tion id="ucbf7d186-4dae-5103-91d9-b732ea79c487">
John Hay
Castilian Days Published by Good Press, 2019 EAN 4064066213923 Table of Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Cathedral of Toledo Segovia from the Corner Tower The St. Christopher of Toledo Inn of Cervantes, Toledo Gallery of the Prado The Fountain playing at La Granja Puerta del Sol, Madrid The Palace, Madrid The Courtyard of the Palace, Madrid The Squares of the Statues, Madrid A Summer Day in Madrid The Bridge of Toledo, Madrid Delightful Pictures of Domestic Life In the Garden of the Prince, Aranjuez x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gardens of the Royal Palace, Madrid The Bridge of Segovia, Madrid Madrid Market The Promenades of Madrid The Royal Palace, Madrid Salon de los Reyes Catolicos, Aranjuez New Madrid Madrid al Fresco Cloak-Play Entrance to Bull-Ring, Madrid The Procession Banderillas Cloak-Dance Espada La Granja The Shrine of San Isidro Paula, La Granja The Plaza Major, Madrid In the Park, La Granja The Garden of the Island, Aranjuez Entrance to the Velazquez Room, the Prado Velazquez Room The Grand Gallery of the Prado The Long Gallery of the Prado La Granja Fountain The Palace. La Granja San Ildefonso Approach to Segovia The Aqueduct from the Market, Segovia. Segovia LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Alcazar, Segovia San Juan de los Reyes and Valley of Tagus The Alcazar, Toledo The Cathedral of Toledo The Gilded Organ-Pipes The Zocodover, Toledo Cloisters, San Juan de los Reyes Interior of San Juan, Toledo Porta Viragia The Bridge, Toledo Endless Escorial Court of the Temple, Escorial High Altar, Escorial Interior of Church, Escorial Sacristy, Escorial Side Chapels, the Cathedral of Toledo A Street of Toledo Mozarabic Chapel, Toledo The Cheerful Gothic Cloisters, Toledo The Choir, Toledo An Inn Door, Toledo Chapel of the University, Alcald The University, Alcald The Gorgeous Sarcophagus of Ximenez Calle Major, Alcald Baptismal Font of Cervantes, Alcald House of Cervantes, Madrid The Tomb of Cervantes MADRID AL FRESCO MADRID is a capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of government is established in some important town from the force of circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spite of the wandering flirtations its varying governments in different centuries have carried on with Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can imagine no Residenz for Austria but the Kaiserstadt, -- the gemüthlich Wien. But there 4 CASTILIAN DAYS are other capitals where men have arranged things and consequently bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his imperial court down on the marshy shore of the Neva, where he could look westward into civilization and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligent barbarian the doings of his betters. Washington is another specimen of the cold-blooded handiwork of the capital builders. We shall think nothing less of the clarum et venerabile nomen of its founder if we admit he was human, and his wishing the seat of government nearer to Mount Vernon than Mount Washington sufficiently proves this. But Madrid more plainly than any other capital shows the traces of having been set down and properly brought up by the strong hand of a paternal government; and like children with whom the same regimen has been followed, it presents in its maturity a curious mixture of lawlessness and insipidity. Its greatness was thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptoms of the dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrim tabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares. Charles V. found the thin, MADRID AL FRESCO 5 fine air comforting to his gouty articulations. But Philip II. made it his court. It seems hard to conceive how a king who had his choice of Lisbon, with its glorious harbor and unequalled communications; Seville, with its delicious climate and natural beauty; and Salamanca and Toledo, with their wealth of tradition, splendor of architecture, and renown of learning, should have chosen this barren mountain for his home, and the seat of his empire. But when we know this monkish king we wonder no longer. He chose Madrid simply because it was cheerless and bare and of ophthalmic ugliness. The royal kill-joy delighted in having the dreariest capital on earth. After a while there seemed to him too much life and humanity about Madrid, and he built the Escorial, the grandest ideal of majesty and ennui that the world has ever seen. This vast mass of granite
