A Precious Collection Of Old Books And Older Manuscripts,
Useless To The World As The Hoard Of A Miser.
Along the wall are hung
the portraits of the Escorial kings and builders.
The hall is furnished
with marble and porphyry tables, and elaborate glass cases display some
of the curiosities of the library, - a copy of the Gospels that belonged
to the Emperor Conrad, the Suabian Kurz; a richly illuminated
Apocalypse; a gorgeous missal of Charles V.; a Greek Bible, which once
belonged to Mrs. Phcebus's ancestor Cantacuzene; Persian and Chinese
sacred books; and a Koran, which is said to be the one captured by Don
Juan at Lepanto. Mr. Ford says it is spurious; Mr. Madoz says it is
genuine. The ladies with whom I had the happiness to visit the library
inclined to the latter opinion for two very good reasons, - the book is a
very pretty one, and Mr. Madoz's head is much balder than Mr. Ford's.
Wandering aimlessly through the frescoed cloisters and looking in at all
the open doors, over each of which a cunning little gridiron is inlaid
in the woodwork, we heard the startling and unexpected sound of boyish
voices and laughter. We approached the scene of such agreeable tumult,
and found the theatre of the monastery full of young students rehearsing
a play for the coming holidays. A clever-looking priest was directing
the drama, and one juvenile Thespis was denouncing tyrants and dying for
his country in hexameters of a shrill treble. His friends were
applauding more than was necessary or kind, and flourishing their wooden
swords with much ferocity of action. All that is left of the once
extensive establishment of the monastery is a boys' school, where some
two hundred youths are trained in the humanities, and a college where an
almost equal number are educated for the priesthood.
So depressing is the effect of the Escorial's gloom and its memories,
that when you issue at last from its massive doors, the trim and
terraced gardens seem gay and heartsome, and the bleak wild scene is
full of comfort. For here at least there is light and air and boundless
space. You have emerged from the twilight of the past into the present
day. The sky above you bends over Paris and Cheyenne. By this light
Darwin is writing, and the merchants are meeting in the Chicago Board of
Trade. Just below you winds the railway which will take you in two hours
to Madrid, - to the city of Philip II., where the nineteenth century has
arrived; where there are five Protestant churches and fifteen hundred
evangelical communicants. Our young crusader, Professor Knapp, holds
night schools and day schools and prayer meetings, with an active
devotion, a practical and American fervor, that is leavening a great
lump of apathy and death. These Anglo-Saxon missionaries have a larger
and more tolerant spirit of propaganda than has been hitherto seen. They
can differ about the best shape for the cup and the platter, but they
use what they find to their hand.
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