-

THE Escurial is the most magnificent edifice in Spain. It is the largest in Europe. It has been called the ninth wonder of the world.

Upon the summit of the ridge, about sixteen miles from Madrid, you first descry its massive walls, appearing in lonely and solemn grandeur, still twelve miles distant. It reposes in colossal magnitude upon the elevated forefoot of the dark, sullen mountain sierra, which forms its imposing background; which rises like a vast towering semi-amphitheatre behind it. It sits there in imperial grandeur upon its mountain throne, 2,700 feet above the level of the sea. It was erected by Philip II., renowned alike for his ambition, his bigotry, and his vices. This wondrous edifice is a combined Imperial palace, a magnificent monastery, and a royal mausoleum, the tomb of kings. In this respect, death owns no other palace on earth like it. Philip made it an imperial palace to gratify his ambition. He made it a monastery in honor of an old saint, San Lorenzo, who had been dead more than a thousand years, because, panic-struck at the battle of St. Quintin, Philip invoked the aid of the old saint on the day of conflict, August 10, 1557, it being just 1296 years to a day after San Lorenzo had been put to death upon a gridiron by Valentianus, August 10, 261. This battle over the French was gained, not by the old dead saint, or by the Spanish army alone, but by 8,000 English and other foreign troops under Lord Pembroke, while Philip kneeled trembling between two confessors, vowing convente, and swearing, if once safe, never to conquer twice. The victory was gained. Philip fulfilled his Vow and built the Escurial. He made it a grand mausoleum, in accordance with a desire expressed in the last will of the Emperor Charles V., that a sepulchre should be erected to contain the bones of himself and the Empress, who were the parents of Philip. Such is the origin of the Escurial, which, in stupendous dimensions and surpassing internal riches, has no equal. Countless millions were expended in its erection. The

treasures of Spain and her ancient colonies were lavished upon it.

The first stone was laid April 23d, 1563. The edifice was finished September 13th, 1584, in 21 years. The circumference of the Escurial is said to be 4,800 feet, or nearly three-quarters of a mile. To give some idea in a word of the Escurial, which we are about to enter, and desire to describe, we will just say here that it has eighteen hundred and sixty rooms, twelve thousand windows and doors, eighty staircases, seventythree fountains, eight organs, fifty-one bells, and forty-eight wine-cellars, as the record says. The great central dome, invested with eight lofty towers, perfectly symmetrical, and in exact correspondence, impart to the whole fabric a solemn and imposing aspect. We went into them all in making the circuit of the dome. Each angle of the immense parallelogram is flanked with a tower, elevated a hundred and eighty feet from the ground. The central gate presents two styles of architecture. The lower part is adorned with eight Doric columns. The upper has four of the Ionic order. This colossal edifice is approached on the eastern front, looking towards Madrid, by a large square, raised on arches like a terrace, and encircled by a lofty balustrade. From this balustrade you look down upon extensive gardens and luxuriant groves, artificial lakes and spouting fountains, which environ the Escurial. But enough. Let us pass into the interior.

We entered, and began our wanderings through the labyrinths of the vast building. We were fortunate in meeting two foreign ambassadors, who, with their ladies and friends, on the same errand as we, made up an agreeable party. Two venerable monks conducted the party, and made explanations of the historic scenes and objects in the numerous apartments and rooms of state through which we passed. Previous to the suppression of the monasteries in Spain, a large number of monks dwelt here in this magnificent monastery of the Escurial. A few only now

1

1

remain to take care of the building. The whole interior aspect imparted a deep impression of silent, lonely and deserted grandeur.

The monks very naturally conducted the party first through the monastic apartments, the chapter-rooms, the old church, the cloisters, the priory, refectories, and libraries. The church is 129 feet in length, and richly adorned with paintings. The refectory is spacious. It is 103 feet in length, 33 in breadth, embellished with paintings and frescoes by the old masters. We next passed through the smaller cloister, whose walls are covered with paintings. The ground cloister is a square, formed by a double row of piazzas, one above the other, 93 feet in length on each of the four sides. The ascent to the upper cloister is by a beautiful staircase, adorned with fine fresco paintings, allegorical, and also representing the battle of St. Quintin and the foundation of the monastery. We went next to the double cloister, built of granite. It rises to an elevation of 52 feet, and is adorned with four magnificent fronts, opening each side upon a spacious court of 88 arches, 11 in each row, supported by 96 columns of the Doric and Ionic order, half-and-half. In the centre is an octagonal temple, 52 feet in height, and 26 in diameter, and terminates in a dome. Its interior is formed of beautiful jasper marble. The sculptured allegorical figures represent an angel, an ox, an eagle, and a lion, as symbolical of attributes of the four Evangelists, pouring water into beautiful vases. The library is rich in ancient treasures. Besides many rare and curious books, it has 4,300 manuscripts, of which 567 are in Greek, 67 in Hebrew, 1,805 in Arabic, 1,820 in Latin, Castilian, and other languages. There are some ancient Bibles, and a copy of the Four Evangelists, 700 years old, beautifully embellished. The apartment in which these literary treasures are deposited, is adorned with fluted Doric columns. The roof is covered with rich allegorical paintings. In the centre is a small temple, richly ornamented with filigree work in silver and gold, and gemmed with lapis lazuli, agates, diamonds, and other precious stones. The lavish expenditure of the most costly gems and jewels upon the rooms and furniture of this monastic establishment, fills the eye with admiration and the mind with astonishment. As we surveyed these immense treasures, we could not but reflect and the idea almost haunted our brain-what a magnificent commonschool fund the vast sums expended in this building would have made to educate the child

ren and youth of Spain for the last three hundred years, and for long years to come. It is the most wasteful expenditure of enormous wealth we have ever seen, to gratify the pride and foolish vanity of a miserable and unhappy monarch, in this out-of-the-way place! But he has gone long ago to his dread account.

We went next down to the tomb of the kings. We were anxious to see it. It is doubtless the most magnificent sepulchre in the world. It is difficult to conceive any thing more gorgeous than this royal and imperial mausoleum. The descent is by a deep staircase underneath the great altar. The walls of the staircase are entirely of blood jasper of the utmost beauty and polish. The mausoleum itself is circular. You descend 59 steps of the staircase, thus encrusted and walled with these beautiful marbles, to a landing-place in the form of a rotunda. Resume your descent a few steps, and you come to a beautiful front formed by ten columns of the Doric order, of which the bases, the capitals, the medallions are of gilded bronze of exquisite workmanship. Descend 34 steps farther along the staircase and walls of the richest jasper marble, to the entrance of the common sepulchre of the royal family of Spain. In this splendid but gloomy mansion are 59 urns, in which repose the remains of members of the royal family. This leads to the imperial mausoleum. It is of an octagonal form, 31 feet in diameter, and 38 feet in height. It is completely encased with the most beautiful marbles of red jasper and various other colors, and decorated with gilt bronze. The door opens on one of the octangles, and the splendid altar of the mausoleum is in the octangle directly opposite. The other six octangles are separated by sixteen double pilasters of the Corinthian order. Twenty-four urns, or coffins, are arranged in the intervening intervals or recesses, four in each octangle, one above another. A large bronze lamp, encircled by 24 chandeliers, is suspended from the centre, in which a light is always kept burning. Here, in this magnificent mausoleum, our party were assembled, and stood for some time in silent and speechless astonishment. We have not seen its like, nor ever expect to. We looked around the coffins of eight kings and eight queens of Spain. Here they sleep. Here they repose in this noiseless mausoleum, free from the tur moil of life. Here are they who were once the masters of a hemisphere. A little dust in those gorgeous coffin-urns is all that remains of the mighty kings whose deeds fill volumes.

upon

We

looked upon the silent coffin of the mighty Emperor Charles V., who for near a quarter of a century kept the world in a flame, and left it for a cloister; upon the coffin of Philip, for whose ambition and crimes the world was too narrow. This imperial mausoleum is suggestive of the folly of human ambition, and the emptiness of worldly grandeur. We coveted not the name or renown of one of those proud and haughty monarchs of the olden time. We had a thousand times rather be a humble missionary or colporteur, than either of them. A few questions were asked by our party in a low voice, to identify the various coffins by which we were surrounded, and upon which we could lay our hands as we walked round. The rich covering of these coffins is faded, but gives little ocular proof of decay, though some of them have stood here nearly three hundred years.

It will aid our description to say that the ground-plot of the Escurial is in the form of a gridiron, in honor of the old saint, San Lorenzo, who suffered martyrdom upon such an instrument of torture. The interior is divided into courts or squares, representing the intersections of the bars of a gridiron. The handle forms the palace. Four lofty towers at the angles represent the feet. There are sixteen of these courts or squares in the interior of the vast edifice, upon which the windows of the numerous apartments look down, many of which are surrounded by spacious corridors, columns and arches.

On leaving the imperial mausoleum, the magnificent tomb of the Spanish kings, the old monks conducted our party to the royal library. Over the entrance is a solemn notice of excommunication by the Pope, of all who should steal any of the books. The great library apartment is 194 feet in length, 32 feet wide, 36 feet high, and arched lengthwise. The floor is of fine marble. The book-cases are beautifully designed and executed in the Doric order. The library formerly contained 30,000 printed volumes, and over 4,000 volumes in manuscript. The French stole some of them, regardless of the Pope's excommunication. There are ample tables of marble and porphyry, for the use of the readers. The lofty ceilings are painted in gorgeous fresco, in subjects analogous to a library, and a personification of the liberal sciences. The ancient sages, Socrates, Cicero, Demosthenes, and others, are represented as surrounded with attentive listeners. This imperial library is composed of choice books of great value, splendidly bound. We noticed that all the books presented their edges or fronts

298

to the eye of the spectator. We were curious to know why, and inquired the reason for such an anomaly among books. The explanation and novel answer which we received on the spot was thie: The haughty monarchs of Spain, Charles V. and Philip, his son, would allow no living beings, and not even the books in their library, to turn their backs upon them.

Among the remarkable portraits in the library are those of the Emperor Charles V. and Philip II., his son, the founder of the Escurial. Their painted life-like physiognomy is wonderfully characteristic. They face each other from opposite walls. In the expressive face of Charles, you see the full index of his whole historic career. We never before saw in a single portrait the whole character, biography, temper, history, bigotry, miserable life and dreadful death of man or monarch, such as is expressed in the painted likeness and features of Philip II. It is full of identity and individuality. You see him here in his old age, with his wan, dejected look, marked with melancholy and guilty wretchedness, and his bigot, gray eyes, cold and repulsive as globules of ice. We had just come up from the tomb of the kings, and from looking at the coffin of this miserable monarch, and the impression was half as if the suspicious and scared bigot had burst his coffin lid and come up from his grave, and was just ready to walk out of his pictureframe in the library into the midst of us, and demand what business so many heretics had here. We kept an eye upon that strange portrait and picture-frame.

The party was next conducted into the imperial church or chapel. The interior of the church is in the form of a Greek cross, with a lofty dome in the centre. Its dimensions are immense, as forming part of the greater edifice. It is 320 feet in length, 230 in width, and 320 high to the top of the cupola. The grandeur of its proportions, and the perfection of its Doric architecture, strike the mind with awe and admiration. It has three naves, forty-eight altars, and four organs of great power and sweetness of tone. We revisited the church in the evening, to listen to their celestial music, as it rolled along the lofty arches and dome. The altars are richly adorned with priceless paintings. The retablo of the high altar is superb, and is ascended by a flight of seventeen red jasper marble steps, over 100 feet long. The screen is 98 feet high, and 43 feet in width, and employed the Milan artist seven years to complete it. The dividing columns are of red jasper of great, beauty, with bronze gilt bases and capi

tals. This lofty façade, or campania, as it is here called, communicates with the other portions of the church by a double gallery, one over another, 86 feet in length, adorned with Ionic columna Above and between these, and resting on pilasters, are six colossal statues of the Kings of Israel, of white marble, inlaid in black, 18 feet high, of imposing, giant aspect. Eight of the compartments of the vaulted roof are painted in gorgeous fresco, of various designs. The most prominent one, and that which occupies the most conspicuous portions of the ceiling, is a fresco painting of heaven, representing, in some aspects, the scenes of the final judgment. It was a work of great invention and labor. The Holy Trinity of the Godhead is represented, surrounded with angels and glorified spirits. And what struck us with surprise was the representation of Romish Bishops and Archbishops, with mitres on their heads, and a number of Popes wearing the tiara, which seemed very unlikely and out of place in a celestial community. We admired the skill of the artist, but we have no belief in mitres and tiaras of Popes in heaven. But we must not linger among the painting embellishments. We only add that the frescoes of the Escurial, if all brought together, would form, it is said, a square of eleven hundred feet, And besides there are, or were, in the Escurial, fifteen hundred and sixty oil paintings.

On each side of the high altar are small oratories or chambers of black and shaded marble, for the members of the royal family. On the sides are arranged fifteen bronze-gilt statues as large as life, represented in a kneeling posture before the King of kings, as if the Deity could regard the posture and presence of bronze-gilt statues as true and acceptable worshippers, instead of living men with broken hearts and contrite spirits. On one side is the Emperor Charles V., his Empress Isabel, his daughter Maria, and his sisters Eleanora and Maria, as if perpetual bronze worshippers. Upon the opposite side are Philip II., his Queen Anna, the mother of Philip III., and two others of his queens. The second of his four queens is not there. These statues are said to be portraits, and their costume and heraldic decorations are very remarkable. The whole is characteristic of those old monarchs, as if they sought an immortality on earth.

The room of relics (relicario) is in the transept on the right of the high altar. Philip II. was a relico-maniac. He accumulated more than 7,421 relics, which were preserved in 515 shrines of Cellini plate. The French army stole many of

the most valuable shrines of gold and silver. They carried off also more than a hundred sacred vessels of gold and silver, besides the jewelled custodia-the silver female image called La Macina, and the full-length silver statue of San Lorenzo, which weighed four hundred and fifty pounds, holding in its hand one of the pretended real bars of his gridiron set in gold.

The

The magnificence of this church is made up of marbles, porphyries of great variety and beauty, gold, silver, and precious stones in lavish abund ance. The grand altar-piece, ninety feet high and fifty broad, is one mass of jasper, porphyry, marble, and gilded bronze. We counted the eighteen pillars that adorn it, each eighteen feet high, which are of deep red and green jasper, of exquisite polish and beauty. In the centre of the massive granite walls which surrounded this vast and magnificent church edifice, are two arched passage ways at different elevations in the walls, with frequent apertures or windows looking into the church. The monks conducted our entire party twice round the church, along these arched passages, pausing at the apertures to admire the surpassing magnificence, riches, and adornments of the edifice. In the upper passage we were high up, and quite near the immense expanse of fresco paintings upon the lofty vaulted ceiling. eye luxuriates upon the richest gems of art. And which way you turn your admiring gaze, the sight rests upon the splendors of artistic wealth. But we may not linger among these beautiful paintings and other adornments of this magnificent chapel, though we have scarcely enumerated half the treasures which it contains, We have indulged in the imperfect description, to show how the riches and treasures of Spain were squandered and wasted by that unhappy and miserable monarch, Philip II. He seems to have thus expended the vast wealth of his kingdom in the hope of making some atonement for his wickedness, and relieving his guilty and tortured conscience from the hideous crime of having caused or allowed so many of his innocent subjects to be burned to the stake at Autos da Fé. He vainly thought thus to purchase peace with Heaven. His end accorded with his guilty life. Let us go into the humble and more private apartments of Philip, and see where and how he ended his days. The rooms, the chairs, the bed, the furniture, and the various seats and lounges contrived to ease his tortured limbs, were shown to us, and minutely explained. We examined them carefully for the sake of their historic associations and impressions. They are sad memorials of monarchy.