this sumptuous monument,
Has left the seats of sempiternal rest!
A fellow tall, on deeds of valour bent,
My exclamation heard. "Bravo," he cried,
"Sir Soldier, what you say is true, I vow!
And he who says the contrary has lied!"
With that he pulls his hat upon his brow,
Upon his sword-hilt he his hand doth lay,
And frowns--and--nothing does, but walks away!"[16]

Far more ineffaccable even than the record left by Philip's life upon
the history of Seville and Spain is that of this immortal soldier and
scribbler, who "believed he had found something better to do than
writing comedies."

The soft, sonorous syllables of Guadalquivir (from the Arabic
Wad-el-Kebir, or The Great River) would picture to the imaginative eye a
river far more poetic than the sluggish stream that loiters across the
wide plain and fruitful valley until it pierces the amber girdle of
crenelated walls and embattled towers which enclose the treasures of
Seville. On its broad bosom have swept the barks and galleys of
Phoenicia and Greece, of Roman, Goth, and Moor. On its shores Columbus
lowered the sails of his caravel and presented Spain with a new world on
Palm Sunday, 1493; Pizarro and Cortez here first embarked their greedy
and daring adventurers; hither Pizarro returned with hoards of gold and
silver treasures from Mexico and Peru, for the Council of the Indies
restricted all the trade of the colonies to the port of Seville. The
valley through which the river descends is sheltered from the cold
tablelands lying northward by the Sierra Morena chain. Gray olive trees,
waving pastures, and fields of grain cover its slopes. A soft, tempered
wind whispers through the grassy meadows of La Tierra de Maria
Santissima, and the atmosphere is so dry and clear that far away against
the horizon objects stand out in clear silhouette. So vivid are the
colors that the smoky olive groves, the orange and lemon-colored walls,
the fir trees, the chalky white of the stucco, the fleshy, prickly
leaves of the cacti, and the tall standards of the aloes seem
photographed on the brain.

In a fair and fruitful land lies the city, and her spires pierce a
smokeless, unspotted sky.

In the heart of the city, set down in the very centre of her life of
song and laughter and childish simplicity, surrounded by crooked streets
and great airy courts, in the widest sunlit square, lies her Cathedral.

The first impression made by a building is g