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.
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