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


dwarfs who were scholars and gentlemen, as
well as monstrosities, for was not Alypius,
cited above. famous logician and philoso-
pher? and did not Richard Gibson, Esq,
teach Queen Anne the art of drawing, and
proceed on a special mission to Holland to
impart artistic instruction to the Princess of
Orange? after dwelling on the dwarfs who
formed part of the retinue of William of
Normandy when he invaded England, and
who held the bride of the Emperor Othos
horse; after remembering the dwarfs whom
Dominichno and Rafaelle, Velasquez and
Paul Veronese have introduced in their
pictures; after this rich enjoyment of
dwarfish record / am thrown back on Gene
raj Tom Thumb. / grant the General,
and the Commodore, and their ladylzind a
decent need of acknowledgment. confess
them calm, self-possessed, well bred, and
innocuous; but / have no heart to attend
their 'levees." Mutt, in the caricature of a
naval uniform, does not speak to my heart;
l have no ambition to see Thumb travestied
as the late Emperor Napoleon-that con-
uueror could, upon occasion, cause himself to
appear even smaller than Thumb-nor am L
desirous of purchasing Photographic cartes
de visite of Minnie Warren My dwarf is the
gorgeously attired little pagod of the middle
ages; the dwarf who pops out of pie at q
court banquet; the dwarf who runs between
the court TESTERS legs and trips him up; the
dwarf of the king of Brobdignag, who is
jealous of Gulliver, and souses his rival in a
bowl of cream and gets soundly whipped for
his pains. Or, in default of this pigmy, give
me back the dwarf of my youth in his sham
three-storied house, with his tinkling bell and
sounding pistol.
1t is not to be, I presume. These many
years past have moodily disbursed in divers
parts of the world sundry francs, lire, guild
ers, florins, thalers, reals, dollars, piastres,
and mark-banco for the sight of dwarfs; but
they (Thumb and his company includedD have
failed to come up to my standard of dwarfish
excellence. Did you ever meet with anything
or anybody that could come up to that same
standard? Man never is, but always to be
blest; still, although my dreams of dwarfs
have not as yet been fully realized, have
been able to enjoy the next best thing to
fulflment. 1 call to mind perhaps the Won
derfulest dwarfs house existing on the sur
face of this crazy globe. 1t is a house in the
construction and the furniture of which many
thousands of pounds were expended; and it
was built by king for his son. 1t is for this
reason that have called the diminutive man
sion ''The Palace of King Pippin."
King Pippin's palace is in Spain, and has
been shamefully neglected by English tourists
in that interesting country. For my part
think that it would be great advantage to
picturesque literature if the Alhambra and
the Alcazar, the Bay of Cadiz and the Rock
of Gibraltar the Sierra Morena, and the
Mezquita of Cordova, the Cathedral of
Burgos, and the Bridge of Toledo, could be
eliminated altogether from Spanish topo-
graphy By those means travellers in Spain
would have little more leisure to attend to
O number of ''cOSds de Esp0R0" which are at
present passed by almost without notice.
Among them is an incompatible dwarf house
of mine. You will observe that have ex
cluded the Escorial from the catalogues of
places which English sight-seers in the
Peninsula might do we'll, for time to
forget. The Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo
must needs be visited, for King Pippih's Palace
is sadependency of that extraordinary pile. Few
tourists have the courage to admit, in print at
least, that this palace-monastery, or monas-
tery-palace of the Escorial is a gigantic bore
When it was my lot to visit it, my WEAKNESS
began even before I had entered its halls;
for in the railway carriage which conveyed
our party from Madrid to the "Gridiron
station" there was a fidgetty little Anda-
lusian, a maker Of guitar strings, think
he was, at Utrera, who was continually
rebounding on the cushions like a parched
pea in a fre-shovel, and crying out to us,
''El edifcio, caballeros donde esta ell edi-
ficio?" 1t was his first visit to the northern
provinces of his native country, and he was
burning to see the 'edifcio" To him, evil
IDENTIFY, there was but one edifice in the world,
and that was the Escorial. When at last he
caught sight of its sullen facades, its stunted
dome and blue slate roofs, the little Andalu-
sian fell into kind of ecstacy, and protruded
so much of his body out of the carriage
window that L expected him every moment to
disappear altogether. To my surprise, how
ever, when the train drew up at the station he
did not alight, but murmering the conyen-
tional ''PueS, Senores, echemos un cigarito,"
''Well, gentlemen, let us make little cigar,
calmly rolled up tube of paper with tobacco,
lit it, and adding, ''Vamos al Norte, sub
sided into sleep, and, the train aiding, pur-
sued his journey to the Pyrenees, or Paris, or
the North Pole, or wheresoever else he was
bound. He was clearly philosopher. He
had seen Eel edifcio" from afar off. Was
not that enough? dare say, when he went
back to Utrera he talked guide-book by the
page to his friends, and minutely described
all the marvels of the interior of the palace.
| rarely think of the little Andalusian with
out recalling Sheridan's remark to his son
Tom about the coal pits-"Cant you sag
you've been down ?"
The ''Edifce" itself is really and without
exaggeration bore. The good pictures have
all been taken away to swell the attractions
of the Real Museo at Madrid; the Jolly
monks have been driven out and replaced By
few meagre, Misunderstanding, shovel
hated seminarists (even these, since thu
last political earthquake in Spain may have
disappeared), and it is with eXtrem9
difficulty that you can persuade the
| custodes to show you the embroidered vest
ments in the sacristy, or the illuminate
manuscripts in the library. The guardian
OF every public building in Spain have set