The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain: Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville. — John Shaqi
The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain: Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.Wells, Nathaniel Armstrong
Islamic
The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain: Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.
The new quarter of Bordeaux is handsome, spacious, and airy. In the
promenade called "La Quinconce," on the bank of the river, a large
insulated edifice, the most monumental in view, is discovered by the
inscription on its front to be an establishment for warm baths. At one
extremity of the principal façade is seen, in sculptured letters, "Bains
des dames;" at the other, "Bains des hommes." At this latter entrance a
handsome staircase leads to the corridor of general communication, on
the unsullied white wall of which the code of discipline of the
establishment, traced in large sable characters, forces itself on the
notice of the visitor. It consists of the following single and rather
singular statute: "Il est expressement défendu aux garçons de permettre
à deux hommes de se servir de la même baignoire." After some reflection
I concluded it to be a measure of precaution with regard to cleanliness,
carried, no doubt, to an extreme at Bordeaux. This town is well
deserving of a few days' halt, should the traveller's object be
amusement, or the pleasures of the table, for which it enjoys a
well-merited reputation. It is a large and handsome city, the second in
France in beauty, and vies with the capital in the elegance of its shops
and principal streets. The theatre is, externally, the finest in France;
and there is, besides the cathedral, and surpassing it in interest and
antiquity, a remarkable Gothic church.
Of the sixty leagues which separate this town from Bayonne, forty afford
the most perfect example of monotony. One sighs for the Steppes of
Russia. These are the well-known Landes, consisting of uncultivated
sands and morass; now covered league after league with the unvarying
gloom of the pine and cork forests,--now dreary and bare,--but ever
presenting to the wearied eye a wide interminable waste, replete with
melancholy and desolation. It is true, that a day of pouring rain was
not calculated to set off to advantage the qualities of such a region,
and should in strict justice be admitted in evidence before passing
condemnation on the Landes.
LETTER III.
THE BASQUE PROVINCES.
Burgos.
It never causes me surprise when I see the efforts made by persons of
limited means to obtain the situation of Consul in a continental town.
In spite of one's being, as it were, tied to one's residence,--and that
not one's home,--there are advantages which counterbalance the evil. The
place carries with it a certain degree of consequence. One feels oneself
suddenly a man of influence, and a respectable public character. I have
heard one, certainly far from being high on the list of these
functionaries, termed by a humbler inhabitant of his "residence," the
"Premier Consul."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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