David Urquhart

“ Who ever painted such children as Murillo?—the cherubs of Raphael are statuettes; those of Rubens, fœtuses; Murillo’s are children and cherubs. The brood is as prolific as the type is beautiful—golden, rosy, dimpled, sporting in troops, or flying in flocks, and then gathered into his canvas—light as the air; bright as the rainbow, yet of flesh and blood; full of life and grace, of vigour and ease, of health and gladness.
Who ever painted such virgins? The Madonnas of Italy are matrons and mothers. Mary holds her Child, or she gazes on Him as she shows Him,—it is maternal love. ”

“ That a people not settled on a remote island or in a far oasis, but in the midst of us—in the country which has ever been the battle-field of Europe—should preserve a tradition which belongs to times anterior to history, is a fact calculated to instruct as well as to astonish. The Basques have lived through the mythology of Greece, the wars of Carthage, the dominion of Rome, the devastations of the Vandals, the sway of the Goths, the arms of the Moors, the usurpations of Madrid, and the opinions of Europe, keeping themselves all the while distinct, and recollecting themselves alone. ”

“ They have not, like us, a domestic and a public, a religious and a civil architecture. Alone have they combined delicacy and strength. In their edifices there is the durability of the rock and the delicacy of the flower. It would seem as if they at once thought only of to-day and only of eternity. Nor have there been with them different ages and styles—one of strong and busy war, another of idle elegance: their strongest and rudest military works preserve the choicest specimen of arts, which elsewhere have required, that they might spring and blossom, times of peace and ages of refinement. ”

“ There are lowly vales and verdant plains, as well as gigantic mountains. This great, this beautiful country—this corner of a mighty continent—almost touches Europe. One-half of our whole trade passes along it; yet it is sealed against us more effectually than China or Japan.
European enterprize, by lust of conquest, love of gain, or spirit of proselytism, has made the wide world its vineyard; and, combining its various engines, has, far and near, shattered thrones, and subjugated or extinguished races. How is it that Morocco stands unmoved and unassailed? ”

“ Few sounds awaken more pleasing associations than the tent of the Arab. Palace, castle, tower call up visions of events; but “tent” drives the imagination back upon itself to discover in its own nature the resemblances and the method of the noblest men and the simplest manners. The tent, not the camel, is the ship of the desert; the moveable home that makes the strangest spot familiar, the wildest habitable. ”

“ Spain preserves the character of the Moorish people—the character that enabled them to expel the Moors, in after times the English, and more recently the French; and the capital is actually in arms against the spirit of the age. The familiar forms we see at Madrid, the glibness with which the diplomatist speaks of this thing and that, this party and that, paves the way to plans and schemes;—then intervenes the unknown element, the spirit of the Spanish people, and capsizes all the plots.
If Europe is the source of the evils of Spain, so is Spain the source of the dangers of Europe. ”

“ We have viewed at our leisure the city of Salee and Rabat, and their environs. It is a strange place and country. The land is a series of long, gentle, bare, sweeping drives, at the edge cut out into cliffs and cones as if with a pastry cutter. About three miles north of Salee we descried, through the mists of spray, a magnificent palace. It changed to a gaunt ruin. A little further on there is a kubbe, or saint’s tomb, surmounted by a dome, like the tombs of Judæa and India. Next comes the point of Salee, and over it flutters the red flag of the “Rovers.” ”

“ Architecture has laboured itself into life by long trial and patient progress. Like no other art, it is within the grasp of no individual genius: the materials are of the rudest kind, the labour is conducted in the people’s eye, the poor man is the workman, and the embellishments are of the commonest nature. Architecture is as identified with the people, as the nest with the bird, or the honeycomb with the bee. ”

“ The attitudes are a study for an artist. There are not the stiff figures and sharp angles of our fencing; but the rounded limb, the gathered-up muscle, the balanced body:—instead of the glance of the steel there is that of the eye. The weapon is concealed under the hand, and pointing down, so that not a ray betokens it. There is no boxer’s fist or cestus, no crusader’s helm or hauberk, no Roman’s sword or shield. It seemed as if the hands and the eye of the man were equal to the claw of the tiger, or the tusk of the boar. ”

“ The body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of your own skin is electric. Buffon has a wonderful description of Adam’s surprise and delight at his first touch of himself. It is the description of the human sense when the body is brought back to its purity. The body thus renewed, the spirit wanders abroad, and reviewing its tenement rejoices to find it clean and tranquil. There is an intoxication or dream that lifts you out of the flesh, and yet a sense of life and consciousness that spreads through every member. ”

“ The soaring nave of a Gothic minster, in the clustered and banded stalks of its lofty pillars, the curling leaves of its capitals and cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted vault, the interminable entwinings of its tracery, the countless hues that sparkle from roof, and chapiter, and wall, and window, recall no work of man, indeed—no tent, or hut, or cavern, but the sublimest temple of natural religion, the awful gloom of the deep forests of the north ”

“ It is the error to which a man is liable, and which, when he founds a system and instructs others, is more readily caught by his pupils than his merits,—a colourless and unblemished glass is invisible. We become sensible of its presence by its changing the hue or distorting the ray. And so manner in painting either perverts or obscures nature.
Nature, in her varieties, has a counterpart in the Spanish school. She is represented darkly in Ribera and Roelas, mildly in Cano, richly in Morales, boldly in Zurbaran, brightly in Velasquez, divinely in Murillo.
The school of Spain is solemn. ”

“ The tree of Minerva, in all its stubborn and unsubjugated vigour, here flourishes in scorn on Neptune’s border, and the oak of Jupiter, presenting food for man, completes the assemblage of these leafy reminiscences of time gone by, veiling the grey ruins that the elements had not yet destroyed, nor man laid low. Here were the things of Nature, which they in their time admired, leaf for leaf, and line for line; bright, gay, verdant, with their shining dewdrops, and their buzzing insects; and there, after thirty centuries, lay the stones they had chiselled, and the mortar they had mixed. ”

“ CHAPTER I. THE ISLAND OF ANDALUZ. The emporium of the new world and the port of the Western ocean, has become an inland town; but the shade of orange groves, the white marble of Moorish halls, the dance, the bull-fight, the garb of the Andalusian, still attract the wanderer and detain the guest. No where on the soil of Europe is there so much that is beautiful with so little that is familiar. The Tower of our metropolis claims the honour of having for its founder Julius Cæsar. ”

“ What ruler in modern times can make a comparison otherwise than degrading to himself between the government over which he presides and those of ancient Greece or Rome? Can he reflect, without taking shame to himself, that the heads of the republics of Athens and Sparta, the tribunes, ædiles, consuls, censors, and emperors of Rome, thought they had not rendered the condition of the poor tolerable, unless they had afforded them the gratuitous enjoyment of baths, theatres, and games, to make them forget for some hours of the day the hardships and privations which poverty brings with it? ”

“ What would a nation be without a flag? What is a nation without a costume? A flag is an emblem, [Pg 169] a costume is a property. A flag designates and defies, a costume ennobles and preserves. A flag has come by accident, costume is the produce of a people’s taste. The Medes had a dress; the Persians, the Romans, the Egyptians had each a dress. To say, then, a dress, is to say a people. A costume is to a people like its mountains, its floods, and its lakes. The costume of its land and its fathers has been to every noble people like their tongue, their fame, their precepts, and their laws ”

“ The Spaniard’s cloak, of which the style consists in the lap thrown over the left shoulder, is a mixture of the haïk and the bornoos: to this day the Spaniard looks upon the want of a cloak as the want of decent covering;—to be without a cloak is, as it were, to be naked.
Great as is the distance between the attire of Europe and that of the East, not greater is the distance between its magnificence and the dignity of that of Numidia. The excellence of all other costumes resides in their own composition. There is not one which does not strain or coerce the human frame into its own design. ”

“ The head is large, the brow ponderous, the eye full and grave, while the cheek and lips are robbed from Hebe. It is hard to say whether the martyr’s palm, the veil of Cythera, or the club of Hercules is the emblem befitting it. On inquiring where it had been discovered, I was surprised to learn that it was a head of Cleopatra, a present from a Roman Pontiff. It must have been sent to the Queen of Guadalquivir, as the prototype of herself; sensual and heroic, faithful and capricious, wanton and warlike—handling with equal dexterity and equal grace, the faggot and the fan ”

“ It is shrub and flower; the frailty of its blossoms, the down of its waxy leaves, the balm of its fragrance, are so unlike the glancing foliage of other shrubs—the hot-house forms, the dyer tints, and perfumer scent of other flowers,—that it makes them look children of art and care: wild and tender, it is to other flowers as a shepherdess among women, and to other shrubs as an Arab among the races of men. ”

“ The double side-aisles at Seville are equal in height to the nave and transept at York. Three cathedrals of York might stand, as to width, in that of Seville. In York there is more glass than wall, and these are whitewashed: its windows are its glory—their absence is the splendour of Seville. The vastness of the one is increased by its gloom, the size of the other diminished by its glare: the one may excite admiration, curiosity—the other inspires awe. The want of uniformity in the building and arches at York, brings into evidence the harmony of the Seville church ”

“ Roman history is a conspiracy to rob of their fame the Elephants and the Gauls. What were the conditions imposed by Rome—what the fate incurred by Carthage? the surrender of her ships, her elephants, and her Gauls. Such was the importance of tribes which Roman writers exhibit as warlike, yet undisciplined as brave; but unmanageable, with long unwieldy swords, and rash and aimless impulses. Here were they in Africa the prop of Carthage. ”

“ At Gibraltar all is disorder—the stream incessant—the level on both sides the same. The tide rises and falls, yet the current always runs out of the ocean and into the Mediterranean. So determined is this rush, that the gales of the Equinox neither quicken nor retard it, and the phases of the moon have no power over it. It bursts through all obstacles and transgresses all laws, and seems to move by a will of its own—too strong to be disturbed, too deep to be discovered. ”

“ To corrupt Greece and Rome it furnished a gratification that was innocent; to the rigid sectarians of the Koran an observance that was seductive; multiplying the sensibilities and strengthening the frame, it increased to all the value of life. No sacrifice is required for its possession. Nothing has to be given up in exchange: it is pure gain to have, sheer loss to want. Like the light of heaven, those only walk not in it who are blind. Where not practised, it is not inducements that are wanting, but knowledge: “they don’t know how.” ”

“ Each breastful of air seems to pass, not to the heart but to the brain, and to quench, not the pulsations of the one, but the fancies of the other. That exaltation which requires the slumber of the senses—that vividness of sense that drowns the visions of the spirit—are simultaneously engaged in calm and unspeakable luxury: you condense the pleasures of many scenes, and enjoy in an hour the existence of years. ”

“ It has no level ground in front, swept by its galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill approaches nearly to the glacis, and looks into the works. The landscape beyond stretches away, wooded and picturesque, to the foot of the chain or block of mountains which fill up this angle of Africa, overshadowing Tetuan on the one side, Tangier on the other, and ranging along the Straits. The only sign of human habitation is a small enclosure of white walls, with a tower perched on the green mountain side, like a city on old tapestry in some Arcadian scene. ”

“ That which all despise, when only a thing of use, will be by all rushed after when it becomes a matter of fashion. The sight of a bath of a new fashion, and enjoyed by another people, has impelled me to make this endeavour to regain it for my own. Is Europe ever to remain on the map the black spot of filth? Can she owe the bath only to the Roman sword or Moorish spear? ”