I Have Kept The Unique Wonder Of Seville Waiting Too Long Already For My
Recognition, Though In Its Eight Hundred Years It Should Have Learned
Patience Enough For Worse Things.
From its great antiquity alone, if
from nothing else, it is plain that the Giralda at Seville could not
have been studied from the tower of the Madison Square Garden in New
York, which the American will recall when he sees it.
If the case must
be reversed and we must allow that the Madison Square tower was studied
from the Giralda, we must still recognize that it is no servile copy,
but in its frank imitation has a grace and beauty which achieves
originality. Still, the Giralda is always the Giralda, and, though there
had been no Saint-Gaudens to tip its summit with such a flying-footed
nymph as poises on our own tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is
at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the
mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry
it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret for
the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only
two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in
offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in form
and spirit achieves an impossible harmony. The Giralda, however, chiefly
works its enchantment by its color, but here I must leave the proof of
this to the picture postal which now everywhere takes the bread out of
the word-painter's mouth.
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