horsemen who pranced under them. In the large squares they extended in a checkerboard arrangement, with intricate ropes and pulleys which I never tried to understand, content to enjoy the result of black shadows alternating with great splotches of sunlight. Even the town hall spread out an awning all across the wide sidewalk in front of it, and not a hotel or bank or palace or big house did we enter that had not its court as well protected.

The people were as gay as the town: too gay, too commercial, too modern, M. Maurice Barrés thought Seville. But, fortunately, I was quite prosaic enough to delight at the time in its constant movement and noise and life. The Sierpes during the day was the center of their gaiety-Seville's Corso or Broadway or Piccadilly. It was here the hottest hours were spent. Under its awnings it was like a pleasant court; for, though peasants might pass with their donkeys, no cart or carriage could ever drive through. In the clubs on each side, their façade nothing but one open window, rows of chairs were always turned toward the street, and always held an audience as entertaining as it was willing to

be entertained. The same people who in the evening filled the Plaza Nueva, there to listen to the music, sauntered in and out of the shops, where you could buy the latest French novel or the photograph of the favorite matador. But of this multitude of loungers none seemed to have anything to do except to become violently interested the minute J. tried to sketch.

BULL-FIGHTERS OLD AND YOUNG.

CONSPICUOUS among them were the bullfighters, who, alone in southern Spain, preserve a distinct type; they were to the population of Seville what the awnings were to the town-its most characteristic element. The clean-shaven face and the hair cut square about the brow may have much to do with this distinction; but in any case there it is, and the type is handsome. With age it may tend to brutality, but the young, slim espada or chulo has a beautiful and a really refined face. The costume, even out of the arena, is as distinctive-the low, stiff, broadbrimmed sombrero, the short jacket, the ruffled shirt fastened at neck and wrists with

links of gold. But in Seville so many men modeled themselves upon the bull-fighter that I had to look for the pig-tail under the broad hat to tell the real from the sham.

Its school of bull-fighting accounts for the prominence the town gives to the national pastime. The ring may be closed, but there is no forgetting the sport. The merest children, almost babes in arms, play at it in the streets, though, judging from one swagger performance we saw, their game is in defiance of the law. For this fight a retired square off a busy street was the arena. When we took our places in a convenient doorway the bull, a small boy about ten years old perhaps, came dashing in. He held on his head a broad board armed with horns. Into this the banderillos had to be stuck, and there was a ring between the horns through which the espada's wooden sword had to pass before the bull could be considered

DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL.

duly killed. Everything was done in proper style. There were even chulos waving ragged red cloaks. It was to us the chubbyfaced, flaxen-haired little espada came to ask the official permission. He flung down his hat at our feet with an air that might have given points to Guerrita. But when he turned for action the arena was empty, nothing to be seen but the heels of bull, chulos, and banderilleros disappearing around a corner, a policeman in full chase.

A NATIONAL FÊTE IN THE CATHEDRAL. SEVILLE, which seems to have a feast, or at any rate a holiday, every other day in the year, held a special one for our benefit, the feast of San Fernando. We knew already how impressive the cathedral could be at ordinary times. Without, in rose-color beauty, the Giralda soars above it; wide steps give

VOL. LII.-82.

THE GIRALDA TOWER, SEVILLE.

to the Moorish walls of its court the height and dignity which we had missed in Cordova's mosque; and the court itself, the Court of Oranges, has all the picturesqueness that little tumbled-down houses actually built into the cathedral, and chance balconies, where women lounge among the flowers, and chance windows behind grilles, and a central fountain, and a few low, fruit-bearing trees, and posing beggars in admirably composed rags, can produce. Within, scaffolding and workmen in the completely blocked-up nave, which will take years in the repairing, could not altogether destroy, in our eyes, the grandeur and solemnity of the vast proportions, great golden grilles looming up before us unexpectedly in

DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL.

what Delacroix calls the cathedral's «magnificent obscurity,» chapels opening on every side, but only the glitter of a jewel in a Virgin's crown, or the glow of the gold in a Christ's drapery, to show where the altar stood in the comforting gloom. One is apt to credit the Moor with everything that is good in southern Spain. But if it was he who planned the court without, and raised its high wall, it was the Christian Spaniard who built this most solemn and beautiful of all earthly temples.

It was not until the feast of San Fernando that we learned with what sumptuousness and stateliness the beautiful interior could array

itself for its festivals, and with what fervor it could keep them. Already, on the eve of the great day, the Royal Chapel was hung with silken draperies; cloth-ofgold covered the royal tombs, the altar was a mass of golden plate, and people were crowding to kiss the hands of the Virgen de los Reyes, the large, matronly Virgin who wears a cap like that of the ladies of the Sacred Heart, and who holds the Child in her arms. When we came to the cathedral its court was. held by red-legged soldiers, grouped about the fountain, at the base of pillars, on every step. Two sentinels paced up and down at the door of the Royal Chapel, which was filled with well-dressed men and women in mantillas, crouched on the floor, sitting on low campstools, lying face downward with hands outstretched to form a cross, or else pressing close about the altar; for the curtain was raised above the coffin where San Fernando has lain these thousand years, and through the glass we could see the mummy-like head and the ermine robes; and all the people prayed as if they meant it. We wan

dered back in the late afternoon, in the hour just before sunset. Under the oranges and about the fountain the red-legged soldiers still lingered and loafed; but even as we came a bugle sounded, they fell into line, and marched across the court through the cloister, under the door with the crocodile above, and then into the Royal Chapel, where they formed on each side. The altar with its hundreds of candles made an almost blinding glory in the midst of the falling shadows, and wherever the silken hangings caught the light they shone with jewel-like splendor. But the service was very simple, the more solemn because of its simplicity. A monk in a black robe mounted into a pulpit half hid in a dusky

Las Delicias, where now no one but ourselves walked, and we looked across to the Triana, with all the memories Cervantes' priest thought so many snares of the devil, it seemed farther away, because of the bridge of sunlight, than if the Atlantic had rolled between. How did they manage to fight, those old Moors and Christians, with the thermometer away up somewhere in the hundreds? I could understand better the indolent or lustful stories the chroniclers tell of Dom Pedro and Maria de Padilla, and the gay company who loved and hated in the blood-stained Alcazar.

This palace of the Moorish kings is near the cathedral, and is much larger, much bolder and finer in its ornament, much lovelier than Granada's Red Palace. It has more of the majesty that one looks for in Moorish architecture, and more of the voluptuousness and color, though its halls and courts are as bare and silent, a background also for the tourist, who, unless he is as mad as ourselves, never comes in summer. But the enchantment of the Alcazar is felt, above all, in its garden, which has not, it may be, the stateliness of the Boboli in Florence or of the Borghese in Rome in the old days, but instead a rich tropical luxuriance, an almost barbarous excess of bloom and perfume, seldom found in the more classical Italian garden. At the Alhambra and the Generalife I had thought much

of my pleasure depended on the glimpse to be had at every moment of low-lying, white town, or wide plain stretching away to the shadowy mountains. And yet here it was the way the world beyond was softly, but inexorably, shut out from this garden of Eden that struck me with greatest joy. It was, for all purposes, as cloistered as a monastery. We could see nothing but the hot, blue sky above, at one end the high, white walls and overhanging balconies of the palace, and in the distance, the rose-flushed Giralda, as we wandered from one little walled court, all blue and white with jasmine, into another; or to the bath where king and court were wont to gather to pay homage to Maria de Padilla and the white beauty of her perfect body; or between palms and orange-trees, down the narrow paths all undermined with the hidden fountains which monarchs, in moods of ponderous humor, once set playing upon the unsuspecting knights and ladies of their court. Late roses were still in bloom all about us as we walked. Dahlias and strange tropical blossoms flamed in scarlet splendor above the myrtle hedges. Everywhere was the sound of running or falling water, the most familiar and soothing of Andalusia's many musical sounds. Everywhere were the sweet, strong scents of the South, penetrating, irresistible, intoxicating. And the youth in broad-brimmed hat who