by heavy projectiles in rifled tubes of large

bore.

The tree of knowledge is indeed not that of life, when the delicate agencies of air, steam and gaseous exhalations, the beautiful nature that was surely meant to be innocent of any but an Ariel-like gentleness of service, are thus made the ministering spirits of evil, and when nothing in human thought seems so much prized as the elements of a new destructiveness. What times were these, when gunpowder was felt to be "villanous," the use of "vile cannon against men unchristian, and these earthly temples, believed to be filled with a celestial fire were not more defended by their panoplies of steel than by the gentle courtesies of the hostile code itself. Then weapons, coarse and simple, as if they had cost no second thought, were not the measure of the age's civilisation; then a humanising principle, a faith of feeling, a Christianity that entered

actively into the play of life, exorcised from war nearly all that was demoniac; then an angel of mercy descended to stir even the waters of strife into a healing quality, and war half forgot itself from a bloody business into that exercise of noble instincts which made ambition virtue ! But not, therefore with Hamlet, say we of the change, it will not, and it cannot come to good. There is a philosophy of comfort to be gathered from the dark phenomena even of destruction, just as we know that what was foolishness to the Greeks, and to the Jews a stumbling block, was in truth, but a mystery of benign revolution. Thus too, may it happen, that the mouth of the cannon-that ass of the prophets-may yet be eloquent of a truth to rebuke many a cynical doubt, and that the ultimate evolution of even our science of slaughter may be as good, as great as it is certainly unforeseen.

SEVILLE.

BY WALTER THORNBURY.

"He who has never in Seville been, Has not, I trow, a wonder seen." Spanish Proverb. SEVILLE, one of the choicest spots in the Moors' Andalusian Paradise, is also one of the most interesting cities in Spain. As for Madrid,

it is but a foundling of Charles V.'s,-a dusty mob of grand houses, reared on a plateau of "mangy hills," and adorned with a river that, in summer, is dry as a turnpike-road. Legend and association it has none; but what it wants it makes up for by the miseries of ice-winds in winter, and African suns in summer; though the Castillian-at the best, never very humble, does say that "there is but a stage from Madrid up to Paradise."

Seville has a beautiful river-deep and brimming when the Manzanazes is dry: it is one of the healthiest places in Spain, for Sangrado told me, and he is to be depended on, that knife-wounds heal there, "even at the first intention."

You approach it by the winding Guadalquiver -the river with the Arab name-upon whose low, flat earthbanks, mounted herdsmen, driving before them smoking, dust clouded herds of wild bulls for the amphitheatre, stare at you from under their broad-brimmed hats, as your steamer ploughs on to the fair Moorish city through the turbid yellow water, once traversed by the same great Kalif, whose banners were borne through Scinde. You land through a cutting in the bank, and find yourself on the Alameda, where the lamps are, perhaps, beginning to twinkle, like prisoned glowworms in their glass-cases under the avenues of trees. You leap into a car, and in a moment are borne past the cathedral, where sleeps the son of Columbus, and past the great Moorish tower of the Giralda-one of the wonders of the world-to some quiet fountain square where your hotel is situated.

The guide, to-morrow, pointing about with the red guide-book he carries for you, will tell you, with the usual accuracy and truthfulness of guides-in fact, you will see it engraved over the Puerta de Xeres-that Hercules built this city; that Julius Cæsar necklaced it with ramparts; that Don Roderick the Luckless lost it; and that Saint Ferdinand re-won it, aided by that great ballad-hero, Perez de Vargas, who, pulling up a young oak-tree with a great boss of earth round the roots, caused huge slaughter among the turbaned Moors, who fled from him as dolphins do from the shark.

The city is still Moorish in all its external decoration; all that is beautiful or eternal in it bears on it the strong seal of the crescent. The streets are still narrow, as the Moors built them for shade. The palace-rooms still shine with the beautiful blue-glazed tiles of the dead infidel potters' handiwork. The matted gratings, instead of windows, the porches, the court-yard, with the silver tumbler of a fountain playing tricks all day and night in the centre; the marble-shafted cloisters, the intricate ceilings, the harlequined woodwork, are all Moorish; the Giralda itself, the stately king of all, is the work of one Jaber, a Moor, whom some confuse with the. Arabian inventor of Algebra, that short-hand of arithmetic.

There it springs up, like a lily stem to the left of our illustration. It has stood there in its steadfast beauty ever since 1196, when Aboo Yosoof Yacoob added it to a great mosque his Sultan father had built; and so dear was it to the Moors, that when, after a glorious reign of 536 years, they surrendered their kingly city to the Christians, they would have destroyed the tower, had not Alonso the Wise threatened to sack the town.

The pinnacle of the tower is of filigree tabernacle work; 100 feet of it was added by a monk, and on it is planted a figure of Faith, weighing 2,800 lbs., yet turning at the merest breath of wind. There are innumerable legends about this fairy tower; it is specially guarded, the

Sevillians think, by two virgin martyrs, potters' daughters of the Triano suburbs, who were put to death in the Roman times. Murillo painted them from fancy; and even as late as Espartero's bombardment of Seville, in 1843, they are said to have been seen catching the shot that the Devil bowled at the tower, which is now a belfry or campanile to the cathedral. They may be seen, those who believe in the miraculous effects of good wine think, with lightning swords driving the devil of the wind and thunder from the hallowed building which they are deputed from Hea- | ven to guard. "Being generally represented about 500 feet high," says Ford, who is always strong in his irony, "these young ladies must be a tolerable match for the father of lies." They tell you a story in Seville, as you walk round the cathedral terraces, and stare up in astonishment and delight at the Moorish tower, that some French officers were one day looking at it admiringly, when a bull-fighter passing by exclaimed from behind, "And yet this was not made in Paris!"

Seville, too, is the storehouse of the finest pictures Murillo ever painted. Here you can see him in his "cold," "warm," or "misty" manner. Here there is a convent quite peopled with his Intellectual Monks, his Child Christs, his Virgin Mothers, and his Painstricken Mendicants; and you look at them, and then at the greedy, frowning, stupid pride of the vainthinking, ignorant travellers, who trip through the gallery, till, to use the beautiful thought of Wordsworth, you almost think they are the shadows, and that the pictures are the life.

Seville was once the special resort of the clergy, who filled whole streets round the cathedral. "Mais nous avons changé tous cela." Soult and his rabble French cruelly plundered them, and in 1836 Mendizabel, a Carthaginian, at least in name, with Punic faith, confiscated all church property. It was remarked and joked upon years ago, that in the clerical houses here the children had all uncles, but not a soul of them even the ghost of a father. The clerical creed, Spanish writers tell us, was-—

First, to love Don Dinero (money).
Second, to oppress everybody.

Third, always to eat good beef and mutton.
Fourth, to fast when you have had enough.
Fifth, to drink good red and white wine.
"And these five commandments are summed up in two—
Everything for me, and nothing for you.”

Altogether, Seville is the model of a Spanish city, with its bullies, thieves, hypocrites, monks, and mendicants. No doubt, too, within its cloistered houses some of the grand old Spanish types of character might here and there be found-chivalrous, staunch, true and heroic; not Palafoxes, but Gonzalvoes; not Godoys, but Cids; not carpet-soldiers, but Columbuses, great to suffer; and Cortezes, great to act. Spain is a country of undeveloped resources-of mines and ironworks, of fields untilled-of corn that rots, and of fruit that withers; let us hope however, that a daybreak may be reddening for it, as it has for Italy, though the dawn be lurid and be heralded by the sulphurous hell-fires of Death's cannon.

over her; she was too modest to question me very roughly, besides, it was necessary to her life to believe in Alfred's constancy. Whenever she ventured a new inquiry, I could see her trembling lest my evidence should go against the culprit. She was full of doubt, but afraid of disbelieving. The comfort of my words freshened her up, her head rose, her voice crisped up and became almost joyful. The truth is, I made myself so especially pleasant, I should have taken a bill discounter off his guard.

The house seemed like itself again, she bustling about and getting everything ready to receive him, I petted and sung to, and forced to drink sherry and be waited upon. It cut me to the heart, though, to hear her every morning count the days that had passed, and say in her hopeful voice, "He'll soon be back now;" whilst I, like a villain, had to reply, "Yes! only a few days longer to wait." If the brute had only written her one line, or even sent her a message! I posted to him three imploring letters, capitally worded, and, I think, rather touching; but plague take the man, his heart was hard and sour; I knew his tactics well enough, and could almost guess the ending.

The three weeks passed, but no husband came home! I implored her to throw in another week, working hard to make her hope and hope, and then there was nothing for it but to have her put to bed and send for the Doctor-a very respectable and not expensive gentleman, who secured our affections and patronage in a few minutes by giving my Uncle an order for a ton of coals. My Aunt was half inclined to fall ill from gratitude.

This Doctor C. did me the honour of mistaking me for the sick lady's husband, so I thought it better to explain to him the cause of his patient's malady. "Purely mental, I take it," was my suggestion. "Exactly so," he replied. Naturally, I didn't want him to be blundering in his scientific darkness, sending in draughts by the gross, which Rosa would never take, and nobody would buy, even at half price. We had no money to fool away in coloured water. A little quinine wine was the extent of his prescription-that with quiet, and a generous diet. I ordered in, I remember, some very choice port of fine full-bodied quality, but I don't think she drank two glasses out of the entire dozen-poor lady. Every day the Doctor called, and every day his report on the case was-" I don't think we are any better, but I don't think we are any worse." "Dash it!" I used to say to myself, as he left, "you earn your money easily enough."

There was just room enough in our load of miseries for another to force its way; and, tight fit as it must have been, it came upon us, placing me in a very delicate position. After one of his visits, the Doctor requested to see my Aunt Ruth. I had not even a suspicion of what was the matter, and actually thought the Doctor either wanted more coals or was going to complain about the last. When my Aunt (who, from being a civil and grateful poor relation, in less than five minutes puffed out with importance, and tried to order me about most offensively), revealed to me that there was

every chance of a child being born unto the house of Berthold; on my word, if I had been a married man myself, I could not have been more vexed at the interesting event. My Aunt's first command was, that I should put on my hat and run over to France, and fetch Alfred. I preferred trusting to the post. Letter after letter did I myself carry to the Berlin wool shop, and slip into the box, begging him, if he had any respect for the life of the mother of his future family, to return at once, and all should be forgiven. "The Doctor says," I wrote, "that if her mind is not perfectly at rest, he will not answer for the consequences." What did he care about consequences? Beyond one line, stating that he should shortly be in London— which was a falsehood, and not worth the postage he paid on it-I never heard from him. I had more than half a mind to visit the Madam and ask her what she thought about the business, but I couldn't help having some little faith in the vagabond, and besides where would my three hundred pounds have been?

Poor little wife! she kept her bed, and tried to die very quietly, telling everybody who asked after her health that she was "much better," though her tearful eyes were red, and her cheeks white. We were all as attentive as we could be. I always took my boots off before I went up stairs. Gallons and gallons of capital mutton broth were made for her, but my dear Uncle had to eat them for his luncheon, until, positively, he grew so sick of broth, he had to entreat the Doctor to change his patient's diet to beef tea. The boiled fowls she refused to touch, the sweetbreads she wouldn't even look at, made the housekeeping very heavy, and my dear Aunt, very fat and dainty. All the pleasures of that once happy home ceased from the moment she withdrew from us and took to her bedroom. I was forced to keep up my heart with half prices to the theatres, but alas! when late at night I returned home and gazed up at the illuminated window of that sad room, with a round dot of light from the rushlight shade centered on the blind, as if a magic lantern were exhibiting; then the supper I had paid for so recklessly, turned to lead and became expenditure without profit.

One day I was walking down Regent-street, very heart broken and disturbed (even my cigar wouldn't burn properly), when a gentleman, evidently a foreigner, stopped me and claimed my acquaintance, in imperfect English, but lifting his hat with consummate grace. I was so overcome I tried to hide my cigar, for it was rather early in the day for a man to be seen puffing at his cuba. He was a very fine man, with a chest like an eighteen-gallon cask, and a better beard than some horses tails. I don't know which were the more elegant, his manners or his costume. It was an honour to be seen 1 talking to him. "Really I think you are mistaken," I said, regretting my shirt was so dirty. "Oh, yes! we had met in Italy. And how was his friend Mr. Berthold and his Italian lady." How the dickens, I thought to myself, does be know that Alfred is married. I concluded that he must be a very intimate acquaintance to be entrusted with that great secret. Then I told