ART. VI.-Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain. By GEORGE EDMUND STREET, F.S.A. London: 1865. THIS volume, which furnishes a valuable contribution to the history of Gothic architecture, and treats of the least known chapter in it, comes most opportunely before the public. It will form a useful addition to the few books with which a traveller may profitably equip himself for the Peninsula; and travellers in that direction grow yearly more numerous from the increased and increasing facility of railway communications. The railway which enters Spain at Irun ascends through the mountainous districts of the Basque Provinces to their frontier at Miranda, and thence the traveller has the choice of two routes to Madrid-one, the most direct, by way of Burgos, and the other by way of Saragossa; and these lines place the capital in relation with nearly all the great towns of the north of Spain-with Barcelona, Pamplona, Santander, Bilbao, Valladolid, Burgos, and Vittoria. Lines to Salamanca, Leon, and Vigo, through mountainous regions of rainy Galicia, are also in process of construction. In Portugal, the line from Badajoz to Lisbon is open, and Badajoz will before long be connected with Madrid, the two capitals of the Peninsula being thus brought within an easy journey of each other. In the south Granada and Malaga still stand isolated from the general network of railways; but before two years Malaga will be united to Cordoba with a branch to Granada; and from Valencia and Alicante the line has been open for some years to Madrid. At all the chief places on the main line of railway hotels are now to be found. None equalling indeed, except at Madrid, those of the largest provincial towns of France, but they nevertheless offer entertainment of which none but the over-fastidious can complain. In out-of-the-way places, and in towns where the increased abundance of travellers have not yet stimulated local enterprise, the posadas, paradors, and ventas still justify the old classification of Spanish inns into three divisions-the bad, worse, and worst; but even here the discomfort has often been much exaggerated. Gastronomers and lovers of fleshly comfort will assuredly find little to their taste in any part of the Peninsula; but lovers of art and of the picturesque will be content enough with the comparatively easy terms on which they can now enjoy beauties once so much more inaccessible. In all the ordinary routes passable accommodation is to be found in the fondas, as the first-class hotels are called: it is only when passing out of the

beaten track, that travellers will be obliged to seek refuge in the old-fashioned posada and parador, where the smell of mules, the assaults of fleas, and the ceaseless hubbub of sounds from man and mule*, and the tough and tasteless beef of the puchero exhaust the traveller's equanimity.†

These new methods are doubtless not so favourable as the old customs of the country for making intimate acquaintance with the inhabitants. A traveller may now arrive at Madrid almost without having had intercourse with a Spaniard. Many of the railway officials are French, the innkeepers are for the most part Italian; the companions of railway travel are often foreigners themselves, and from the moving apartment of the railway carriage, the traveller may see the country and people pass rapidly before his eyes like a panorama. We are not at

all sure that the pleasant spirit of Richard Ford can look down with any complacency upon modes of Spanish travel so entirely unlike his own Quixotic outfit: and certainly none of these railway passengers will ever know, as he knew, every inch of the whole country.

In diligence, on horseback, and on muleback, the traveller was brought perforce into companionship with the native; and such experience, notwithstanding the monotony and delay inseparable from such modes of travelling, provided matter for much amusement both immediately and in remembrance. Mayorals, zagals, delanteros, and arrieros were living beings, whose characteristic costumes, quaint humour, sayings and doings, illustrated the character of their countrymen, and kept alive in the traveller the sense of individuality-whereas railway officials are as much like one another as their own locomotives. In the days of diligences, too, everybody along the route took a personal interest in their lumbering progress; arrieros and caleseros would leave their teams for a moment at the invitation of the mayoral to give four cuts,' cuatro palos, to a lagging mule of the team of ten or twelve attached to the ponderous vehicle. Whereas the mechanism of the railway seems to take possession of conductors, passengers, and spectators, rendering impossible all exercise of volition or caprice, and reducing all to take part in the proceedings with the inflexible uniformity and countenance of fate.

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* The ruido de la casa, for which the traveller is charged in his bill.

† Yet sometimes at such places even as Avila, on the main route, but not often a place of sojourn for tourists, the traveller will be driven to make use of the old class of hotel. At Avila, however, we believe, a fonda is in process of erection by an Englishman.

It is difficult to say which is the best season of the year for visiting Spain: to know the country well we should doubtless see it in every season, and every season has some advantage. The winter offers immunity from dust and intense heat, and, except in the central table-lands and in their exceptional seasons, is never too cold for enjoyment; but at that time of the year the trees are without foliage, and the fields and mountains are destitute of the exuberance characteristic of Southern vegetation: nature hybernates and man is torpid; for here, even more than in more rigorous climes, do the natives abstain from public entertainments and funciones of all kinds in the winter. The spring is the only season in which the vast dreary plateaux of Castile can be seen to advantage, covered as they then are with boundless oceans of green corn; but then one misses the rich tints of autumn, the joys and festivals of harvest and of vintage; the luxuriance of vine, fig-tree, and pomegranate in the vineyard and the field; the ruddy piles of melons, gourds, calabazas and pimientas, with the profusion of flower, fruit, and vegetable in the market-places, where Plenty bestows her gifts with a prodigality delightful to witness for one accustomed to dwell under colder skies.

'On the whole, from my own experience, I should be inclined to recommend the autumn as the most favourable season for a Spanish journey, the weather being then generally more settled than in the spring. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that any one who wishes to judge fairly of the scenery of Old and New Castile, of great part of Aragon, and of Leon, ought on no account to visit these provinces save in the spring. Then I know no sight more glorious in its way than the sea of corn which is seen covering with its luxuriance and lovely colour the endless sweeps of the great landscape on all sides; whereas in the autumn the same landscape looks parched and barren, burnt up as it is by the furious sun until it assumes everywhere a dusty hue, painful to the eye, and most monotonous and depressing to the mind; whilst the roads suffer sometimes from an accumulation of dust such as can scarcely be imagined by those who have never travelled along them. Even at this season, however, there are some recompenses; and one of them is the power of realising somewhat of the beauty of an Eastern atmosphere, and the singular contrasts of colours which Eastern landscapes and skies generally present; for nowhere else have I ever seen sunsets more beautiful or more extraordinary than in the dreariest part of dreary Castile.' (P. 2.)

This book is the result of observations taken during three separate journeys to the Peninsula. We regret that Mr. Street has confined his attention to the northern parts of Spain, and that his peculiarly purist taste-his exclusive admiration of the purest forms of Gothic architecture, and his

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abhorrence of everything approaching to the Renaissance or, as he styles it, the Pagan character-prevented his proceeding to Andalusia and giving us any account of the Mosque of Cordoba and the magnificent Cathedral of Seville; but we trust he may yet be induced to extend his architectural survey over the whole country. We shall proceed at once to follow him through the cities and edifices to which he chiefly directed his attention.

Most of the Spanish cathedrals have plain and often unfinished exteriors-Burgos being one of the chief exceptions to the rule their beauty is thus mainly confined to their interiors; and to get a clear idea of the magnificence of these interiors, it is necessary to take into account their peculiar inside arrangements. One of them is the placing of the choir in the nave, an arrangement which, however, often interferes with the effect of the interior.

'I have already said that the choir proper (coro) is transferred to the nave, of which it occupies commonly the eastern half; the portion of the nave outside, or to the west of the coro, being called the "trascoro," and that to the east of it the "entre los dos coros;' and in most great churches the "crucero," or crossing, and the transept really do the work of the nave, in the way of accommodating the people. The floor of the nave proper is, indeed, too often a useless appendage to the building, desolate, dreary, unused, and cold; whereas in the transepts, the services at the altar and in the choir are both seen and heard, and this accordingly is the people's place. A passage is sometimes, or perhaps I ought to say is usually, made with low iron or brass screens or rails leading from the eastern gate of the coro to the screen in front of the altar. This is especially necessary here, as the choir proper is deep, and the people are thus kept from pressing on the clergy as they pass to and fro in the long passage from the altar to the coro. Gates in these screens admit of the passage of the people from one transept to the other whenever the services in the coro are not going on. The coro is usually fitted with two rows of stalls on its north, south, and west sides, the front row having no desks before them. The only entrance is usually through the screen on the eastern side, and there are generally two organs placed on either side of the western bay of the coro, above the stalls. In the centre of the coro there is always one, and sometimes two or three lecterns, for the great illuminated officebooks, which most of the Spanish churches seem still to preserve and use. High metal screens are placed across the nave to the east of the coro, and across the entrance to the choir, or “capilla mayor,” as its eastern part is called. These screens are called rejas. Above the crossing of the choir and transepts there is usually an open raised lantern, called by the Spaniards the cimborio; and behind the altar, at the end of the capilla mayor, is usually a great sculptured and painted retablo or reredos.' (P. 16.)

At the church of the Convent of San Tomas at Avila, in the Chapel of the Escurial, and in some other places, the coro is placed in a western gallery, which, as at San Esteban at Burgos, is often a striking feature in the church; and at San Tomas a peculiar effect is produced by the coro being placed in the western gallery, while the altar is equally elevated at the other extremity of the church, so that the congregation who stand on the pavement have both the coro and capilla mayor at equal altitudes above them. There are other peculiar arangements which strongly attract a visitor's attention. The extreme richness of the church furniture is unsurpassed in Europe; the baldachins are often magnificent; the lofty retablos or reredos (especially those by Berruguete) are carved, sculptured, and gilded to a degree of gorgeousness not to be found elsewhere; the elaborately chiselled monuments of marble and alabaster are unrivalled, and look as though covered with the richest lace; those of Ferdinand and Isabella, of their daughter Juaną, and the Archduke Philip, at Granada; of Alfonso at Burgos, and above all of their son Prince Juan at Avila, are the chief examples of these beautiful memorials. The choir-stalls are for the most part marvellously rich, fine, and elaborate. The choir lecterns of brass and wood are often grand in design and fine in execution. In no other country can one see so many magnificent Rejas or metal screens. organ fronts, usually on both sides the choirs, are in harmony The with the grand style of the rest of the furniture, presenting usually a striking feature in their rows of pipes projecting vertically out or slightly tilted upwards, presenting files of huge trumpet-shaped throats, looking like a vast artillery of sound. No temporary structure in the shape of pews or seats, not even chairs, are permitted: the men either stand or kneel, the women, when not kneeling, in Oriental fashion squat on the pavement, with skirts decorously spread around them. The rich church plate, the silver and gilded ornaments of the richly carved altars of jasper and precious marbles, the crowded constellations of lights on the altar, the towering wax flambeaux in the magnificent candelabra in front of them, the glaring brilliance of painted glass and canvas, the mysterious and glorious effect of the rays of light piercing the darkened interiors, the purple, crimson, scarlet and gold robes of crowds of ecclesiastics, the grand roll of organ music, the beautiful silver sounds of wheels of bells used at the elevation of the host-all combine to produce a gorgeousness of effect unparalleled in any other country.

With respect to the artists employed in the production of Spanish church furniture, Mr. Street thus speaks: