Some Day These Groves And Forests Must Be For
The People's Pleasure, As All Royal Belongings Seem Finally To Be; And
In The Mean Time I Did Not Grudge The Landscape To The Young King And
Queen Who Probably Would Not Have Grudged It To Me.
Our guide valued
himself upon our admiration of it; without our special admiration he
valued himself upon the impressive buildings of the railway station in
the middle distance.
I forget whether he followed us out of the
quadrangle into the roadway where we had the advantage of some
picturesque army wagons, and some wagoners in red-faced jackets and red
trousers, and top-boots with heavy fringes of leathern strings. Yet it
must have been he who made us aware of a high-walled inclosure where
soldiers found worthy of death by court martial could be conveniently
shot; though I think we discovered for ourselves the old woman curled up
out of the wind in a sentry-box, and sweetly asleep there while the boys
were playing marbles on the smooth ground before it. I must not omit the
peanut-boaster in front of the palace; it was in the figure of an ocean
steamer, nearly as large as the _Lusitania,_ and had smoke coming out
of the funnel, with rudder and screw complete and doll sailors climbing
over the rigging.
But it is impossible to speak adequately of the things in that wonderful
armory. If the reader has any pleasure in the harnesses of Spanish kings
and captains, from the great Charles the Fifth down through all the
Philips and the Charleses, he can glut it there. Their suits begin
almost with their steel baby clothes, and adapt themselves almost to
their senile decrepitude. There is the horse-litter in which the great
emperor was borne to battle, and there is the sword which Isabella the
great queen wore; and I liked looking at the lanterns and the flags of
the Turkish galleys from the mighty sea-fight cf Lepanto, and the many
other trophies won from the Turks. The pavilion of Francis I. taken at
Pavia was of no secondary interest, and everywhere was personal and
national history told in the weapons and the armor of those who made the
history. Perhaps some time the peoples will gather into museums the pens
and pencils and chisels of authors and artists, and the old caps and
gowns they wore, or the chairs they sat in at their work, or the pianos
and violoncellos of famous musicians, or the planes of surpassing
carpenters, or the hammers of eminent ironworkers; but these things will
never be so picturesque as the equipments with which the military heroes
saved their own lives or took others'. We who have never done either
must not be unreasonable or impatient. It will be many a long century
yet before we are appreciated at the value we now set upon ourselves. In
the mean while we do not have such a bad time, and we are not so easily
forgotten as some of those princes and warriors.
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