through which you enter a narrow
street that overlooks the lateral frontage of the palace. This is built
on the same plan as the exterior, but here the stone is completely
hidden by enamel. Bands of mosaics, representing candelabra, Brahma
ducks, elephants and peacocks in blue, rose-colour, green and gold,
give this immense blank wall an incomparably beautiful appearance. The
bricks of which these mosaics are composed still retain their primitive
brilliancy of colour and delicacy of shading, though ten centuries have
passed over them. I know of no country in the world where an architect
has succeeded so well in giving a graceful appearance to a heavy blank
wall.
The exact date of the construction of these facings is unknown, though
it is certain that they were the work of a Rajpoot prince of the name
of Pal; but, as several Chandela and Kâchwa chiefs bore this name, it
is difficult to fix the date more precisely than between the Eighth and
Ninth Centuries.
The palace of the kings of Gwalior covers an immense area on the
east of the plateau; but it was not the work of a single prince; the
most ancient portions of it date back to the Sixteenth Century. Each
dynasty enlarged the mass of buildings, and the Moguls themselves made
considerable additions to it. The interior of the Palace of Pal is
extremely simple in style. The various stories, which you enter through
rows of square pillars, overlook the large paved courts; and the rooms
are low with flat ceilings.
Among these ruins a portion of the ancient palace of the Vaïshnava
kings may still be seen. The thick walls, pierced with triangular
openings, are somewhat in the same style as the corridors of the
Mexican temples. It is to be regretted that so much of this part of the
Palace has already been destroyed.
The northern extremity of the plateau, which gradually becomes narrower
and narrower, was entirely covered by the palaces of the Emperors Akbar
and Jehanghir; but you do not find here the magnificent buildings
of Agra or of Delhi. It is evident that these were mere provincial
residences. There are nevertheless, a graceful dewani-khas and a small
zenanah, containing some fine galleries.
[Illustration: THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO, ITALY.]
THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
On the slope of the eastern Apennines, overlooking the Adriatic gulf,
stands what may be called (according to the belief of the Roman
Catholic Church) the European Nazareth. Fortified as if by the bastions
of a huge castle, against the approach of Saracenic pirates, a vast
church, even now gorgeous with the offerings of the faithful, contains
the “Santa Casa,” the “Holy House,” in which the Virgin lived, and (as
is attested by the same inscription as that at Nazareth) received the
Angel Gabriel. Every one knows the story of the House of Loretto. The
devotion of one-half the world, and the ridicule of the other half,
has made us all acquainted with the strange story, written in all the
languages[8] of Europe round the walls of that remarkable sanctuary:
how the house of Nazareth was, in the close of the Thirteenth Century,
conveyed by angels, first to the heights above Fiume, at the head
of the Adriatic gulf, then to the plain and lastly to the hill, of
Loretto. But this “wondrous flitting” of the Holy House is not the
feature in its history which is most present to the pilgrims who
frequent it. It is regarded by them simply as an actual fragment of
the Holy Land, sacred as the very spot on which the mystery of the
Incarnation was announced and begun. In proportion to the sincerity
and extent of this belief is the veneration which attaches to what is
undoubtedly the most frequented sanctuary of Christendom. The devotion
of pilgrims even on week-days exceeds anything that is seen at any
of the holy places in Palestine, if we except the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre at Easter.
Before the dawn of day the worship begins. Whilst it is yet dark, the
doors are opened--a few lights round the sacred spot break the gloom,
and disclose the kneeling Capuchins, who have been here throughout the
night. Two soldiers, sword in hand, take their place by the entrance of
the “House,” to guard against all injury. One of the hundred priests
who are in daily attendance immediately begins mass at the high altar
of the church, the first of a hundred and twenty that are repeated
daily within its precincts. The “Santa Casa” itself is then opened and
lighted, the pilgrims flock in; and, from that hour till sunset, come
and go in a perpetual stream. The “House” is thronged with kneeling
or prostrate figures, the pavement round it is deeply worn with the
passage of pilgrims, who, from the humblest peasant of the Abruzzi
up to the King of Naples, crawl round it on their knees; the nave is
filled with the bands of worshippers, who, having visited the sacred
spot, are retiring backwards from it, as from some royal presence.
On the “Santa Casa” alone depends the sacredness of the whole locality
in which it stands. Loretto--whether the name is derived from the
sacred grove (Lauretum) or the lady (Loreta) under whose shelter the
house is believed to have descended--had no existence before the rise
of this extraordinary sanctuary. The long street with its venders of
rosaries, the palace of the governor, the strong walls built by Pope
Sixtus IV., are all mere appendages to the humble edifice which stands
within the Church. The “Santa Casa” is spoken of by them as a living
person, a corporation sole on which the whole city depends, to which
the whole property far and near over the rich plain which lies spread
beneath it belongs forever.
No one who has ever witnessed the devotion of the Italian people on
this singular spot, can wish to speak lightly of the feelings which
it inspires. But a dispassionate statement of the real facts of the
case may not be without use. Into the general question of the story
we need not enter here. It has been ably proved elsewhere,[9] first,
that of all the pilgrims who record their visit to Nazareth from the
Fourth to the Sixteenth Century, not one alludes to any house of Joseph
as standing there, or as having stood there, within human memory or
record; secondly, that the records of Italy contain no mention of the
House till the Fifteenth Century; thirdly, that the representation of
the story as it now stands, with the double or triple transplantation
of the sanctuary, occurs first in a bull of Leo X., in the year 1518.
But it is the object of these remarks simply to confront the House as
it stands at Loretto with the House as it appears at Nazareth. It has
been already said that each professes to contain the exact spot of
the Angelic visitation, to be the scene of a single event which can
only have happened in one; each claims to be the very House of the
Annunciation, and bases its claim to sanctity on that especial ground.
But this is not all: even should either consent to surrender something
of this peculiar sacredness, yet no one can visit both sanctuaries
without perceiving that by no possibility can one be amalgamated with
the other. The House of Loretto is an edifice of thirty-six feet by
seventeen; its walls, though externally cased in marble, can be seen
in their original state from the inside, and these appear to be of a
dark red polished stone. The west wall has one square window, through
which it is said the Angel flew; the east wall contains a rude chimney,
in front of which is a mass of cemented stone, said to be the altar
on which St. Peter said mass, when the Apostles, after the Ascension,
turned the house into a church. On the north side is (or rather was) a
door, now walled up. The monks of Loretto and of Nazareth have but a
dim knowledge of the sacred localities of each other. Still, the monks
of Nazareth could not be altogether ignorant of the mighty sanctuary
which, under the highest authorities of their Church, professes to have
once rested on the ground they now occupy. They show, therefore, to any
traveller who takes the pains to inquire, the space on which the Holy
House stood before its flight. That space is a vestibule immediately
in front of the sacred grotto; and an attempt is made to unite the
two localities by supposing that there were openings from the house
into the grotto. Without laying any stress on the obvious variation
of measurements, the position of the grotto is, and must always have
been incompatible with any such adjacent building as that at Loretto.
Whichever way the house is supposed to abut on the rock, it is obvious
that such a house as has been described, would have closed up, with
blank walls, the very passages by which alone the communication could
be effected. And it may be added, that there is no traditional masonry
of the “Santa Casa” left at Nazareth, there is the traditional masonry
close by of the so-called workshop of Joseph of an entirely different
character. Whilst the former is of a kind wholly unlike anything in
Palestine, the latter is, as might be expected, of the natural grey
limestone of the country, of which in all times, no doubt, the houses
of Nazareth were built.
It may have seemed superfluous labour to have attempted any detailed
refutation of the most incredible of Ecclesiastical legends. But
Loretto is so emphatically the “Holy Place” of one large branch of
Christendom--its claim has been so strongly maintained by French and
Italian writers of our own times--and is, moreover, so deeply connected
with the alleged authority of the Papal See--that an interest attaches
to it far beyond its intrinsic importance. No facts are insignificant
which bring to an issue the general value of local religion--or the
assumption of any particular Church to direct the conscience of the
world--or the amount of liberty within such a Church left on questions
which concern the faith and practice of thousands of its members.
But the legend is also curious as an illustration of the history of
“Holy Places” generally. It is difficult to say how it originated--or
what led to the special selection of the Adriatic gulf as the scene
of such a fable; yet, generally speaking, the explanation is easy and
instructive. Nazareth was taken by Sultan Khalil in 1291, when he
stormed the last refuge of the Crusaders in the neighbouring city of
Acre. From that time, not Nazareth only, but the whole of Palestine,
was closed to the devotions of Europe. The Crusaders were expelled
from Asia, and in Europe the spirit of the Crusades was extinct. But
the natural longing to see the scenes of the events of the Sacred
History--the superstitious craving to win for prayer the favour of
consecrated localities--did not expire with the Crusades. Can we
wonder that, under such circumstances, there should have arisen the
feeling, the desire, the belief, that if Mahomet could not go to the
mountain, the mountain must come to Mahomet? The House of Loretto is
the petrifaction, so to speak, of the “Last Sigh of the Crusades”;
suggested possibly by the Holy House of St. Francis at Assisi, then
first acquiring its European celebrity. It is indeed not a matter of
conjecture that in Italy--the country where the passionate temperament
of the people would most need such stimulants--persons in this state
of mind did actually endeavour, so far as circumstances permitted,
to reproduce the scenes of Palestine within their own immediate
neighbourhood. One such is the Campo Santo of Pisa--“the Holy Field,”
as this is “the Holy House”--literally a cargo of sacred earth from
the Valley of Hinnom, carried, as is well known, not on the wings of
angels, but in the ships of the Pisan Crusaders. Another example is
the remarkable Church of St. Stephen’s at Bologna, within whose walls
are crowded together various chapels and courts, representing not
only, as in the actual Church of the Sepulchre, the several scenes
of the Crucifixion, but the Trial and Passion also; and which is
entitled, in a long inscription affixed to its cloister, the “Sancta
Sanctorum”; nay, literally, “the _Jerusalem_” of Italy. A third
still more curious instance may be seen at Varallo, in the kingdom of
Piedmont. Bernardino Caimo, returning from a pilgrimage to Palestine
at the close of the Fifteenth Century, resolved to select the spot in
Lombardy most resembling the Holy Land, in order to give his countrymen
the advantage of praying at the Holy Place without undergoing the
privations which he had suffered himself. Accordingly, in one of
the beautiful valleys leading down from the roots of Monte Rosa, he
chose (it must be confessed that the resemblance is of the slightest
kind) three hills, which should represent respectively Tabor, Olivet,
and Calvary; and two mountain-streams, which should in like manner
personate the Kedron and Jordan. Of these the central hill, Calvary,
became the “Holy Place” of Lombardy. It was frequented by S. Carlo
Barromeo; under his auspices the whole mountain was studded with
chapels, in which the scenes of the Passion are represented in waxen
figures of the size of life; and the whole country round now sends its
peasants by thousands as pilgrims to the sacred spot. We have only to
suppose these feelings existing as they naturally would exist in a more
fervid state two centuries earlier, when the loss of Palestine was more
keenly felt--when the capture of Nazareth especially was fresh in every
one’s mind--and we can easily imagine that the same tendency, which by
deliberate purpose produced a second Jerusalem at Bologna and a second
Palestine at Varallo, would, on the secluded shores of the Adriatic,
by some peasant’s dream, or the return of some Croatian chief from the
last Crusade, or the story of some Eastern voyager landing on their
coasts, produce a second Nazareth at Fiume and Loretto. What, in a more
poetical and ignorant age was in the case of the Holy House ascribed to
the hands of angels, was actually intended by Sixtus V. to have been
literally accomplished in the case of the Holy Sepulchre by a treaty
with the Sublime Porte for transferring it bodily to Rome, so that
Italy might then have the glory of possessing the actual sites of the
conception, the birth, and the burial of our Saviour.
THE ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE
EDMUNDO DE AMICIS
The Alcazar, an old palace of the Moorish kings, is one of the best
preserved buildings in Spain. From the outside, it looks like a
fortress, as it is completely surrounded by high walls, battlemented
towers and old houses, which structures form two spacious courts in
front of the façade. Like the other parts of this building, the façade
is plain and severe. The door is ornamented with arabesques that are
painted and gilded, and there is also a Gothic inscription recording
the time when the Alcazar was restored by the order of the king Don
Pedro.
In fact, although the Alcazar is an Arabian palace, it is the work of
Christian rather than Arabian monarchs. The date that it was begun is
not known, but it was rebuilt towards the end of the Twelfth Century by
King Abdelasio. King Ferdinand took possession of it about the middle
of the Thirteenth Century; it was altered again by Don Pedro in the
next century, since when it was inhabited by nearly all the kings of
Castile. Finally it was chosen by Charles V. for the celebration of his
marriage with the Infanta of Portugal.
The Alcazar has witnessed the loves and crimes of three races of
kings, and every one of its stones awakens some memory or holds some
secret. After entering, you cross two or three rooms, in which there
is nothing Arabian left except the ceiling and some mosaics upon the
walls, and find yourself in a court that strikes you dumb with wonder.
A gallery composed of elegant arches supported by small marble columns
arranged in pairs runs along the four sides. The arches, walls, windows
and doors are covered with mosaics, carvings and arabesques. The latter
are delicate and intricate, in some places perforated like a veil, in
others thick and close as woven carpets and elsewhere again hanging and
jutting out like garlands and bunches of flowers. With the exception
of the brilliantly coloured decorations everything is as white, clean
and glistening as ivory. Four large doors, one in each side, lead into
the royal rooms. Here you no longer wonder; you are enchanted. Every
thing that the most ardent fancy could imagine in the way of wealth and
splendour is to be found in these rooms. From the ceiling to the floor,
around the doors, around the windows in the distant recesses, wherever
the eye may please to wander, such a multitude of gold ornaments and
precious stones, such a close network of arabesques and inscriptions,
such a marvellous blending of designs and colours appear that, before
you have gone twenty steps, you are overpowered and confused, and you
glance here and there as if trying to find a piece of bare wall upon
which to rest your eye.
[Illustration: THE ALCAZAR OF SEVILLE, SPAIN.]
In one of the rooms, the custodian pointed out a reddish spot upon the
marble pavement, and said very solemnly:
This is the stain caused by the blood of Don Fadrique, Grand Master of
the Order of Santiago, who was killed here in the year 1358, by the
order of the King Don Pedro, his brother.
When I heard this, I remember looking at the custodian as if to say:
“Let us move on,” and the good man answered dryly:
“Caballero, if I were to tell you to believe this on my word you would
be perfectly right to doubt it; but when you see the thing with your
own eyes, it seems to me--I may be mistaken,--but----”
“Yes,” I hastily replied, “yes it is blood, I have no doubt of it; but
don’t let us talk about it any more.”
Even if you are able to joke about a spot of blood, you cannot do so
about the story of the crime. The place awoke in my mind all the most
horrible facts. I seemed to hear Don Fadrique’s step echoing through
these gilded rooms, as he was being pursued by the soldiers armed with
clubs. The palace is shrouded in darkness; no noises are heard but
those of the executioners and their victim. Don Fadrique tries to enter
the court. Lopez de Padilla seizes him and he breaks away. Now he is in
the court; he grasps his sword; he utters maledictions upon it for the
cross of the hilt is entangled in the mantle of the Order of Santiago.
Now the archers arrive; he cannot draw it from its sheath; he flies
hither and thither as best he may. Fernandez de Roa overtakes him and
fells him with a blow from his mace; the others approach and wound him
and he expires in a pool of blood.
This sad memory soon vanishes amidst the thousand fancies of the
delicious life of the Moorish kings. These lovely little windows at
which the dreamy face of an Odalisk ought to appear at any moment;
these secret doors before which you pause, despite yourself, as if
you heard the rustling of a dress; these sleeping-rooms of princes
enveloped in a mysterious gloom, where you fancy you hear the sighing
of girls who lost in them their virginal purity; and the prodigious
variety of colours and friezes resembling an ever-changing symphony
excite your senses to such a degree that you are like one in a dream.
The delicate and very light architecture, the little columns (which
suggest the arms of a woman), the capricious arches, and the ceilings
covered with ornaments that hang in the form of stalactites, icicles,
and bunches of grapes,--all rouse in you the desire to seat yourself in
the centre of one of these rooms, pressing to your heart a beautiful
dark Andalusian head which will make you forget the world and lose all
sense of time, and with one long kiss that drinks away your life, put
you to sleep forever.
The most beautiful room on the ground floor is that of the ambassadors,
formed by four great arches supporting a gallery of forty-four smaller
arches, and above, a lovely cupola which is sculptured, painted and
ornamented with an inimitable grace and a fabulous magnificence. On the
next floor which contained the winter apartments, nothing remains but
an oratory of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, and a small room
which is said to be the one where the King Don Pedro slept. You descend
from here, by a narrow, mysterious staircase, into the rooms inhabited
by the famous Maria di Padilla, a favourite of Don Pedro, whom popular
tradition accuses of having instigated Don Pedro to the murder of his
brother.
The gardens of the Alcazar are not large, nor extraordinarily
beautiful; but the fancies that they engender are more precious than
size or beauty. Beneath the shade of those oranges and cypresses, near
the soft sound of those fountains when a great brilliant moon shone
in the clear Andalusian sky and the host of courtiers and slaves lay
down to rest, how many sighs of lovelorn sultanas were heard! how many
humble words of proud kings! what mighty loves and embraces!
“Itimad! my love!” I murmured, thinking of the famous favourite of King
Al-Motamid, as I roamed from path to path as if following her spirit:
“Itimad! Do not leave me alone in this quiet paradise! Stop! Give me
one hour of delight to-night. Don’t you remember? You came to me and
your lovely locks fell over my shoulders like a mantle; and as the
warrior seizes his sword, I seized your neck, softer and whiter than
a swan’s! How beautiful you were! How my parched heart satisfied its
thirst on thy blood-coloured lips. Your beautiful body issued from your
splendidly embroidered robe like a gleaming blade from its scabbard;
and then I pressed with both hands your large hips and slender waist
in all the perfection of their beauty. How dear you are, Itimad! Your
kiss is as sweet as wine, and your glance, like wine, makes me lose my
reason!”
While I was uttering this declaration of love in the phrases and
imagery of the Arabian poets, I entered a pathway bordered with flowers
and suddenly felt a jet of water on my legs; I jumped back and had a
dash of it in my face; I turned to the right, and felt a spray on my
neck; turning to the left, I got another on the nape of my neck; then
I began to run and there was water under me, over me, and all around
me, in jets, sprays, and showers, so that in a moment I was as wet
as if I had been plunged in a tub. Just at the moment I was about to
shout I heard a loud laugh at the end of the garden, and, turning, I
saw a young man leaning against the wall and looking at me, as if to
say: “Did you enjoy it?” Then he showed me the spring he had touched in
order to play the trick and comforted me by saying that the Seville sun
would not leave me long in that wet condition, into which I had passed
so brusquely, ah me! from the amorous arms of my sultana.
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF BELEM, PORTUGAL.]
THE TOWER OF BELEM
ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN
The place where Vasco da Gama spent the night before starting on his
voyage of discovery, and where he was received by Emmanuel I., on his
triumphant return in 1499, was called Bairro de Restello, and here
stood a small _Ermida_, or hermitage, which had been founded for
the use of navigators by the great pioneer of maritime discovery,
Prince Henry the Navigator.
Osorio, Bishop of Sylves, thus describes the embarcation of the
successful expedition which Belem specially commemorates: There was a
chapel by the seaside, about four miles from Lisbon, built by Emmanuel
in honour of the Virgin Mary; thither Gama resorted the day before he
went aboard, and spent the whole night in offering up prayers, and
performing other religious duties. Next day he was followed by vast
crowds of people to take leave of him and the rest who embarked in the
expedition. Not only those in holy orders, but all present, with one
voice put up their petitions to the Almighty that he would grant them
a prosperous voyage and a safe return. Many of those who came to see
them aboard were deeply concerned, and expressed their sorrow as if
they had come to the funeral of their friends. “Behold,” said they,
“the cursed effects of avarice and ambition! What greater punishment
could be devised for these men, if guilty of the blackest crimes? To be
thrown upon the merciless ocean, to encounter all the dangers of such
a voyage, and venture their lives in a thousand shapes. Would it not
be more eligible to suffer death at home than be buried in the deep
at such a distance from their native country? These, and many other
things did their fears suggest. But Gama, though he shed some tears
at departure from his friends, was full of hope, and went aboard with
great alacrity. He sailed on the 9th of July, 1497. Those who stood on
the shore followed the ships with their eyes; nor did they move from
thence till the fleet was under full sail, and quite out of sight.”
A few weeks after the return of Vasco da Gama, the foundation-stone
of the edifice was laid by the thankful monarch. Boutaca, who was
responsible for some of the work at Setubal, supplied the general
design, and its details were worked out by the famous Joao de Castilho,
who assumed the superintendence of the work in 1517. John III.
discontinued the work in 1551, and it is still incomplete. The first
stone was laid in 1500 by the Fortunate King with great ceremony, and
the construction progressed very rapidly. The limestone of which the
buildings were constructed was procured from the Alcantara valley in
the vicinity, and lends itself readily to exquisite carving. Originally
white when it came from the quarry, it has now mellowed into tints of
rich brown, and it is very durable.
The architectural style of the building is what is called the _Arte
Manoelina_, called after the king, Emmanuel I., the Fortunate,
(1495–1521) under whose reign it flourished. It is a transitional
style, or rather a luxuriant medley of Gothic, Renaissance and
Mauresque. Its wealth of detail often borders on the extravagant and
fantastic, but its interest cannot be denied. Belem has been said to be
the last struggle between Christian and Pagan art in Portugal, and it
shows the scars of both in its excessive ornamentation. Its barbaric
splendour of enriched stonework cannot fail to fascinate the art-lover,
though it is inferior even in these characteristics to the beautiful
_Capella Imperfeita_ at Batalha.
There is a strange story told of the building of the church of
Belem. The architect had made some miscalculation, so that when the
scaffolding of the nave was removed, the vaulted roof fell, killing
a number of the workmen. When the damage was repaired, the architect
was so nervous that he fled to France. The king consequently gave
orders for the removal of the scaffolding by criminals under sentence
of death, with a promise of pardon in case they escaped death. It is
related that the walls and roof stood the strain this time, and the
criminals received the timbers of the scaffolding as perquisites, used
them in building houses for themselves, and later became pillars of
society. When the architect heard that his plans were justified, he
returned and was rewarded for his work with a pension. He also was
honoured by having his bust carved on one of the pillars.
The entire building is erected on a foundation of pine piles, and
suffered scarcely any damage in the great earthquake of 1755.
The great church contains many features of interest, several chapels,
magnificent arches, pulpits and choir stalls, and numberless statues.
Of the lifelike figure of St. Jerome, Philip II. said: “I am waiting
for it to speak to me.” The stalls are delicately carved with intricate
Arabesque tracery. There are two organs, one of which shows traces of
former magnificence. The capella-mór (death chapel) of Renaissance
decoration is entered through a magnificent arch flanked by two richly
carved pulpits. On the North in recesses are the tombs of King Emmanuel
and his Queen Maria, and on the South are similar ones of Joao III. and
his Queen Catharina. These sarcophagi are borne by elephants. In the
chapel beyond are tombs of other royal personages, including that of
King Sebastian, who mysteriously disappeared at the battle of Al-Kasr
al-Kebîr (1578); the eight children of Joao III., and a natural son of
his, Don Duarte, Archbishop of Braga. Close by is the tomb of Catherine
of Braganza, the neglected wife of the Merry Monarch, Charles II. of
England; and others of the Cardinal King Henrique and other Infantes.
Behind the high altar is a chapel containing the tombs of Alfonso VI.,
his brother Theodosio and a sister. The king is attired in the costume
of the period in which he lived, and his body is said to be in perfect
preservation.
The chief glory of the convent, however, is its superb cloisters,
the masterpiece of Joao de Castilho. They are about 180 feet square,
surrounded by a two-storied arcade. Other features are the Casa Pia,
the Refectory, the Sacristy and the Capella dos Jeronymos. The Sala dos
Reis contains (some imaginary) portraits of the kings of Portugal down
to John VI. The Spanish usurpers are omitted.
At the Eastern extremity of the suburb of Belem, on the banks of the
Tagus, are the constructions of the Belem tower, a massive building
rather more than 100 feet square, flanked on the corners by Gothic
turrets. It shelters a telegraph station and battery that defends the
port.
This tower (Torre de Sao Vicente) is generally regarded as one of the
most interesting structures in Lisbon. It stands really on a rocky
islet in the Tagus, but the silting up of the channel between it and
the shore renders its position less imposing than it used to be.
Moreover its picturesque effect has been further marred by the erection
of factories in the immediate vicinity.
In the castle of Belem is kept a registry-office for all vessels that
enter or leave the Tagus; as well as an establishment of custom-house
officers, health officers and naval police for the protection of
property.
The Torre de Belem is of three stories, and its commanding situation
affords a splendid view of the beautiful Tagus. Belem now forms
a suburb of Lisbon, and the vineyards that formerly adorned the
intervening banks of the river have been largely utilized for building
purposes, but the tower still forms a striking object in the landscape
and dominates the vicinity. The rhapsodies of travellers who visited
Lisbon half a century ago are still justified. One of them writes:
“From this point, the view up the river, to the East, is grand beyond
all conception; and, to do the magnificent opening of the scenery
justice, the most elaborate description would be perfectly inadequate.
The breadth of the mighty river crowded with the vessels of every
nation; men-of-war at anchor, and in various stages of equipment; the
heights to the South crowned with batteries, villages and vineyards,
descending down their sides to the very skirts of the water; the
numerous fishing and pleasure-boats gliding swiftly across the river in
various directions; the long uninterrupted line of palaces, convents
and houses, running along the shore from Belem to Lisbon, under the
elevated ridge upon which the splendid residence of the Portuguese
sovereigns, the Ajuda, is erected, and then the beauteous city itself,
with its domes and towers and gorgeous buildings, extended over its
many hills; and, above all, the deep blue of the heaven’s dazzling
canopy above,--form a combination of objects, the striking interest of
which can scarcely be represented to a northern imagination.”
The tower is said to be modelled on an old design by Garcia da Resende.
The lower part adjoins a sort of platform projecting over the river,
and is enclosed by a parapet with battlements and the shields of the
Knights of Christ. Six ornate turrets copied from Indian originals
adorn the corners. The decoration of the square tower itself on the
front facing the river consists of a balcony with traceried parapet and
round-headed windows. The other sides have bow-windows. Higher up, the
tower is girt with a passage for the use of its defenders. Four Indian
turrets ornament the flat roof. The interior contains several square
rooms which have suffered many restorations. One of them, the Sala
Regia is celebrated for its peculiar acoustic properties. The basement
is divided into dungeons that have seldom been vacant in the past. The
prisoners immured there received light and air only through gratings in
the floor of the casemates. They were constantly filled with political
offenders under Miguel.
VENETIAN PALACES
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
The Grand Canal is to Venice what the Strand is to London, the Rue
Saint-Honoré to Paris, and the Alcala to Madrid,--the principal artery
for the circulation of the whole city. Its form is that of a double S,
reversed, the sweep of which bounds the city around St. Mark’s while
the upper point borders upon the isle of Santa-Chiara, and the lower
point at the Custom-House, near the canal of the Giudecca. This S is
cut about the middle by the bridge of the Rialto.
[Illustration: THE FOSCARI PALACE, ITALY.]
The Grand Canal of Venice is the most marvellous thing in the world.
No other city can present so beautiful, so bizarre and so fairy-like
a spectacle: perhaps you may find elsewhere remarkable specimens
of architecture, but never placed in such picturesque conditions.
Here, every palace has a mirror in which to admire her own beauty,
just like a feminine coquette. The superb reality is repeated in a
charming reflection. The water lovingly caresses the feet of those
beautiful façades whose brows are kissed by a clear light and are
rocked in two skies. The little boats and the large barks which can
come up close to them seem moored on purpose to produce effective
dark spots, or foregrounds for the convenience of scene-painters and
water-colourists.
In drifting along by the Custom-House, which, with the Palace
Giustiniani (to-day the _Hôtel de l’Europe_) marks the entrance of
the Grand Canal, throw a glance at those skeleton-like heads of horses
sculptured in the square and dumpy cornice which supports the globe of
Fortune. Does this peculiar ornament mean that the horse was useless in
Venice (you get rid of him at the Custom-House) or rather is it not a
pure caprice of ornamentation? This explanation seems to me the best,
for I do not wish to fall into the symbolical exaggeration with which
I have been reproaching others. I have already described the Salute,
which I can see from my window and which does not require any attention
after having seen Canaletto’s picture, which is, perhaps, the painter’s
masterpiece. But here I experience embarrassment. The Grand Canal is
the true Golden Book in which all the Venetian nobility has signed its
name upon the monumental façades.
Each stone of the walls has a story to tell; each house is a palace;
each palace, a masterpiece with a legend: at each stroke of the oar,
the gondolier mentions a name which was as well-known at the time of
the Crusades as it is to-day; and this on the right and left for a
length of more than half a league.
I have written a list of these palaces, not quite all but the most
remarkable of them, and I dare not insert it on account of its length.
It takes up five or six pages: Pietro Lombardo, Scamozzi, Vittoria,
Longhena, Andrea Tremignan, Giorgio Massari, Sansovino, Sebastiano
Mazzoni, Sammichelli, the great architect of Verona, Selva, Domenico
Rossi, and Visentini designed and superintended the construction
of these princely dwellings,--without counting the marvellous
unknown artists of the Middle Ages who erected the most picturesque
and romantic ones, those that gave to Venice her distinction and
originality.
Upon these two banks, façades, all charming and variously beautiful,
succeed each other without interruption. After a specimen of
Renaissance architecture, with its columns and superimposed orders
comes a mediæval palace of the Gothic-Arabian style, of which the
Ducal palace is the prototype, with its open-work, balconies, its
ogives, its trefoils and its lace-like acrotera. A little farther is
a façade encased in coloured marbles, ornamented with medalions and
consoles; then comes a great rose-coloured wall, where a large window
with little columns is cut out. Every style is found here: Byzantine,
Saracen, Lombard, Gothic, Roman, Greek, and even Rococo; the column
and the small column, the ogive and the cincture and the capricious
capital filled with birds and flowers that has come from Acre or
Jaffa; the Greek capital found amidst Athenian ruins, the mosaic and
the bas-relief; the classic severity and the elegant fantasy of the
Renaissance. It is an immense gallery in the open air, where one can
study from his gondola the art of seven or eight centuries. What
genius, talent and money have been expended in this space that can be
traversed in less than an hour! What wonderful artists! But also what
intelligent and magnificent lords! What a pity that the patricians who
knew how to have such beautiful things made should exist no longer
save in the canvasses of Titian, Tintoretto and Il Moro!
Just before arriving at the Rialto, you have to the left, in ascending
the Canal, the Dario Palace, Gothic style; the Venier Palace, which
reveals itself by one corner with its ornaments, its precious marbles
and its medalions, Lombard style; the Fine-Arts, classic façade by
the side of the ancient School of Charity and surmounted by a figure
of Venice riding on a lion; the Contarini Palace, of Scamozzi’s
architecture; the Rezzonico Palace, with three orders superimposed; the
triple Giustiniani Palace, in the taste of the Middle Ages, inhabited
by Signor Natale Schiavoni, a descendant of the celebrated painter
Schiavoni, who has a picture-gallery and a beautiful daughter, the
living reproduction of a picture painted by her ancestor; the Foscari
Palace, recognizable by its lower door, its two rows of little columns
supporting the ogives and the trefoils, where formerly lived those
sovereigns who visited Venice, and now abandoned; the Balbi Palace,
from the balcony of which the princes leaned to watch the regatta which
took place on the Grand Canal with so much pomp and brilliancy during
the heyday of the Republic; the Pisani Palace, in the German style
of the beginning of the Fifteenth Century; and the Tiepolo Palace,
quite smart and relatively modern, with its two elegant pyramids. To
the right, very near the European Hotel, there stands between two
large buildings a delicious little palace, composed of a window and a
balcony; but what a window and what a balcony! a lace-work of stone:
scrolls, guilloches, and open-work that one would not believe it
possible to execute except by a cutting-machine and a piece of paper.
I regretted that I did not have 25,000 francs about me to buy it, for
that is all they asked.
A little farther, still ascending, you find the Palace Corner della
Cà Grande, which dates from 1532, one of Sansovino’s best; Grassi,
to-day the Emperor’s inn, the marble stairway of which is garnished
with handsome orange trees in pots; Corner-Spinelli, whose marble base
is surrounded by a double fretwork of fine effect and which is to-day
the Post Office; and Farsetti, with its columned peristyle and its
long gallery with little columns occupying all the façade, where the
municipality is lodged. We could say, as Don Ruy-Gomez da Silva says
to Charles V. in _Hernani_, when he shows him the portraits of
his ancestors: “_J’en passe, et des meilleurs._” We ask, however,
attention for the Loredan Palace and the ancient dwelling of Enrico
Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople. Between these palaces there
are some worthy houses, whose chimneys in the form of turbans, towers,
and vases of flowers, break the great lines of architecture very
appropriately.
Ascending always, you meet on the left the Corner della Regina Palace,
so named on account of the Queen Conaro, whom Parisians know through
Halévy’s opera, _La Reine de Chypre_, in which Madame Stoltz
played such a fine _rôle_. I do not remember if the scenery of
MM. Séchan, Dieterle and Despléchin resembled it; it could have been
without sacrificing anything, because the architecture of Domenico
Rossi is of great elegance. The sumptuous palace of Queen Cornaro is
now a pawn shop, and the humble rags of misfortune and the jewels of
improvidence come to heap themselves here beneath the rich decorations
which should not fall into ruins: for to-day it does not suffice to be
beautiful, it is necessary to be useful.
The College of the Armenians, which is a short distance from here, is
an admirable building by Baldassare de Longhena, of a rich, solid and
imposing architecture. It is the ancient Pesaro Palace.
To the right there rises the Palazzo della Cà d’Oro, one of the most
charming of the Grand Canal. It belonged to Mademoiselle Taglioni, who
had it restored with the most intelligent care. It is all embroidered,
all denticulated, all cut out in a Grecian, Gothic and Barbarian style,
so fantastic, so light and so aërial that you would say it must have
been made for the nest of a sylph. Mademoiselle Taglioni took pity upon
these poor abandoned palaces. She rented several of them that attracted
her out of pure commiseration for their beauty; three or four were
pointed out to me upon which she had bestowed this charity of repairs.
Look at those blue and white stakes sprinkled with golden
_fleur-de-lis_; they will tell you that the ancient palace
Vendramini Calergi has become a quasi-royal habitation. It is the
dwelling of Her Highness the Duchesse de Berry, and certainly she is
better lodged than at the pavilion Marsan; for this palace, the most
beautiful one in Venice, is a masterpiece of architecture and its
carvings are of a marvellous delicacy. Nothing could be more beautiful
than the groups of children who are supporting shields upon the arches
of the windows. The interior is filled with precious marbles: you
admire above all two porphyry columns of such rare beauty that their
value would pay for the palace.
Although I have been a long time about it, I have not told all. I see
that I have not yet spoken of the Mocenigo palace, where the great
Byron lived; our gondolier however has grazed the marble stairway,
where with her hair flying in the wind, her foot in the water, in the
rain and tempest, the daughter of the people and mistress of Lord Byron
welcomed him upon his return with these tender words: “Great dog of the
Madonna, is it time to go to the Lido?”
The Barbarigo Palace also deserves mention. I have not seen the
twenty-two Titians that are contained within it and which are held
under seal by the Russian consul who has bought them for his master;
but it still possesses some very beautiful pictures, and the carved and
gilded cradle destined for the heir of this noble family,--a cradle
which might be converted into a tomb, for, like most of the ancient
families of Venice, the Barbarigo family is extinct: of the nine
hundred patrician families inscribed in the Golden Book, only about
fifty now remain.
The old caravansary of the Turks, so crowded at the time that Venice
held all the commerce of the Orient and the Indies, presents now two
rows of Arabian arcades, littered and obstructed by hovels that have
pushed themselves up there like unhealthy mushrooms.
[Illustration: SAINT OUEN, FRANCE.]
SAINT OUEN, ROUEN
L. DE FOURCAUD
The Fourteenth Century erected in France four churches of a peculiar
grandeur and magnificence: the Cathedral of Saint Quentin; the abbey of
Saint Bertin, Saint Omer; Saint Nazaire of Carcassonne and Saint Ouen
of Rouen. The first two have disappeared, but the two others have come
down to us almost intact, and both of them derive their disconcerting
basilicas from the end of the Thirteenth Century; Saint Urbain of
Troyes is a piece of stone jewelry.
We shall have less trouble in characterizing briefly the marvellous
building of Saint Ouen, than in describing Notre-Dame (Rouen). The
edifice is longer, less ample, clearer, and more of a unity as far
as the structure is concerned, and it is deprived of those brilliant
accessories which engross the attention. It is, by all odds, superior
in harmony and compactness of the execution and inferior in size.
The one attracts poets, the other is preferred by men of learning.
Everybody will appreciate the subtlety.
Now, first of all and very briefly, here is the history of this abbey.
Upon the ruins of an oratory constructed in this very place by the
indefatigable Saint Victrice about 535, Clotaire erected a large
church dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the last years of
the Seventh Century, Saint Ouen restored it and wished it to be his
sepulchre. According to the _Life_ of that great bishop attributed
to Fridegode, a monk of Canterbury, it was a building of noble
appearance, constructed of square stones in the _Gothic style_.
It is useless to discuss these words, quoted on account of their
curiosity, but which might well be accounted for by some alteration in
the text, and, in any case, have but little meaning for us. After the
appearance of the Northmen, the abbey experienced varied fortunes: it
was sacked and demolished in 841, repaired in 1046 by the Abbé Nicholas
of Normandy, son of Duke Richard III., and it was burned to the ground
several times. A fragment of Nicholas’s apsis at the end of the nave
is preserved under the name of _Chambre aux clercs_: a portion of
the hemicycle arched cul-de-four is ornamented very coarsely, but it is
strongly built.
But to resume: there was no glory for the monks of Saint Benoît here
until the beginning of the Fourteenth Century and the advent of the
Abbé Jean Roussel. This Jean Roussel, born in Quincampoix, near Rouen,
and known, nobody knows why, by the nick-name of Marc d’ Argent, was
a very original personage. Active, discreet, prudent, energetic,
and devoted to everything under his charge, he re-established the
monastic discipline and by the wisdom of his administration doubled the
revenues; and, as Suger did before him at Saint Denis, he resolved to
rebuild his abbey according to the latest developments in architecture.
We do not know who was his master in this work; but certainly it must
have been some clever man who had carefully studied Amiens, Beauvais,
Troyes and Séez. Within a few years, the work was sufficiently advanced
for his conception to have become definitive. His successors had
nothing more to do than to follow out his ideas. Materials were not
stinted. The quarries of Chaumont, Vernon and Saint-Leu furnished their
magnificent calcareous stone, of fine grain mixed with silex. As the
Abbé was never at a loss for funds, it was popularly imagined that he
coined gold, and many a legend exists upon this subject. The truth
is, he knew how to economize with large sums, obtained from the King
important rights regarding the cutting of wood in the forest Verte and
created disinterested good-will around him. In the year 1318, the first
stone was laid, and in the year 1339, when he died, more than 79,936
livres (2,600,000 francs of our money) were paid to the stone-cutters.
The inscription placed on his tomb, destroyed in 1562 by the
Calvinists, described the state in which he left the church, the choir
and the eleven transept chapels comprising the large terminal chapel
were finished: the large pillars of the transept were only lacking the
tower, the two arms of the transept were approaching completion, and
doubtless also the nave was quite advanced.
The Hundred Years’ War retarded the work without actually interrupting
it. We find Charles VI. in 1380 allowing 3,000 livres to the Abbé
Arnaud du Breuil to hasten the work. The portal called _des
Marmousets_ at the south arm of the transept is now given over to
the sculptors. However the hour for rapid achievement has passed. It
is not until 1439 that the two roses of Master Alexandre de Berneval
and his legendary pupil unfold at the extremities of the transept.
Under Admiral d’ Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen and Abbé of the
monastery, the entrance to the choir was closed by a precious Gothic
rood-screen; but the nave had yet to be finished, and the central
tower and the façade had yet to be done. The Abbé Bohier at the very
last of the Fifteenth Century, finished the building. The delicious
square tower, eighty-two metres high, set off with bays, with gables
and corner buttresses upon which are grafted the flying-buttresses
of the octagonal belfry with the open-worked crown, is of the same
date, the same style, and, perhaps, of the same hand as the _Tour de
Beurre_. We possess the plan of the façade, drawn at this time by
an unknown artist. It recalls the taste of the Normans for the porches
under bell-towers of which few examples are to be found outside of
their province after the Thirteenth Century. This master conceived
two large, square towers placed diagonally, of a most original effect
of perspective, and beneath which opened two lateral porches whose
sheltered arches broke the draughts and were very converging and very
convenient for the entrance and exits in and out of the church of the
several filing processions. We are astonished to think that such a
picturesque arrangement was never carried into effect. The execution
of the plan was never commenced. The two bell-towers had been carried
up to twenty metres and then abandoned. Their dimensions frightened
the architect Grégoire, who in 1840 was charged with enriching Marc
d’ Argent’s façade, and he pulled down the stumps to build those two
towers with their thin spires and that commonplace façade with its dry
lines that we now see.
A glance at the general plan of the building is necessary. Nothing
could be simpler than this general arrangement: a polygonal choir and
chapels between the buttresses; a lantern in the centre; some rather
narrow branches of the transept; a large nave moderately wide, but very
long with some quite narrow tributaries. The total length amounts to
138 metres; the width of the nave is restricted to twenty-six. What
does this matter if these proportions are well united? What astonishes
us beyond everything is the evident charming intention. There are no
walls beyond those that are necessary; it is all tracery with support.
The second impression is received from the forms; with the exception
of a few architectural details in the bay near the porch, the style
is perfectly homogeneous. There is no spirit of creation here; it is
that admirable spirit of refinement and adaptation of the Fourteenth
Century. As at Saint Urbain de Troyes, all the arches spring from
pillars and all the ribs return to them, where, to employ the synthetic
formula of Viollet-le-Duc, “the piers are nothing more than projections
in clusters of the different profiles of the arches.” What then is the
use of capitals under such conditions? They are more detrimental than
useful. Moreover, you find no trace of them except in the oldest parts
of the choir. The ribs of the arches instead of being strictly fastened
against the walls cross the mass to leap outside in bracing arches
and archivolts. Exactly as at Séez, the triforium drops very low and
ends, not in a massive ledge but in a gallery of lace-work, in order
to allow you to see from the nave across its spaces between the arches
the dazzling lucidity of the windows of the gallery. And everywhere is
manifested this threefold intention: elevation, ease and open-work.
And what windows to adorn these masses of filagree work! The most
varied, the finest and the richest of the period of Louis XII. at its
apogee. Patriarchs and martyrs, prophets and holy abbés, kings and
sibyls stand out on all sides in the hues of brilliant and soft jewels.
We have no longer the frank mosaic of former days giving life to the
light, and bestowing upon it a certain mystical impression; they are
not the simple large figures under sumptuous baldaquins brightened
with silver gilt; they are, most frequently, the glass pictures of the
Renaissance. We are astonished at the perfection of their treatment.
Several subjects are those that the Thirteenth Century took pleasure
in evoking; witness the legend of the pilgrim of Saint-Jacques, whose
son, unjustly hung, is kept on the gibbet by the saint himself and
recognized as innocent. Nothing seems to me, however, so memorable
here, as much on account of the subject as for the treatment, as the
series of sibyls--those pagans to which the Middle Ages had begun
to give a Christian fate and which the Sixteenth Century treated so
voluptuously. This is why they assume a new importance at Saint Ouen.
The artist took pleasure in painting them under the adornments of
elegant ladies, in landscapes bristling with buildings. Above all, I
cannot forget the charming sibyl of Samos, in her embroidered robe
covered with _orfèvrerie_ and jewels, two doves pecking at her
feet in the midst of a piece of country scenery, and treated so to
speak, in the manner of a portrait. This series of glass extending
from one end of the church to the other and almost from top to bottom,
forms an immense, translucent and radiant tapestry. It seems as if a
breath might annihilate it. But no, it remains hard, rigid and as if
incorporate with the very wall. Solid bars of iron, cutting the bays,
give it an indestructible armature. The evanescent dream of the period
has eternalized itself in a fairy-like vision.
What beautiful roses are cut out in the transept! On the central one,
God the Father appears on his throne of gold, above the adoring kings.
The other, with its more complicated outlines, shows us the Glory of
Paradise. You know the tradition attached to these two architectural
flowers with the resplendent lobes? Alexandre de Berneval having
designed the first, became jealous of one of his disciples who traced
the second, and in anger, killed him. To expiate the crime he had to
die by the hands of the hangman. Who invented this story? The master
lies yonder, in the second chapel down the nave to the right, by the
side of one of his pupils, or, perhaps with his son Colin. Can any one
believe that the monks would admit under any pretext beneath the holy
vaults the body of an assassin and honour him with a superb sepulchral
stone? Upon the stone the two architects live again in their long robes
lined with vair, and their large hats. The older, his compass in his
hand carving out a quarter-round, the younger one making a plan, the
feet of both resting on a lion, and above them a Gothic daïs. The older
is Berneval who died in 1440: the inscription tells us this. Of the
younger we know nothing, for the inscription concerning him was never
made.
There is no fine carving to note in the interior of the abbey. Many of
the pillars in the nave were ornamented with statues in the style of
the Fourteenth Century, but placed in niches that retreat a little.
Broken in 1794, when the building was used as a forge, they have never
been restored. The destruction of the rood-screen dates from 1791, at
the time of the departure of the monks and the erection of the parish
church. This rood-screen must assuredly have spoiled the perspective
of a building so frankly conceived for the effect in perspective.
But if one wants to delight in sculptured scenes, it is before the
_portail des Marmousets_ that he must betake himself. Beneath a
finely arched porch, is a door that is condemned to-day. The statue of
Saint Ouen, decapitated by the Reformers, and the pier covered with
little bas-reliefs, relates in detail the life and miracles of the holy
bishop. On the tympanum, three zones of perfect figures describe the
death of the Virgin, her funeral, her assumption and her entrance into
heaven between two angels who are playing the organ and the rebeck. A
curious popular invention has found its place in the funeral scene,
where an impious Jew trying to make an attempt upon the coffin has
to see the Archangel Michael cut off his hands and St. Peter give
them back to him, whilst converting him. This decoration is of an
exceptional vivacity and delicacy of carving.
From the public garden, we can take in the development of the apsis.
The elegance of design and the working-out are seen in all their
grandeur from here. From the pinacled buttresses spring the graceful
double flying-buttresses responding exactly to the spring of the
arches that are distributed and repeated with such wise judgment.
Above the chapels with their pyramidal roofs runs a balustrade of
quatrefoils inscribed in a curved quadrangle reproduced at the base
of the top. These charming galleries whose stone rivals ironwork, in
its extraordinary precision of the cutting, define the essential lines
of the plan through the bristling lines of the secondary forms. They
represent calm and order surrounded by agitation.
But from whatever point of view you survey Saint Ouen, you will
recognize the most exemplary refinement of construction. It is not
merely the frame which should be taken as a model with its square and
chamfred wood, its suspended binding-pieces, its Saint Andrew’s cross,
and its double sabliere plates gathered at the base of the chevrons. In
the eyes of architects, the Abbey of the wise Abbé Marc d’ Argent will
always be regarded as one of the _chefs d’œuvre_ of the art of
building in France.
CARISBROOKE CASTLE
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE
The Isle of Wight, like Kent, was peopled by Jutes, who, coming
in under the wing of the actual conquerors, Cerdic and Cynric,
exterminated the existing Romano-British inhabitants at the bloody
battle of Wihtgaresbyrg (Saxon Chron.), a name which, omitting the
primary syllable, became “Carisbrooke.” The later castle, whose site
is actually that of the battlefield of 530, was conferred by the
conquerors on their relative Wihtgar. But whereas the Jutes of Kent
were the first, those of the Isle of Wight were the last among the
English to embrace Christianity, and in the Seventh Century the fine
proselytizing zeal of the West Saxons led them to invade and annihilate
with their murderous knives the heathen islanders, whose land they
annexed to the Wessex diocese.
[Illustration: CARISBROOKE CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
The island was already found to give the shortest passage between
England and Normandy, and for this reason was used in Saxon times,
as also by William the Conqueror on some of his journeys to and from
Normandy. It was here that he arrested his half-brother, Bishop Odo,
as he was on his way to Rome, and here he tarried on quitting England
for his last journey to France. William granted the Isle of Wight to
William Fitz Osborne, Earl of Hereford, who, it is believed, reared the
castle of Carisbrooke, in which Odo was arrested, as he likewise
founded the priory adjoining. He had accompanied his leader from
Normandy, and was one of his army marshals. Besides having the lordship
of this isle, he was made constable of the newly built castles of York
and Winchester, and justiciary for the King in the North. On the great
mound of the Saxon burh at Wihtgaresbyrg he built a Norman keep, but
as he was killed in France four years after coming to the isle, it is
probable that the work he began was completed by his son, Roger de
Bretteville, who was imprisoned for life by William for levying war
against him, all his estates being forfeited to the Crown.
Henry I. next gave the lordship of the isle, with the castle and
honour of Carisbrooke, to Richard de Redvers, whose son succeeding
him (temp. Stephen) was made Earl of Devon; large additions were made
by this family to the castle, which was held by the Redvers until
that race ended in an heiress, Isabella de Fortibus, so called from
her marriage with an Earl of Albemarle of that name. This lady lived
here (1262–1293) and built a large part of the castle, which, at her
death, she bequeathed to King Edward I. Afterwards, in the Fourteenth
Century, the castle was held by Piers Gaveston, William Montague, the
chivalrous Earl of Salisbury, and by Edward, Earl of Rutland, son of
Edmund of Langley, fifth son of Edward III. who inherited his father’s
title of Duke of York, and fell at Agincourt, when, after his widow,
Philippa’s death, the castle and island fell to Humphrey, the Good Duke
of Gloucester, in the reign of Henry VI. After him the lordship was
enjoyed by several royal and other personages, and lastly by Anthony,
Earl Rivers, and his brother, Sir Edward Woodville, who, together with
a large force he had raised in the island, fell at the battle of St.
Anbyn, in a foolish expedition against the King of France. Since that
time Carisbrooke has always been held by the Crown. In Elizabeth’s
reign, when preparations were made on the south coast to repel the
Spanish Armada, very elaborate outworks were planned and executed at
this castle, entirely surrounding it with fortifications of the then
new type, escarp and ditch and ravelin and redan, which exist at the
present time: but they were never wanted, and only served usefully as a
promenade for the royal victim, King Charles, in his imprisonment.
Charles having escaped from his durance with the army at Hampton Court
(November 11, 1647), rode to Titchfield, the Earl of Southampton’s
place, where he might have sailed by Portsmouth Harbour to the
Continent, as his intention was; but, by a mistake, Colonel Hammond,
the Governor of the Isle of Wight, was brought to Titchfield, and he
conducted the King to Carisbrooke, where he became again a prisoner.
Here three attempts seem to have been made, chiefly by some gentlemen
of the island, to give him freedom during the twelve months of his
detention. On the first of these occasions it was arranged that Charles
should pass through the window of his room, and let himself down to
the ramparts, below which a guide with a horse was waiting, and a boat
was ready to take him to a ship in the offing; but an iron bar in the
window prevented his getting through, and so the King had to wave off
his friends. The window in question is discernible from the outside
of the King’s lodgings; it adjoins the only buttress of the wall, and
is walled up. On another occasion implements having been provided for
him, Charles managed to saw through and remove the bar which impeded
him, and all arrangements were made for his flight, but a rascally
officer, one Major Rolfe, was entrusted with the secret and betrayed
it. So, when the King was about to make the attempt, he observed below
more people than were expected, and wisely decided to remain where
he was. It was said that Rolfe intended to have shot the King as he
descended. After being there for a year, Charles was removed, with
scant ceremony or respect from Carisbrooke. At daybreak one morning a
party of soldiers were sent, who, rousing him from bed, took him off to
Hurst Castle, a fort on the mainland, standing at the extremity of the
spit of land, near Lymington, which stretches across the Solent Strait
to within a mile of the opposite island. Here the King was detained for
a month, when he was taken to Windsor. To Carisbrooke were sent the two
royal children, the year succeeding their father’s judicial murder, but
in less than a month the Princess Elizabeth was found dead in her room,
her face resting on the Bible given her by her father at their last
interview. Prince Henry remained there nearly two years. An attack was
made on the castle at the outbreak of the civil war by the mayor and
people of Newport, in obedience to the instructions of the Parliament,
in order to get rid of the King’s captain, the Earl of Portland,
and his successor, Lord Pembroke; and the fortress was yielded on
honourable terms. After the Restoration, the governor, Lord Cutts, made
great and lamentable alterations in the old fabric, quite modernizing a
part of it; but at a recent date the Government have restored the work
in a judicious manner, and brought to light some hidden and interesting
features.
The Norman keep of Richard de Redvers stands on the ancient English
mound at the north-east angle of the inner ward, surrounded by its
moat; it is an irregular polygon in shape, a shell keep sixty feet
across, with walls of great strength and thickness, the access to which
is by a long flight of stairs, the postern being protected by double
gates and a portcullis. One room only remains, in which is a deep well,
the others are destroyed, but there remains a small staircase to the
top, whence a very fine view is obtained; at the foot was a sally-port
defended by a bastion, which has disappeared. The entrance is on the
west by a fine machicolated gateway, flanked by two round embattled
towers, through a high pointed archway with portcullis grooves; all
this was built by Anthony, Lord Scales, who had the lordship in 1474,
and whose arms are on the gatehouse, as they are on Middleton Tower
near Lynn with the Rose of York. Inside are the older gates, with
latticed ironwork, and on the right the ruins of the guardhouse, and
the chapel of St. Nicholas, built in 1738 on the site of the ancient
chapel. On the north are the ruins of the buildings occupied by King
Charles, a small room being shown as his bedroom. The governor’s
quarters, barracks and other buildings are all of different periods.
In the centre of the south wall are remains of a mural tower, and there
are the ruins of the Mountjoy, a Norman tower in the south-east corner,
the walls here being eighteen feet thick: east are two other towers.
Anciently there must have been some outworks, as in the Domesday
Survey, the area of this castle is said to be one virgate, or twenty
acres.
THE PANTHEON
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
The Pantheon, the most perfect pagan building in the city, was built
B.C. 27, by Marcus Agrippa, the bosom friend of Augustus
Cæsar, and the second husband of his daughter Julia. The inscription,
in huge letters, perfectly legible from beneath, “M. Agrippa, L. F.
Cos. Tertium Fecit,” records its construction. Another inscription
on the architrave, now almost illegible, records its restoration
under Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla, _c._ 202, who,
“_Pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultur restitverunt._”
Some authorities have maintained that the Pantheon was originally only
a vast hall in the baths of Agrippa, acknowledged remains of which
exist at no great distance; but the name “Pantheum” was in use as early
as A.D. 59.
[Illustration: THE PANTHEON, ITALY.]
In A.D. 399 the Pantheon was closed as a temple in obedience
to a decree of the Emperor Honorius, and in 608 was consecrated as
a Christian church by Pope Boniface IV., with the permission of
the Emperor Phocas, under the title of Sta. Maria ad Martyres. To
this dedication we owe the preservation of the main features of the
building, though it has been terribly maltreated. In 663, the Emperor
Constans, who had come to Rome with great pretence of devotion to its
shrines and relics, and who only stayed there twelve days, did not
scruple, in spite of its religious dedication to strip off the tiles
of gilt bronze with which the roof was covered, and carry them off with
him to Syracuse, where, upon his murder, a few years after, they fell
into the hands of the Saracens. In 1087, it was used by the anti-pope
Guibert as a fortress, whence he made incursions upon the lawful pope,
Victor III., and his protector, the Countess Matilda. In 1101, another
anti-pope, Sylvester IV., was elected here. Pope Martin V., after
the return from Avignon, attempted the restoration of the Pantheon
by clearing away the mass of miserable buildings in which it was
encrusted, and his efforts were continued by Eugenius IV., but Urban
VIII. (1623–1644), though he spent 15,000 scudi upon the Pantheon, and
added the two ugly campaniles, called in derision “the asses’ ears,” of
their architect, Bernini, did not hesitate to plunder the gilt bronze
ceiling of the portico, 450,250 lbs. in weight, to make the baldachino
of St. Peter’s, and cannons for the Castle of Saint Angelo. Benedict
XIV. (1740–1758) further despoiled the building by tearing away all the
precious marbles which lined the attic to ornament other buildings.
The Pantheon was not originally, as now, below the level of the piazza,
but was approached by a flight of five steps. The portico, which is one
hundred and ten feet long and forty-four feet deep, is supported by
sixteen grand Corinthian columns of oriental granite, thirty-six feet
in height. The ancient bronze doors remain. On either side are niches,
once occupied by colossal statues of Augustus and Agrippa.
The Interior is a rotunda, 143 feet in diameter, covered by a dome.
It is only lighted by an aperture in the centre, twenty-eight feet in
diameter. Seven great niches around the walls once contained statues
of different gods and goddesses, that of Jupiter being the central
figure. All the surrounding columns are of giallo-antico, except four,
which are of pavonazzetto, painted yellow. It is a proof of the great
value and rarity of the giallo-antico, that it was always impossible to
obtain more to complete the set.
Some antiquarians have supposed that the aperture at the top of the
Pantheon was originally closed by a huge “Pigna,” or pine-cone of
bronze, like that which crowned the summit of the mausoleum of Hadrian,
and this belief has been encouraged by the name of a neighbouring
church being S. Giovanni della Pigna.
The Pantheon has become the burial-place of painters, Raphael, Annibale
Caracci, Taddeo Zucchero, Baldassare Peruzzi, Pierino del Vaga, and
Giovanni da Udine, are all buried here.
The third chapel on the left contains the tomb of Raphael (born April
6, 1483; died April 6, 1520). From the pen of Cardinal Bembo is the
epigram:
“Ille hic est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.”
Taddeo Zucchero and Annibale Caracci are buried on either side of
Raphael. Near the high altar is a monument to Cardinal Gonsalvi
(1757–1824), the faithful secretary and minister of Pius VII., by
Thorwaldsen. This, however, is only a cenotaph, marking the spot where
his heart is preserved. His body rests with that of his beloved brother
Andrew in the church of S. Marcello.
During the Middle Ages the Pope always officiated here on the day of
Pentecost, when, in honour of the descent of the Holy Spirit, showers
of white rose-leaves were continually sent down through the aperture
during service.
In the Piazza della Rotunda is a small obelisk found in the Campus
Martius. Following the Via della Rotunda from hence, in the third
street on the left is the small semicircular ruin called, from a
fancied resemblance to the favourite cake of the people, Arco di
Ciambella. This is the only remaining fragment of the baths of Agrippa,
unless the Pantheon itself was connected with them.
Behind the Pantheon is the Piazza della Minerva, where a small obelisk
was erected in 1667 by Bernini, on the back of an elephant. It is
exactly similar to the obelisk in front of the Pantheon, and they were
both found near this site, where they formed part of the decorations of
the Campus Martius. The hieroglyphics show that it dates from Hophres,
a king of the 25th dynasty.
ST. LAURENCE, NUREMBERG
LINDA VILLARI
Once in the train bound for Nuremberg, every sight on the road seems
to bring one nearer to Mediæval Germany, and is a fitting prelude to
its charms. The storied prettiness of the Rhine district left behind,
ripening vines give way to festoons of hops and plots of tobacco; you
pass through forests of fir and larch, and come to fields of gold
brocade where the lupines are in bloom. Woodlands merge into pleasant
meadows watered by swiftly-running streams; every village is crowned
by a ruined castle; and there are storks’ nests on clustered roofs
about the red church spires. Flaxen-haired children are driving flocks
of fat geese; here and there is a battlemented monastery; then come
tracts of moorland flushed pink and purple with heather; you dive into
hill-sides; you sight dark masses of pine-trees beyond a winding river
crossed by an occasional ferry; you halt at mediæval towns capped by
crumbling yellow walls of palace and prison, and before long at the
spick and span station of manufacturing Fürth (where most of the toys
and wood-carvings are now made). And then you see a confusion of dusky,
jagged roofs pierced by lofty spires and high walls; massive towers
loom above the greenery of a steep hill-side, and you know that your
goal is reached. This is Nuremberg, the “jewel-casket of the German
Empire.” Your first impression is that it should rather be named the
city of wonderful roofs. Mighty roofs heave their four and five rows
of dormers high in air above a forest of lower dwellings, with roofs
of every degree of steepness, covered for the most part with small
inverted tiles of reddish-brown hue. This arrangement gives them a
soft and curious shagginess that greatly adds to their effect. Driving
first round the town, before passing its gates, you see that it is
almost entirely surrounded by dark-red walls, studded by numerous
steeple-crowned watch-towers, and further guarded by a dry moat a
hundred feet wide and fifty deep, now draped with vines and planted
with vegetables and fruit-trees. The River Pegnitz runs through the
city, and issues from it in two arms at either end; its islands and
covered bridges, with smaller bridges (_hinterbrücke_) swung
underneath, supply deliciously pictorial incidents of towers and sheds
and mills and timber-yards, with fascinating peeps up and down stream
into the interior of the town.
[Illustration: ST. LAURENCE, GERMANY.]
St. Sebald is the patron saint of the older part of the city near the
castle, St. Laurence of the portion across the river, dating from the
Thirteenth Century.
Passing through the “Lady Gate,” with its massive Sixteenth Century
fortifications, the König’s Strasse lies before us, and we are in the
Germany of the Middle Ages. What matter modern shop-fronts or gliding
trams? We hardly see them; can only look at the wonderful houses on
either hand, their steep, jagged roofs, their gables and stepped
gables, their pepper-caster towers, projecting casements, bays and
oriels and mullions, carved doors and eaves and balconies, fantastic
gargoyles and cross-timbered fronts. In short, all the exquisite
irregularities and details of mediæval domestic architecture. And, as
we look, we think of Grimm’s household tales, the beloved dog’s eared
treasure of our childish days. Yonder broad-shouldered inn, _Zum
grünen Weinstock_ (the Green Vine) might well be the lodging where
the soldier with the blue light played his naughty pranks on the king’s
daughter.
But now the street widens; other gabled avenues branch off from it,
and we are face to face with the red-brown bulk of St. Laurence. There
it is, the beautiful church of the twin towers, with its sculptured
portals and grand wheel windows! It almost seems to fill the square
in which it stands, and where ancient red houses, deep-porched with
jutting galleries and many-storied roofs are set about the stones of
the precincts.
We wandered round the church to admire its exterior, and dally as
it were with the wonderland within, but a fierce easterly wind gave
an edge to our desire, and we speedily knocked at the side entrance
appointed to sightseers. A wonderland indeed--rather a perfect
symphony of form and colour! St. Laurence is certainly one of the
most beautiful, perhaps one of the finest Gothic interiors in Europe,
with a special charm of its own, that makes your first moments in it
moments breathless with delight. Presently you begin to analyze your
sensations, and study the details of the lovely scene that has stirred
your sense of beauty to so reverent a joy. St. Laurence is very lofty
and admirably proportioned, being 322 feet long by 104 broad. Its
pointed Gothic arches spring from their tall, slender shafts with the
grace and somewhat the effect of a grove of palms. Windows of richest
stained glass lend a magic glow to the delicate avenues of stone, and
on all sides are picturesque details: monuments, statues, paintings,
and relics of ancient days. Midway up the nave is suspended the
coloured group in wood carved by the famous Veit Stoss, and known as
the “Angel’s Greeting.” Sculptured saints and virgins project from the
columns, and make you in love with the naïve realism of early German
art. One wooden Madonna is absolutely romping with her babe. The side
chapels are lined with quaint, rich tapestries from the designs of
Albert Dürer, representing Scriptural scenes. There are many pictures
of the Nuremberg school, of which the best are those of Wohlgemuth,
Dürer’s master; several interesting mural tombs and curious crucifixes.
But the chief art treasure of the church is, of course, the Ciborium,
or “Sacraments Hauslein” of Adam Krafft, erected against one of the
pillars of the choir. It is a poem in stone. Its leading motive is the
crown of thorns, but all the scenes of the passion are represented on
small tablets in high relief; its base is supported by the kneeling
figures of the sculptor and his two assistants. It is in the shape of a
five-sided tower, gradually tapering to a curled finial sixty-four feet
from the ground. Every detail is a marvel of grace and delicacy, and
the faces of Krafft and his men are full of life and expression. They
had worked on this masterpiece for four years.
In this beautiful church you are grateful to the happy tolerance that
has preserved the art relics of Catholicism in the temple of a purer
faith. Nuremberg was one of the first cities to protest against the
sale of indulgences, to adopt the tenets of Luther and Melancthon, and
in 1530 it subscribed to the Augsburg Confession.
This great change was accomplished in the most peaceable way. One
by one, the convents and monasteries were suppressed, and when the
Catholic bishop of Bamberg called on the Swabian Bund to oppose
these measures by force, he was told that the Bund had no concern in
the matter, and that the free city claimed the right of freedom of
conscience.
So much for the history, but we cannot leave St. Laurence without
relating some of the old-world legends attached to its walls. The
cathedral was begun in 1278, but the Fifteenth Century was growing old
before its completion; and when the north tower (finished in 1498) was
commenced there was a great squabble among the builders. The master
mason was unjustly dismissed by the intrigues of two of his men, who
were jointly promoted to his post. But the accomplices soon quarrelled,
and, vowing a mortal hate, each sought the other’s destruction.
One day they had to mount the half-built tower together to inspect
the works, and as one leant forward from a window the other rushed
on him and tried to throw him out. But the first man turned on his
assailant, gripped him hard; both fell and both were dashed to pieces
on the stones below. It chanced that their ill-treated predecessor was
crossing the square at the time, and was standing still gazing at the
tower he was to have built just when his two enemies came crashing
down within an inch of him. The town council heard of his miraculous
escape, and likewise how the dead men had ousted him from his post.
So they reinstated him as master builder, and decreed him the right
of recording on the tower stones in what manner God had chastised the
guilty and preserved the life of the innocent. But the master builder
refused to exercise this privilege, and only craved permission to
destroy all trace of the dreadful event. He had the window walled up,
and it remained so for centuries. And even after the gilded roof was
struck by lightning in 1865, and half the tower had to be rebuilt, the
blank window was still left untouched. Only in 1874 public opinion was
roused on the subject, and satirical rhymes circulated on the offence
to taste of this blind window. So now, north and south towers have an
equal number of openings.
Another legend recounts how in the Thirteenth Century a monk was
solemnly walled up in the south-western corner of the church, where
the bell-ropes hang. The criminal was young, his offence slight, and
general horror and pity were excited by his dreadful doom. People
shuddered as they passed that darksome corner, but for the sacristan’s
pretty daughter it seemed to have a curious attraction. She had wept
bitterly on hearing the fate of the young monk whom she had so often
seen praying at the altar, but her pity did not affect her appetite,
for it was noticed that this had suddenly increased. One day the
bell-ringers of St. Laurence were surprised to see a rat spring from a
hole in the wall with a fresh cabbage-leaf in his mouth. They talked of
the strange sight; a watch was set, search made. And when the hole was
enlarged, behold! it led to the niche of the condemned monk, who was
found not only alive, but well nourished, after having been buried for
weeks! The sacristan’s daughter had supplied him with food through the
crack in the wall. The affair made a great noise. It was the hand of
Providence cried the townsfolk. And so the prisoner was pardoned, and
allowed to go free. There the story ends, but we hold to the idea that
he did not go alone.
But the most picturesque of the many legends, of which the cathedral is
the scene, is that of the “Mass of the Dead.”
A lady of the Imhoff family, being left a widow in her youth, could
in no way resign herself to God’s will, remained sunk in grief and
attended every service at St. Laurence in the vain hope of obtaining
relief by prayer. Even in the coldest winter season she was always
to be seen at early mass. One All Saint’s Eve she was awakened from
her first sleep by the sound of the church-bells. The moon was still
shining, but the lady thought it was the first break of day, and,
rising from her bed, wrapped herself in a thick cloak and hastened
across the square to the church. Its doors stood wide open, and an
unusually large congregation was already assembled. Kneeling in her
accustomed place, she saw that the priest was already bending before
the altar, and the candles burnt with so strange a light that the
faces of her fellow-worshippers appeared ghastly pale. And when the
priest turned she recognized him as one who had died and been buried
during the past year. She glanced right and left with terrified eyes,
and on all sides were persons she had once known but who were no longer
living. As she sank back in her chair in mortal dismay, there glided
close to her an old friend whose death she had recently mourned and
whose body she had helped to clothe in the garments of the grave. In
faint, far-away tones the friend whispered in her ear: “Beloved Clara,
as soon as the bell rings for the elevation of the Host fly thou
quickly from the church, or Death will chastise thee for disturbing by
thy presence the souls of the dead.” And having uttered these words,
the form vanished from her side, and Widow Clara fled towards the door
as fast as her trembling limbs could carry her. She heard a dreadful
rustling and clattering behind; it seemed as though the whole ghostly
company were in full pursuit at her heels. As she hurried through the
churchyard she saw that all the graves were gaping, and fell fainting
on her own threshold. There she was found by her attendants, who,
alarmed by hearing her rise and go out in the middle of the night,
were coming to seek her just as the church-bell struck one. The moon
had gone down, and the deepest stillness reigned in the cathedral
precincts. The next day the cloak, which had slipped from the lady’s
shoulders in her terrified flight, was found torn into tiny fragments
and scattered among the gravestones.
THE TORRE DEL ORO
EDMUNDO DE AMICIS
I arrived at a hotel, threw my valise into a _patio_, and went to
roam about the city. It seemed to me to be a larger, a more beautiful
and an enriched Cordova. The streets are wider, the houses taller, and
the _patios_ more spacious; but the general appearance of the city
is the same. Here is the same spotless whiteness, the same intricate
network of small streets, the general odour of oranges, the delightful
feeling of mystery and that strange Oriental look that produces in the
heart that sweet sentiment of melancholy and in the mind the thousand
fancies, desires and visions of a far-away world, a strange life, an
unknown people and an earthly paradise full of love, delight and peace.
In these streets you read the history of the city: every balcony,
fragment of sculpture and solitary cross-road recall the nocturnal
adventures of a king, the dreams of a poet, the adventures of a beauty,
a love-scene, a duel, an abduction, a fable, and a feast. Here is a
reminiscence of Maria de Pedilla, there of Don Pedro, farther away
one of Cervantes and elsewhere of Columbus, Saint Theresa, Velasquez
and Murillo. A column reminds you of the Roman rule; a tower, the
magnificence of the monarchy of Charles V.; an Alcazar recalls the
splendours of the Arabian courts. Superb marble palaces stand beside
modest white houses; the tiny, winding streets lead to immense squares
filled with orange-trees; from lonely and silent cross-streets you
emerge, after a sharp turn, into a street filled with a noisy crowd.
Wherever you go, through the graceful gratings of the _patios_,
you see flowers, statues, fountains, rooms, walls covered with
arabesques, Arabian windows and slender columns of precious marble; and
at every window and in every garden there are women dressed in white
half hidden, like shy nymphs, behind the grapevines and rose-bushes.
[Illustration: THE TORRE DEL ORO, SPAIN.]
Passing from one street to another, at last I come to a promenade on
the banks of the Guadalquiver, called the Christina, which bears the
same relation to Seville that the Lungarno does to Florence. Here you
may enjoy a sight that is simply enchanting.
First I went to the famous Torre del Oro. This tower, called The Golden
Tower, was so-named from the fact that in it was placed the gold that
the Spanish ships brought from America, or because the King Don Pedro
hid his treasures there. Its form is octagonal with three receding
storeys, crowned by battlements and washed by the river. According
to tradition, this tower was built by the Romans and here the most
beautiful favourite of the King dwelt until the tower was joined to the
Alcazar by a building that was destroyed to make room for the Christina
promenade.
This promenade extends from Torre del Oro to the Duke of Montpensier’s
palace. It is thickly shaded by oriental plane-trees, oaks, cypresses,
willows, poplars, and other northern trees which the Andalusians
admire as we should admire the palms and aloes in the fields of
Piedmont and Lombardy. A large bridge spans the river and leads to the
suburb of Triana from which one sees the first houses on the opposite
bank. A long line of ships, _golettas_ (a species of light boat)
and barks are on the river; and between the Torre del Oro and the
Duke’s palace there is a constant coming and going of boats. The sun
was setting. A crowd of ladies swarmed through the streets, troops of
workmen crossed the bridge, the ships showed more signs of life, a band
hidden among the trees began to play, the river became rose-coloured,
the air was filled with the perfume of flowers, and the sky seemed to
be aflame.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO, ITALY.]
CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
On the road from Siena to Rome, half-way between Ficulle and Viterbo,
is the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time.
Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty and its inns are
indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be
struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon
its mass of rock among the Apennines.
Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are
found like fossils, embedded in the more recent geological formations
of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line
to the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which Civita
Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and fosses,
strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But
their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost
perfect cube, with walls precipitous to the north and south and east,
but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one
of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains
of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up and leave bare
beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round
their dwindled waters.
The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a
sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines swelling tier on
tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and towers,
up to the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. The time to
see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should take his
stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is carried from
the town--the point, in fact, which Turner has selected for his vague
and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he will command the
whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the river creeping in a
straight line at the base; while the sun, rising to his right, will
slant along the mountain flanks and gild the leaden stream, and flood
the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of light. From the centre of
this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid
tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting
up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid
them all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its
unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is
a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow
there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.
The great Duomo was erected at the end of the Thirteenth Century to
commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. The value of this miracle consisted
in its establishing unmistakably the truth of transubstantiation. The
story runs that a young Bohemian priest who doubted the dogma was
performing the office of the mass in a church at Bolsena, when, at the
moment of consecration, blood issued from five gushes in the wafer,
which resembled the five wounds of Christ. The fact was evident to
all the worshippers, who saw blood falling on the linen of the altar;
and the young priest no longer doubted, but confessed the miracle,
and journeyed straightway with the evidence thereof to Pope Urban
IV. The Pope, who was then at Orvieto, came out with all his retinue
to meet the convert and do honour to the magic-working relics. The
circumstances of this miracle are well known to students of art through
Raphael’s celebrated fresco in the Stanze of the Vatican. And it will
be remembered by the readers of ecclesiastical history that Urban had
in 1264 promulgated by a bull the strict observance of the Corpus
Christi festival in connection with his strong desire to re-establish
the doctrine of Christ’s presence in the elements. Nor was it without
reason that, while seeking miraculous support for this dogma, he should
have treated the affair of Bolsena so seriously as to celebrate it by
the erection of one of the most splendid cathedrals in Italy; for the
peace of the church had recently been troubled by the reforming ardour
of the Fraticelli and by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim’s Eternal
Gospel. This new evangelist had preached the doctrine of progression
in religious faith, proclaiming a Kingdom of the Spirit which should
transcend the Kingdom of the Son, even as the Christian dispensation
had superseded the Jewish supremacy of the Father. Nor did he fail at
the same time to attack the political and moral abuses of the Papacy,
attributing its degradation to the want of vitality which pervaded the
old Christian system, and calling on the clergy to lead more simple and
regenerate lives, consistently with the spiritual doctrine which he
had received by inspiration. The theories of Joachim were immature and
crude; but they were among the first signs of that liberal effort after
self-emancipation which eventually stirred all Europe at the time of
the Renaissance. It was, therefore, the obvious policy of the Popes to
crush so dangerous an opposition while they could; and by establishing
the dogma of transubstantiation, they were enabled to satisfy the
growing mysticism of the people, while they placed upon a firmer basis
the cardinal support of their own religious power.
In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo Maitani, the great
Sienese architect, who gave designs for a Gothic church in the same
style as the Cathedral of Siena, though projected on a smaller scale.
Fergusson in his _Handbook of Architecture_, remarks that these
two churches are perhaps, taken altogether, the most successful
specimens of “Italian pointed Gothic.” The Gottico Tedesco had never
been received with favour in Italy. Remains of Roman architecture, then
far more numerous and perfect than they are at present, controlled the
minds of artists, and induced them to adopt the rounded rather than
the pointed arch. Indeed, there would seem to be something peculiarly
Northern in the spirit of Gothic architecture: its intricacies suit
the gloom of Northern skies, its massive exterior is adapted to the
severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch the fleeting
sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles and spires which constitute
its beauty are better expressed in rugged stone than in the marbles
of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their effect upon
the advantages of sunlight or picturesque situations. Many of them
are built upon broad plains, over which for more than half the year
hangs fog. But the cathedrals of Italy owe their charm to colour and
brilliancy: their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the variegated marbles
and shallow portals of their façades, the light aërial elegance of
their campanili, are all adapted to the luminous atmosphere of a
smiling land, where changing effects of natural beauty distract the
attention from solidity of design and permanence of grandeur in the
edifice itself.
The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these remarks. Its design is
very simple. It consists of a parallelogram, from which three chapels
of equal size project, one at the east end, and one at the north and
south. The windows are small and narrow, the columns round, and the
roof displays none of that intricate groining we find in English
churches. The beauty of the interior depends on surface decoration,
on marble statues, woodwork, and fresco-paintings. Outside, there is
the same simplicity of design, the same elaborated local ornament.
The sides of the Cathedral are austere, their narrow windows cutting
horizontal lines of black and white marble. But the façade is a
triumph of decorative art. It is strictly what Fergusson has styled a
“frontispiece”; for it bears no relation whatever to the construction
of the building. Its three gables rise high above the aisles. Its
pinnacles and parapets and turrets are stuck on to look agreeable. It
is a screen such as might be completed or left unfinished at will by
the architect. Finished as it is, the façade of Orvieto is a wilderness
of beauties. Its pure white marble has been mellowed by time to a rich
golden hue, in which are set mosaics shining like gems or pictures of
enamel. A statue stands on every pinnacle; each pillar has a different
design; round some of them are woven wreaths of vine and ivy; acanthus
leaves curl over the capitals, making nests for singing-birds or
Cupids; the doorways are a labyrinth of intricate designs, in which
the utmost elegance of form is made more beautiful by incrustations
of precious agates and Alexandrine glasswork. On every square inch
of this wonderful façade have been lavished invention, skill, and
precious material. But its chief interest centres in the sculptures
executed by Giovanni and Andrea, sons and pupils of Nicola Pisano. The
names of these three men mark an era in the history of art. They first
rescued Italian sculpture from the grotesqueness of the Lombard and the
monotony of the Byzantine styles. Sculpture takes the lead of all the
arts. And Nicola Pisano, before Cimabue, before Duccio, even before
Dante, opened the gates of beauty, which for a thousand years had been
shut up and overgrown with weeds. As Dante invoked the influence of
Virgil when he began to write his mediæval poem, and made a heathen
bard his hierophant in Christian mysteries, just so did Nicola Pisano
draw inspiration from a Greek sarcophagus, which had been cast upon
the shore at Pisa. He studied the bas-relief of Phædra and Hippolytus,
which may still be seen upon the tomb of Countess Beatrice, in the
Campo Santo, and so learned by heart the beauty of its lines, and the
dignity expressed in its figures, that in all his subsequent works we
trace the elevated tranquillity of Greek sculpture. This imitation
never degenerated into servile copying; nor, on the other hand, did
Nicola attain the perfect grace of an Athenian artist. He remained a
truly mediæval carver, animated with a Christian, instead of a Pagan
spirit, but caring for the loveliness of form which art in the Dark
Ages failed to realize.
Whether it was Nicola or his sons who designed the bas-reliefs at
Orvieto is of little consequence. Vasari ascribes them to the father;
but we know that he completed his pulpit at Pisa in 1230, and his death
is supposed to have taken place fifteen years before the foundation of
the Cathedral. At any rate, they are imbued with his genius, and bear
the strongest affinity to his sculptures at Pisa, Siena, and Bologna.
To estimate the influence they exercised over the arts of sculpture and
painting in Italy would be a difficult task. Duccio and Giotto studied
here; Ghiberti closely followed them. Signorelli and Raphael made
drawings from their compositions. And the spirit which pervades these
sculptures may be traced in all succeeding works of art. It is not
classic; it is modern, though embodied in a form of beauty modelled on
the Greek.
The bas-reliefs are carved on four marble tablets placed beside the
porches of the church, and corresponding in size and shape with the
chief doorways. They represent the course of Biblical history,
beginning with the creation of the world, and ending with the Last
Judgment. If it were possible here to compare them in detail with the
similar designs of Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, it might be
shown that the Pisani established modes of treating sacred subjects
from which those mighty masters never deviated, though each stamped
upon them his peculiar genius, making them more perfect as time added
to the power of art. It would also be not without interest to show that
in their primitive conceptions of the earliest events in history, the
works of the Pisan artists closely resemble some sculptures executed on
the walls of Northern cathedrals, as well as early mosaics in the south
of Italy. We might have noticed how all the grotesque elements which
appear in Nicola Pisano, and which may still be traced in Ghiberti,
are entirely lost in Michel Angelo, how the supernatural is humanized,
how the symbolical receives an actual expression, and how intellectual
types are substituted for mere local and individual representations.
For instance, the Pisani represent the Creator as a young man, standing
on the earth, with a benign and dignified expression, and attended
by two ministering angels. He is the Christ of the Creed, “by whom
all things were made.” In Ghiberti we find an older man, sometimes
appearing in a whirlwind of clouds and attendant spirits, sometimes
walking on the earth, but still far different in conception from the
Creative Father of Michel Angelo. The latter is rather the Platonic
Demiurgus than the Mosaic God. By every line and feature of his face
and flowing hair, by each movement of his limbs, whether he ride on
clouds between the waters and the firmament, or stand alone creating by
a glance and by a motion of his hand Eve, the full-formed and conscious
woman, he is proclaimed the Maker who from all eternity has held the
thought of the material universe within his mind. Raphael does not
depart from this conception. The profound abstraction of Michel Angelo
ruled his intellect, and received from his genius a form of perhaps
greater grace. A similar growth from the germinal designs of the Pisani
may be traced in many groups.
But we must not linger at the gate. Let us enter the Cathedral and see
some of the wonders it contains. Statues of gigantic size adorn the
nave. Of these the most beautiful are the work of Ippolito Scalza,
an artist whom Orvieto claims with pride as one of her own sons. The
long line of saints and apostles whom they represent, conduct us to
the high altar surrounded by its shadowy frescoes, and gleaming with
the work of carvers in marble and bronze and precious metals. But
our steps are drawn towards the chapel of the south transept, where
now a golden light from the autumnal sunset falls across a crowd of
worshippers. From far and near the poor people are gathered. Most of
them are women. They kneel upon the pavement and the benches, sunburnt
faces from the vineyards and the canebrakes of the valley. The old
look prematurely aged and withered--their wrinkled cheeks bound up in
scarlet and orange-coloured kerchiefs, their skinny fingers fumbling
on the rosary, and their mute lips moving in prayer. The younger women
have great listless eyes and large limbs used to labour. Some of them
carry babies trussed up in tight swaddling-clothes. One kneels beside
a dark-browed shepherd, on whose shoulder falls his shaggy hair; and
little children play about, half-hushed, half heedless of the place,
among old men whose life has dwindled down into a ceaseless round
of prayers. We wonder why this chapel alone in the empty Cathedral,
is so crowded with worshippers. They surely are not turned towards
that splendid Pietà of Scalza--a work in which the marble seems to
live a cold, dead, shivering life. They do not heed Angelico’s and
Signorelli’s frescoes on the roof and walls. The interchange of light
and gloom upon the stalls and carved work of the canopies can scarcely
rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem fixed upon a curtain of red silk
above the altar. Votive pictures and glass cases full of silver hearts,
wax babies, hands and limbs of every kind, are hung around it. A bell
rings. A jingling organ plays a little melody in triple time; and from
the sacristy comes forth the priest. With much reverence, and with a
show of preparation, he and the acolytes around him mount the altar
steps, and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the curtain
we behold Madonna and her child--a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened
with the smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-working
image, cased in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass and
draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother and
the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off agues,
to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the storm, to
keep the lover’s troth and make the husband faithful to his home,
these pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a simple trust.
While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of
the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds
how the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered
them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and
even to their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden aureoles
of saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of
prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk’s dress,
kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry Judge, the
Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and the glorious
company of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof, expectant of
the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli, the rich man
who “lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in noble clothes,” the
liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the scaffold. For
all the worldliness of his attire and the delicacy of his living, his
brain teemed with stern and terrible thoughts. He searched the secrets
of sin and of the grave, of destruction and of resurrection, of heaven
and hell. All these he has painted on the walls beneath the saints of
Fra Angelico. First come the troubles of the last days, the preaching
of Antichrist, and the confusion of the wicked. In the next compartment
we see the Resurrection from the tomb; and side by side with that is
painted Hell. Paradise occupies another portion of the chapel.
After viewing these frescoes, we muse and ask ourselves why
Signorelli’s fame is so inadequate to his deserts? Partly, no doubt
because he painted in obscure Italian towns, and left few easel
pictures. Besides the artists of the Sixteenth Century eclipsed all
their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has been swallowed up
in that of Michel Angelo. Vasari said that “_esso Michel Angelo
imitò l’andar di Luca, come può vedere ognuno_.” Nor is it hard
to see that what the one began at Orvieto the other completed in the
Vatican. These great men had truly kindred spirits. Both struggled
to express their intellectual conceptions in the simplest and most
abstract forms. The works of both are distinguished by contempt for
adventitious ornaments and for the grace of positive colour. Both
chose to work in fresco, and selected subjects of the gravest and most
elevated character. The study of anatomy, and the correct drawing of
the naked body, which Luca practised, were carried to perfection by
Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought and self-restraint pervade their
compositions. He who would understand Buonarotti must first appreciate
Signorelli. The latter, it is true, was confined to a narrower circle
in his study of the beautiful and the sublime. He had not ascended
to that pure idealism superior to all the accidents of place and
time, which is the chief distinction of Michel Angelo’s work. At the
same time, his manner had not suffered from too close a study of the
antique. He painted the life he saw around him, and clothed his men and
women in the dress of Italy.
Such reflections, and many more, pass through our mind as we sit
and ponder in the chapel, which the daylight has deserted. The
country-people are still on their knees, still careless of the frescoed
forms around them, still praying to the Madonna of the Miracles. The
service is well-nigh done. The benediction has been given, the organist
strikes up his air of Verdi, and the congregation shuffles off, leaving
the dimly-lighted chapel for the vast sonorous dusky nave. How strange
it is to hear that faint strain of a feeble opera sounding where a
short while since, the trumpet-blast of Signorelli’s angels seemed to
thrill our ears!
THE BUILDINGS OF SHAH JEHAN
G. W. STEEVENS
The north-eastern approach to Agra is through a waste of land at the
same time flat and broken. Formless hillocks and ditches, colourless
sand and dead turf, the whole scene was mean and depressing. I raised
my eyes, and there, on the edge of the ugly prairie, sat a fair white
palace with domes and minarets. So exquisite in symmetry, so softly
lustrous in tint, it could hardly be substantial, and I all but cried,
“Mirage!” It was the Taj Mahal.
And now we were clanking over an iron bridge above a dark-green river
that filled barely a quarter of its sandy bed; deep, broad staircases
stepped down to its further bank with pillared pleasure-houses
overlooking them. Now on the right rose a great mosque, its bellying
domes zig-zagged with red and white; dawn from the left frowned the
weather-worn battlements of a great red fortress. This was the city of
Shah Jehan, emperor and devotee, artist and lover.
[Illustration: THE PEARL MOSQUE, INDIA.]
And this, in a few words, is the passionate story of Shah Jehan. He was
the grandson of Akbar the Great, the first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan.
While yet Prince Royal, conquering India for the Moguls, he married the
beautiful Persian, Arjmand Banu, called Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the chosen
of the palace, and loved her tenderly beyond all his wives for fourteen
years. But only a year after he became Sultan she died in travail of
her eighth child. Shah Jehan in his grief swore that she should have
the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he
built the Taj Mahal. Also he built the palace of Agra, the fort and
palace of Delhi, and the great mosque of Agra; he took to wife many
fair ladies, and lived in all luxuriousness, ministering abundantly to
every sense, till he had reigned thirty years. Then his son Aurungzebe
rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner in his own
private mosque, which he had built within the palace of Agra. There he
lived seven years more, attended by his daughter Jehanara, who would
not leave him, till at last, in 1645, being grown very feeble, he
begged to be laid in a chamber of the palace wherefrom he could see the
Taj Mahal. This was granted him, so that he died with his eyes upon the
tomb of the love of his youth. There they buried him beside her. And
his daughter, when her time came, wrote a Persian stanza begging that
no monument should be set up to “the humble transitory Jehanara,” and
praying only for her father’s soul.
Agra is the mirror of Shah Jehan. In the fort and palace you can read
all the story of the warrior and the lover--in the fort so nakedly
grim without and the palace so richly voluptuous within. Under the
brow of the sheer sandstone walls you are dwarfed to a pigmy. Before
and beneath the great gateway stands a double curtain of loophole and
machicolation and tower: you go in through cavernous guard-houses,
up a ramp between sky-closing walls. Only thus do you reach the
real entrance--the great Elephant Gate--two jutting octagon towers
supporting spacious chambers thrown across the passage. On the lower
storey all is closed, and only white plaster designs relieve the
savage masses of the sandstone; in the upper balconies are windows and
recesses, all decked with white, and above all runs a gallery crowned
with cupolas.
Under this arch you go, a dome above, deep and lofty recesses on either
hand; now you are past the sternness. Shah Jehan is soldier no longer
but artist and amorist at large. You come to the Pearl Mosque. There
is a Pearl Mosque at Delhi, sandstone slabs without, marble within,
as this is; but the Delhi mosque is a bauble to this. This is a broad
court, paved with slabs of marble, veined with white and blue, gray
and yellow. This is all marble--marble walls with moulded panels,
marble cloisters of multifoliate arches, marble gateways breaking three
walls of the square, marble columns supporting bell-cupolas above
them and at each corner, a marble basin in the centre of the court,
a marble sundial beside it. Along the west side of the court shines
the glorious face of the mosque itself--only a roofed quarter of the
whole space, a mere portico, but colonnaded with three rows of seven
pillars apiece, each branching to right and left, to front and back,
with eight-pointed, nine-leaved arches. Along the entablature above
runs a Persian inscription in mosaic of black marble; on the roof, over
each pillar of the front row is a cupola with four columns, and at each
corner a cupola with eight columns. Three domes fold their broad white
wings behind and above all.
Three steps for the mullah to preach from, and that is all the
catalogue. No altar or shrine or image: there is no god but God. No
carving or lattice-work: but the simple pillars and arches, the few
cupolas and domes, are yet the richest of ornamentation. No paint or
gems--only the clear harmonious veining of the marble. Only space
and proportion, form and whispers of colour--and it is so beautiful
that you can hardly breathe for rapture. The radiant marble ripples
from shade to shade--snow-white, pearl-white, ivory-white--till it
seems half alive. The bells and pinnacles are so light that they seem
to float in the air. It cannot be a building, you whisper: it is
enchantment.
But now go on to the palace. It has been battered and sacked--the
Jats of Bhurtpur carried away the precious stones from the walls; but
through the restorations you can dream of some of its delights when it
held the houris of Shah Jehan. Dream this and it is all enchantment;
you have arrived at last--at last, after so many years, after so many
leagues--in the dear country of your earliest dreams, and the Arabian
nights are come to life. Under this pillared hall the ambassadors
of Shiraz and Samarkand are making their obeisance and displaying
rich gifts. Above, in the marble alcove festooned with flowers and
tendrils in pietra dura, reclines the Sultan of the Indies on a couch
of white marble. Up the stairs--and here, enclosed by a colonnade of
two storeys, is the fish-pond; on the upper terrace under that canopy,
which is one block of creamy marble embossed with flowers, sits the
lovely favourite Schemselnihar, and makes believe to angle. She rises
and follows the other lights of the harem into the little square court
and portico that miniature the great Pearl Mosque without. But some of
the beauties turn aside to the gallery, where, below, is an enclosed
bazaar; handsome young merchants of Baghdad tempt them with silks and
brocades--and with looks that sigh and languish. They had best be
prudent: eyes as fathomless as theirs have grown dim in the dungeons
under the terraces, below the water. From lust to cruelty is only a
step; and when the Sultan raised the marble and the gems he sank the
dungeon, remote in a labyrinth of tunnels. Across it is a beam with a
noose for soft necks and a shoot for frail bodies that tumbles them
into the Jumna.
The Sultan has risen from his audience: he walks round the terrace,
through the delicious Hall of Private Audience, whose walls are marble,
whose pillars are festooned with creepers in agate and jasper, jade and
cornelian, whose ends are profound and graceful recesses, half-arch,
half-dome. He passes to the heavy slab of the black marble throne on
the riverside brink of the quadrangle; in the pit below they let out
buffaloes and tigers to fight before him; on the white seat behind him
sits the court jester to make him merry.
And now--it is the full moon that rises from an arch of the pavilion
to the right--the full moon, though it is still broad day? It is the
Sultaness-in-Chief looking out at the fight from her abode in the
Jasmine Tower. She has grown tired of throwing the dice, while her
handmaidens stand for pieces on the pachisi-board that is let into
her marble pavement--there, behind those duenna screens, the gauze
of lattice-work that encloses her courtyard. She has grown tired of
dabbling in the fountain that tinkles on the shallow basin of figured
marble, weary of her bower of marble inlaid with gems. The Sultan
rises, and it is the signal for the bath--the bath in the dark Mirror
Palace, lighted with a score of flambeaux and walled with a million
tiny mirrors, that reflect.... No; we must not think of it--nor of the
feast in the Private Palace, under the ceiling emblazoned with blue
and crimson and gold--nor yet of the disrobing in the Golden Pavilion,
where the ladies thrust their jewels into holes in the wall too narrow
for a man’s arm to follow them.... No; you should not listen to what
the Jester is saying now.
But if you envy Shah Jehan, look again later into the tiny Gem Mosque
and the cupboard at the side, too small to turn in, where he is the
uncrowned prisoner of his son. No Mirror Palace now; the ceiling is
black where they heat the water for his bath, in a hole of a cistern
where he cannot stretch out his limbs. Look again into the little
gilt-domed cupola, where he lies dying, and Jehanara’s voice sounds
suddenly far away; and the very Taj, though he knows every angle and
curve of it, swims in a grey-white blur; and nothing is left clear
save the voice and face of the beautiful Persian, Arjmand Banu, whose
palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when empire was still
a-winning, whose children called him father--Arjmand Banu, silent and
unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of his youth.
Now follow him to the Taj. Under the great gateway of strong sandstone
ribbed with delicate marble, its vaulted red arch cobwebbed with white
threads, and then before you--then the miracle of miracles, the final
wonder of the world. In chaste majesty it stands suddenly before you,
as if the magical word had called it this moment out of the earth.
On a white marble platform it stands exactly four-square, but that
the angles are cut off; nothing so rude as a corner could find place
in its soft harmonies. Seen through the avenue, it looks high rather
than broad; seen from the pavement below it, it looks broad rather
than high; you doubt, then conclude that its proportions are perfect.
Above its centre rises a full white dome, at each corner of whose base
nestles a smaller dome, upheld on eight arches. The centre of each face
is a lofty-headed gateway rising above the line of the roof; within
it is again a pointed caving recess, half arch, half dome; within
this, again, a screen of latticed marble. On each flank of these,
and on the facets of the cut-off angles, are pairs of smaller, blind
recesses of the same design, one above the other. From each junction
of facets rises a slim pinnacle. Everywhere it is embellished with
elaborate profusion. Moulding, sculpture, inlaid frets and scrolls
of coloured marbles, twining branches and garlands of jade and agate
and cornelian--here is every point of lavish splendour you saw in the
palace combined in one supreme embodiment--superb dignity matched with
graceful richness.
But it is vain to flounder amid epithets; the man who should describe
the Taj must own genius equal to his who built it. Description halts
between its mass and its fineness. It makes you giddy to look up at it,
yet it is so delicate you feel that a brick would lay it in shivers at
your feet. It is a rock temple and a Chinese casket together--a giant
gem.
Nothing jars; for if the jewel were away the setting would still be
among the noblest monuments on earth. The minarets at the four corners
of the platform are a moment’s stumbling-block: they look irreverently
like the military masts of a battleship, and the hard lines where
the stones join remind you of a London subway. But look at the Taj
itself, and the minarets fall instantly into place; they set off its
glories, and, standing like acolytes, seem to be challenging you not
to worship it. At each side, below the Taj, is a triple-domed building
of sandstone and marble; the hot red throws up the pearl-and-ivory
softness of the Taj. The cloisters round the garden, the lordly
caravanserai outside the gate, the clustering domes and mosaic texts
from the Koran on the great gate itself--all this you hardly notice;
but when you do, you find that every point is perfection. As for
the garden, with shady trees of every hue, from sprightly yellow to
funereal cypress, with purple blossoms cascading from the topmost
boughs, with roses and lilies, phloxes and carnations--and the channel
of clear water with twenty fountains that runs through the garden, and
the basin with the goldfish.... It is pure Arabian Nights! You listen
for the speaking bird and the singing tree. And was it not hither
that Prince Ahmed, leaving his brother Ali to cuddle Nuronnihar in the
palace, followed his arrow? And is not that the fairy Peri-Banu coming
out of the pleasure-house to welcome him? Surely man never made such
a Paradise: it must be the fabric of a dream wafted through gates of
silver and opal.
O Shah Jehan, Shah Jehan, you are bewitching a respectable
newspaper-correspondent. The thought of you is strong wine. Shah Jehan,
with your queens and concubines without number, their amber feet
mirrored in marble, their ivory limbs mirrored in quicksilver; Shah
Jehan, who starved them in the black oubliettes, and hung them from the
mouldy beam, and sluiced their beautiful bodies into the cold river;
Shah Jehan, with elephants and peacocks; Shah Jehan, returning from the
conquered Dekhan, dismounting in the Armoury Square, hastening through
the Grape Garden, hastening past the fair ones in the Golden Pavilion
to the fairest within the Jasmine Tower!
Shah Jehan--Grape Garden--Golden Pavilion--Jasmine Tower--there is
dizzy magic in the very names. And when I turn aside in your garden,
shunning your fierce black-and-scarlet petals to bring back my senses
with English stocks and pansies, the sight of your Taj through the
trees sends my brain areel again. I go in and stand by your tomb. The
jewel-creepers blossom more luxuriantly than ever in the trellised
screen that encloses it, and the two oblong cenotaphs are embowered in
gems. But here it is dark and cool: light comes in only through double
lattices of feathery marble. You look up into a dome, obscure and
mysterious, but mightily expansive, as it were the vault of the heaven
of the dead. It is very well; it is the fit close. In this breathless
twilight, after his battles and buildings, his ecstasies and torments,
his love and his loss, Shah Jehan has come to his own again for ever.
THE PRIORY AND CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW
CHARLES KNIGHT
Of all the persons whom the mighty business of providing sustenance for
the population of London leads among the pens, and crowds, and filth
of the great Metropolitan beast-market--of all those whom pleasure
attracts to the gingerbread and shows, and gong-resounding din of the
great Fair--or, lastly, of all those whom chance, or a dim remembrance
of the popular memories of the place, its burnings, tournaments, etc.,
or any other motive, brings into Smithfield--we wonder how many, as
they pass the south-western corner of the area, look through the
ancient gateway which leads up to the still more ancient church of St.
Bartholomew, with a kindly remembrance of the man (whose ashes there
repose) from whom these, and most of the other interesting features and
recollections of Smithfield, are directly or indirectly derived? We
fear very few. Time has wrought strange changes in the scene around;
and it is not at all surprising that we should forget what has ceased
to be readily visible. Who could suppose, from a mere hasty glance at
the comparatively mean-looking brick tower, and the narrow restricted
site of St. Bartholomew, that that very edifice was once the centre
only, of the splendid church of a splendid monastery--a church which
extended its spacious transepts on either side, and sent up a noble
tower high up into the air, to overlook, and, as it were, to guard, the
stately halls, far-extending cloisters, and delightful gardens that
surrounded the sacred edifice? Or, again, who would suspect that the
site of this extensive establishment (now in a great measure covered
with houses), and most probably the entire space of Smithfield, was,
prior to the foundation of the former, nothing but a marsh “dunge and
fenny,” with the exception of a solitary spot of dry land, occupied
by the travellers’ token of civilization, a gallows? Yet such are the
changes that have taken place, and for all that is valuable in them our
gratitude is due to the one man to whom we have referred--Rahere.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, ENGLAND.]
The history of the Priory is indeed the history of this singular
individual; and, by a fortunate coincidence, the historical materials
we possess are as ample as they are important. Among the manuscripts of
the British Museum is one entirely devoted to the life, character, and
doings of Rahere, written evidently shortly after his death by a monk
of the establishment, and which, for the details it also gives of the
circumstances attending the establishment of a great religious house
in the Twelfth Century, its glimpses into the manners and customs,
the modes of thought and feeling of the time--and, above all, for its
marked superiority of style to the writings that then generally issued
from the cloister--forms one of the most extraordinary, as it certainly
is one of the most interesting, of monastical documents.
Rahere, it appears, was a “man sprung and born from low _kynage_:
when he attained the flower of youth, he began to haunt the households
of noblemen and the palaces of princes; where under every elbow of
them, he spread their cushions with japes and flatterings, delectably
anointing their eyes, by this manner to draw to him their friendships.
And he still was not content with this, but often haunted the King’s
palace, and among the noiseful press of that tumultuous court informed
himself with polity and cardinal suavity, by the which he might draw
to him the hearts of many a one. There in spectacles, in meetings,
in plays, and other courtly mockeries and trifles intruding, he
led forth the business of all the day. This wise to the King and
great men, gentle and courteous known, familiar and fellowly he
was.” The King here referred to is Henry I. Stow says Rahere was
“a pleasant-witted gentleman; and therefore in his time called the
_king’s minstrel_.” To continue: “This manner of living he chose
in his beginning, and in this excused his youth. But the _inward
Seer_ and merciful God of all, the which out of Mary Magdalen cast
out seven fiends, the which to the Fisher gave the Keys of Heaven,
mercifully converted this man from the error of his way, and added to
him so many gifts of virtue.” Foremost in repentance as he had been in
sin, Rahere now “decreed himself to go to the court of Rome, coveting
in so great a labour to do the works of penance. And while he tarried
there, in that meanwhile, he began to be vexed with grievous sickness;
and his dolours little and little taking their increase, he drew to the
extreme of life. He avowed that if health God would him grant, that he
might return to his country, he would make an hospital in recreation
of poor men, and to them there so gathered, necessaries minister after
his power.” And not long after the benign and merciful Lord beheld this
weeping man, gave him his health, approved his vow.
When he would perfect his way that he had begun, in a certain night he
saw a vision full of dread and sweetness. It seemed to him to be borne
up on high of a certain beast, having four feet and two wings, and set
him in a high place. To whom appeared a certain man, pretending in
cheer the majesty of a king, of great beauty and imperial authority,
and his eye on him fastened. “O man,” he said, “what and how much
service shouldest thou give to him that in so great a peril hath
brought help to thee?” Anon he answered to this saint, “Whatsoever
might be of heart and of might diligently should I give in recompence
to my deliverer.” And then, said he, “I am Bartholomew, the apostle of
Jesus Christ, that come to succour thee in thine anguish and to open
to thee the secret mysteries of Heaven. Know me truly, by the will
and commandment of the Holy Trinity _and the common favour of the
celestial court and council_, to have chosen a place in the suburbs
of London, at Smithfield, where in my name thou shalt found a church.”
A man like this could not but succeed in whatever he essayed; and
accordingly the work “prosperously succeeded, and after the Apostle’s
word all necessaries flowed unto the hand. The church he made of
comely stonework, tablewise. And an hospital-house, a little longer
off from the church by himself he began to edify. The church was
founded (as we have taken of our elders) in the month of March, 1113.
President in the Church of England, William, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and Richard, Bishop of London;” who “of due law and right,” hallowed
a part of the adjoining field as a cemetery. “Clerks to live under
regular institution were brought together, and Rahere, of course, was
appointed Prior, who ministered unto his fellows necessaries, not of
certain rents, but plenteously of oblations of faithful people.” The
completion of the work, under such circumstances, evidently excited
a large amount of wonder and admiration, not unmixed with a kind of
superstitious awe. In 1410, during the prelacy perhaps of brother John
the Priory was rebuilt. At this time, and perhaps before, it possessed
within itself every possible convenience for the solace and comfort
of its inmates. We read of Le Fermery, Le Dorter, Le Frater, Les
Cloysters, Les Galleries, Le Hall, Le Kitchen, Le Buttry, Le Pantry,
Le olde Kitchen, Le Woodehouse, Le Garnier, and Le Prior’s Stable,
so late as the period of the dissolution in the Sixteenth Century.
There was also the Prior’s house, the Mulberry-garden, the Chapel now
the Church of St. Bartholomew the Less, etc., etc. It was entirely
enclosed within walls, the boundaries of which have been carefully
traced in the _Londini Illustrata_, and for which we abbreviate
the following description:--The north wall ran from Smithfield, along
the south side of Long Lane, to its junction with the east wall, about
thirty yards west from Aldersgate Street. It is mentioned by Stow, and
shown in Aggas’ plan, who represents a small gate or postern in it.
This gate stood immediately opposite Charter House Lane, where is now
the entrance into King Street or Cloth Fair. The west wall commenced
at the south-west corner of Long Lane, and continued along Smithfield,
and the middle of Duc Lane (or Duke Street) to the south gate, or
Great Gate House, now the principal entrance into Bartholomew Close.
The south wall, commencing from this gate, ran eastward in a direct
line towards Aldersgate Street, where it formed an angle and passed
southward about forty yards, enclosing the site of the present Alboin
Buildings, then resumed its eastern direction and joined the corner of
the eastern wall, which ran parallel with Aldersgate Street, at the
distance of about twenty-six yards. This wall was fronted for the most
part by houses in the street just mentioned, some of them large and
magnificent, particularly London House, between which and the wall was
a ditch. At first there were no houses in the immediate neighbourhood;
but the establishment of the monastery, and the fair granted to it,
speedily caused a considerable population to spring up all around, and
ultimately within. This grant was obtained from Henry II. The fair was
to be kept at Bartholomew tide for three days, namely, the eve, the
next day, and the morrow; and unto it “the clothiers of England and the
drapers of London repaired, and had their booths and standings within
the churchyard of this priory, closed in with walls and gates, locked
every night and watched, for safety of men’s goods and wares.” A Court
of Pie-powders sat daily during the fair holden for debts and contracts.
Although the present church, which was the choir of the more ancient
structure belonging to the Priory, stands some distance backwards from
Smithfield, there is little doubt that its front was originally on a
line with the small gateway yet remaining, and that the latter indeed
was the entrance from Smithfield into the southern aisle of the nave,
the part of the church now entirely lost. It is useless to inquire
what kind of front was here presented to the open area before it;
but if we may judge of it by this gateway, and by the general style
of the interior parts of the choir, it must have been a grand work.
The gateway is of a very beautiful character, with a finely pointed
arch, consisting of four ribs, each with numerous mouldings, receding
one within the other, and decorated with roses and zigzag ornaments.
Straight before us as we pass through this gateway are the churchyard
and church, the former having around it a range of large and very
dingy-looking lath-and-plaster houses, which, however, derive somewhat
of a picturesque appearance from their gable ends, and their windows
scattered about in “most admired disorder.” The exterior of the church,
as it here appears to us, consists of a brick tower, erected in 1628,
and by its side the end of the church, from which the nave has been cut
away, and the wall and large window erected to terminate the structure
at this point. The foundations of the nave still lie below the soil
of the churchyard some three or four feet. The wall of the latter, on
the right or southern side, now faced with brick, is very ancient
and of immense thickness, and forming most probably the original wall
of the south aisle. On stepping into the apartments of the adjoining
public-house, to which the wall now belongs, we find traces of a past
very different from what we see at present. Rooms with arched ceilings,
a cornice with a shield extending through two or three of them, and
thus showing that they have formed but one room, and a chalk cellar
below the house--all betoken that we are wandering among the ruins
of the old Priory. By the side of this house is a yard, filled with
costermongers and their donkeys, and surrounded by black and decayed
sheds and habitations, with balconied galleries.
Entering the church by the gateway below the tower, we get the first
glimpse of the new world as it were that opens upon us, or rather we
should say the old world of seven hundred years ago that has passed
away. Everything is solemn, grand, and apparently eternal. Those
immense pillars that we look upon have lost nothing as yet of their
original strength; there is no token that they will ever lose it.
Within the porch are the remains of a very elegant pointed arch in
the right wall, leading we presume into the cloisters, but of an
older date than those glorious Norman pillars to which some, of as
peculiarly slender make, belonging to another and opposite arch, appear
to have been attached, somewhat we think to the injury of their simple
character. One of the most interesting features of the choir is the
long-continued aisle, or series of aisles, which entirely encircle it,
opening into the former by the spaces between the flat and circular
arch-piers of the body of the structure. It is about twelve feet wide,
with a pure arched and vaulted ceiling in the simplest and truest
Norman style, with windows of different sizes slightly pointed. The
pillars against the wall opposite the entrance into the choir are flat.
One of the most beautiful little architectural effects of a simple
kind that we can conceive is to be found at the north-eastern corner
of the aisle. Between two of the grand Norman pillars projecting from
the wall is a low postern doorway; and above, rising on each side from
the capitals, a peculiarly elegant arch, something like an elongated
horse-shoe. The connexion between two styles so strikingly different in
most respects as the Moorish, with its fantastic delicacy and variety
and richness, and the Norman with its simple (occasionally uncouth)
grandeur, was never more apparent. That little picture is alone worth a
visit to St. Bartholomew’s.
Let us now enter the Choir, and, ascending the gallery to the side of
the organ, gaze on the impressive and characteristic work before us,
which seems scarcely less fresh and solid than when Rahere beheld in
its vast piers and beautiful arches the realization of the vision for
which he had so long yearned. We are standing in the centre of four
arches of the most magnificent span, fit bearers of the great tower
that they lifted so airily, as it were a thing of nought, into the air.
Two of these are round and two slightly pointed. The last (which were
originally open and formed the commencement of the transepts) have
been referred to as among the various instances of the occasional use
of pointed arches by the Normans before their systematic introduction
as a style. In each of the spandrels formed by these arches is a
small lozenge-shaped panel containing ornaments which bear a striking
resemblance to the Grecian honeysuckle, and deserve notice from their
singularity. Behind us are arches showing the original continuation
of the church into the nave. The roof is very ancient, and not
particularly handsome looking. It consists of massy timbers, some of
them braced up in the middle, apparently to prevent their falling.
Prior Bolton’s elegant oriel window in the second story appears to
have been built as a kind of pew or seat, from which the Prior could
overlook the canons when he pleased, without their being aware of his
presence, as it communicated with his house at the eastern extremity of
the church. The piers which support the range of pointed arches forming
the uppermost story are pierced longitudinally, so as to leave open a
passage all round the upper part of the building. The dimensions of
the church are stated somewhat differently by different writers, and
we have no means of reconciling the discrepancy. According to Malcolm,
the height is about forty feet, the breadth sixty feet, and the length
one hundred and thirty-eight feet; to which if we add eighty-seven feet
for the length of the nave, we have two hundred and twenty-five feet as
the entire length of the Priory church within the walls. Osborne, in
his _English Architecture_, gives the height as forty-seven feet,
the breadth fifty-seven feet, and the length of the present church one
hundred and thirty-two feet. We may here observe that when the fire
broke out in 1830, the interior of the church was much injured, and the
entire pile had a narrow escape from destruction.
Lastly, and as we began, so should we end, with Rahere, who is the
presiding spirit of the place, we find the monument of the founder in
the north-eastern corner, almost immediately opposite the beautiful
oriel window which Prior Bolton there erected, in order, perhaps that
when he sat in it the home of the ashes of his illustrious predecessor
might be forever before him. This is a work in every way worthy of
the man whom it enshrines. It is one of the most elegant specimens of
the pointed style of architecture, consisting mainly of a very highly
wrought stonework screen, enclosing a tomb on which Rahere’s effigy
extends at full length. The roof of the little chamber, as we may
call it, is most exquisitely groined. At what period the monument was
erected is uncertain; but the style marks it as of a later date than
that of the founder’s decease. But it was most carefully restored by
Bolton; and the fact is significant of its antiquity. As the latter
found, no doubt, a labour of love in making these reparations, so
Time itself seems to have seconded his efforts, and to have shared
in the hopes of its builders that a long period of prosperity should
be granted to it, by touching it very gently. Here and there the
pinnacles have been somewhat diminished of their fair proportions,
and that is pretty well the entire extent of the injury the work has
experienced. The monument, it must be added, is richly painted as well
as sculptured, and shows us the black robes of Rahere and of the
monks who are kneeling at his side--the ruddy features of the former,
and the splendid coats-of-arms on the front of the tomb below. Each
of the monks has a Bible before him, open at the fifty-first chapter
of Isaiah. And often and often, no doubt, has Rahere, as he read such
verses as that (the third) we are about to transcribe, received fresh
accession of strength to complete his arduous task, until what he had
first looked upon as holy words of encouragement only became to his
rapt fancy a prophecy which he was chosen to fulfil. When others spoke
of the all but impossible task (for such it was generally esteemed)
he had undertaken, of cleaning and building upon the extensive marsh
allotted, he smiled in his heart to think what One had said greater
than they:--“The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste
places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert
like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein,
thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”
KUTB MINAR
G. W. STEEVENS
Delhi is still seamed with the scars of her spoilers, and still
jewelled with remnants of the gems they fought for. If you take them in
order, you will go first, not into the city, but eleven miles south,
to the tower Kutb Minar. Through the dust of the road, rising out of
the springing wheat, among the mud-and-mat huts before which squat the
brown-limbed peasants, you see the country a litter of broken walls,
tumbling towers, rent domes. There are fragments of seven cities built
by seven kings before the present Delhi was. Eleven miles of them bring
you to the tower and mosque of Kutb.
Kutb-ed-Din was a slave who raised himself to Viceroy of Delhi when
the Mussulmans took it, then to Emperor of Hindustan and founder of a
dynasty. Whether he or his son or the last of the Hindu kings built the
tower, antiquaries are undecided and others careless. It is enough that
here is one landmark in Delhi’s history, one splendid monument reared
for a symbol of triumph by a victor whom now nobody can certainly
identify. It is a colossal, five-storied tower, two hundred and forty
feet high, of nearly fifty feet diameter at the base, and tapering
to nine feet at the top. Tiny balconies with balustrades mark the
junctions of the stories: the three lower are red stone, the two
upper--dwarfed just under the sky--faced with white marble. All the red
part is fluted into alternate semicircles and right angles, netted all
over with tracery, and belted with inscriptions under the balconies.
But the details strike you little: the vertical lines of the fluting
only give the impression that this is one huge pillar with a red
shaft and a white capital--a pillar that might form part of the most
tremendous temple in the world, yet stands quite seemly alone by reason
of its surpassing bigness.
[Illustration: THE KUTB MINAR, INDIA.]
Pant to the top. It will do you good, though the view is nothing. The
country is an infinite green-and-brown chess-board of young corn and
fallow, dead-flat on every side, ugly with the complacent plainness of
all very rich country. Beyond the sheeny ribbon of the Jumna, north,
south, east, west, into the blurred horizon, you can see only land and
land and land--a million acres with nothing on them to see--except the
wealth of India and the secret of the greatness of Delhi.
Then look down past your toes and you will see the evidence of some of
Delhi’s falls. From the ground you will have noticed ruins about you;
but there the Kutb Minar dwarfs everything. Now you see that you stand
above a field of broken arches, solitary pillars, stumps of towers, and
in the middle of what must once have been a town of mosques and tombs.
Before it was that, it was a town of Hindu temples and palaces. In the
court of the ruined mosque stands a solid wrought-iron pillar--little
enough to look at, but curious, because it is at least fifteen hundred
years old, and there is nothing else quite like it in the world. It
bears a Sanskrit inscription to the effect that this is “the Arm of
Fame of Raja Dhava, who conquered his neighbours and won the undivided
sovereignty of the earth.”
Poor Raja Dhava! The temples of generations that had already forgotten
him are swept utterly away; the mosque of their conquerors stands now
only as a few shattered red arches and pillars with defaced flowers
wilting on them. Beyond that is the base of what was once to be a tower
more than twice as high as the Kutb Minar, but was never even finished.
The very tower you stand on has been buffeted by earthquake, and great
part of it is mere restoration. And Delhi, which in the year One
stood here, has drifted away almost out of sight from the summit and
left these forlorn fragments to decay without even the consolation of
neighbourhood.
KUTB MINAR
ANDRÉ CHÉVRILLON
I take a carriage to visit the Kutb Minar, the great tower that rears
itself up about ten miles from Delhi.
This is Asia’s Appian Way. Ruins from every century, left by three
races and three religions, are scattered over a large and dismal plain.
The remains of ancient Hindu Delhi, of Afghan Delhi, and of Mogul
Delhi, cover a dead expanse of seventy square miles. Slowly, during the
flow of centuries, the city has changed its site, as a river changes
its bed. As far as the eye can reach, dilapidated domes and broken
columns reveal themselves in the midst of the dry brushwood. These
yellowish hillocks are the ruins of Indra-Partha, the city of Indra,
for which the five brothers of Mahabarata fought three thousand years
ago. Farther away a granite pillar, covered with Pali characters,
proclaims the edicts of the Buddhist King Asoka. Everywhere, like
tombs in a cemetery, the _débris_ of Mongolian art, monumental
mausoleums and domes surrounded by kiosks are heaped together, all
corroded by time and merged into the uniform tint of the sad and dry
vegetation that Nature provides. Several tombs are as large as those of
Akbar at Secundra and rise up solitary upon the arid steppe. The blue
peacocks that are roaming about are the only living things that haunt
the place. Generations have swarmed here and of their living past
this almost imperceptible residue is all that is left, just as ancient
forests have had to exist in order to make a little piece of coal. The
Vedic age, the Brahmanical age, the Buddhist age, the first Mussulman
dynasties, the Mogul Empire,--each historical period has left here a
small deposit.
You can gather this history around the Kutb: four old Hindu forts,
still quite recognizable, once surrounded a large city and some
Buddhist temples where the monks in yellow robes with shaven heads
walked about peacefully; there remains a large iron post charged with
some Sanskrit inscriptions. About the year 1000, over the wall of the
Himalayas overflowed the first hordes of the Mussulmans. The city was
razed and from the stones of the great temple a mosque was built, the
ruins of which now lie around us. Here is a triple colonnade where
you recognize the old Buddhist pillars, and the patient, complicated,
confused work of the poor Hindu workman, with all of its childish
indecency. They are deeply worked, overcharged with chisellings
that time has made almost illegible; here and there, figures of a
symbolical obscenity appear, a few mutilated by the moral superiority
of the conqueror. Little by little, you accustom yourself to read what
the eaten away stone has to say, the lines form themselves afresh.
You recognize processions of gods surrounded by guards and faithful
followers, animals, tigers, lewd monkeys and elephants, which, from a
very early period, occupy the Hindu mind. These thousands of stones,
which ought to be arranged in irregular chapels and leafy roofs,
the Mussulmans have erected into columns, rectangular galleries,
or in geometrical and simple rows. Upon the great bare walls,
cabalistic numbers and letters that look like the tracks of birds are
directed against the unbelievers. Above all, dominating the immense
cemetery-like plain, inviolate through time, the Kutb throws its
straight rocket of red stone and white marble, two hundred and fifty
feet into the sky. Six centuries ago, from its top the sharp chant of
the Muezzin broke the silence of the great plain when the sun dropped
behind the horizon.
KENILWORTH CASTLE
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE
Apart from the great historical interest attaching to these magnificent
ruins, they deserve, architecturally, the closest examination and
study, containing, as they do, elaborate specimens of the best
constructions, in both military and domestic branches, during the
different periods of the art in this country. We find first the
massive square Norman keep, which had its protecting moat. This was
the work of the original grantee, Geoffrey de Clinton, the treasurer
and chamberlain of Henry I. Next comes an era, from 1180 to 1187, when
we find entries for building and repairs to walls and fortifications;
and again, from 1212 to 1216, the castle being then in the hands of
King John, vast sums were expended upon the outer line of walls, with
their flanking defences of Lunn’s Tower and the Water Tower, and upon
a chamber and other accommodation for the King, most of which still
remains, though the timber constructions inside and against the walls
have, of course, not survived. The next development is in the Late
Decorated or Perpendicular style including the ruins of the great Hall
and some other buildings at the west end of the inner court still
called Lancaster’s Buildings, of the Fourteenth Century, rather late in
the reign of Edward III., being some of the additions made by John of
Gaunt, after he obtained Kenilworth by his first wife.
[Illustration: KENILWORTH CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
After this portion come the various alterations and insertions of
the Elizabethan period, the beautiful gatehouse on the north side,
and the towers and works added by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
and called the Leicester Buildings. Here are, therefore, examples
of four different periods in each of which the particular work is
capable of proof by existing documents, showing the gradations and
changes which these buildings underwent, according to the requirements
of the different ages, in passing from the barbarism of a military
despotism to the comforts and splendour of later civilization. It is
a magnificent specimen, and one easy of access. As we have said, the
Manor of Kenilworth was bestowed by Henry I. upon Geoffrey de Clinton,
who founded here a castle and a monastery; deriving, doubtless, from
a Norman follower of Duke William, he must have been of worth and
eminence among the barons, since besides the Royal posts which he
occupied, the King appointed him to the Chief Justiceship of England.
He was succeeded by his son Geoffrey, married to Agnes, daughter of
Roger, Earl of Warwick, whose son, Henry, parted with Kenilworth, most
probably on compulsion, to King John, who made it a Royal residence.
One of the rebellious sons of Henry II. had taken possession of it, and
held it for a time. Henry III., on his sister, the Princess Eleanor,
marrying Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, settled Kenilworth on
her for life but in 1254 it was granted for the joint lives of the
Earl and Countess of Leicester, and they made their home here. During
the Baron’s War which followed, this castle was made the base of
operations by de Montfort, who provided it with warlike engines of
defence not then known in England, and stores of all sorts, and after
the battle of Lewis, Richard, King of the Romans, Henry’s brother,
with his youngest son, Edmund, was sent prisoner to Kenilworth, under
the care of Leicester’s second son Simon. In 1265, after effecting
his escape from the custody of the barons at Hereford, Prince Edward,
by a daring night attack, beat up the quarters of young de Montfort
at Kenilworth, and took temporary possession of the place, making
prisoners thirteen knights bannerets, with their followers, who were
unguardedly sleeping in houses around the castle perhaps for the sake
of an early bath. Young de Montfort and his pages narrowly escaped
capture and only did so by a headlong race “some stark naked, some in
breeches or drawers, some in shirts and many with their clothes under
their arms.” Departing thence Prince Edward rapidly effected a junction
with his friends in the West, and overwhelmed and slaughtered the Earl
of Leicester at the battle of Evesham. After this the Royal forces
returned to Kenilworth which still held out manfully under the Earl’s
second son Simon and underwent a close siege that lasted for six months.
Trenches were cut on the land side of the castle and huge wooden
towers, holding slingers and archers, were advanced against the wall,
while barges, transported overland from Chester maintained the attack
across the castle lake; but the garrison which numbered 1,200 men, met
these assaults with the mangonels and other engines of de Montfort,
and only gave in when reduced by famine, when, with the surrender of
Kenilworth, the Civil War came to an end in December, 1265.
Having thus recovered possession of the fortress, King Henry bestowed
it and the manor upon his youngest son Edmund, whom he created, two
years later, Earl of Lancaster. In 1279, under the encouragement of
that martial prince, Edward I., a very magnificent tournament was held
at Kenilworth, under Mortimer, Earl of March, for the space of three
days, at which, besides the sports of tilting and the barriers, the
new military game of the Round Table was introduced. King Edward II.,
after his flight and capture, was brought a prisoner here to meet the
commission appointed by Parliament, from whose lips he received the
announcement of his deposition in favour of his son, at hearing which
he fell senseless to the ground. Of the presence chamber, where this
mournful scene was enacted, little remains but fragments of walls and
two large bay windows festooned with ivy. The unfortunate King was
shortly after, on December 5, removed hence to his hideous doom at
Berkeley Castle on January 25. On the accession of Edward III., the
castle again became the seat of baronial splendour under the Earls of
Lancaster, the third of whom, Henry, was created Duke of Lancaster,
but dying s. p. male (35 Edward III.), his two daughters became heirs
to his great estates: Blanche, the younger, inheriting Kenilworth and
bringing it, and afterwards, on her sister’s death the whole property
of her father, in marriage to John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward
III., who shortly after revived in him the title of Duke of Lancaster.
The wealth thus obtained from his father enabled in great measure the
duke’s son and heir, Henry of Bolingbroke, in later days to oust his
cousin, Richard II., from the throne, and to take his place thereon as
King Henry IV., being greatly driven thereto by the King’s treatment of
him in regard to Kenilworth.
The range called Lancaster Buildings was caused to be erected by John
of Gaunt between his accession to the property and his death in 1399.
They lie on the south side of the inner quadrangle and there is a tower
with three stories of arches adjoining the hall on the north, also of
this date; the same origin is given to the Strong, or Mervin’s Tower,
as it is called by Sir Walter Scott. The ancient garden of the castle
was situated near the north-east angle of the outer wall, where the
Swan Tower meets the lake and wet ditch on the north.
Of course on Henry IV. succeeding, the crown resumed the ownership of
the fortress, and thus it continued, often enlivened by the visits
of royalty, until the days of Elizabeth, who bestowed it on her
favourite, Robert Dudley, fifth son of the Duke of Northumberland,
with all the royalties thereto belonging. Without enlarging on the
history of this courtier, it is enough to say that he seems to have
expended the enormous emoluments derived from the many dignities with
which Elizabeth overwhelmed him in his lavish outlay upon Kenilworth.
The additions and alterations made there by this Dudley involved an
expenditure of £60,000--an incredible sum in those days. He erected
the great gatehouse on the north, also the mass of square rooms from
the north-east angle of the upper court, the buildings, called after
him, and the gallery and lower gatehouse towers, together with a
great range of stabling. He removed the Norman windows from the keep,
replacing them by more modern ones; and it is evident that the great
object of his outlay was to provide magnificent accommodation for the
entertainment of his Queen and her Court.
This reception took place in July, 1575, and the festivities were
continued for seventeen days during which every sort of prodigal
extravagance possible at that age was indulged in. It cost Leicester
£1,000 a day. At his death he bequeathed the castle to his brother
Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, for life, and afterwards to his own son Sir
Robert Dudley, upon whose birth and legitimacy the father (who is
certainly one of the dark characters in English history) chose to throw
doubts.
This seems to have incited that greedy monarch, James I., to refuse
the succession to Sir Robert, whom he forced to consent to a nominal
sale of the property to Henry, Prince of Wales, at one-third of its
value, and even that was never paid. Dudley, in disgust, withdrew from
England, and lived in much honour at Florence, when he died about the
year 1650.
When the place fell into the hands of Oliver Cromwell, a sort of
commission of army officers was sent to Kenilworth to divide and share
the property between them, and they, caring nothing for historical
associations, the splendour of the structure, or the richness of the
furniture and plenishing (it was but seventy-five years after the
entertainment of Elizabeth there) proceeded to strip the place, to cut
the timber, kill the deer, and even to sell the walls and roofing, for
the value of the bare materials.
At the restoration, Charles II. granted the reversion of the manor
to Lawrence, Lord Hyde, second son of Chancellor Clarendon, whom he
created Baron Kenilworth and Earl of Rochester. His grandson leaving
only a daughter, the lands and ruins came by marriage to the Essex
family and, afterwards, by marriage to Thomas Villiers, the second son
of the Earl of Jersey, created, in 1756, Baron Hyde, in whose family
they still continue.
At Kenilworth was immured Eleanor Cobham, the wife of Humphrey, Earl
of Gloucester, after the performance of her penance on a charge of
practicing witchcraft against Henry VI. and here she ended her days.
As in most other cases the Norman baron founded his castle on the site
of a Saxon home with a fortified burh; a square keep was built on the
most commanding position, perhaps on the mound, and a large walled
enclosure was made, defended on the west, south and east sides by a
lake and by a deep ditch across the north front. Somewhat on the west
side of this was formed the inner ward a rectangular enclosure, nearly
one and one-half acres in area, the north-east corner of which was
occupied by Clinton’s keep. This is a plain late Norman edifice with a
forebuilding on the west side, and containing a vaulted basement and
one upper floor only, the former being entirely filled with earth. The
main floor formed one immense room thirty-four feet by sixty-four and
about forty feet high. The forebuilding contained the staircase of
approach to the entrance doorway, and above was a room, possibly an
oratory. Large corner turrets, three containing mural chambers and one
large spiral stair, cap the angles of the keep, the walls of which are
of immense thickness. There is no evidence as to what was the nature
of the Norman buildings in this ward, since they have been replaced
by the work of the Earls of Lancaster, and of John of Gaunt, and are
called by their name. West from the keep are the ruined kitchens,
showing a huge fireplace and baking ovens. At the north-west angle
is the Strong Tower, of three stages, which was, perhaps, used as a
prison for persons of consequence. Adjoining this is the Hall, a pure
Perpendicular building, due to John of Gaunt, beyond which was the
white hall, and next the State rooms, which are connected with a large
garderobe tower. Then at the south-east corner comes the range to which
the name of Leicester’s Buildings has been given, and the east face to
the keep is made up by the site of Dudley’s Lobby and Henry VIII.’s
lodgings, but all this has perished.
The outer ward is a large oblong enclosure, 270 yards long from east
to west by 174; at its east end were domestic offices, the entrances
and the chapel. Originally this ward was divided by a ditch seventy
feet wide running north and south with a bridge for access to the
inner ward, part of it remaining in front of Leicester’s buildings,
and the rest having probably been filled in by Dudley after the visit
of Elizabeth. This outer ward contains about nine acres, having a
circumference of 750 yards; it is formed by a strong curtain wall
embracing six important buildings; namely, the octagon Swan Tower on
the north-west, Mortimer’s Tower, or the gatehouse, at the head of
the dam across the lake, called either after Lord Mortimer of Wigmore
(temp. Edward III.), or from Sir John Mortimer, imprisoned here in the
reign of Henry V. Then towards the east came the Warden’s Tower, and
next the Water Tower at the south-east corner, a complete mural bastion
of Early Decorated style; whence the curtain runs to Lunn’s Tower at
the north-east angle, a round building thirty-six feet in diameter and
forty high. At the back of this part of the wall is a long range of
stabling and farm buildings, with an upper half-timbered storey, said
to have been built by the great Earl Thomas of Lancaster, in the reign
of Edward II., but some part is Late Perpendicular. Next to this is
the chapel. West of Lunn’s Tower is the building called Leicester’s
Gatehouse, built in 1570, a rectangular tower with octangular corner
turrets. On the north side of the great ditch, which is cut through the
rock and forms the north defence, is Clinton’s green, where are still
banks of earth, probably survivals of the great siege by Henry III.
In front of Mortimer’s Tower is the dam, eighty yards long, across the
valley, having at its further end the remains of a flood-gate and outer
gatehouse, or the gallery tower, with a drawbridge here over the outer
ditch. This was the point at which Queen Elizabeth made her entry.
Beyond it was called the Brayz, where tournaments were held, as they
also were on the dam itself. On both sides of the dam extended a lake,
half a mile long on the west, and some twelve feet deep, upon which the
attack by ships was made by Henry III. Finally, beyond the Brayz was a
great curved outwork forming a tête-du-pont in front of the entrance.
The keep, or Clinton’s Tower was perhaps built between 1170 and 1180.
Lunn’s Tower may be the work of King John. Henry III. expended large
sums at Kenilworth, and to him is ascribed the great dam, the Water and
Warden’s Towers, and much of the curtain on the south and east. Robert
Dudley, Earl of Leicester, altered the keep into Tudor Style, and
besides the buildings called by his name, added the Gallery Tower and
the gatehouse at the north-east, “a very fine example of a declining
period in English architecture.” John of Gaunt certainly built the
great Hall (circ. 1390), “one of the most beautiful examples of Early
Perpendicular work in the kingdom,” and he is said to have built the
portion called Lancaster’s Buildings, between Cæsar’s Tower and the
hill. It was at Kenilworth, during one of her visits in August, 1572,
while out hunting, that Queen Elizabeth read, as she rode, the terrible
news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE
JOHN RUSKIN
“SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE,” Our Lady of Health, or of Safety, would be
a more literal translation, yet not perhaps fully expressing the force
of the Italian word in this case. The church was built between 1630
and 1680, in acknowledgment of the cessation of the plague:--of course
to the Virgin, to whom the modern Italian has recourse in all his
principal distresses, and who receives his gratitude for all principal
deliverances.
The hasty traveller is usually enthusiastic in his admiration of this
building; but there is a notable lesson to be derived from it, which
is not often read. On the opposite side of the broad canal of the
Guidecca is a small church, celebrated among Renaissance architects as
of Palladian design, but which would hardly attract the notice of the
general observer, unless on account of the pictures by John Bellini
which it contains, in order to see which the traveller may perhaps
remember having been taken across the Guidecca to the Church of the
“Redentore.” But he ought carefully to compare these two buildings with
each other, the one built “to the Virgin,” the other “to the Redeemer”
(also a votive offering after the cessation of the plague of 1576): the
one, the most conspicuous church in Venice, its dome, the principal one
by which she is first discerned, rising out of the distant sea; the
other, small and contemptible, on a suburban island, and only becoming
an object of interest, because it contains three small pictures! For
in relative magnitude and conspicuousness of these two buildings, we
have an accurate index of the relative importance of the ideas of the
Madonna and of Christ in the modern Italian mind.
[Illustration: SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE, ITALY.]
The Church of Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal, one of
the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, is rendered
impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These latter
are exceedingly good; the grace of the whole building being chiefly
dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty grouping
of the two campaniles behind them. It is to be generally observed that
the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style
or general merits of their architecture. An architect trained in the
worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning or purpose in his
work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing and grouping as will
render all his structures effective when seen from a distance: such a
gift is very general with the late Italian builders, so that many of
the most contemptible edifices in the country have good stage effect so
long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is farther
assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the
Canal; and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen
by Turner for the principal object in his well-known view of the Grand
Canal. The principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in
the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses
under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being
originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by Lazari to be
of timber, and therefore needs none. The sacristy contains several
precious pictures: the three on its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are
indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small Titian, “St.
Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and Damian,” was, when I first saw it, to my
judgment, by far the first work of Titian’s in Venice. It has since
been restored by the Academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed,
but I had not time to examine it carefully.
At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated
the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo; and at the side of it, one of
the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice, namely _The Marriage
in Cana_, an immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen
feet high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which Tintoret
signed with his name.
[Illustration: THE RAMPARTS OF CARCASSONNE, FRANCE.]
THE RAMPARTS OF CARCASSONNE
A. MOLINIER
To what race shall we attribute the foundation of the city of
Carcassonne? We cannot say exactly, so many races having occupied this
part of the valley of the Aude in turn; the first in point of time
was that of the Iberians, that mysterious people, who had colonized
Southern Europe long before the coming of the Aryan race. Without
taking any more account than is necessary regarding the hypothesis of
the etymologists, we may recall the fact that the celebrated William
von Humboldt attaches the vocable _Carcaso_, as well as many
others from the south of Gaul and the north of Spain, to the Iberic
language.
Erected into a Latin colony by Cæsar himself, or by his adopted
son, Augustus, Carcassonne vegetated obscurely for three centuries
until the day when the invasion by the Barbarians and the civil
wars brought about the ruin of the Empire. At this moment she was
shorn of her ancient glory; and from a Latin colony, she became a
simple _castrum_, which many manuscripts of the _Notitia
dignitatum_, written about the year 400, do not even mention. But
if the old city lost her importance with regard to civil life, she
gained it in military life. At the moment the Germans, those hereditary
enemies of Rome, spread over the whole of Gaul, the cities repaired
their too long neglected fortifications in great haste; open spaces
they surrounded with high walls; the ancient citadels were reinforced;
and in their haste, just as happened later during the Hundred Years’
War, many sumptuous buildings erected by Latin architects, were
sacrificed to make the defences. Carcassonne is now furnished with
a strong enclosure, the honour of which many archæologists, among
them Viollet-le-Duc, wish to give to the Visigoths; but it seems more
prudent to attribute them to the last engineers of the expiring Empire.
This enclosure, of which some parts still exist to-day, is composed of
curtains of medium height, surmounted by a parapet without projections
and flanked at intervals with semicircular towers opened at the gorge,
or closed by a flat wall.
The towers were bare up to the level of the circling road, higher they
comprised two or three stories. Viollet-le-Duc supposes that they were
covered with a roof, and restored one according to this hypothesis.
Much more elevated than the curtain, these Gallo-Roman towers commanded
it from above, and on each of their flanks the curtain is interrupted
by a gap connected by a narrow bridge, which was easy to destroy in
case of an attack.
One must imagine the city of Carcassonne, with this enclosure composed
of high curtains with parapets and turrets, and, at intervals, high
towers, dominating the country and commanding the neighbouring
defences. Such she was at the end of the Empire and such she remained
for several centuries. Occupied by the Visigoths, vainly besieged
several times by Clovis and by the successors of that prince, she was
not forced before the Eighth Century. At this date, she fell into the
hands of the Arabs, with all of the surrounding country. The domination
of the Mussulmans, however, was very ephemeral; occupied by them about
720, Carcassonne again became Christian thirty years later, in 759.
Carcassonne became an important town. The city remains a fortress of
the first order, almost impregnable, with its towers, its curtains
and its vast _château_; but around it, on the slopes and at
the base of the hill between the Aude and the city, extensive and
flourishing boroughs are forming. These _bourgs_ are mentioned
in 1067; more recent discoveries tell us that the two principal ones
were Saint-Vincent and Saint-Michel. The latter was a commercial town
inhabited by common people and workmen whose turbulent character caused
great embarrassment to the viscounts during the Twelfth Century. From
the beginning of that century, the notables of Carcassonne took the
side of the enemy of their legitimate master, the Count of Barcelona,
gave him their oath, and on two different occasions the Viscount,
Bernard Aton, was chased by them from his capital. When he returned, in
1125, he took rigorous measures to assure his rule in the future. Each
tower on the wall was confided to the care of a faithful noble who had
to live in it with his family and his men, to do what was called _le
service d’estage_. The feudal acts have preserved for us the name of
several towers, the _turris monetaria vetus_, for example, but it
would be difficult to state precisely to which of the existing towers
the old names were given.
To the same viscount, Bernard Aton, is attributed the construction of
a great part of the present wall of the city, and almost the entire
_château_; from the reign of the same prince dates also the old
part of the church Saint-Nazaire. Let us begin with the _château_.
An act of the year 1034 already mentions the residence of the Counts of
Carcassonne, and the _sala_, in which the Bishop of Gerona, Pierre
Roger, lived; it speaks of the kitchens, the chambers, the stables
and the chapel Saint-Marcel. Later, the _castellum Carcassonne_
is always carefully distinguished from the citadel; the acts, in
mentioning a _camera rotunda_, speak of the elm that ornamented
the court and under which the feudal lords rendered justice, as Saint
Louis did later at Vincennes. But these give very meagre information
which the study of this building will happily permit us to complete.
The ordinary residence of the suzerain, the _Château de
Carcassonne_, like the donjons of the North, was designed to
protect him against all attacks that came from outside as well as from
within the town. A last refuge for faithful defenders, it had to be a
shelter during a regular siege, or a personal attack, and to protect
the suzerain against enemies without and traitors within. Therefore,
a special wall was erected against the town and against the country.
The _Château de Carcassonne_ was no exception to the general
rule. Supported by the exterior wall on the side of the town, it is
defended by a wide moat and by a circular barbican over the end of
a bridge that was thrown over the moat; it forms a parallelogram,
flanked by towers and high curtains. The masonry is the same and
is composed of yellowish stones placed in regular layers of from
fifteen to twenty centimetres in height. The domes have the form of
hemispherical caps, with regular arches and are unornamented. The
bays are semicircular without mouldings, or projections; nowhere is
there any sacrifice to decoration, with the exception of certain upper
openings that are inaccessible to attack, and these have received a
few ornaments,--mouldings and little columns of marble that garnish
the corners of the windows. The principal entrance towards the city
was defended by two portcullises and two successive gates; after
having passed these obstacles, you find yourself in a large court of
honour which was flanked on one side by the walls of the city, and
on the other by dwellings, shops, and light wooden buildings, that
have disappeared to-day, or have been restored in the style of the
Thirteenth Century. A few halls of the Twelfth Century have, however,
survived; they are not very attractive, with their surbased vaults and
their narrow openings.
Let us now turn our back on the _château_ and enter the
_lices_, for this is what they called the space circumscribed by
the two walls of the City. We have seen above that from 1240 the town
had a double wall, but the first, probably much damaged by the lords of
Trencavel, was doubtless reconstructed in, and appears to date almost
entirely from, the reign of St. Louis. It is composed of curtains
elevated upon the rock and which never could have been of a great
height: since the ground of the _lices_ was made, it has gained in
height. Sometimes the two curtains were quite far apart, sometimes, on
the contrary, they are close together, and the straight passage between
them was formerly closed by walls with battlements and solid gates.
Most of the towers which flank the exterior wall are very simple and
are quite low; as a rule, they are composed of two storeys and their
platform is covered with a pointed roof covered with slate.
The interior enclosure, which is much stronger and better preserved
than the exterior, dates only in part from the Thirteenth Century, but
if the royal architects have respected the work of their predecessors
as scrupulously as possible, they have never hesitated to transform
the defective or insufficient portions, whenever they felt it
practical. This second enclosure is at once higher and stronger than
its neighbour, the towers are closer together and better arranged for
defence. The elevated and spacious curtains still carry traces of the
_hourds_ which surmounted them in times of war; in many of those
near the _château_, the base dates from the time of a remote
epoch,--perhaps the time of the Romans, but the tops were remodelled in
the Thirteenth Century by Saint-Louis, or Philip the Bold. Moreover,
these princes made no other changes in the whole wall that extends from
the _château_ to the Tower of the Inquisition; you particularly
notice the Tower of Justice, a beautiful building with four stories
of the feudal period, and the Visigoth Tower, cleverly restored, too
cleverly perhaps, by Viollet-le-Duc, but an interesting example of the
military system of the Gallo-Romans of the Decadence.
The Tower of the Inquisition appears to date from the reign of Philip
the Bold. It is a beautiful building of four storeys which in the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, sheltered the ecclesiastical
tribunal the name of which it bears.
Before the Revolution, the city was deserted; in 1744, the bishop
followed the general example and left his old palace of the Thirteenth
Century. The new _régime_ was not equally just. For a long time,
the city remained a military post, mutilated by military genius, on the
pretext of maintaining and improving it; a great number of towers were
razed and transformed into low curtains, absurd defences which could
not have held out two hours against a strong attack. This admirable
collection of mediæval military art was exposed to the greatest
danger; let us thank the archæologists who interested the State in
the preservation of these venerable remains. Restored to-day with a
reverent care, the old citadel is assured a long life. As for the City
herself, she can never become what she was in the Thirteenth Century,
a rich and populous town, but she will certainly remain forever an
admirable museum, where everyone who is interested in national history
will come to study the military art of old France.
THE CATHEDRAL OF MODENA
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The student of the Romanesque who transports himself suddenly from the
Arno and the Apenines to the river-basin of the Po will find himself
spirited away into a new architectural world. Let him flit from Pisa
to Modena. Pistoia, a city of high interest on other grounds, will not
long detain him. A single noble campanile is attached to a basilican
_duomo_ which would hold a third or fourth-rate place at Lucca,
and which at Pisa no one would think of mentioning at all. But at
Modena his halt must be longer. The church of Pisa and the church of
Modena are contemporary buildings, and the Great Countess is honoured
as a benefactress by both; but they are as unlike one another as any
two buildings of the same date and general style well can be. At Modena
we get our first glimpse of the genuine Lombard form of the Italian
Romanesque, a form wholly unlike either the domical or basilican
type, and which makes a far nearer approach to the Romanesque of the
lands beyond the Alps. The approach is indeed only an approach; the
_duomo_ of Modena is Italian, and not English, French, or German;
still it is a form of Italian far less widely removed from English,
French, or German work than the style of Pisa or St. Vital. As at Pisa,
the architect seems to have halted between two opinions. The church
is cruciform, but the transepts have no projection on the ground-plan;
there are real lantern-arches, not obscured as they are at Pisa, but
they do not bear up any central dome or tower. The lantern-arches are
pointed; but here, as at Pisa, the pointed form is more likely to
be Saracenic than Gothic. Without, three eastern apses, rising from
between pinnacles of quite Northern character, group boldly with one
of the noblest campaniles of Italy, which is certainly not improved by
the later addition of a spire. The great doorways rest on lions; the
west front has a noble wheel window; the greater part of the outside is
lavishly arcaded, but the arcading is of a different type from the long
rows of single arcades at Lucca and Pisa; the favourite form at Modena
is that of several small arches grouped under a containing arch.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OE MODENA, ITALY.]
With such an outside, we are not surprised to find, on entering the
church, an elevation more nearly after the Northern type than anything
which we have yet seen in Italy. At Pisa we saw an arcade, triforium,
and clerestory; but the triforium was not so much the Northern type
itself as the Northern type translated into Italian language. But at
Modena we find as genuine a triforium as in any minster of England or
Normandy. Its form indeed seems somewhat rude and awkward, as if the
containing arch had been crushed by the lofty clerestory above. And
eyes familiar with Norman detail may possibly be amazed at the sight of
mid-wall shafts, and those of a somewhat rough type, showing themselves
in such a position. But the mid-wall shaft is constructively as
much in its place in a triforium as it is in a belfry window, and in
the whole elevation there is nothing lacking. There is pier-arch,
triforium, and clerestory, and the deep splay of the highest range
hinders the presence of any continuous blank spaces such as we have
seen in the Basilican churches. The capitals are a strange mixture of
classical and barbaric forms, and in the alternate piers, supporting
the arches which span the nave, we find huge half-columns, which form
a marked contrast to the tall slender shafts commonly used in like
positions in Northern churches. Altogether the Cathedral of Modena is
strictly an Italian church, yet the approaches to Northern forms are
very marked, and they are of a kind which suggests the direct imitation
of Northern forms or the employment of Northern architects.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS, FRANCE.]
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS
LOUIS GONSE
The basilica of Rheims is the ideal type of a great Gothic cathedral.
Everything has been gathered together here to enchant the eye and touch
the mind.
From the outside, with its eight spires, and the lace-work of its
bell-towers, and its galleries boldly mounting to the sky, with the
breadth of its arrangement, the splendid development of its cruciform
plan, with its two cloisters and its magnificent dependencies, it
appears as the sublime expression of western genius and the culminating
point of the Christian idea.
Within, it is dazzling. All the resources of decoration have been
prodigally employed. Indeed, the eye does not know which of the marvels
to select, and if this stupendous whole has been preserved to us by
a miracle, nothing in the world can be compared to it. The brilliant
series of windows, one of the most complete and beautiful in existence;
the pavement, with its labyrinth and countless mortuary tombs; the rich
altars and chapel paintings; the tomb of St. Nicaise; the pulpit of St.
Remi; the rood-screen, a master work by Colard de Givry, made in 1417;
the railings of the choir, with precious hangings and stalls; the high
altar charged with relics, and presents from the Kings of France; its
golden retable and its splendid ciborium of the Thirteenth Century,
in silver gilt; the sacrarium, the fonts, and the sepulchres;--form a
great mass of treasure.
And how greatly is the feeling increased by memories when you
reconstruct the public life of Notre-Dame of Rheims, and the events of
which she was the theatre during the long course of centuries; when you
dream of all the coronations, councils, and meetings that have taken
place beneath its vaults! No edifice, in truth, is, in this respect,
more worthy of our honour and admiration.
Notre-Dame of Rheims measures in round numbers one hundred and
thirty-nine metres long and thirty-eight metres high beneath the
vault; it is not surpassed in length by the Cathedral of Mans, thanks
to the unusual dimensions of its absidal chapel, nor in height by
Beauvais, Cologne, Metz, Amiens, or Saint-Quentin. The great divisions
of the whole, founded upon a triple scale, in height and breadth, are
clearly accentuated. From the lower part of the nave the view is one
of striking grandeur and harmony; the dazzled glance loses itself in
these vast depths, under the luminous sheets of light which spread out
from the lateral bays, while the large vault, clouded in the mysterious
penumbra of the high windows, ornamented with their glass, invites you
to meditation. No cathedral offers so powerful an opposition to light.
The arrangement of the great piers cantoned by four half-columns bound
together also increases the fleeting perspective.
Of the whole building, I have only to criticize the composition of the
triforium, which is truly not of the first order; it demands more
elegance and firmness; the arches of that gallery, the decorative
function of which is so important in a Gothic church, seem heavy and as
if crushed between the robust piers of the ground-floor and the large
bays of the upper story.
In all that belongs to the Thirteenth Century, the execution bears
witness to an extreme care and luxury. The Cathedral of Rheims,
principally in its interior work, is a model that has never been
surpassed from the point of view of technique, of show and of the
judicious use of material. The carving is of the first order. The
capitals of Rheims are celebrated, and very justly. The independence
of the _Style champenois_ has introduced some elements of life
and fantasy which give them a character of their own. Some of the
most beautiful, notably the capital of the _Vendanges_ (The
Vintages), have been made popular by the mouldings in the Musée of the
Trocadéro; but all of them are remarkable on account of the variety
of the motives that decorate them. Viollet-le-Duc has justly observed
that the capitals of Rheims present a decisive progress in the union of
the capital of the principal column with the capitals of the connected
columns: a very great difficulty which Gothic architects did not solve
until after numerous groupings. Here the monotony has been avoided by
a division of the bound columns into two segments, separated by an
astragal. The effect of this division is most happy and constitutes one
of the most striking peculiarities of the Cathedral of Rheims.
The choir is unanimously admired. However, it has not the breadth
nor the spring of the great choirs of Bourges, Amiens and Mans; but
it derives its originality from its depth and its radiating chapels;
and to the preservation of its most exquisite windows it owes a poetic
charm that very few interiors can equal. The windows of Rheims are,
in reality, the most perfect we have seen after those of Chartres,
Bourges, Mans and Auxerre. In purity of expression they surpass the
windows of Soissons, Troyes, and Châlons. The windows in the apsis are
masterpieces; their sweet intensity, in the scale of blue, is truly
enchanting. They were executed from 1227 to 1240 under the episcopate
of Henri de Braisne, whose figure appears in the principal window, in
the centre of nine large, high windows, between the twelve suffragans
of Rheims, arranged in order, according to their rank in the province:
Soissons, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Senlis, Tournai, Cambrai, Châlons,
Thérouanne, Amiens, etc., each having at his side a Gothic cathedral.
These figures of bishops of gigantic proportions have a majesty that
cannot be described. But in the midst of these splendours, it is
the rose of the western window which is perhaps the most worthy of
everything to hold your attention. Composition, brilliancy, harmony and
elegance of position,--it possesses all these qualities. It would be
difficult to find a more admirable witness of the decorative sense of
the old glass-workers. When across the network of the immense surface,
the light from the setting sun is thrown, the whole interior of the
church is illuminated as if by a conflagration. The preservation of
this masterpiece is unfortunately greatly compromised by the crack like
a sabre cut which crosses the façade near the rose. The high windows in
the nave represent the Kings, just as in the Cathedral of Sacres; they
are still more beautiful, however, of deep rich colours, but of a less
careful execution than the great rose and the windows in the choir.
All these marvels, however, pale before the carved decoration that
surrounds on the inside the lower part of the three doors of the
façade, a kind of drapery in relief, as unique by the character of its
invention as by the perfection of its workmanship.
This extraordinary decoration envelops up to their summits the three
ogival windows that open upon the porch. It goes up as high as the
triforium, by a succession of seven rows of niches closed by trefoil
arches, and separated from them by panels and corner-pieces of leaves
borrowed from the flora of the country and divinely carved. You see
in turn: the laurel, the vine, the pear, the apple, the holly, the
oak, the ivy, the water-lily, the bulrush, the peony, the clover,
the chestnut, the liverwort, and the olive. A hundred and twenty-two
statues of incomparable beauty, rivalling the most beautiful
productions of sculpture of former times, occupy the niches, and,
deliciously set off by the floral decoration of the plain surfaces,
stand out like living personages from the dark background of the niches.
Each one of these figures is a most precious work, studied from nature
with a sovereign knowledge of drapery and movement. Here is a priest
officiating in his chasuble and holding the Eucharist; there, is a
warrior in coat-of-mail, who seems to have just returned from the
Crusades; moreover, there are some prophets of heroic mien, noble
virgins with trailing robes, and martyrs, illuminated with ecstasy.
All this mural decoration was made in the spirit of the architecture,
intended to complete the iconography of the great door and to amplify
still further the cyclic character,--the general theme being the
history of Christ and the glorification of the Virgin, with the
accessory scenes that belong to it.
Let us cross the threshold: we are outside, before the façade. We must
walk farther away in order to embrace all the lines and take in the
masterly idea of the whole. It is most celebrated, that is well-known;
for a long time, its richness has been a synonym of beauty in mediæval
art. I have already said that the general conception is of the highest
order, the upward movement is magnificent, the statues blossom with a
bewildering luxuriance, and the infinite multiplication of the details,
which--miraculous fact--do not obliterate the majestic section of
the lower stages, so happily cut by the tall bays scattered in the
bell-towers. Nevertheless, when you come nearer, you are surprised at
finding so much uncertainty in the conduct of this terrible enterprise!
How much weakness and lassitude in the highest parts! You perceive both
haste and economy there. All that dates from the end of the Fourteenth
and the beginning of the Fifteenth Century is mediocre; the sculpture,
cut in bad materials that are injured by the frost, is coarse and
flabby: the nobility of the contours is lost beneath the excessive
ornamentation, and the absence of the spires deprives this aërial
building of its necessary finish.
To be satisfied, the eye must rest below the row of Kings made during
the reign of Charles V.
While the upper stories have been made of soft stone of a bad quality,
the lower parts, built of hard stone, have acquired in the course of
time the hues of Florentine bronze. It is here that the Champagne
sculptor has lavishly exhibited the treasures of his spirit, his
audacity and his genius. When the great statues of the portals of
Rheims are mentioned, everybody is of one accord.
The Queen of the basilica, the Virgin, is the soul of this cosmos, the
centre from which everything radiates.
She is crowned by Christ beneath the daïs of the great gable, and this
composition, which is still brightened by the remains of the gold
background from which it stands out, is one of the most exquisite
creations of Christian Art; the Virgin is also on the pier; she is
directly or indirectly in every scene of the life of Jesus. Her memory,
her legend, her poetry are everywhere: she is at once the culminating
point and the humble pretext of all this magnificence. At Paris, at
Bourges and at Amiens, it is Christ; here, it is the Virgin; and
around this admirable theme a powerful thought has quickened into
being a race of statues, a people in whom life, movement and fantasy
circulate, beneath the compassionate gaze of the Mother of God and
under the influence of her adorable grace. Charm is really the special
characteristic of the sculpture at Rheims,--a special charm that is
always evident, a charm carried to the point of _morbidezza_ which
in certain figures has been compared, and not without reason, to the
mysterious charm of Leonardo da Vinci.
All these personages of high stature, blackened and polished by time,
possess an indescribable grace, smiling and familiar, an indescribable
and eloquent gravity that puts them into communion with the spectator;
they are indeed of our country and of our race; their idealism, always
youthful despite the centuries, is not too far removed from earth to
respond even now to the secret aspirations of our souls; they are the
glory of the portals of Rheims, the glory of French sculpture.
Beautiful as these figures are, they must not let us forget the
population of two thousand five hundred statues that make the Cathedral
of Rheims a unique monument of decorative and monumental sculpture.
All the images of this old basilica deserve attentive study. An entire
volume would scarcely suffice to enumerate them. It is necessary to
take a trip to the roof to measure fully this incredible wealth:
giants of stone, angels with spread wings, apostles, saints and royal
figures, fantastic animals, more than forty metres high, which occupy
the pinnacles of the buttresses, are lined along the galleries of
the transepts or fortify the balustrade of the roof; figures full of
vitality that project from the corners, the springs of the arches, the
junction of curves, as crowns, supports, caryatides, mascarons, and
gargoyles; capricious, expressive and energetic figures, to execute
which the Champagne chisel, the freest and most supple of Gothic
chisels, has given itself full scope, with an exuberant joy.
Despite the devastations of the rococo period, to which was added that
of the Revolutionary period, the Cathedral of Rheims has not been
entirely stripped of her incomparable artistic treasures. She has
preserved a great portion of her tapestry hangings, and her Treasury is
still one of the richest in France.
The tapestries of Rheims have been very learnedly described by M.
Ch. Loriquet. Before the Revolution the collection was unique.
Hincmar, Hérivée, Regnault de Chartres, Juvénal des Ursins, Robert de
Lenoncourt, the great Cardinal of Lorraine, the Cardinal of Guise,
Henri de Lorraine, the Kings of France and the Chapter were the
principal donators.
These tapestries were used to decorate the cathedral on days of special
solemnity. Of the magnificent collection there only remain the fifteen
pieces by Lenoncourt, two of the six tapestries of the _Grand Roi
Clovis_, given by the Cardinal of Lorraine, fifteen tapestries
executed by Pepersack, at the order of Henri de Lorraine, the four
pieces ordered from Lombart d’ Aubusson by the Chapter, four tapestries
called the _Cantiques_ and two Gobelins after Raphael’s Cartoons.
The most remarkable are certainly those by Lenoncourt and those of the
Clovis set. The first were offered to the cathedral by the Archbishop
Robert de Lenoncourt; one of them bears the dedication of 1530. They
represent the _Life of the Virgin_. They are of Flemish origin
and of a very fine execution. The composition is rich, spirited and of
an extremely graceful style. Some of them have not lost the freshness
of their colours and can still be counted among the best specimens of
the art of tapestry at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. These
precious hangings occupy the wall surfaces of the side-aisles of the
nave, where they produce a sumptuous effect.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO, ITALY.]
THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
The Ponte S. Angelo is the Pons Elius of Hadrian, built as an approach
to his mausoleum, and only intended for this, as another public bridge
existed close by, at the time of its construction. It is almost
entirely ancient, except the parapets. The statues of St. Peter and
St. Paul, at the extremity, were erected by Clement VII., in the place
of two chapels, in 1530, and the angels, by Clement IX., in 1688. The
pedestal of the third angel on the right is a relic of the siege of
Rome in 1849, and bears the impress of a cannon-ball.
These angels, which have been called the “breezy maniacs” of Bernini,
are only from his designs. The two angels which he executed himself,
and intended for this bridge, are now at S. Andrea della Fratte. The
idea of Clement IX. was a fine one, that “an avenue of the heavenly
host should be assembled to welcome the pilgrim to the shrine of the
great apostle.”
From the Ponte S. Angelo, when the Tiber is low, are visible the
remains of the bridge by which the ancient Via Triumphalis crossed
the river. Close by, where Santo Spirito now stands, was the Porta
Triumphalis, by which victors entered the city in triumph.
Facing the bridge, is the famous Castle of S. Angelo, built by the
Emperor Hadrian as his family tomb, because the last niche in the
imperial mausoleum of Augustus was filled when the ashes of Nerva were
laid there. The first funeral here was that of Elius Verus, the first
adopted son of Hadrian, who died before him. The Emperor himself died
at Baiæ, but his remains were transported hither from a temporary tomb
at Pozzuoli by his successor Antoninus Pius, by whom the mausoleum was
completed in A.D., 140. Here also were buried, Antoninus
Pius, A.D., 161; Marcus Aurelius, 180; Commodus, 192; and
Septimius Severus, in an urn of gold, enclosed in one of alabaster,
A.D., 211; Caracalla, in 217, was the last Emperor interred
here. The well-known lines of Byron:
“Turn to the mole which Hadrian rear’d on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt’s piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity,
Whose travell’d phantasy from the far Nile’s
Enormous model, doom’d the artist’s toils
To build for giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this dome! How smiles
The gazer’s eye with philosophic mirth,
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth,
seem rather applicable to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius than to this
mausoleum.
The Castle, as it now appears, is but the skeleton of the magnificent
tomb of the Emperors. Procopius, writing in the Sixth Century,
describes its appearance in his time. “It was built,” he says, “of
Parian marble; the square blocks fit closely to each other without
any cement. It has four equal sides, each a stone’s throw in length.
In height it rises above the walls of the city. On the summit are
statues of men and horses, of admirable workmanship in Parian marble.”
Canina, in his _Architectura Romana_, gives a restoration of
the mausoleum, which shows how it consisted of three stories: 1, A
quadrangular basement, the upper part intersected with Doric pillars,
between which were spaces for epitaphs of the dead within, and
surmounted at the corners by marble equestrian statues; 2, a circular
story, with fluted Ionic colonnades; 3, circular story, surrounded
by Corinthian columns, between which were statues. The whole was
surmounted by a pyramidal roof, ending in a bronze fir-cone.
The history of the Mausoleum, in the Middle Ages is almost the
history of Rome. It was probably first turned into a fortress by
Honorius, A.D., 423. From Theodoric it derives the name of
“Carcer Theodorici.” In 537, it was besieged by Vitiges, when the
defending garrison, reduced to the last extremity, hurled down all the
magnificent statues which decorated the cornice, upon the besiegers. In
A.D., 498, Pope Symmachus removed the bronze fir-cone at the
apex of the roof to the court of St. Peter’s, whence it was afterwards
transferred to the Vatican garden, where it is still to be seen between
two bronze peacocks, which probably stood on either side of the
entrance.
Belisarius defended the castle against Totila, whose Gothic troops
captured and held it for three years, after which it was taken by
Narses.
It was in 530 that the event occurred which gave the building its
present name. Pope Gregory the Great was leading a penitential
procession to St. Peter’s, in order to offer up prayers for the
staying of the great pestilence which followed the inundation of
589; when, as he was crossing the bridge, even while the people were
falling dead around him, he looked up at the Mausoleum and saw an
angel on its summit, sheathing a bloody sword, while a choir of angels
around chaunted with celestial voices, the anthem, since adopted by
the church in her vesper service--“_Regina cœli, lætare--quia quem
meruisti portare--resurrexit, sicut dixit, Alleluja_.”--To which the
earthly voice of the Pope solemnly responded: “_Ora pro nobis Deum,
Alleluja_.”[10]
In the Tenth Century the fortress was occupied by the infamous Marozia,
who, in turn, brought her three husbands (Alberic, Count of Tusculum;
Guido, Marquis of Tuscany; and Hugo, King of Italy), thither, to
tyrannize with her over Rome. It was within the walls of this building
that Alberic, her son by her first husband, waiting upon his royal
stepfather at table, threw a bowl of water over him, when Hugo retorted
by a blow, which was the signal for an insurrection, the people taking
part with Alberic, putting the King to flight, and imprisoning Marozia.
Shut up within these walls, Pope John XI. (931–936), son of Marozia
by her first husband, ruled under the guidance of his stronger-minded
brother Alberic; here, also, Octavian, son of Alberic and grandson
of Marozia, succeeded in forcing his election as John XII. (being the
first Pope who took a new name), and scandalized Christendom by a life
of murder, robbery, adultery and incest.
In 974, the Castle was seized by Cencio (Crescenzio Nomentano), the
consul, who raised up an anti-pope (Boniface VII.) here, with the
determination of destroying the temporal power of the popes and
imprisoned and murdered two popes, Benedict VI. (972), and John XIV.
(984), within these walls. In 996, another lawful pope, Gregory V.,
calling in the Emperor Otho to his assistance, took the Castle and
beheaded Cencio, though he had promised him life if he would surrender.
From this governor the fortress long held the name of Castello de
Crescenzio, or Turris Crescentii, by which it is described in mediæval
writings. A second Cencio supported another anti-pope, Cadolaus, here
in 1063, against Pope Alexander II. A third Cencio imprisoned Gregory
VII. here in 1084. From this time the possession of the Castle was
a constant point of contest between popes and anti-popes. In 1313,
Arlotto degli Stefaneschi, having demolished most of the other towers
in the city, arranged the same fate for S. Angelo, but it was saved by
cession to the Orsini. It was from hence, on December 15, 1347, that
Rienzi fled to Bohemia, at the end of his first period of power, his
wife having previously made her escape disguised as a friar.
“The cause of final ruin to this monument,” is described by Nibby to
have been the resentment of the citizens against a French governor who
espoused the cause of the anti-pope (Clement VII.) against Urban VI. in
1378. It was then that the marble casings were all torn from the walls
and used as street pavements.
A drawing of Sangallo of 1465 shows the upper part of the fortress
crowned with high square towers and turreted buildings; a cincture of
bastions and massive square towers girding the whole; two square-built
bulwarks flanking the extremity of the bridge, which was then so
connected with these outworks that passengers would have immediately
found themselves inside the fortress after crossing the river.
Marlianus, 1588, describes its double cincture of fortifications,--“a
large round tower at the inner extremity of the bridge; two towers with
high pinnacles, and the cross on their summits, the river flowing all
around.”
The Castle began to assume its present aspect under Boniface IX. in
1395. John XXIII., 1411, commenced the covered way to the Vatican,
which was finished by Alexander VI.; and roofed by Urban VIII., in
1630. By the last named pope the great outworks of the fortress were
built under Bernini, and furnished with cannon made from the bronze
roof of the Pantheon. Under Paul III. the interior was decorated with
frescoes, and a colossal marble angel erected on the summit, in place
of a chapel (S. Angelo inter Nubes), built by Boniface XIV. for the
existing angel of bronze, by a Dutch artist, Verschaffelt.
Of the Castle, as we now see it externally, only the quadrangular
basement is of the time of Hadrian; the round tower is of that of
Urban VIII., its top added by Paul III. The four round towers of the
outworks, called after the four Evangelists, are of Nicholas V., 1447.
The interior of the fortress can be visited by an order. Excavations
made in 1825 have laid open the sepulchral chamber in the midst of
the basement. Here, stood in the centre, the porphyry sarcophagus of
Hadrian, which was stolen by Pope Innocent II. to be used as his own
tomb in the Lateran, where it was destroyed by the fire of 1360, the
cover alone escaping, which was used for the tomb of Otho II., in
the atrium of St. Peter’s, and which, after filling this office for
seven centuries, is now the baptismal font of that basilica. A spiral
passage, thirty feet high and eleven wide, up which a chariot could be
driven, gradually ascends through the solid mass of masonry. There is
wonderfully little to be seen. A saloon of the time of Paul III. is
adorned with frescoes of the life of Alexander the Great, by Pierino
del Vaga. This room would be used by the pope in case of his having
to take refuge in S. Angelo. An adjoining room, adorned with a stucco
frieze of Tritons and Nereids, is that in which Cardinal Caraffa was
strangled (1561) under Pius IV., for alleged abuses of authority under
his uncle, Paul IV.--his brother, the Marquis Caraffa, being beheaded
in the castle the same night. The reputed prison of Beatrice Cenci is
shown, but it is very uncertain that she was ever confined here,--also
the prison of Cagliostro, and that of Benvenuto Cellini, who escaped,
and broke his leg in trying to let himself down by a rope from the
ramparts. The statue of the angel by Montelupo is to be seen stowed
away in a dark corner. Several horrible trabocchette (oubliettes) are
shown.
On the roof, from which there is a beautiful view, are many modern
prisons, where prisoners suffer terribly from the summer sun beating
upon their flat roofs.
Among the sculptures found here were the Barberini Faun, now at Munich,
the Dancing Faun, at Florence, and the Bust of Hadrian at the Vatican.
The sepulchral inscriptions of the Antonines existed till 1572, when
they were cut up by Gregory XIII. (Buoncompagni), and the marble used
to decorate a chapel in St. Peter’s! The magnificent easter display of
fireworks (from an idea of Michael Angelo, carried out by Bernini),
called the girandola, used to be exhibited here, but now takes place
at S. Pietro in Montorio, or from the Pincio. From 1849 to 1870, the
Castle was occupied by French troops, and their banner floated here,
except on great festivals, when it was exchanged for that of the pope.
Running behind and crossing the back streets of the Borgo, is the
covered passage intended for the escape of the popes to the Castle.
It was used by Alexander VI. when invaded by Charles VIII. in 1494,
and twice by Clement VII. (Giulio de’ Medici), who fled, in 1527, from
Moncada, viceroy of Naples, and in May, 1527, during the terrible sack
of Rome by the troops of the Constable de Bourbon.
“The Escape” consists of two passages; the upper open like a loggia,
the lower covered, and only lighted by loop-holes. The keys of both are
kept by the pope himself.
S. Angelo is at the entrance of the Borgo, promised at the Italian
invasion of September, 1870, as the sanctuary of the papacy, the
tiny sovereignty where the temporal sway of the popes should remain
undisturbed,--the sole relic left to them of all their ancient
dominions.
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
W. J. LOFTIE
Salisbury Cathedral, from the point of view of the architectural
artist, is the most beautiful and the most perfect in England. The
visitor who sees it first on a bright day, can never forget the
impression it has made on his mind. Unlike the architects of the
so-called “Great Gothic Revival,” the builders of Salisbury put their
trust in proportion. Incidentally they made their details as elaborate
and perfect as possible; but they were subordinated to the general
effect, and when during the frightful ravages of the “restorers,” let
loose upon the church in the past and present centuries, many of the
best and most precious of these details and ornaments perished or were
renewed, the main building survives, raising its exquisitely graceful
spire into the blue sky, its thousand pinnacles all pointing upward and
gleaming white against the deep green of the old trees and the emerald
turf of the surrounding close. “How long,” asked an American visitor,
“does it take to grow such turf?” “Oh! not long,” was the reply; “only
a couple of centuries.” One feels at Salisbury that whether the answer
was given there or at Oxford, of no place could it be more true. Though
when we look near enough, we can see that fresh and white as is the
general effect, the masonry of Salisbury is of great antiquity,
except, of course, where it has been restored; and antiquity adds
another charm, for Salisbury was the first complete cathedral built
after the Romanesque tradition had died out, as St. Paul’s is the
first built after it had been revived. In other cathedrals there are
portions and fragments of the same style, and they are always the most
beautiful features of the whole building. We can recall the western
porch at Ely, and the angel choir at Lincoln, and the Chapter-house at
Southwell; but here at Salisbury, we have the whole vast cathedral,
all in the same supreme style, every part fitting into its place, and
adding its contribution to the general effect, never in contrast, but
always in harmony until the effect is attained. What that is may be
read in countless books of travel or criticism. Salisbury cathedral,
like the Parthenon and all the other--there are not many--buildings
which tempt one to call them poems in stone--produces a different
feeling in the minds of all who see it. I am not going to add another
to the descriptions of the view. On the contrary, I am going about
the prosaic task of trying to find out to what circumstances its
beauty is due, and why the name of Richard Poore is honoured among
lovers of good architecture with that of Christopher Wren, no other
Englishman being worthy to make a third. The chief points to be noted
about Salisbury are these. The effect does not in any way depend upon
ornamental details. This may be proved by two examples taken from the
building. The west front was greatly injured at different times, its
carving broken, and its figures defaced. The carving has been copied
and “restored,” and new figures have replaced the old. The front is
now neat and spick and span, but the general effect is in no wise
improved, but rather deteriorated, by having its antiquity destroyed.
It is the same with the chromatic decoration of the interior, and with
the “improvement” of the Chapter-house. The painting on the roof tends
to lower it; the gaudy, shiny aspect of the Chapter-house goes far to
spoil, if it could spoil, the exquisite design and subtle proportions.
[Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND.]
Another point to be noticed is this: Salisbury does not owe its beauty
to size, nor yet altogether to the style in which it is built. This is
easily proved. The great French cathedral of Amiens exceeds Salisbury
in all its dimensions, and was built, allowing for the difference
between France and England, in the self-same style. Both are examples
of First Pointed, and Amiens is, according to Fergusson, at least
twice as large in its cubic contents. “The French church covers 71,000
square feet, the English only 55,000. The vault of the first is one
hundred and fifty-two feet in height, the latter only eighty-five.”
There is still a more remarkable difference between the central spires
of the two churches. That of Amiens rises to a height of 422 feet;
that of Salisbury, the tallest in England, only to 404. Yet the great
height of the roof at Amiens robs its spire of any preponderance it
might otherwise boast, and leaves the comparatively small steeple of
Salisbury a feature of grandeur and beauty only approached by the still
lower dome of St. Paul’s, which rises at its highest part, the cross,
to 365 feet above the ground level.
It will be seen, therefore, that Salisbury owes its effect to something
beyond ornament or size. The extraordinary order and regularity of
the masonry may have something to say to it, although the stones, as
compared with what may be seen in Egypt, and elsewhere, are not very
large. But you can trace the same course all round the church and
the same stone, oolite from the quarry at Chilmark, has been used
throughout. This communicates a certain look of stability to the
structure, which is, in itself, more pleasing to the eye than any
amount of ornament out of place, or intended, as in modern Gothic, to
divert the eye from the poverty of the materials or the absence of
proportion. The proportions of Salisbury, like those of St. Paul’s, or
the Parthenon, are calculated to give the building its full measure of
beauty, without anything extraneous.
That Salisbury should have this unity of age and design is owing to a
curious fact in the history of the place. The “bishop’s stool” had been
upon the bleak, chalk down which borders Salisbury Plain. The place was
really a castle whose fortifications are still visible; the cathedral
within the walls must have been Norman in design, to judge in dry
seasons from the marks still visible among the grassy mounds, and from
fragments of carved stone built into the wall or cross. Mr. Walcott
gives its dimensions as follows: “A nave one hundred and fifty feet
by seventy-two feet, a transept one hundred and fifty feet by sixty
feet, and a choir sixty feet in length, in all two hundred and seventy
feet.” The situation was in every way inconvenient, having been chosen
for security not comfort. After the King took the fort and filled it
with his own soldiers, a governor superseding the bishop, the position
of the ecclesiastics became unendurable. The inhabitants in times of
comparative peace and security migrated to the rich pastures by the
Avon and the Bourne below, while cold winds in winter, and a scarcity
of water in summer, finally determined Bishop Poore and his canons, for
Sarum was a church of the old foundation, to seek a better country. The
old legend says that the site of the new cathedral was determined by
the fall of an arrow in Merrifield (or more likely Mirifield), shot by
a stalwart archer from the ramparts. The church was raised in a green
vale, surrounded by the downs. Pepys, in describing his journey from
Hungerford says, “So, all over the Plain by the sight of the steeple,
the Plain high and low; to Salisbury by night.”
“Of the cathedral,” Pepys remarks that it is “most admirable; as big,
I think, and handsomer than Westminster, and a most large close about
it.” Pepys’ comparison of Westminster and Salisbury is a very just
one; both were built in the then new First Pointed style, but there
is no doubt about the superiority of Salisbury in either design or
completeness.
In the close, which occupies an extent of half a square mile, there
are three gates, the South or Harnham, the East or St. Anne’s, and the
North or Close Gate, built about 1327. The ground-plan of the church
embraces a nave of ten bays, with aisles; a northern porch; a main and
a choir transept of four and three bays each; to the east a choir and
presbytery, each of three bays, and the so-called Lady Chapel, all
having aisles. The cloister is on the south side, and to eastwards of
the cloister is the Chapter-house. An octangular canon’s vestry and
muniment room is to the south of the south-east transept. The pyramidal
disposition of the leading lines is very observable from certain
points of view. It is the only ancient cathedral in England begun and
finished on a uniform plan and in one style. The foundations were laid
under Bishop Poore, on the Feast of St. Vitalis (April 28), 1220, and
it was built by Elias of Dereham, clerk of the works, and by Nicholas
of Portland, and Richard of Farleigh, his successors, the last named
completing the spire in 1375. The Beauchamp and Hungerford Chapels,
both subsequently removed, were built in the Lady Chapel in the
Fifteenth Century. Bishop Audley’s Chantry in the choir was built in
1502. In the close, near the north aisle of the nave, as at Chichester,
was the Clochard or Campanile. There are several points of resemblance,
of which this is one, between Chichester and Salisbury. This
bell-tower was taken down in “cold blood” as we may say, or by way of
“restoration” in 1799. About the same time Wyatt made many structural
and other alterations, which are detailed with undisguised approbation
by contemporary writers. Dodsworth gives particulars received from
Wyatt himself. They are in form and language, and, I may add, conceit,
so like what the “restorer” of to-day uses of a building which he has
done his best to ruin, and are besides so interesting, historically,
that I am tempted to quote some sentences. Wyatt was first let loose
on Salisbury about 1789. He went to work without a doubt or a scruple.
The Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels were “defects.” He “expressed his
astonishment at the temerity of their builders. They were destroyed,
though the consent of their owners had to be obtained first. Their
fragments were used in the alterations, some in the organ screen,
some in the choir. The walls and buttresses of the Lady Chapel were
restored, the windows brought to their proper level, the seats which
disfigured it removed, and the pavement was raised a few inches to give
an ascent from the choir.” The phrase “proper level” is good. Then came
almost the worst of Wyatt’s “restorations.” It was found “necessary”
to remove several monuments. New sites were prepared--the result being
what we now see in the nave, where the mixture of the fragments of
one monument with the ruins of another of a different period has not
even the merit of being picturesque. The tomb ascribed traditionally
to Bishop Poore and nine others were destroyed, portions being neatly
arranged as in a kind of museum “along the plinth between the series
of pillars on each side of the nave.” Two small porches, one at the
north end of the great transept, and the other on the south side, near
the Lady Chapel, “were considered as neither adding to the beauty, nor
to the convenience of the building. They were accordingly taken down.”
The “accordingly” is another happy expression. We might be reading a
report of Sir G. Scott, or Mr. Pearson, or Mr. Butterfield. Yet this
was written close on a hundred years ago. A very interesting series
of paintings, representing the months or the Zodiac, were on some of
the eastern bays of vaulting. They were highly admired, we are told, by
those “regard the mere antiquity of an object as a sufficient title to
admiration.” These are precisely the words used lately by an architect
about the north transept of Westminster Abbey. Wyatt promptly wiped
off the traces of these decorations, and “judiciously coloured the
arches and ribs of the choir like the original stone. As the Campanile
intercepted the most striking view of the structure it was taken down.”
When we enter by the west door the first view is hardly so striking as
the first view of the exterior. A closer examination and a comparison
with other cathedrals shows how far Salisbury is in advance of
everything else of its kind. The exquisite lightness and delicate
proportions of the steeple are equally apparent in the nave and its
aisles, the slender columns, the pointed arches, the light triforium,
the lancets of the clerestory, and the soaring vault. The same
“order,” as the classical architect would say, is practically carried
round the church. As we advance eastward, and reach the crossing
of the transepts, we observe the curious four centred buttressing
arches erected by Bishop Wayte, 1415, to increase the supports of the
tower. Similar precautions are seen in Canterbury, Hereford and Wells
Cathedrals. Under the tower is a brass plate in the pavement which
was placed here in 1737, and marks the fact that the spire inclines
twenty-two and a half inches to the south-west. This inclination,
which is perfectly visible on the outside, was first calculated by
Sir Christopher Wren, who put iron “bandages” round the masonry, and
made other repairs. No increase of the deflection has been observed
since his time, although the spire was struck by lightning in 1741. The
choir screen is by Skidmore. The organ is divided. Some ancient glass
may be seen in the triplet windows at the ends of the transepts. The
altar stood to the eastward of the second or choir transept, and some
parts of the old stalls are still to be seen, but almost everything
in this part of the church is new. The Audley chantry (1524), in the
latest style of Gothic, is on the north side. There are some remains
of the very curious and interesting if not unique iron chantry of Lord
Hungerford, formerly in the Lady Chapel, made into a kind of pew or
cage, about a hundred years ago, by the heirs of the family when Wyatt
destroyed it. A somewhat similar example, or part of one, the Chantry
of Edward IV. in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, has already been
“restored” away.
The Lady Chapel is probably not correctly described by that name. The
whole church is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. It is perhaps more
correctly called Trinity Chapel. Here the colouring, modern, of the
roof, and other amendments and improvements made and suggested by
Scott, for the most part, though Clutton also showed himself a worthy
successor of Wyatt, are exceedingly offensive.
The cloisters are entered from the south-western transept. They are
slightly later, in the same style as the church, but were evidently
not built till it was finished. In churches of the old foundation
cloisters were an ornament, a luxury, and not a necessity, as at
Canterbury or Gloucester, where they were needed for the use of the
monks. The cloisters of Salisbury are the largest in England, each walk
being, within, 181 feet long, or from wall to wall, without, 195 feet.
Over the east walk is a fine Library, containing many illuminated and
other manuscripts, including some early liturgies.
THE CASTLE OF ANGERS
HENRI JOUIN
On the 7th of September, 1661, as night was falling, a company of
musketeers crossed the drawbridge of the Castle of Angers. Scarcely had
they entered the fortress when these musketeers expelled the garrison.
This was the King’s order. A sub-lieutenant commanded these men: it
was d’Artagnan. A prisoner had been confided to him: this was Nicholas
Fouquet. The superintendent’s servant, La Vallée, and his physician,
Pecquet, taking pity upon Fouquet, who was the prey of a quartan
fever, obtained leave to share his captivity. The Castle then had shut
within it three prisoners, who were subjected to the most rigorous
treatment. We know by the official account of Fouquet’s detention that
the bed in which he had to sleep on the 7th of September “was not of
the cleanest.” Now for the rest, d’Artagnan, and his two officers,
Saint Mars and Saint Leger, maintained an extreme reserve towards their
guests. There is no news from outside. Pecquet, before leaving Nantes,
had, it is true, fortuitously met Gourville. It was from him that
Pecquet got the news of the arrest of Pellisson and the exile of Madame
Fouquet. Sorrowful presage! The accused one began first of all to
prepare his defence. He wrote several memoirs, but at the end of a few
days, writing was prohibited. The president of Chalain, suspected of
having wished to bribe a musketeer was also apprehended to be conducted
to the Bastille. Louis XIV., Colbert, Le Tellier, and Séguier kept
their eyes fixed on Angers. Fouquet lived there until the first of
December, having no other pastime between his two attacks of fever than
to contemplate with a melancholy look “_la fillette du Roi_.” This
was the name by which they designated an iron cage, in which, according
to legend, a queen of Sicily had been shut up by her husband “for
having built the church of Saint-Maurice at Angers too magnificently.”
This legend was not calculated to reassure the Superintendent. He knew
that he was accused precisely of having used the money of the Treasury
to build Vaux-le-Vicomte, the magnificence of which had offended the
King. If, through misfortune, the thought of keeping him under such
good guard, between these bars, had entered the heads of his enemies,
of what advantage was the little bit of liberty that he still enjoyed?
Moreover, he was not unaware of the refinements of cruelty that had
been practiced for the past two centuries upon the prisoners of State.
The “_fillette du Roi_,” made at the order of Louis XI., had not
been empty at any period. Had not Cardinal Balue, bishop of Angers,
known this instrument of torture at the _Château d’Onzain_, near
Blois? Fouquet might well be afraid, for there entered perhaps far more
passion than justice in his disgrace. They did not go so far, however,
as to put him in a cage. The vigilance and the loyalty of d’Artagnan,
and the thickness of the walls of the Castle seemed to Fouquet’s
enemies, a sufficient safeguard against all danger of his escape. What
is then the Castle of Angers?
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF ANGERS, FRANCE.]
Péan de la Tuilerie--the _d’Argenville angevin_--comes to tell us.
“The Castle is at one of the extremities of the city, on a rock, and
surrounded with deep moats, cut in the rock, which is an escarpment on
the bank of a river that flows at its base, and from which they lift,
by means of a very convenient machine, all the munitions which are
necessary. It is of a triangular form, all built of slate and flanked
by eighteen round towers and a crescent, which is the gate of the
faubourg.”
Péan de la Tuilerie wrote in 1778. His description is still very nearly
exact. To speak the truth, this military post forms less of a triangle
than a pentagon, but the appearance of the Castle remains what it was
in the last century. The girdle of moats has been, however, a little
changed. The Maine rolls no longer beneath its towers. It is not, as
you will readily believe, that the course of the river has been turned.
To change the position of the fortress would have been difficult.
They considered it simpler to fill up the canal. Some factories, some
counting-houses, and some private dwellings occupy the place of the
moat, and the traveller seeks vainly at the present moment for that
“very convenient machine,” of which Péan speaks. Moreover, it would be
useless. The Castle has no more need of munitions. English, Bretons
and Normans have left it. Their attacks are ended. Angers ignores
to-day those savage incursions and perpetual threats, which for several
centuries, troubling its repose, kept its independence in check. Then
the Castle had to sustain repeated sieges. The silence that envelops it
has grown out of the clank of arms and the cries of the combatants, who
many times made this stone colossus tremble to its very foundations.
Ah! the noble rampart of the city! Its great days and its glorious
past, haunt my memory.
Who chose its site? Count Eudes, under the royal approbation of Charles
the Bald. The Plantagenets seem to have embellished and fortified the
north turret of the building, but it is to Louis IX. that the primitive
castle is indebted to its transformation into a military post. Its
imposing towers, firmly planted on their bases of schist, are the work
of Louis IX. Its large canals hollowed out of the slate date from
the last years of the Fifteenth Century. They give character to the
citadel. You judge it most impregnable in measuring the depth of its
moats with your eye; but how many times had the enemy been repulsed by
the rain of projectiles thrown from the Castle?
In 1444, the English approached the city. They ravaged the country
mercilessly, and pillaged and ruined according to their good pleasure.
The army encamped near the fortress, intending to open the siege on
the following day. On the following day the English troops took their
departure. What could have been the cause of their retreat? One of
the English chiefs was hit in the forehead by a shot and instantly
killed. This occasioned such confusion that the assailants fled. An
artilleryman thus saved the city.
The Fifteenth Century was, moreover, the great epoch for the Castle
of Angers. Louis XI., profound politician and crafty of action,
meditated upon uniting the Duchy of Anjou to the crown of France.
This was shown on two occasions. The second time, the Prince being at
war with Bretagne had levied previously upon the city of Angers for
subsidies for his troops. He came again. Behnard Guillaume Cerizay,
his secretary, and three chamberlains entered Angers. They convoked
and consulted with the notables. At this time _plébiscites_ were
unknown. People did not have the character to defend their rights and
their interests. They were minors. But if the Angevin populace could
have spoken, it would not have spoken better than its representatives.
The notables chose for France. “The assembly,” wrote M. Port, “through
the voice of the Chancellor of Anjou, pledged its faith to the King.
On the following day, Louis XI. had come to the Castle offering
a favourable reply to all requests, granting to the most zealous
petitions leave to have a house in the city.” The Castle in which this
act of submission to the King of France took place, was formerly the
property of the Duc d’Anjou, who was at the same time Count of Provence
and King of Sicily, René, son of Yolande, poet, amateur, bibliophile,
collector, and patron of poets, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry-workers
and illuminators who filled his court,
“_René le prince populaire,
Doux artiste aux yeux éblouis
Des peintres que, pour lui plaire
Lui fait offrir le roi Louis._”
It was at the Castle of Angers, in a kind of little manor-house flanked
by four turrets, that René first saw the light on the 16th of January,
1409. The Maugine was his nurse in the citadel, the Maugine, Tiphaine,
to whom in after years he erected a tomb, the touching inscription
upon which is from his hand. Married at the age of twelve to Isabelle
de Lorraine, René d’Anjou, fighting everywhere for twenty-five years,
made only rare appearances at the Castle of Angers; but soon comes
the death of Isabelle and upon it quickly follows the second marriage
of the prince with Jeanne de Laval, upon which he establishes his
residence at Angers. Farewell war, diplomacy, treaties and conquests!
René yields himself up to the charm of his young wife. To her the poet
consecrates his loving stanzas of _Regnault and Jeanneton_, a
kind of autobiography of the husband and wife. _The Shepherd and the
Shepherdess_, a delicate pastorale composed in honour of Jeanne de
Laval, will be put into its final form under the skies of Provence, at
Tarascon; but it is in the Angevin country that the poet finds all his
ideas as he strolls at the side of the beautiful Jeanne. The writers
of the time show us René going out of the Castle without escort,
accompanied solely by his royal spouse, and taking the _chemin de la
Baumette_. After passing through the field-gate, the illustrious
personages got into a fisherman’s boat below the _Basse-Chaîne_,
and descended the Maine to that solitary hermitage, where Rabelais will
presently come to study at the Cordeliers.
It is also from this Castle that René d’Anjou issues to cross his
“beautiful city” on foot to his dear hermitage, where he loved to
consort “with the citizens of Angers, the artists and the men of
learning of his Court.”
René disappeared; Louis XI. reigned. A century elapsed. Henri III.
yielded to the request of the common people of the city who wished
for the destruction of the Castle. The citadel suffered. Letters
patent from the King authorized the governor of Anjou to “raze to
the ground the stones of all the walls, towers, lodgings, buildings
and fortifications of the Castle.” Already the workmen are called.
Who will direct this barbarous piece of work? Donadieu, Sieur de
Puycharic, claims this honour. Puycharic is the governor of the
Castle. They grant his wish. But a man of heart, a soldier, can he
conscientiously annihilate the ramparts of a city? This military post
of which he is the keeper has its past of glorious traditions. It is
worthy of respect. Its services, it seems to him, ought to be taken
into consideration. This is what Puycharic thought aside, and for ten
years--you have read of this--for ten years--with clever ingenuity,
Puycharic kept his army of destroyers busy without destroying anything.
He yielded to the necessities of the hour by demolishing the outside
buildings of the Castle which he had inherited from his predecessors; a
garden pavilion, built by Louisa of Savoy, disappeared; the field-gate,
whose defence was difficult, was altered; two useless towers lost
their turrets, and in proportion as the waggons full of stones left
the Castle, the common people exulted, proud of their success. From
time to time, it is true, public opinion complained of the slowness
of the workmen at the town’s expense. “Isolated during the troubles,”
M. Port has said of him, “in the heart of the Angevin league, the
valiant captain was not merely satisfied to guard the place but bravely
attacked the foe in the field, one day the Lion d’Angers, another
Brissac, Rochefort, Beaupreau, and Chemillé, fighting for about ten
years in every kind of warlike adventure, fought against and fighting,
holding the country in hand and preparing the place for the King.” His
headquarters were at the Castle. It was here that he rallied his men
and came to heal his wounds between encounters. Peace being restored,
Puycharic, being appointed senechal of Anjou, dismissed his workmen,
who were greatly astonished and perhaps greatly pleased at having
repaired, embellished and fortified the Castle that they thought they
were pulling down.
Puycharic died in 1605. His funeral was magnificent. He rests in the
chapel of the Jacobins; and his brothers, the bishops of Saint-Papoul
and d’Auxerre erected to his memory a monument surmounted by his
statue.
THE PAGODA OF TANJORE
G. W. STEEVENS
Southward out of Madras you still run through the new India, the old
India of the nursery. Now it is vivid with long grass, now tufted
with cotton, then dark-green with stooping palm-heads or black with
firs; anon brown with fallow, blue with lakes and lagoons, black with
cloud-shadowing pools starred with white water-lilies. Presently red
hills break out of the woods, then sink again to sweeping pastures
dotted only with water-hoists and naked herdsmen.
Then in the placid landscape you are almost startled by the sight
of monuments of religion. A tall quadrangular pyramid, its courses
lined with rude statues, a couple of half-shaped human figures, ten
times human size, a ring of colossal hobby-horses sitting on their
haunches like a tea-party in Wonderland--they burst grotesquely out of
meadow and thicket, standing all alone with the soil and the trees. No
worshippers, no sign of human life near them, no hint of their origin
or purpose--till you almost wonder whether they are artificial at all,
and not petrified monsters from the beginning of the world.
[Illustration: THE PAGODA OF TANJORE, INDIA.]
These are the outposts of the great pagodas of Southern India--those
sublime monstrosities which scarce any European ever sees,
which most have never heard of, but which afford perhaps the
strongest testimony in all India at once to the vitality and the
incomprehensibility of Hinduism. The religion that inspired such
toilsome devotion must be one of the greatest forces in history; yet
the Western mind can detect neither any touch of art in the monuments
themselves nor any strain of beauty in the creed. Both command your
respect by their size: that which is so vast, so enduring, can hardly,
you tell yourself, be contemptible. And still you can see nothing in
the temples but misshapen piles of uncouthness, nothing in the religion
but unearthly superstitions, half meaningless and half foul.
The nearest approach to a symmetrical building is the great pagoda
of Tanjore. Long before you near the gate you see its tall pyramidal
tower, shooting free above crooked streets and slanting roofs.
Presently you see the lower similar towers, so far from the first
that you would never call them part of the same building. In reality
they are the outer and inner gateways--_gopura_ is their proper
name--built in diminishing courses, garnished with carving and
statuary. From a distance the massive solemnity of their outlines,
the stone lace of their decorations, strike you with an overwhelming
assertion of rich majesty. But you are in India, and you wait for the
inevitable incongruity.
It comes at the very gate. The entrance is not under the stately
gopura, but under a screen and scaffolding of lath and plaster daubed
with yellow and green grotesqueness--men with lotus-eyes looking out
of their temples, horses with heads like snakes, and kings as tall as
elephants. There is to be a great festival in a day or two, explains
the suave Brahman; therefore the gopuras are boarded up with pictures
beside which the tapestries of our pavement-artists are truth and
beauty. You walk through scaffold-poles into a great square round the
great tower, and with reverence they show you that colossal monolith,
the great bull of Tanjore. I wish I could show you a picture of him,
for words are unequal to him. In size he stands, or rather sits,
thirty-eight hands two. His material is black granite, but it is kept
so piously anointed with grease that he looks as if he were made of
toffee. In attitude he suggests a roast hare, and he wears a half-smug,
half-coquettish expression, as if he hoped that nobody would kiss him.
From this wonder you pass to the shrines of the chief gods. The
unbeliever may not enter, but you stand at the door while a man goes
along the darkness with a flambeau. The light falls on silk and tinsel,
and by faith you can divine a seated image at the end. Next you are at
the foot of the great tower, and the ridiculous has become the sublime
again. Every story is lined with serene-faced gods and goddesses,
dwindling rank above rank, a ladder of deities that seems to climb
half-way up to heaven. Then the Brahman shows you a stone bull seated
on the ground, like a younger brother of the great one. “It is in
existence,” he says, throwing out his words in groups, dispassionately,
as though somebody else were speaking and it were nothing at all to
do with him--“it is in existence--to show the dimensions--of four
other bulls--which are in existence--up there.” You lay your head
back between your shoulder-blades, and up there, at the very top,
among gods so small that you wonder whether they are gods or only
panels or pillars, are four more little brothers of the hare-shaped
toffee-textured monster below.
Reduplication is the keynote of Hindu art. The same bulls everywhere,
the same gods everywhere, and all round the cloistered outer wall
scores on scores of granite, fat-dripping, flower-crowned emblems, so
crudely shapeless that you forget their gross significance--but all
absolutely alike. Next the Brahman leads you aside to piles and piles
of what look like overgrown, gaudily painted children’s toys. This is
an exact facsimile of the Tower, reduced and imitated in wood. It is
all in pieces, but at the festival the parts are fitted together and
carried on a car. Every god sculptured on the pyramid is represented in
a section of this model, waiting to be fitted into his place. Only what
is richly mellow in tinted stone is garishly tawdry in king’s yellow
and red lead--and again you tumble from the sublime to the infantile.
Next, a little shrine that is a net of the most delicate carving--stone
as light and fantastic as wood; pillar and panel, moulding and
cornice, lattice and imagery, all tapering gracefully till they become
miniatures at the summit. It is a gem of exquisite taste and patient
labour. And the very next minute you are again among flaming red and
yellow dragon-tigers and duck-peacocks, and the one is just as holy and
just as beautiful to its worshippers as the other. From which objects
of veneration the Brahman passes lightly to the domestic life of the
frescoed rajahs of Tanjore. “This gentleman--marry seventeen wives--all
one day--doubtless in anxiety of getting son.” It is quite true. The
Rajah, having but three wives and no child, resolved to marry six
more young ladies, and collected seventeen to choose them from. But
the fathers and brothers of the rejected eleven were affronted; and
rather than have any unpleasantness on his wedding-day, his Majesty
tactfully married the whole seventeen, nine in the morning and eight in
the afternoon. “And here,” pursued the Brahman automatically, showing
a tank, “he will let in water--and here he will play--with all his
females--and all that.”
That is all, except to write your name in the visitor’s book. As I
went in to sign, I noticed a band of musicians standing at the door
and thought no more of it. But as my pen touched the paper, suddenly
reedy pipes and discordant fiddles and heady tom-toms began to play
“God Save the Queen.” A huge chaplet of muslin and tinsel, like a
magnified Christmas-tree stocking, was cast about my neck; betel and
attar-of-rose were brought up in silver vessels, and flowers and
fruits on silver trays. The pagoda keeps its character to the end: the
compliment was sublime--and I ridiculous.
Yet the temple of Tanjore is the most simple and orderly of all its
kind. Visit the great pagoda of Madura and you will come out mazed with
Hinduism. All its mysteries and incongruities, its lofty metaphysics
and its unabashed lewdness, seem to brood over the dark chambers
and crannying passages. The place is enormous. Over the four chief
gateways rise huge pyramid-towers, coloured like harlequins, red tigers
jostling the multiplied arms and legs of blue and yellow gods and
goddesses so thick that the gopuras seem built of them. In the pure
sunlight you almost blush for their crudity, just as you would blush
if the theatre roof were lifted off during a matinée. But inside the
place is nearly all half-lighted, dim, and cryptic. You go through a
labyrinth, that seems endless, of dark chambers and aisles. Now you
are in thick blackness, now in twilight, now the sun falls on fretwork
over pillared galleries and damp-smelling walls. But as the light
falls on the pillar you start, for it is carved into the shape of an
elephant-headed Ganesh, or a conventionally high-stepping Shiva. On you
go, from maze to maze, till there is no more recollection of direction
or guess at size: you are lost in an underground world of gods that are
half devils; you hardly distinguish the silent-footed, gleaming-eyed
attendants from the stone figures. Some of the fantastic images are
smeared with red-lead to simulate blood: all drip with fat. A heavy
smell of grease and stagnant tank-water loads your lungs.
You feel that you are bewitched--lost and helpless among unclean
things. When you come out into the sun and the cleaner dirt of the
town, you draw long breaths. If you could understand the Hindu
religion, you tell yourself, you would understand the Hindu mind. But
that, being of the West, you never, never will.
THE VENDRAMIN-CALERGI
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Following a vagabond method, let us regain the Grand Canal and give
some details upon the Vendramin Palace, now occupied by the Duchesse
de Berry. It is of a rich and noble architecture, probably by Pietro
Lombardo; in the entablature and above the windows, little cherubs
uphold storied shields adorned with exquisite taste, and contribute
much elegance to this façade. A garden of somewhat restricted space
contributes some green trees alongside this palace, which would not be
distinguished from the others if the large white and blue posts with
ropes did not indicate, by means of the fleur-de-lis painted upon them,
a princely and semi-royal dwelling.
After having obtained permission to visit this palace, _valets_ in
green livery welcome you very politely at the base of the staircase,
the steps of which are laved by the waters, fasten your boat to the
posts, and take you into a vestibule, where you wait until all the
formalities of admission are complied with.
This vestibule is just as long as the palace; it opens upon a kind of
court similar to the courts of our hotels.
Two hitched gondolas and a few earthen pots containing small firs and
other poor plants that are dying of thirst are all that adorn the
bareness of this vast waiting-room that is found in every Venetian
palace,--an antechamber that is also a landing-place.
[Illustration: THE VENDRAMIN, CALERGI, ITALY.]
In the centre of this vestibule, a little to the left, a wide stairway
between two walls is seen where the same decoration of miserable plants
appear. A narrow carpet covers the steps leading to an immense hall
resembling a vestibule, without furniture and without adornment. From
this, you enter the dining-room, the walls of which are hung with
family portraits.
This is a long square room. It is very well lighted by two enormous
French windows.
An oval table stands in the centre and a screen shields the entrance.
Upon the wall to the right you notice the portrait of the Duchesse
de Bourgogne in a blue velvet dress; also of the Comte d’Artois and
Madame la Princesse de Lamballe and several others. Upon the left wall
opposite, is the full length portrait of Louis XV., and on either side
of him, his daughters.
In this dining-room, a masked door opens into a dark chapel, so
small that it will barely hold six persons. You can count four
_Prie-Dieu_ there. On the right, a large door opens into a very
modern drawing-room filled with pictures and a great number of small
pieces of furniture: English tables, Parisian coffers,--nothing is
lacking to produce that charming home-like feeling that is derived
from luxurious trifles. Two portraits of Her Royal Highness are placed
opposite one another; that by Lawrence in a dress of white satin, with
a rose on her breast, exhibits the most charming little foot that can
possibly be admired in a white satin slipper.
On walking through the dining-room, you enter, by a door on the left, a
little salon, which seems relatively small after the preceding rooms,
and perhaps overwhelmed by the sumptuous furniture that adorns it. It
contains thirty splendid pictures; this is a kind of Uffizi or _Salon
carré_, where scarcely one of the greatest names in painting is
missing. Among these great masterpieces shines a Virgin by Andrea del
Sarto, so beautiful that it would make cold chills run through the most
elementary connoisseur and the most hide-bound and prosaic Philistine.
This Salon illumined by a soft and well distributed light, seems to me
the select spot, the very heart of the building, and I left it with
deep regret to go and visit the famous salon which contains those two
porphyry columns whose value is so great that they are worth more than
the entire palace. They are placed in front of a door, and thus produce
as little effect as the lapis lazuli in the “Salon Serra” in Genoa,
which you might well believe were painted and varnished, and which
strongly resemble a metallic blue watered silk.
There is still another salon, but it is not remarkable in any way. In
the four corners, four bracket pedestals support four busts: those of
the Duc de Berry, of Charles X., and other members of the royal family.
The Vendramin-Calergi has gained an additional interest in
recent years on account of the fact that Richard Wagner died in
it on Feb. 13, 1883.--E. S.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE OLD SERAGLIO, TURKEY.]
A VISIT TO THE OLD SERAGLIO, CONSTANTINOPLE
PIERRE LOTI
The rising sun gilds the mosque, gilds it under the fresh plane-trees;
in the air there is a white mist which is like the original veil of
day. The little Turkish _cafés_ begin to open, and two or three
_minims_ are already being shaved in the open air under the trees.
It is evidently very early, and I have time to stop here before
returning to Pera. I sit down under the trellis ordering coffee with
those warm little _bonbons_ that they sell here in the morning,
and I think this better than the most delicate breakfast.
About two hours afterwards, about eight o’clock, a carriage takes me
back to Stamboul in the company of an aide-de-camp of His Majesty; and
in a solemn and desert-like quarter, where the grass pushes up between
the stones of the pavement, our coachman stops before a forbidding
enclosure like that of a Mediæval fortress.
These walls shut in a little corner of earth which is absolutely
special and unique, and which is the extreme point of Oriental
Europe,--a promontory that juts out towards neighbouring Asia, and
which was, moreover, for many centuries, the residence of the Caliphs
and a place of incomparable splendour. This, and the sacred suburb of
Eyoub contain all that is most exquisite in Constantinople: this is the
“Old Seraglio,”--a name that alone evokes a world of dreams.
They open for us a door in this wall, and, then, as soon as the barrier
is passed, the delicious melancholy of interior things is revealed
to us, and the dead Past takes us to itself and envelops us with its
winding-sheet.
At first, there is silence and shadow. Empty, desolate courts, where
the neglected grass pushes through the flag-stones and where still live
ancient trees that were contemporaries of the magnificent sultans of
former times: black cypresses as tall as towers, plane-trees which have
acquired unwonted forms, all hollowed out by time, being supported only
by immense shreds of bark and bent like old men.
Then come the galleries with colonnades in the ancient Turkish style,
painted with strange frescoes, under which the great Solomon forced the
ambassadors of the European kings to enter. And this place, happily
never open to profane visitors, has not yet become a common promenade
for tourists; behind the high walls, it preserves a little mysterious
peace, it is all imprinted with the sadness of dead splendour.
Crossing these first courts, we have upon the right impenetrable
gardens, where you see rising above the clumps of cypress old kiosks
with closed windows,--the residences of imperial widows and aged
princesses who wish to end their days here in this austere retreat in
one of the most wonderful sites in the world.
It is all bathed in sunlight, all dazzling in tranquil light, the
last portion of this walled-in spot to which we have now come,--the
very last point of the Old Seraglio, and of Europe. It is a solitary
esplanade, very elevated and very white, dominating the distant blue of
the sea and of Asia. The clear morning sunlight inundates those depths
of space out yonder, where the towns, the islets and the mountains are
sketched out in light tints above the motionless sheet of Marmora.
Around us are old buildings also white, which contain all that is
rarest and most precious in Turkey.
First the kiosk, forbidden to infidels, where the cloak of the Prophet
is kept in a cover embroidered with jewels. Then the kiosk of Bagdad,
the interior of which is entirely clothed in those old Persian
faïences; which are priceless to-day: the branches of red flowers were
made upon them with coral that they liquified by a process now lost and
spread upon them like pigment.
Then the Imperial Treasury, very white also under its layers of
whitewash and barred like a prison; and whose iron gates will be opened
for me presently.
And finally, a palace, uninhabited, but well maintained, which we
entered and sat down. Steps of white marble led us to the salons of
the first floor, which were furnished about the middle of the last
century in the European taste. They are of the Louis XV. style, to
which an imperceptible mixture of Oriental singularity gives a special
charm. The white and gold wainscots with old cherry or old lilac damask
with white flowers show nothing but light tints mellowed by time.
There are some large Sèvres and Chinese vases, and few other objects,
but all of them are old and rare. Much space, air, and light, and a
tranquil symmetry in the arrangement of everything--give a feeling of
changelessness and neglect.
And there in a sort of sumptuous solitude, seated on these
_fauteuils_ of a deliciously pale rose, before large open
windows, we have from this last promontory of Europe, the splendid
view that charmed the Sultans of the past. To our left, and very far
below us, the Bosphorus spreads, furrowed with ships and caïques; the
whiteness of the marble quays are reflected in it; the whiteness of
the new imperial residences, Dolma Bagtche and Tcheragan, are mirrored
inverted in long, pale lines; the row of palace and mosques is pictured
magnificently upon its banks. Opposite is Asia, still bluish in the
remaining drifts of the morning mist; it is Scutari, with its domes and
minarets, with its immense cemetery and its forest of dark cypresses.
To the right, the infinite expanse of Marmora;--distant steamboats
are moving upon it, lost in all that diaphanous blue,--little grey
silhouettes trailing delicate clouds of smoke.
How well it was chosen, this site, to dominate and watch from above
that Turkey, seated superbly on two divisions of the world! And to-day,
what peace and what melancholy splendour in this complete isolation
from all the agitations of modern life, in this great silence of
abandonment, under this clear and mournful sun!
When the guardian of the Treasury--an old man with a white beard--is
ready to open the iron door with his enormous keys, twenty individuals
come to form a hedge, ten to the right, ten to the left, on each side
of the entrance.
We pass between this double row and enter the rather dark halls, into
which they all follow us.
The cavern of Ali Baba could never have been filled with such wealth!
For eight centuries they have been heaping up here the rarest jewels
and the most astonishing marvels of art. As our eyes become rested from
the outside sunlight, and get accustomed to the shadowy interior, the
diamonds begin to sparkle everywhere. Things in profusion, without age
or price, classified by species upon shelves. Arms of all periods, from
Genghis Khan to Mahomet; weapons of silver and gold set with jewels.
Then there are collections of golden coffers of all sizes and of all
styles; some are covered with rubies, others with diamonds and others
with sapphires; some of them are even cut out of a single emerald
as big as an ostrich’s egg. Then there are services for coffee, for
drinking, and ewers of antique and exquisite forms. And the stuffs fit
for fays; the saddles; the harness, the housings of parade in brocades
of gold and silver, embroidered and encrusted with flowers in precious
stones; the large thrones made to sit upon cross-legged: all these in
ruby and fine pearl together produce a rosy brilliancy; elsewhere,
others covered with emeralds and brilliant in their green reflections,
look as if bathed in sea-water.
In the last hall, there is waiting for us behind the windows a
motionless and terrible company: twenty-eight _macabre_ dolls,
of human size, standing up straight in a military row with their
elbows touching each other. They all wear that high pear-shaped turban
that has not been in use for a century, and which is only to be seen
upon the catafalques of distinguished personages, in the twilight of
mortuary kiosks, or carved upon the tombs--so that this kind of a
turban is for me absolutely associated with the idea of death. Until
the beginning of this century, whenever a sultan died, they brought
here a doll clothed in the ceremonial robes of the dead sovereign,
they placed marvellous arms in his belt, put on his turban, and his
magnificent jewelled aigrette,--and it remained here forever covered
with this eternally wasted wealth. The twenty-eight Sultans who
succeeded each other from the capture of Constantinople until the end
of the Seventeenth Century are standing here in their imperial robes in
facsimile; slowly has the sombre and sumptuous assembly increased, new
funeral dolls came one by one to range themselves in line with the old
ones, who had awaited them for hundreds of years, sure of seeing them
at last--and they are now touching each other’s elbows.
Their long robes are of the strangest brocades, with great mysterious
designs whose tints are dimmed by time; priceless poignards with large
handles made of a single precious stone, rust, notwithstanding the
care, in the silken belts; it even seems that the enormous diamonds of
the aigrettes have lost some of their fire, and shine with a yellowish
and dulled light.
And this unheard of luxury, all powdered with dust, is sad to look
upon. Fabulously magnificent, the dolls with the high coiffure,
objects of so much human covetousness guarded there behind the double
doors of iron, useless and dangerous, see the seasons, years, reigns,
revolutions and centuries pass by with the same immobility and the
same silence, with scarcely any daylight through the gratings of the
old windows and in total darkness after the sun sets. Each one bears
his name, written like a common name upon a faded ticket--illustrious
names that were formerly terrible: Mourad the Conqueror, Soliman the
Magnificent, Mohammed and Mahmoud. I believe that these dolls give me
the most terrifying lesson of fragility and nothingness.
THE DUOMO, THE LEANING TOWER. THE BAPTISTERY AND THE
CAMPO-SANTO OF PISA
H. A. TAINE
There are two Pisas: one in which people are bored and where they have
lived in a provincial manner since the decadence; this is the greater
part of the city, with the exception of a secluded corner: the other
is this corner, a marble sepulchre, where the Duomo, the Baptistery,
the Leaning Tower and the Campo-Santo repose silently like beautiful
things that are dead. The true Pisa is here, and in these relics of an
extinguished life, you find a world.
A renaissance before the renaissance, a second and almost antique
budding of an antique civilization, a spring-time after six centuries
of snow,--such are the ideas and words that crowd into the mind.
Everything is of marble, white marble, whose immaculate whiteness
shines in the azure. On all sides are large solid forms, the cupola,
the full wall, the balanced stories, the firmly-planted round or square
mass; but over these forms, revived from the antique, like delicate
foliage that clothes an old tree-trunk, there is spread an individual
invention and a new decoration of the small columns surmounted by
arcades, and the originality and grace of this architecture thus
renewed cannot be described.
[Illustration: DUOMO, LEANING TOWER, BAPTISTERY AND CAMPO SANTO,
ITALY]
In 1083, to honour the Virgin who had given them the victory over the
Saracens of Sardinia, the Pisans began to build their Duomo.
This is almost a Roman basilica, I should say a temple surmounted by
another temple, or if you like better, a house having its gable for
a façade, and this gable is cut off at the peak to support a still
smaller house. Five stories of columns cover the entire façade with
their superimposed porticoes. Two by two they are coupled together
to support the little arcades; all these lovely columns of white
marble under their black arcades make an aërial population that is
most graceful and unexpected. In no place here do you perceive that
sorrowful reverie of the Mediæval north; it is the holiday of a young
nation that is awakening, and, in the joy of its newly acquired wealth,
honours its gods. She has gathered from the distant shores to which
her wars and trade led her, capitals, ornaments and entire columns and
these fragments of antiquity fit into the work without any incongruity;
for the work is instinctively cast into the ancient mould and is only
developed with a grain of fantasy on the side of delicacy and charm.
All the antique forms re-appear, but remodelled in the same spirit, by
a new and original vivacity. The exterior columns of the Greek temple
are reduced, multiplied and elevated into the air and are not only
a support but have become an ornament. The Roman or Byzantine dome
is elongated and its natural heaviness diminished beneath a crown of
slender little columns with a mitre ornament which girds it in the
centre with its delicate gallery. On the two sides of the great door
two Corinthian columns are enveloped with the luxuriant leaves, buds
and twining stems of the acanthus, and from the threshold we see the
church with its rows of black, and white columns of nave and transept,
with their multitude of slender and beautiful forms rising up like an
altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears here, a more delicate sense
of feeling; it is not excessive and confused as in the north, but, at
the same time, it is not contented with merely the grave simplicity and
the robust nudity of antique architecture. This spirit is the daughter
of a pagan mother, healthy and gay, but more feminine than her mother.
She is not yet an adult, sure of her steps; she makes awkward mistakes.
The lateral façades outside are monotonous. The cupola within is a
reversed funnel, of a strange and disagreeable form. The union of
the two arms of the cross is unpleasing, and a number of modernized
chapels dispel the charm of the purity found in Sienna. At the second
glance, however, all this is forgotten, and the effect of the whole is
felt again. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted by arcades,
divide the church into five naves and form a forest. A second passage
also as richly peopled with columns crosses the first one, and above
the beautiful grove, rows of still smaller columns are carried along
and intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the quadruple
gallery, also prolonged and intersected. The ceiling is flat; the
windows are little, and most of them without panes; they allow the
walls to exhibit the grandeur and solidity of their mass, and down
these long lines of straight and simple windows the untempered
daylight makes these innumerable columns glow with the serenity of an
ancient temple.
It is not, however, wholly an ancient temple, and there lies its
peculiar charm: at the back of the choir the entire hollowed out apsis
is occupied with a large Christ[11] in a golden robe, with the Virgin
and another smaller saint. His face is gentle and sad: on this golden
background in the dimness of the pale daylight he seems like a vision.
Certainly, a number of pictures and constructions of the Middle Ages
supply all the needs of ecstasy. Other fragments show the decadence
and the deep barbarism from which they sprang. There remains one of
those ancient bronze doors covered with formless and horrible bronze
bas-reliefs.
Such is what the descendants of the sculptors preserved out of
antiquity, such is what the human mind became in the chaos of the
Tenth Century at the time of the Hungarian invasions, of Marozzia and
Theodora: sad, mournful, anæmic, dislocated and mechanical figures, God
the Father and six angels, three on one side and three on the other,
all leaning at the same angle like a row of cards leaning against one
another; the twelve apostles all in a row, six in front and six in the
intervening spaces, like those round rings with holes for eyes and
long lines for arms that children scribble in their exercise-books. On
the other hand, the entrance doors, carved by John of Bologna,[12]
are full of life: leaves of the rose, the grapevine, the medlar, the
orange and the laurel with their berries, their fruits and their
flowers, amongst which are birds and animals, twine about and make
frames for animated figures and groups that are energetic and imposing.
This wealth of truthful and vital forms is peculiar to the Sixteenth
Century: it discovered nature and man at the same time. Five centuries
lie between the work of these two doors.
There is nothing more to say about the Baptistery or the Leaning Tower;
the same idea, the same taste and even the same style are seen in them.
The one is a simple isolated dome; the other is a cylinder; each has
its exterior decoration of columns. However, each has its own distinct
and speaking physiognomy; but too much time would be occupied in either
talking or writing about them and too many technical terms would be
needed to distinguish the subtle differences. I will only mention
the inclination of the Tower. It is supposed that when the Tower was
half-finished, it leaned and that the architects kept on, and since
they went on with it this inclination did not seem to have troubled
them. At all events, there are other leaning towers in Italy,--at
Bologna, for instance; voluntarily, or involuntarily, this fondness for
oddity, this search for paradox and this yielding to fantasy, is one of
the characteristics of the Middle Ages.
In the centre of the Baptistery is a superb eight-sided basin; each
one of three sides is incrusted with a rich and complicated flower
in full bloom, and each flower is different. There is a circle of
large Corinthian columns around it, supporting round-arched arcades;
most of them are ancient and are ornamented with antique bas-reliefs:
Meleager with his barking dogs and the nude bodies of his companions
is assisting at Christian mysteries. On the left, there is a pulpit
similar to the one in Sienna, the first work of Nicholas of Pisa,[13]
a simple marble coffer supported on marble columns and covered with
carvings. The feeling of the strength and nudity of antiquity is
exhibited here in a striking manner. The sculptor understood the
postures and movements of the body. His figures, a little massive, are
grand and simple; sometimes he reproduces the tunics and the folds
of the Roman costume; one of his nude personages, a kind of Hercules
carrying a lion on his shoulders, has that large chest and the strained
muscles that the sculptors of the Sixteenth Century loved so much.
What a difference to human civilization and what a hastening of it
there would have been if these restorers of ancient beauty, these young
Republics of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, these precocious
creators of modern thought had been left to themselves like the ancient
Greeks, if they had followed their natural bent, if mystical tradition
had not intervened to limit and divert their effort, if secular genius
had developed among them, as it formerly did in Greece, amongst free,
rude and healthy institutions, and not, as it did, two centuries later,
in the midst of the servitude and the corruptions of the decadence.
The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the
earth of which, brought from Palestine, is holy. Four high walls of
polished marble surround it with their white and highly ornamented
panels. Within, a square gallery forms a promenade and opens upon a
court through arcades trellised with ogival windows. It is filled with
mortuary monuments, busts, inscriptions, and statues of every form
and of every age. Nothing could be nobler or simpler. A framework of
dark wood supports the vault, and the naked crest of the roof cuts
the crystal of the sky. At the corners four cypresses rustle their
leaves in the light breeze. The grass grows in the court with freshness
and wild luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twines itself
around a column, a little rosebush, or tiny shrub, glowing in a ray of
sunlight. Not a sound,--this quarter is deserted; now and then you hear
only the voice of a stroller which echoes as if beneath the vault of
a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and Christian city;
here before the tombs of the great, you can well reflect upon death and
public affairs.
[Illustration: ROCHESTER CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
ROCHESTER CASTLE
ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN
The Romans, who always had a keen eye for favourable defensive sites,
were scarcely likely to miss the high ground in the great bend of the
Medway not far from where it falls into the Thames. The Watling Street
from Dover to London passed the river, moreover, at this point and
received protection from the Roman camp. The Saxons and Danes also
maintained the Castle of Hrofa here. The usual timber fortifications
were constructed in an oblong enclosure of about seven acres, including
a large conical mound of the Eastern chalk range called Bully Hill.
It must even at that date have been a place of some strength, because
when it was besieged by the Danes in 885, it was able to hold out long
enough for Alfred to come to its relief. At the Conquest, the Normans
recognized the strength of the position and added their own improved
methods of fortification, enclosing a quadrangular space close to the
river with a strong curtain wall and afterwards building a massive
square keep in the enclosure. The Saxon works were left outside and
used merely as an outpost, as was the case at Warwick and Canterbury.
The original quadrangular enclosure had a wall-circuit of 580 yards,
the North and South walls measuring 160, and the East and West 130
each. The East front faced the cathedral which even at that day was
venerable. The West wall ran along the river front. The other three
walls were defended by a broad and deep moat, traces of which still
remain. Much of the outer wall, with square open towers recurring at
intervals also exists. The main entrance or gatehouse with drawbridge,
which no longer exists, was at the North-east angle, from which there
was a steep descent to what is now the High Street. At the North-west
angle, was a bastion tower with a postern gate. Although this tower
no longer exists, it was still standing as late as 1735, immediately
on the shore, commanding the bridge. A large round tower still stands
at the South-east angle. It measures thirty feet in diameter; it has
two floors and is loop-holed for archery. Two rectangular towers
that defended the East front are still in existence. Throughout the
constructions, we cannot fail to notice and admire the strength and
massiveness of the masonry. To this the ruin owes its preservation,
for besides the destroying hand of time, the neglect of unappreciative
generations, and the destruction wrought by greed and fanaticism, it
has also suffered from several sieges.
On the highest ground of the enclosure, near the South-east angle,
stands the keep. In grandeur and impressiveness, this tower does
not suffer in comparison with any English keep of the Norman
period. Neither the smaller keep of Newcastle, nor the larger ones
of Colchester, Canterbury, Norwich and Hedingham show the original
arrangement better than Rochester. Its base is more than seventy feet
square, and it is 113 feet high. It is buttressed at the angles with
four small towers each twelve feet square. These, rising twelve feet
above the principal mass, add greatly to the picturesque effect of
the whole. Clinging like a limpet to the East angle of the keep is a
smaller tower twenty-eight feet square and about seventy-five feet
high. This contained the chief entrance to the keep. It had a flight
of steps and an arched gateway enriched. This and the other arches are
constructed of Caen stone brought from Normandy; the walls, from ten to
twelve feet thick, are built with Kentish rag. Even when this smaller
tower was taken in an assault, the besiegers still had trouble to get
into the keep proper, for the vestibule was divided from the rooms of
the great keep by a portcullis in the main wall. The groove in which it
worked and traces of the ironwork still remain.
The keep contains three storeys of lofty apartments, with a vault
beneath. As in the tower of London, it is divided into two nearly equal
parts by a wall running East and West that rises to the roof. Its
thickness allows it to contain a well two feet nine inches in diameter
with openings by which each apartment might be supplied with water.
By this arrangement, it was impossible for besiegers to cut off the
drinking supply of the garrison. The thickness of the walls also admits
of mural galleries, as in the White Tower, and a well staircase leading
from the vault to the roof, communicating with each apartment. The
basement and first floor received their light through loop-holes; the
rooms of the higher storeys have their walls pierced with windows.
On the second storey were the rooms of state, thirty-two feet high.
It has two tiers of windows, the upper tier having a passage in the
wall in front of the windows. On this floor, the apartments open into
one another through the central dividing wall by four arches; and in
the north-east corner is a large doorway leading into an oratory or
chapel built over the great entrance. A flight of steps ascends to the
wall gallery which goes all round the tower: as in the White Tower,
it is vaulted. It is three feet high. In these apartments, there are
fireplaces with enriched arches from which the smoke escaped through
openings in the wall near the hearth. This primitive contrivance must
have rendered the council-chamber and banqueting-hall uncomfortable
with draughts.
Twenty-three steps lead from the wall gallery to the top floor which
contains two handsome rooms twenty-five feet high. From this storey,
the visitor may enjoy a lovely view, including the town and banks
of the winding river, the Cathedral and its close, extending in the
distance to the junction of the Thames and Medway.
Above the third floor, are the battlements which had a rampart walk.
The floorings were all carried by timber joists, and in the basement
was a prison.
The striking resemblance between this keep and the White Tower at
London of the same date would lead us to conclude that both were
designed by the same architect. They were in fact both planned
originally by Gundulf, who was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in the
year after the Conquest. Besides his other great attainments, this
bishop was a very able architect, and when the Conqueror wanted to
erect a strong castle at Rochester, Gundulf was naturally entrusted
with the task.
The first important historical event connected with the castle was
the rebellion of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, half (and
perhaps full) brother to William the Conqueror. Kent had already
suffered greatly from his rapacity, and his conduct finally led to
his dramatic arrest by William’s own hands. After William’s death, he
plotted in Robert’s interest against his nephew Rufus. He attributed
his imprisonment to Archbishop Lanfranc, and when war broke out between
the brothers Robert and William in 1088, he plundered Kent, paying
especial attention to the Archbishop’s estates. Finally, being captured
at Pevensey, he was forced to give up all his possessions in England,
including Rochester, and leave the country. He was sent under guard to
Rochester to complete the surrender and take ship for Normandy; but
on his arrival, Eustace of Boulogne and Robert de Belême and other
supporters rescued Odo and refused to surrender the city. The castle
was garrisoned and William Rufus besieged it in person. It surrendered
after a blockade of six weeks. William was very reluctant to grant any
terms, and indignantly refused Odo’s request for the honours of war.
The English portion of William’s army, who were principally Kentishmen,
were very bitter against the Bishop who had harried and oppressed them,
and cried: “Halters! halters for the traitor bishop! Let not the doer
of evil go unharmed!” Counsels of clemency, however, prevailed; and
Odo was allowed to go; and on this occasion Rochester saw the last of
him.
The castle had been considerably injured in the siege, and William
commissioned Gundulf to spend £60, a large sum in those days, in
building a new tower.
In the twenty-seventh year of William’s successor, Henry, the king,
with the consent of his barons, granted to the church of Canterbury,
William (of Corbeil), archbishop of that see, the custody of the
castle of Rochester for ever, with liberty to build a fort and a
tower. This archbishop, who had the support of the king in the rivalry
of Canterbury and York, was a great builder. He rebuilt Rochester
Cathedral and attended its dedication in 1130. Shortly before, he
had with great pomp completed and dedicated the great cathedral at
Canterbury begun by Lanfranc. It was therefore about 1130 that the new
castle was also completed.
The castle with its splendid and strong keep was far too important a
military post to remain in possession of the see of Canterbury for
any length of time in that turbulent age. When the see became vacant,
and on other occasions, the Crown resumed possession of it. In 1141,
William of Ypres, a Fleming, was its governor for Stephen, as the
archbishop had sworn allegiance to the Empress Maud. When the Earl of
Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I. was captured at Winchester, he
was imprisoned in this castle until exchanged for Stephen, who was
taken at Lincoln later in the year. William of Ypres being banished,
Henry II. gave his earldom of Kent and the castle of Rochester to
Philip, Earl of Flanders, but the Earl never took possession.
In 1202, the castle was again restored to the archbishop, then Stephen
Langton, who later, during John’s wars with his barons, turned it over
to William de Albini, a valiant and able commander, to be held in the
interests of the barons. John invested the stronghold in 1215, and
succeeded in gaining possession after an obstinate defence lasting
three months. The military engines could produce little impression, but
the walls were undermined, and then the keep was attacked in the same
way. The following year, Louis the Dauphin, being invited over by the
barons to assist them against John, landed at Sandwich and led his army
to Rochester. The damage had not yet been repaired and so the castle
easily fell. With other Crown possessions, it then came into the hands
of Henry III. Much money was spent in repairs, especially in 1225–6–7.
This was while Hubert de Burgh was constable of Rochester castle. In
1240, the tower was ordered to be whitewashed where it had not yet been
done; and in 1247 both chapels were ordered to be wainscoted. One of
these was in the outer ward, and used by the garrison.
In 1264, the king gave the charge of the castle to the celebrated
Roger de Leybourne who had just joined his cause. He furnished it with
sufficient arms, garrison, and provisions to stand a siege. Early in
April, the attack being imminent, the king’s brother-in-law, the Earl
of Surrey, arrived at the castle with reinforcements. Just before
Easter, Simon de Montfort came to besiege the castle. On reaching
the western bank of the Medway, he found the passage of the bridge
disputed, and a palisade and breastwork thrown up on the opposite side,
well defended. Having sent Gilbert de Clare to attack the south side
of the town, the Earl of Leicester in person assaulted the bridge,
but was twice driven back by the citizens. At length, with the aid of
boats loaded with combustibles, he set fire to the bridge and the tower
upon it which were both built of wood. During the confusion caused by
the fire, he crossed the river and destroyed the church and what was
left of the priory. Richard de Leybourne for purposes of defence had
already burned down all the suburbs and part of the priory. Simon de
Montfort next made a furious assault upon the castle and captured the
outworks and all the towers except the great keep. The latter made
such an obstinate resistance that after a seven days’ close siege,
Simon suddenly relinquished the attempt and retreated to London.
Shortly afterwards, in 1264, most of the garrison, under Leybourne,
who had been badly wounded, left Rochester and joined the Royal army
at Lewes. The king’s disastrous defeat there resulted in the surrender
of Rochester castle to the Baron’s forces. When however the tide of
success turned two years later, on the death of de Montfort at Evesham,
and the fall of Kenilworth, Leybourne resumed his governorship.
In 1274, Robert de Hougham died constable of this castle, and was
followed by Robert de Septvans. Two other constables of Rochester
during this reign were Sir John de Cobham and Stephen de Dene. During
the next two centuries the following names occur among the holders of
this office: William Skarlett, Lord Grey of Codnor, John de Newtrun,
William Criol and Sir Thomas Cobham.
In 1367–8, extensive repairs were undertaken by Edward III., under
Prior John of Rochester as chief of the works. Stone was imported from
Beer, Caen, and Reigate, with copings and crests for battlements,
probably for buildings in the court. Edward IV. also repaired the
castle, but afterwards it lost its military importance and fell into
decay. A drawing, of the year 1518, shows the turrets domed over and
capped with vanes, like those of the White Tower.
Rochester much resembles Hedingham, which is a very perfect Norman keep
with three floors, the remains of a forebuilding and upper gallery
in the main floor. In each ornamentation, the chevron moulding is
profusely employed.
SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE
JOHN RUSKIN
Your Murray’s Guide tells you that this chapel of the Bardi della
Libertà, in which you stand, is covered with frescoes by Giotto; that
they were whitewashed, and only laid bare in 1853; that they were
painted between 1296 and 1304; that they represent scenes in the life
of St. Francis; and that on each side of the window are paintings of
St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Louis King of France, St. Elizabeth of
Hungary, and St. Claire,--“all much restored and repainted.” Under such
recommendation the frescoes are not likely to be much sought after;
and accordingly, as I was at work in the chapel this morning, Sunday
6th September, 1874, two nice-looking Englishmen, under guard of their
valet de place, passed the chapel without so much as looking in.
You will perhaps stay a little longer in it with me, good reader, and
find out gradually where you are. Namely, in the most interesting and
perfect little Gothic chapel in all Italy--so far as I know or can
hear. There is no other of the great time which has all its frescoes in
their place. The Arena, though far larger, is of earlier date--not pure
Gothic, nor showing Giotto’s full force. The lower chapel at Assisi is
not Gothic at all, and is still only of Giotto’s middle time. You have
her developed Gothic, with Giotto in his consummate strength, and
nothing lost, in form, of the complete design.
[Illustration: SANTA CROCE, ITALY.]
By restoration--judicious restoration, as Mr. Murray usually calls
it--there is no saying how much you have lost. Putting the question of
restoration out of your mind, however, for a while, think where you
are, and what you have got to look at.
You are in the chapel next the high altar of the great Franciscan
Church of Florence. A few hundred yards west of you, within ten
minutes’ walk, is the Baptistery of Florence. And five minutes’ walk,
west of that is the great Dominican Church of Florence, Santa Maria
Novella.
Get this little bit of geography, and architectural fact, well into
your mind. There is the little octagon Baptistery in the middle; here,
ten minutes’ walk east of it, the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross;
there, five minutes’ walk west of it, the Dominican Church of St. Mary.
Now, that little octagon Baptistery stood where it now stands (and
was finished, though the roof has been altered since) in the Eighth
Century. It is the central building of Etrurian Christianity,--of
European Christianity.
From the day it was finished, Christianity went on doing her best, in
Etruria and elsewhere, for four hundred years,--and her best seemed
to have come to very little,--when there rose up two men who vowed to
God it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith;
of which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have
a fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little
octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel:--which two
buildings you have also within sight.
But your business is not at present with them; but with these two
earlier churches of Holy Cross and St. Mary. The two men who were the
effectual builders of these were the two great religious Powers and
Reformers of the Thirteenth Century;--St. Francis who taught Christian
men how they should behave, and St. Dominic, who taught Christian men
what they should think. In brief, one the Apostle of Works; the other
of Faith. Each sent his little company of disciples to teach and to
preach in Florence: St. Francis in 1212; St. Dominic in 1220.
The little companies were settled--one, ten minutes’ walk east of the
old Baptistery; the other five minutes’ walk west of it. And after they
had stayed quietly in such lodgings as were given them, preaching and
teaching through most of the century; and had got Florence, as it were
heated through, she burst out into Christian poetry and architecture,
of which you have heard so much talk:--burst into bloom of Arnolfo,
Giotto, Dante, Orcagna, and the like persons, whose works you profess
to have come to Florence that you may see and understand.
Florence then, thus heated through, first helped her teachers to build
finer churches. The Dominicans, or White Friars, the Teachers of Faith,
began their church of St. Mary’s in 1279. The Franciscans, or Black
Friars, the Teachers of Works, laid the first stone of this church of
the Holy Cross in 1294. And the whole city laid the foundations of its
new cathedral in 1298. The Dominicans designed their own building;
but for the Franciscans and the town worked the first great master of
Gothic art, Arnolfo; with Giotto at his side, and Dante looking on, and
whispering sometimes a word to both.
And here you stand beside the high altar of the Franciscan’s Church,
under a vault of Arnolfo’s building, with at least some of Giotto’s
colour on it still fresh; and in front of you, over the little altar,
is the only reportedly authentic portrait of St. Francis, taken from
life by Giotto’s master. Yet I can hardly blame my two English friends
for never looking in. Except in the early morning light, not one touch
of all this art can be seen. And in any light, unless you understand
the relations of Giotto to St. Francis, and of St. Francis to humanity,
it will be of little interest.
Observe, then, the special character of Giotto among the great painters
of Italy is his being a practical person. Whatever other men dreamed
of, he did. He could work in mosaic: he could work in marble; he
could paint; and he could build; and all thoroughly: a man of supreme
faculty, supreme common sense. Accordingly, he ranges himself at once
among the disciples of the Apostle of Works, and spends most of his
time in the same apostleship.
Now the gospel of Works, according to St. Francis, lay in three things.
You must work without money, and be poor. You must work without
pleasure, and be chaste. You must work according to orders, and be
obedient.
Those are St. Francis’s three articles of Italian opera. By which grew
the many pretty things you have come to see here.
And now if you will take your opera-glass and look up to the roof above
Arnolfo’s building, you will see it is a pretty Gothic cross vault,
in four quarters, each with a circular medallion, painted by Giotto.
That over the altar has the picture of St. Francis himself. The three
others, of his Commanding Angels. In front of him, over the entrance
arch, Poverty. On his right hand, Obedience. On his left, Chastity.
Poverty, in a red patched dress, with grey wings and a square nimbus of
glory above her head, is flying from a black hound, whose head is seen
at the corner of the medallion.
Chastity veiled, is imprisoned in a tower, while angels watch her.
Obedience bears a yoke on her shoulders, and lays her hand on a book.
Now, this same quatrefoil, of St. Francis and his three Commanding
Angels, was also painted, but much more elaborately, by Giotto, on the
cross vault of the lower church of Assisi, and it is a question of
interest which of the two roofs was painted first.
Your Murray’s Guide tells you the frescoes in this chapel were painted
between 1296 and 1304. But as they represent, among other personages,
St. Louis of Toulouse, who was not canonized till 1317, that statement
is not altogether tenable. Also, as the first stone of the church was
only laid in 1294, when Giotto was a youth of eighteen, it is little
likely that either it would have been ready to be painted, or be ready
with his scheme of practical divinity, two years later.
Farther, Arnolfo, the builder of the main body of the church, died in
1310. And as St. Louis of Toulouse was not a saint till seven years
afterwards, and the frescoes therefore beside the window not painted
in Arnolfo’s day, it becomes another question whether Arnolfo left the
chapels or the church at all, in their present form.
On which point--now that I have shown you where Giotto’s St. Louis
is--I will ask you to think awhile, until you are interested; and then
I will try to satisfy your curiosity. Therefore, please leave the
little chapel for the moment, and walk down the nave, till you come to
two sepulchral slabs near the west end, and then look about you and see
what sort of a church Santa Croce is.
Without looking about you at all, you may find, in your Murray, the
useful information that it is a church which “consists of a very wide
nave and lateral aisles, separated by seven fine pointed arches.” And
as you will be--under ordinary conditions of tourist hurry--glad to
learn so much, _without_ looking, it is little likely to occur to
you that this nave and two rich aisles required also, for your complete
present comfort, walls at both ends, and a roof on the top. It is just
possible, indeed, you may have been struck on entering, by the curious
disposition of painted glass at the east end;--more remotely possible
that, in returning down the nave, you may this moment have noticed the
extremely small circular window at the west end; but the chances are a
thousand to one that, after being pulled from tomb to tomb round the
aisles and chapels, you should take so extraordinary an additional
amount of pains as to look up at the roof,--unless you do it now,
quietly. It will have had its effect upon you, even if you don’t,
without your knowledge. You will return home with a general impression
that Santa Croce is, somehow, the ugliest Gothic church you ever were
in. Well, that is really so; and now, will you take the pains to see
why?
There are two features, on which, more than on any others, the grace
and delight of a fine Gothic building depends; one is the springing of
its vaultings, the other the proportion and fantasy of its traceries.
_This_ church of Santa Croce has no vaultings at all, but the roof
of a farmhouse barn. And its windows are all of the same pattern,--the
exceedingly prosaic one of two pointed arches, with a round hole above,
between them.
And to make the simplicity of the roof more conspicuous, the aisles are
successive sheds, built at every arch. In the aisles of the Campo Santo
at Pisa, the unbroken flat roof leaves the eye free to look to the
traceries; but here, a succession of up-and-down sloping beam and lath
gives the impression of a line of stabling rather than a church aisle.
And lastly, while, in fine Gothic buildings, the entire perspective
concludes itself gloriously in the high and distant apse, here the nave
is cut across sharply by a line of ten chapels, the apse being only
a tall recess in the midst of them, so that, strictly speaking, the
church is not of the form of a cross, but of a letter T.
Can this clumsy and ungraceful arrangement be indeed the design of the
renowned Arnolfo?
Yes, this is the purest Arnolfo-Gothic; not beautiful by any means;
but deserving, nevertheless, our thoughtfullest examination. We
will trace its complete character another day: just now we are only
concerned with this pre-Christian form of the letter T, insisted upon
in the lines of chapels.
Respecting which you are to observe, that the first Christian churches
in the catacombs took the form of a blunt cross naturally; a square
chamber having a vaulted recess on each side; then the Byzantine
churches were structurally built in the form of an equal cross; while
the heraldic and other ornamental equal-armed crosses are partly signs
of glory and victory, partly of light, and divine spiritual presence.
But the Franciscans and Dominicans saw in the cross no sign of triumph,
but of trial. The wounds of their Master were to be their inheritance.
So their first aim was to make what image to the cross their church
might present, distinctly that of the actual instrument of death. And
they did this most effectually by using the form of the letter T, that
of the Furca or Gibbet,--not the sign of peace.
Also their churches were meant for use; not show, nor
self-glorification, nor town-glorification. They wanted places for
preaching, prayer, sacrifice, burial; and had no intention of showing
how high they could build towers, or how widely they could arch vaults.
Strong walls and the roof of a barn,--these your Franciscan asks
of his Arnolfo. These Arnolfo gives,--thoroughly and wisely built;
the successions of gable roof being a new device for strength much
practised in his day.
This stern humour did not last long. Arnolfo himself had other notions;
most of all, Nature and Heaven. Something else had to be taught about
Christ than that He was wounded to death. Nevertheless, look how grand
this stern form would be, restored to its simplicity. It is not the old
church which is in itself unimpressive. It is the old church defaced by
Vasari, by Michael Angelo, and by modern Florence. See those huge tombs
on your right hand and left, at the sides of the aisles, with their
alternate gable and round tops, and their paltriest of all sculpture,
trying to be grand by bigness, and pathetic by expense. Tear them
all down in your imagination; fancy the vast hall with its massive
pillars,--not painted calomel-pill colour, as now, but of their native
stone, with the rough true wood for roof,--and a people praying beneath
them, strong in abiding, and pure in life, as their rocks and olive
forests. That was Arnolfo’s Santa Croce. Nor did his work remain long
without grace.
That very line of chapels in which we found our St. Louis shows signs
of change in temper. They have no pent-house roofs, but true Gothic
vaults: we found our four square type of Franciscan Law on one of them.
It is probable, then, that these chapels may be later than the
rest--even in their stonework. In their decoration, they are so,
assuredly; belonging already to the time when the story of St. Francis
was becoming a passionate tradition, told and painted everywhere with
delight.
And that high recess, taking the place of apse, in the centre,--see how
noble it is in the coloured shade surrounding and joining the glow of
its windows, though their form be so simple. You are not to be amused
here by patterns in balanced stone, as a French or English architect
would amuse you, says Arnolfo. “You are to read and think, under these
severe walls of mine; immortal hands will write upon them.”
THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA
The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering
sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a
lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been
driven round together with the crew of sightseers can carry little
away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze work, inlaid agates and
labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted
faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens
with rows of pink primroses in Spring and bigonia in Autumn, blooming
beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking contrast
between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance façade, each
in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and thoughts of the
two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride of power it is a
monument, may be blended with the recollection of art treasures alien
to their spirit.
[Illustration: THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA, ITALY.]
Two great artists, Ambrognio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo are the
presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the
accurate investigation of records and comparison of styles, must
be left the task of separating their work from that of numerous
collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of the
whole music is struck by them. Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni
chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the façade
of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the
distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only
fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento
inspiration is that the façade is a frontispiece, with hardly any
structural relation to the church it mocks: and this, though serious
from the point of view of architecture, is no abatement of its
sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a
wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues--of angel faces, fluttering
raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures
of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and
cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details
to the main design, clear, rhythmical and lucid, like the chant of
Pergolese, or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity
evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the
harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the
instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in its expenditure of
rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the costliest workmanship
on ornamental episodes, brought into truer keeping with a pure and
simple structural effect.
All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in succession
on this miracle of beauty; and this may account for the sustained
perfection of style, which nowhere suffers from the languor of
exhaustion in the artist or from repetition of motives. It remains the
triumph of North Italian genius, exhibiting qualities of tenderness
and self abandonment to inspiration which we lack in the severer
masterpieces of the Tuscan school.
To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave and
choir--exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with stately
Gothic style. Borgognone, again, is said to have designed the saints
and martyrs worked in _tarsia_ for the choir-stalls. His frescoes
are in some parts well preserved, as in the lovely little Madonna at
the end of the south chapel, while the great fresco above the window in
the south transept has an historical value that renders it interesting
in spite of partial decay.
The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From Borgognone’s
majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini’s Christian grace, or
mark the influence of Leonardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by
his pupil Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Leonardesque
spirit, this great picture was left unfinished; yet Northern Italy has
nothing finer to show than the landscape outspread in its immeasurable
purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles, and the ascendant Mother
of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between the Alps and
Lombardy, where there are many waters--_et tacitos sine labe lacus
sine murmure rivos_--and where the last spurs of the mountains sink
in undulations to the plain, has passed into this azure vista, just as
all Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of young Raphael or
Perugino.
The portraits of the dukes of Milan and their families carry us into
a very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of
sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic
canopies, men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble
biers--we read in all these sculptured forms a strange record of human
restlessness resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of
Gian Galeazzo Visconti, _il gran Biscione_; the blood-thirst of
Gian Maria; the dark designs of Fillipo and his secret vices; Francesco
Sforza’s treason; Galeazzo Maria’s vanities and lusts; their tyrant’s
dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths by pestilence and
the assassin’s poniard; their selfishness, oppression, cruelty and
fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine plots and acts
of broken faith;--all is tranquil now, and we can say to each what
Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her execution:
Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay’s now competent:
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed!
From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters flooded
with sunlight, where the swallows skim and the brown hawks circle
and the mason bees are at work among the carvings. The arcades of
the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta.
The memory fails before such infinite invention, such facility and
felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the arches among
grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of angels, like
rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave, ascending and
descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on their pedestals
and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of cherubs and courses
of stars and acanthus-leaves in woven lines and ribands incessantly
inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich red light and
purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance sympathizes more
completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad plain space of
waving summer grass beneath our feet.
It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes the train will take
us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and
strained spirits among the willows and poplars by the monastery wall.
Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring, the pinnacles
of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields are
under water, far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the
level light now near to sundown. Frogs are croaking; those persistent
frogs whom the muses have ordained to sing for aye in spite of Bion
and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water snakes, the
busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat, well watered
soil. Nightingales here and there, newcomers, tune their timid April
song. But, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my comrade from
the Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd’s melody--_Auf den Alpen
droben ist ein herrliches Leben!_
Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo’s convent ever wake to such a tune as
this before?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Perhaps in the choice of the abbot’s cheer, there was some occult
reference to the verse of Solomon’s Song: “Stay me with flagons,
comfort me with apples.”
[2] “On the 14th day of April, 1374, there were found, in this church
of the first martyr St. Stefano, two hundred and more bodies of holy
martyrs, by the venerable priest, Matthew Fradello, incumbent of the
church.”
[3] “The women, even as far back as 1100, wore dresses of blue,
with mantles on the shoulder, which clothed them before and
behind.”--Sansovino. It would be difficult to imagine a dress more
modest and beautiful.
[4]
“Whom Eve destroyed, the pious Virgin Mary redeemed;
All praise her, who rejoice in the Grace of Christ.”
[5] The embroidered skullcap of Constance of Aragon, wife of Frederick
II, in the sacristy of the Cathedral at Palermo, is made of gold thread
thickly studded with pearls and jewels--rough sapphires and carbuncles,
among which may be noted a red cornelian engraved in Arabic with this
sentence, “In Christ, God, I put my hope.”
[6] Matteo of Ajello induced William to found an archbishopric at
Monreale in order to spite his rival Offamilio.
[7] Nearly all cities have their own distinctive colour. That of Venice
is a pearly white, suggestive of every hue in delicate abeyance, and
that of Florence is a sober brown. Palermo displays a rich yellow ochre
passing at the deepest into orange, and at the lightest into primrose.
This is the tone of the soil, of sun-stained marble, and of the rough
ashlar masonry of the chief buildings. Palermo has none of the glaring
whiteness of Naples, nor yet of that parti-coloured gradation of tints,
which adds gaiety to the grandeur of Genoa.
[8] Of these numerous versions of the story, made in 1635, one is
in English, one in Lowland Scotch, containing all the peculiarities
of diction with which every one is so familiar from the nearly
contemporary conversations of King James I, in _The Fortunes of
Nigel_; showing clearly that at that time these two dialects of
English were regarded as two distinct languages, each unintelligible to
the speaker of the other.
[9] See an elaborate and conclusive Essay on the origin of the story
of the Holy House of Loretto, which appeared in the _Christian
Remembrancer_, April, 1855.
[10] The pictures at Ara Cœli and Sta. Maria Maggiore both claim to
be that carried by St. Gregory in this procession. The song of the
angels is annually commemorated on St. Mark’s Day, when the clergy pass
by in procession to St. Peter’s, and the Franciscans of Ara Cœli and
the canons of Sta. Maria Maggiore, halting here, chaunt the antiphon,
_Regina cœli, lætare_.
[11] By Jacopo Turrita, the restorer of the mosaic.
[12] 1602.
[13] 1260.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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