exceed the population in flesh and blood that inhabit the town.
Thanks to the charming politeness of the political chief, Don Enrico de Vedia, we were enabled to visit the cathedral most minutely. An octavo volume of description, a folio of two thousand plates, and twenty rooms filled with plaster casts would not be sufficient to convey a complete idea of this prodigious production of Gothic art with its immense mass of sculptures, more thick and more complicated than a virgin forest in Brazil. Such being the case, we shall, perhaps, be pardoned for some few slight omissions and instances of seeming negligence, having been obliged to scribble these lines hastily and from recollection, on the table of a posada.
The moment the visitor enters the church, he is forcibly arrested by a chef-d'œuvre of incomparable beauty, namely, the carved wooden door leading to the cloisters. Among the other bas-reliefs upon it, there is one representing our Saviour's entry into Jerusalem: the jambs and crosspieces are covered with delicious little figures, so elegant in their form, and of such extreme delicacy, that it is difficult to understand how so heavy and solid a substance as wood could ever be made to lend itself to so capricious and ethereal a production of the imagination. It is certainly the most beautiful door in the whole world, if we except that executed by Ghiberti, at Florence, and which Michael Angelo, who understood something about these matters, pronounced worthy of being the door of Paradise. There certainly ought to be a bronze copy taken of this admirable work of art, so that it might at least live as long as the work of men's hands can live.
The choir, in which are the stalls, called in Spanish silleria, is enclosed by gates of wrought iron of the most wonderful workmanship; the pavement, as is the custom in Spain, is covered with immense mats made of spartum, besides which, each stall has its own little carpet of dry grass or reeds. On looking up, you perceive a kind of dome formed by the interior of the tower to which I have before alluded. It is one mass of sculptures, arabesques, statues, columns, nerves, and pendentives, sufficient to make your brain turn giddy. Were a person to gaze for two years, he still would not be able to see everything in it. The various objects are as densely crowded together as the leaves of a cabbage; there is as much open work as in a fish-slice; it is as gigantic as a pyramid, and as delicate as a woman's earring. How such a piece of filigree work can have remained erect during two centuries surpasses human comprehension! What kind of men could those have been who raised these marvellous buildings, which not even a fairy palace could ever surpass in profuse magnificence? Is the race extinct? Are not we, who are always boasting of our high state of civilization, but decrepit barbarians in comparison? I am always oppressed with a profound sentiment of melancholy whenever I visit any of these prodigious edifices of the past; my heart is overwhelmed by a feeling of utter discouragement, and the only wish I have is to withdraw to some retired spot, to place a stone upon my head, and, in the immovability of contemplation, to await death, which is immovability itself. Why should I work? Why should I exert myself? The most mighty effort of which man is capable will never produce anything more magnificent than what I have just described; and yet we do not even know the name of the divine artists to whom we owe it; and, if we wish to obtain the slightest information concerning them, we are obliged to seek it in the dusty leaves of the monastical archives. When I think that I have spent the best part of my life in making ten or twelve thousand verses, in writing six or seven wretched octavo volumes, and three or four hundred bad articles for the newspapers, and that I feel fatigued with my exertions, I am ashamed of myself and of the times in which I live, when so much exertion is required in order to produce so little. What is a thin sheet of paper compared to a mountain of granite?
If the reader will take a turn with me in this immense madrepore, constructed by the prodigious human polypi of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we will commence by visiting the little sacristy, which, notwithstanding its name, is a very good-sized room, and contains an "Ecce Homo" and a "Christ on the Cross" by Murillo, as well as a "Nativity" by Jordäens. It is lined with the most beautifully carved woodwork. In the middle is placed a large brazero, which serves to light the censers, and perhaps the cigarettes also, for many of the Spanish priests smoke, a practice that does not strike me as being more unbecoming than that of taking snuff, in which the French clergy indulge, without the slightest scruple. The brazero is a large copper vessel, placed upon a tripod, and filled with burning embers, or little fruitstones covered with fine cinders, which produce a gentle heat. In Spain, the brazeros are used instead of fireplaces, which are very rare.
In the great sacristy, which is next to the little one, the visitor remarks a "Christ on the Cross" by Domenico Theotocopuli, surnamed El Greco, an extravagant and singular painter, whose pictures might be mistaken for sketches by Titian, if there were not a certain affectation of sharp and hastily-painted forms about them, which causes them to be immediately recognised. In order that his works may appear to have been painted with great boldness, he throws in, here and there, touches of the most inconceivable petulance and brutality, and thin sharp lights which traverse the portions of the picture which are in shadow, like so many sword-blades. All this, however, does not prevent El Greco from being a fine painter. The good specimens of his second style greatly resemble the romantic pictures of Eugène Delacroix.
The reader has seen, no doubt, in the Spanish Gallery at Paris, the portrait of El Greco's daughter; a magnificent head that no master would disown. It enables us to form an opinion as to what an admirable painter Domenico Theotocopuli must have been when he was in his right senses. It appears that his constant wish to avoid any resemblance to Titian, whose scholar he is said to have been, troubled his understanding, and led him to adopt an extravagance and capriciousness of style, that allowed the magnificent faculties with which nature had endowed him to gleam forth only at rare intervals. Besides being a painter, El Greco was also an architect and a sculptor, – a sublime union, a triangle of light, which is often met with in the highest region of art.
The walls of this apartment are covered with panelled wainscoting, with florid and festooned columns of the greatest richness. Above the wainscoting there is a row of Venice mirrors; for what purpose they are placed there, unless it is simply for ornament, I am at a loss to say, as they are hung too high for any one to see himself in them. Above the mirrors are ranged, in chronological order, – the most ancient touching the ceiling, – the portraits of all the bishops of Burgos, down from the very first, to the prelate who now occupies the see. These portraits, although in oil-colours, look like crayon drawings, or sketches in distemper. This is occasioned by the practice they have in Spain of never varnishing their pictures, a want of precaution which has been the cause of a great number of very valuable masterpieces having been destroyed by the damp. Although most of these portraits present a tolerably imposing appearance, they are not first-rate paintings; besides, they are hung too high for any one to form a just opinion of the merit of the execution. The middle of the room is occupied by an immense side-board and enormous baskets, made of spartum, in which the church ornaments and sacred vessels are kept. Under two glass cases are preserved, as curiosities, two coral trees, whose branches, however, are far less complicated than the smallest arabesque in the cathedral. The door is ornamented with the arms of Burgos in relief, sprinkled with small crosses, gules.
Juan Cuchiller's room, which we traverse after the one I have just described, offers nothing remarkable in the way of architecture, and we were hastening to leave it as soon as possible, when our guide requested us to raise our eyes and look at an object of the greatest curiosity. This object was a large chest, firmly attached to the wall by iron cramps: it would be difficult to conceive anything more patched, more worm-eaten, or more rotten. It is decidedly the oldest chest in the world; but the following inscription, in black letters, Cofre del Cid, instantly imparted, as the reader may imagine, an immense degree of importance to its four planks of mouldering wood. This chest, if we can believe the old chronicle, is the very same that the famous Ruy Diaz de Bivar, more generally known under the name of the Cid Campeador, – being once, hero though he was, pressed for money, exactly as a mere author might be, – caused to be filled with sand and stones, and left in pledge at the house of an honest Jewish usurer, who made advances on this kind of security. The Cid forbad him, however, to open the mysterious deposit until he, the Cid Campeador, had paid back the sum borrowed. This proves that the usurers of that period were of a much more confiding
