e does with equal intensity
in the sweetness of loveliness, as in the country about Seville: "Oh how
pleasant it is, especially in springtide, to stray along the shores of
the Guadalquivir! Not far from the city, down the river, lies a grove
called Las Delicias, or the Delights. It consists of trees of various
kinds, but more especially of poplars and elms, and is traversed by long,
shady walks. This grove is the favourite promenade of the Sevillians,
and there one occasionally sees assembled whatever the town produces of
beauty or gallantry. There wander the black-eyed Andalusian dames and
damsels, clad in their graceful silken mantillas; and there gallops the
Andalusian cavalier on his long-tailed, thick-maned steed of Moorish
ancestry. As the sun is descending, it is enchanting to glance back from
this place in the direction of the city; the prospect is inexpressibly
beautiful. Yonder in the distance, high and enormous, stands the Golden
Tower, now used as a toll-house, but the principal bulwark of the city in
the time of the Moors. It stands on the shore of the river, like a giant
keeping watch, and is the first edifice which attracts the eye of the
voyager as he moves up the stream to Seville. On the other side,
opposite the tower, stands the noble Augustine Convent, the ornament of
the faubourg of Triana; whilst between the two edifices rolls the broad
Guadalquivir, bearing on its bosom a flotilla of barks from Catalonia and
Valencia. Farther up is seen the bridge of boats which traverses the
water. The principal object of this prospect, however, is the Golden
Tower, where the beams of the setting sun seem to be concentrated as in
the focus, so that it appears built of pure gold, and probably from that
circumstance received the name which it now bears. Cold, cold must the
heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic scene,
to do justice to which the pencil of Claude himself were barely equal.
Often have I shed tears of rapture whilst I beheld it, and listened to
the thrush and the nightingale piping forth their melodious songs in the
woods, and inhaled the breeze laden with the perfume of the thousand
orange gardens of Seville.

'Kennst du das land wo die citronen bluhen?'"

If a scene was not in fact superlative his creative memory would furnish
it with what it lacked, giving the cathedral of Palencia, for example,
windows painted by Murillo.

CHAPTER XXI--"THE BIBLE IN