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.
BY
NATHANIEL ARMSTRONG WELLS.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
M.DCCC.XLVI.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley,Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
PREFACE.
The author of the following letters is aware thathis publication would have possessed greater utility,had the architectural descriptions been more minute.He ventures to hope, however, that this imperfectionmay be in some measure balanced by themore extended sphere opened to whatever informationit may contain.
The absence of many technical expressions, especiallythose which enter into a detailed descriptionof almost all Gothic buildings, and the employmentof which was forbidden by the occasion, may tendto facilitate the satisfaction of popular curiosityrespecting Spanish art: the more so from the circumstancethat the most intelligent in such subjectsare scarcely sufficiently agreed on the applicationof technical terms, to allow of the compilation of astandard vocabulary. His ambition will be morethan satisfied, should his past, and perhaps futureresearches, succeed, in some degree, in pioneeringthe path for a more scientific pen.
Should this work fall into the hands of any reader,whose expectations of entertainment may havebeen encouraged by the announcement of anotherSpanish tour, but who may feel but moderate enthusiasmfor the artistic and monumental gloriesof the Peninsula, an explanation is due to him,exonerative of the author from much of the responsibilityattached to the matter-of-fact tone of hisdescriptions. It is no less his nature than it washis wish to paint what he saw as he saw it. Unfortunatelyhis visits to Spain took place after theaccomplishment of the revolution, the hardest blowsof which were aimed at her church. The confiscationof the ecclesiastical revenues has necessarilystripped the processions and other ceremonies oftheir former splendour, and by suppressing what constitutedone of their chief attractions to the nativepopulation, transferred the interest of the lover ofthe picturesque from the bright colours of animatedgrouping, to the dead background of stone andmarble they have left.
In studying, however, to preserve this strict accuracyin all that related to the principal subject ofhis correspondence, his aim was to enliven it bythe introduction of any incidents worthy of noticewhich came under his observation. In this objecthe hopes he may have succeeded.
One more remark is necessary. The letters fromSeville, which form the second of the two partsinto which the volume is divided, although placedlast in order of succession, date in reality froman earlier period than the rest; and even froma different tour, as will a