The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-05

SurDamed ''Iuca Ia Presto, or Luxe IN
hurry. This Luke the Laborer has stuck
innumerable saints, seraphs, and other
celestial personages upon the plaster. He
executed his apotheoses by the yard, for
which he was paid according to fixed tariff,
q reduction, suppose, being made for
clouds; and the result of his work is about as
interesting as that of Sir James Thornhill in
the Painted Hall Of Greenwich Hospital.
Almost an entire day must be spent If you
wish to see the Escorial thoroughly, and
you grow, at last, fretful and peevish we'll
nigh to distraction at the iargon of the
guides with their monotonous statistics of
the eleven thousand windows of the place,
the two thousand and two feet of its area,
the sixty-three fountains, the twelve clois-
ters, the sixteen 'patios" or court-yards,
the eighty staircases, and so forth. AS for
the relics preserved of that nasty old man
Philip the Second, his greasy hat his
walking-stick, his shabby elbow-chair, the
board he used to rest his gouty leg upon,
they never moved me. There is something
beautifully and pathetically interesting in
the minutest trifle which remains to remind
us of Mary Queen of Scots, Did you
ever see her watch, in the shape of a
death'ss head, the works in the brain-pan, and
the dial enamelled on the base Of the jaw!
But who would care about q personal me-
mento of Bloody Queen Mary? She was our
her bad individuality, utterly Should we
care anything more about her Spanish hus-
band?
To complete the lugubrious impressions
which gather round you in this museum of
cruelty superstition, and madness, you are
taken to an appalling sepulchre under
ground: o circular vault, called absurdly
enough, the Pantheon" where, on ranges
of marble shelves, are sarcophagi containing
cboc Of o1l ba VIII
have afflicted Spain since the time of Charles
the Fifth. This bonehouse is rendered
all the more hideous by the fact of
it's being ornamented in the most garishly
theatrical manner with porphyry and verde
antique, with green and yellow jasper, with
bronze gilt bas-reliefs, and carvings in varie-
gated marble, and other gimcracks. There is
an old English locution which laughs at the
man who would put brass knocker on a
pigsty door. Is such an architect worthier of
ridicule than he who paints and gilds and
tricks up charnel house to the similitude of
a playhouse? AS, with guttering wax taper
in your hand, you ascend the staircase leading
from this Pantheon into daylight and the
world again, your guide whispers to you that
to the right is another and ghastlier Golgotha
where the junior scions of Spanish royalty
are buried or rather where their cofins lie
huddled together, pell-mell. The polite name
for this place, which might excite the indig-
nation of graveyard" Walker Che put a stop
to intramural interments in England, and GOT
no thanks for his palms, is the Pantheon of
the Infantes.' The common people call it,
with much more brevity and infinitely more
eloquence, GEL Pudridero," the 'rotting
place." The best guide-book you can take
with you to this portion of the Escorial is
Jeremy Taylors sermon on Death.
Once out of the Escorial, ''Luke's iron
crown mean the crown of Luca ia
Prestos ponderous heroes-is at once re-
moved from your brow, on which it has been
pressing with the deadest of weights. Once
rid of the Pantheon, and the stone staircases
and the Shiny cloisters, and you feel inclined
to chirrup almost. The gardens are hand
some, although shockingly out of repair; but
bleak as is the site, swept by the almost
ceaseless mountain blasts of the Guadarrama
range, it is something to be rid of Luca ia
Presto, and Philip the Second and st. Law
renee and his gridiron, and all their gloomy
company. You breathe again; and down in
the village yonder there is a not bad inn
called the Biscaina, where they cook very de-
cent omelettes, and where the wine is drinka-
BILE. But before you think of dining you mast
see King Pippin's Palace.
This is the ''Casita del Principe de abajo,"
the little house of the prince on the heights"
and was built by Juan de Villanueva for
Charles the Fourth when heir-apparent. The
only circumstances, perhaps, under which a
king Of Spain can be contemplated with COM
placency are those of childhood. In Madrid,
l used always to have q sneaking kindness for
the infantes and infantas-'los ninos de
Espana" with their nurses and COVER
nesses, and their escort of dragons and
lancers, used 10 be driven every afternoon in
their gilt coaches drawn by fat mules, through
the Puerta del Sol to the Retro. The guard
at the Palace of the Gobernacion used to turn
out, the trumpets would be fourished bravely
as 'los ninos' went by. Poor little urchins
In the pictures of Don Diego Velasquez, the
ninos, in their little ruffs, and kirtles, and
farthingales, or their little starched doublets
and trunk hose, with their chubby peachy
cheeks, their ruddy lips, and great melting
black eyes, look irresistibly fascinating. All
my infantes and infantas of Don Diego, why
did you not remain for aye at the Toodle-
kins stage? why did you grow up to be
tyrants, and madmen, and bigots, and imbe
Giles, and no better than you should have
been? This Carlos the Fourth, for instance,
for whom King Pippin's Palace was built
made an exceedingly bad end of it. He was
the king who was led by the nose by a worth
less wife, and a more worthless favorite
Godoy, who was called 'Prince of the Peace,
and who lived to be quite forgotten, and to
die in gaITet in Paris. Carlos the Fourth
was the idiot who allowed Napoleon to kidnap
him. He was the father of the eXecrable
Ferdinand the Seventh, the betrayer of his
country, the restorer of the Inquisition, and
the embroiderer of petticoats for the Virgin
King, or rather Prince Pippin, Charles
the Thirds son, is represented in a very
curious style of portraiture, in one OF the