The Parthenon, fixed like a
battered coronet on the brow of the Acropolis, will always be the
loveliest sight that Greece can offer to those who come sailing in from
the blue Aegean. It is scarcely possible to imagine a condition of
thought or feeling in which these master-works shall seem quaint or
old-fashioned. They appeal, now and always, with that calm power of
perfection, to the heart and eyes of every man born of woman.
The cloisters enclose a little garden just enough neglected to allow the
lush dark ivy, the passionflowers, and the spreading oleanders to do
their best in beautifying the place, as men have done their worst in
marring it. The clambering vines seem trying to hide the scars of their
hardly less perfect copies. Every arch is adorned with a soft and
delicious drapery of leaves and tendrils; the fair and outraged child of
art is cherished and caressed by the gracious and bountiful hands of
Mother Nature.
As we came away, little Francisca plucked one of the five-pointed leaves
of the passion-flowers and gave it to La Senora, saying reverentially,
"This is the Hand of Our Blessed Lord!"
The sun was throned, red as a bacchanal king, upon the purple hills, as
we descended the rocky declivity and crossed the bridge of St. Martin.
Our little Toledan maid came with us, talking and singing incessantly,
like a sweet-voiced starling. We rested on the farther side and looked
back at the towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires aflame,
its long lines of palace and convent clear in the level rays, its ruins
softened in the gathering shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfigured
over the glowing river. Before us the crumbling walls and turrets of the
Gothic kings ran down from the bluff to the water-side, its terrace
overlooking the baths where, for his woe, Don Roderick saw Count
Julian's daughter under the same inflammatory circumstances as those in
which, from a Judaean housetop, Don David beheld Captain Uriah's wife.
There is a great deal of human nature abroad in the world in all ages.
Little Francisca kept on chattering. "That is St. Martin's bridge. A
girl jumped into the water last year. She was not a lady. She was in
service. She was tired of living because she was in love. They found her
three weeks afterwards; but, Santisima Maria! she was good for nothing
then."
Our little maid was too young to have sympathy for kings or servant
girls who die for love. She was a pretty picture as she sat there, her
blue eyes and Madonna face turned to the rosy west, singing in her sweet
child's voice her fierce little song of sedition and war: -
"Arriba los valientes!
Abajo tirania!
Pronto llegara el dia
De la Restauracion.
Carlistas a caballo!
Soldados en Campana!
Viva el Rey de Espana,
Don Carlos de Borbon!"
I cannot enumerate the churches of Toledo, - you find them in every
street and by-way. In the palmy days of the absolute theocracy this
narrow space contained more than a hundred churches and chapels. The
province was gnawed by the cancer of sixteen monasteries of monks and
twice as many convents of nuns, all crowded within these city walls.
Fully one half the ground of the city was covered by religious buildings
and mortmain property. In that age, when money meant ten times what it
signifies now, the rent-roll of the Church in Toledo was forty millions
of reals. There are even yet portions of the town where you find nothing
but churches and convents. The grass grows green in the silent streets.
You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses.
You see on every side bolted doors and barred windows, and, gliding over
the mossy pavements, the stealthy-stepping, long-robed priests.
I will only mention two more churches, and both of these converts from
heathendom; both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy
of the calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced to the level
of the rest. One is the old pretorian temple of the Romans, which was
converted by King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the seventh
century. It is a curious structure in brick and mortar, with an apsis
and an odd arrangement of round arches sunken in the outer wall and
still deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the resting-place of Saints
Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we have met before. The statue of the
latter stands over the door graceful and pensive enough for a heathen
muse. The little cloisters leading to the church are burial vaults. On
one side lie the canonical dead and on the other the laity, with bright
marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the court outside I noticed a
flat stone marked Ossuarium. The sacristan told me this covered the
pit where the nameless dead reposed, and when the genteel people in the
gilt marble vaults neglected to pay their annual rent, they were taken
out and tumbled in to moulder with the common clay.
This San Cristo de la Vega, St. Christ of the Plain, stands on the wide
flat below the town, where you find the greater portion of the Roman
remains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched in an oval form over the
meadow mark the site of the great circus. Green turf and fields of
waving grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city stood. The Romans
built on the plain. The Goths, following their instinct of isolation,
fixed their dwelling on the steep and rugged rock. The rapid Tagus
girdling the city like a horseshoe left only the declivity to the west
to be defended, and the ruins of King Wamba's wall show with what
jealous care that work was done.
