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.
Cadiz is the last town in Europe I should select for a residence, had I
the misfortune to become blind. One ought to be all eyes there. It is
the prettiest of towns. After this there is no more to be said, with
regard, at least, to its external peculiarities. It possesses no
prominent objects of curiosity. There is, it is true, a tradition
stating it to have possessed a temple dedicated to Hercules; but this
has been washed away by the waves of the ocean, as its rites have been
by the influx of succeeding populations. Nothing can be more remote from
the ideas of the visitor to Cadiz, than the existence of anything
antique; unless it be the inclination to prosecute such researches: the
whole place is so bright and modern looking, and pretty in a manner
peculiar to itself, and unlike any other town,--since, like everything
else in Spain, beauty also has its originality. Nothing can be gayer
than the perspective of one of the straight, narrow streets. On either
side of the blue ribbon of sky, which separates the summits of its lofty
houses, is seen a confusion of balconies, and projecting
box-windows,--all placed irregularly--each house possessing only one or
two, so as not to interfere with each other's view, and some placed on a
lower story, others on a higher; their yellow or green hues relieving
the glittering white of the façades. Nor could anything improve the
elegant effect of the architectural ornaments, consisting of pilasters,
vases, and sculpture beneath the balconies, still less, the animated
faces--the prettiest of all Spain, after those of Malaga--whose owners
shew a preference to the projecting windows, wherever a drawing-room or
boudoir possesses one.
The pavement of these elegant little streets, is not out of keeping with
the rest. It would be a sacrilege to introduce a cart or carriage into
them. A lady may, and often does, traverse the whole town on foot, on
her way to a ball. It is a town built as if for the celebration of a
continual carnival. Nor does the charge brought against the Gaditanas,
of devotion to pleasure, cause any surprise: were they not, they would
be misplaced in Cadiz. Hither should the victim of spleen and melancholy
direct his steps. Let him choose the season of the carnival. There is
reason to suspect that the advertiser in the Herald had this remedy in
view, when he promised a certain cure to "clergymen and noblemen, who
suffer from blushing and despondency, delusion, thoughts of self-injury,
and groundless fear:" these symptoms being indications of an attack of
that northern epidemy, which takes its name from a class of fallen
angels of a particular hue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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