Castilian Days

His fete is the Derby Day of Madrid. The whole town goes out to his Hermitage on the further banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day or two of the soft spring weather in noisy...

They do not seem to have been spoiled by overmuch travel. Such impressive and Oriental courtesy could not have survived the trampling feet of the great army of tourists. On our...

It is not by mere activity that great things are done in art. In the great gallery we now enter we see the deathless work of the men who wrought in faith. This is the grandest r...

The great days of art in the Escorial are gone. Once in every nook and corner it concealed treasures of beauty that the world had nearly forgotten. The Perla of Raphael hung in...

There remain the pictures of the Dutch and the Flemings. It is due to the causes we have mentioned in the beginning that neither in Antwerp nor Dresden nor Paris is there such w...

But at last the days of mourning are accomplished. The expiation for sin is finished. The grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in victory. Man can turn from the grief that...

In this Holiday Edition of _Castilian Days_ it has been thought advisable to omit a few chapters that appeared in the original edition. These chapters were less descriptive than...

In all this vast crowd nobody is in a hurry. They have all night before them. They stayed quietly at home in the stress of the noontide when the sunbeams were falling in the glo...

I once asked a very intelligent English contractor why he used no wheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart navvies employed carrying dirt in small wicker baske...

In the domain of politics there is still the lamentable disproportion between honor and honesty. A high functionary cares nothing if the whole Salon del Prado talks of his pilfe...

At noon the day grew dark with clouds, and the black storm-wreath came down over the mountains. A terrific fire of artillery resounded for a half-hour in the craggy peaks about...

I am afraid they give rise to much worldly conjecture on the part of idle youth as to what amiable sins these pretty penitents can have been guilty of. It is not prudent to ask...

If one should speak of all the noteworthy things you meet in this Cathedral, he would find himself in danger of following in the footsteps of Mr. Parro, who wrote a handbook of...

The second act is the play of the banderilleros, the flag-men. They are beautifully dressed and superbly built fellows, principally from Andalusia, got up precisely like Figaro...

I will only mention two more churches, and both of these converts from heathendom; both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy of the calendar the Saviour is mere...

The robbers pick up their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinsel torrent. This is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs of the cock-loft. The bandits...

There were, after all, compensations in this evening of life. As long as his dropsy would let him, he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar to say his prayers in the little ora...