It Is So Glorious
A Masterpiece, With The Child Joyously Running Down From The Clustering
Angels Toward The Kneeling Saint
In the nearest corner of the
foreground, that it was distinctly a moment before I realized that the
saint had
Once been cut out of his corner and sent into an incredible
exile in America, and then munificently restored to it, though the seam
in the canvas only too literally attested the incident. I could not well
say how this fact then enhanced the interest of the painting, and then
how it ceased from the consciousness, which it must always recur to with
any remembrance of it. If one could envy wealth its chance of doing a
deed of absolute good, here was the occasion, and I used it. I did envy
the mind, along with the money, to do that great thing. Another great
thing which still more swelled my American heart and made it glow with
patriotic pride was the monument to Columbus, which our suffering his
dust to be translated from Havana has made possible in Seville. There
may be other noble results of our war on Spain for the suzerainty of
Cuba and the conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but there is
none which matches in moral beauty the chance it won us for this Grand
Consent. I suppose those effigies of the four Spanish realms of Castile,
Leon, Aragon, and Navarre, which bear the coffin of the discoverer in
stateliest processional on their shoulders, may be censured for being
too boldly superb, too almost swagger, but I will not be the one to
censure them. They are painted the color of life, and they advance
colossally, royal-robed and mail-clad, as if marching to some proud
music, and would tread you down if you did not stand aside. It is
perhaps not art, but it is magnificent; nothing less stupendously
Spanish would have sufficed; and I felt that the magnanimity which had
yielded Spain this swelling opportunity had made America her equal in
it.
We went to the cathedral the first morning after our arrival in Seville,
because we did not know how soon we might go away, and then we went
every morning or every afternoon of our fortnight there. Habitually we
entered by that Gate of Pardon which in former times had opened the
sanctuary to any wickedness short of heresy; but, as our need of refuge
was not pressing, we wearied of the Gate of Pardon, with its beautiful
Saracenic arch converted to Christianity by the Renaissance bas-relief
obliterating the texts from the Koran. We tried to form the habit of
going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there
was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our
sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the
trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains.
Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of
Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the
Normans when they took and sacked his city.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 126 of 197
Words from 65337 to 65867
of 103320
