He Promised That He Would Show Us A Piece Of
The Old Roman Wall, But He Showed Us Ever So
Much more, beginning with
the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found
the afternoon light
Waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress
the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and
the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for
heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville.
Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the
crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy
scuffled for our copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us,
but was brought to justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of
children chanting "Mo-ney, mo-ney!" round us, but no more expecting an
answer to their prayer than if we had been saints off the church door.
We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage a
cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole,
and then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere
fragment, but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it and
characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable
physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you
see at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was
the beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch
from Moor, or from Christian.
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