The Lenten piety increases with the lengthening days. It reaches its
climax on Holy Thursday. On this day all Spain goes to church: it is one
of the obligatory days. The more you go, the better for you; so the good
people spend the whole day from dawn to dusk roaming from one church to
another, and investing an Ave and a Pater-Noster in each. This fills
every street of the city with the pious crowd. No carriages are
permitted. A silence like that of Venice falls on the rattling capital.
With three hundred thousand people in the street, the town seems still.
In 1870, a free-thinking cabman dared to drive up the Calle Alcala. He
was dragged from his box and beaten half to death by the chastened
mourners, who yelled as they kicked and cuffed him, "Que bruto! He will
wake our Jesus."
On Good Friday the gloom deepens. No colors are worn that day by the
orthodox. The senoras appear on the street in funeral garb. I saw a
group of fast youths come out of the jockey club, black from hat to
boots, with jet studs and sleeve-buttons. The gayest and prettiest
ladies sit within the church doors and beg in the holy name of charity,
and earn large sums for the poor. There are hourly services in the
churches, passionate sermons from all the pulpits. The streets are free
from the painted haunters of the pavement. The whole people taste the
luxury of a sentimental sorrow.
Yet in these heavy days it is not the Redeemer whose sufferings and
death most nearly touch the hearts of the faithful. It is Santisima
Maria who is worshipped most. It is the Dolorous Mother who moves them
to tears of tenderness. The presiding deity of these final days of
meditation is Our Lady of Solitude.
But at last the days of mourning are accomplished. The expiation for sin
is finished. The grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in victory.
Man can turn from the grief that is natural to the joy that is eternal.
From every steeple the bells fling out their happy clangor in glad
tidings of great joy. The streets are flooded once more with eager
multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. Christ has arisen! The heathen
myth of the awakening of nature blends the old tradition with the new
gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies clean and blue. Birds are
pairing in the budding trees. The streams leap down from the melting
snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of verdure. Through the
vast frame of things runs a quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart
of man love and will mingle into hope. Hail to the new life and the
ever-new religion! Hail to the resurrection morning!
AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS
As a general thing it is well to distrust a Spaniard's superlatives. He
will tell you that his people are the most amiable in the world, but you
will do well to carry your revolver into the interior. He will say there
are no wines worth drinking but the Spanish, but you will scarcely
forswear Clicquot and Yquem on the mere faith of his assertion. A
distinguished general once gravely assured me that there was no
literature in the world at all to be compared with the productions of
the Castilian mind. All others, he said, were but pale imitations of
Spanish master-work.
Now, though you may be shocked at learning such unfavorable facts of
'Shakespeare and Goethe and Hugo, you will hardly condemn them to an
Auto da fe, on the testimony even of a grandee of Spain.
But when a Spaniard assures you that the picture-gallery of Madrid is
the finest in the world, you may believe him without reserve. He
probably does not know what he is talking about. He may never have
crossed the Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of Dresden, or
Florence, or the Louvre. It is even possible that he has not seen the
matchless collection he is boasting of. He crowns it with a sweeping
superlative simply because it is Spanish. But the statement is
nevertheless true.
The reason of this is found in that gigantic and overshadowing fact
which seems to be an explanation of everything in Spain, - the power and
the tyranny of the House of Austria. The period of the vast increase of
Spanish dominion coincided with that of the meridian glory of Italian
art. The conquest of Granada was finished as the divine child Raphael
began to meddle with his father's brushes and pallets, and before his
short life ended Charles, Burgess of Ghent, was emperor and king.
The dominions he governed and transmitted to his son embraced Spain, the
Netherlands, Franche-Comte, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily; that is to
say, those regions where art in that age and the next attained its
supreme development. He was also lord of the New World, whose
inexhaustible mines poured into the lap of Europe a constant stream of
gold. Hence came the riches and the leisure necessary to art.
Charles V., as well as his great contemporary and rival, Francis I., was
a munificent protector of art. He brought from Italy and Antwerp some of
the most perfect products of their immortal masters. He was the friend
and patron of Titian, and when, weary of the world and its vanities, he
retired to the lonely monastery of Yuste to spend in devout
contemplation the evening of his days, the most precious solace of his
solitude was that noble canvas of the great Venetian, where Charles and
Philip are borne, in penitential guise and garb, on luminous clouds into
the visible glory of the Most High.
