IN THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 138, 16 July 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

IN THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE.

Now, I do think that if I were able to perforin the happy theological despatch, if I could summon before me the Pope and all the councils, and the writings of the fathers, and pronounce sentence upon them after long examination, research and study, and then, after having performed this great act of private judgment go into the Church of Rome and kick over the ladder that brought me there, and bid good-bye to the right to think for myself forever, I would make straight for Seville, and haunt this Cathedral for the rest of my days. It is a place where there seems no call to think at all; no ghosts : of old controversies would rise before me. I could dream life most pleasantly away in company with these charming priests in red and white and gold, surrounded with the glorious pictures of Murillo and Alonzo Cano, and amid these orange groves. The Cathedral of Seville combines the beauty of a cathedral,with the quiet of a mosque, for it was a mosque once, and as things are said to go by the law of circularity, it may be one again. It would not surprise me to see a turbaned Turk resuming his sandals at that horseshoe door, and frowning at the unbeliever who had invaded his precincts. High over every thing towers the famous and most exquisite Giralda Tower. It is the work of the Moors, aud was built by Geber the Arabian, whose productions of another kind school boys have considerable and painful experience, for he is said to have been also the inventor of algebra. From this tower, in the days when it was surmounted by the crescmt, the muezzin, or call to prayer, used to be sounded over the city. It is now crowned by a statue of Faith, of which the Sevillians think much as a work of art; but as it serves for a weather cock, and turns about with every wind that blows, it may be doubted whether this symbol of Christian grace is in its pi'oper position. We enter the horseshoe door and along an arched corridor, aud we are in the great building. It is very grand. Spaniards, comparing it with the other two cathedrals of the Peninsula, say—‘La de Savilla la grande, la de Toledo la rica, y la de Leon la bella,’ and the comparison is just.—Good Words.