File:Rambles in sunny Spain (1889) (14776596721).jpg

Identifier: ramblesinsunnysp00ober (find matches)
Title: Rambles in sunny Spain
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Ober, Frederick A(lbion), 1849- (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, Estes and Lauriat
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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e name of the station, and we all alightedand looked about us. All the sight-seers had gone ahead of us in the omnibus, andthe great courtyard of the convent was entirely deserted when wereached it, so that we were for a while at a loss where to £0. For-tune always favors the dilatory, however; and so we fell in with agroup of Barcelonians who were visiting Madrid and vicinity ona circular ticket, and who admitted us joyfully to their party. Theywere in charge of the official guide of the place, who was, or seemedto be, afflicted with some trouble of the brain, or total lack ofsense, which made him an interesting though not an indispensableauxiliary. Some of the guide-books will tell you that the Escorial was builtin the shape of a gridiron ; and the general plan of it does resembleone, with bars and handle, and towers sticking into the air for itsfeet. It took this shape, it is said, because of a vow of Philip II. toerect a monastery dedicated to Saint Lawrence, who was broiled on a
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IN THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD. &J gridiron, and would naturally be supposed to desire to commemoratethis event. This Escorial is comprised of a monastery, a palace, achurch, pantheon, library, and seminary. We enter first the greatCourt of the Kings (the Patio de los Reyes), two hundred and thirtyfeet long and one hundred and thirty-six wide, and see, at its fartherend, six great statues of the kings of the house of David, the mostnoteworthy being that of Solomon. Before entering the church let us try to grasp the magnitude ofthe entire structure known as the Escorial. It is a rectangular par-allelogram seven hundred and forty-four Spanish feet long and fivehundred and eighty wide, covering over five hundred thousand squarefeet. It is said to be the first great Graeco-Roman edifice in Spain ;and it were well had it been the last, for it is gloomier than a tomb,and severe to austerity, though grand and impressive as any artificialmountain of granite ever erected. Eight towers r

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