Morning journal and courier., 1888-01-28
russet supporlI.

doIlio-and yellow cross; and anywhere
 everywhere all manner of structures, orsls. yellow or royal in the color of 8 crushed huckleberry.
 But you cannot look at it all through this glowing light and air, and underneath this marvellous sky without the consciousness, de- spite all the odds of your conservatism and art notions, that these strange contrasts rest the eye in this fervid cline, and that it grows upon you from sense of grotesqueness to one of fitness and propriety, and at length to agreeableness and harmony. You may ex- plain this, or rather be content with it, on grounds of reason logical enough from their Saracenie origin; but you never wholly rest in the idea that you are oBly in Cuba and not five thousand miles to the east, and in time half thousand years behind us. You may finally perhaps account for 1t all because it is Italy in atmosphere and sky; Granada and Constantinople in architecture; the Midland in landscape and Oriental color. Nor when set down within the city and deterninedly bent on analysing as far as may be, through the innumerable aids of street scenes of any country's metropolis, can you escape this constant sense of immeasurable distance from your own inexpressibly different time and conditions. Spain has not 50 character istic Spaniards; Egypt no darker olive in faces; Turkey has no more picturesque groupings of inhabitants; the Tyrol sends to the villages on market-days no more distinct peasantry; Asia has no more marked human studies than she has sent here; the far Malay was never so much Malay in his own cline; Italy has a no more revolting lazzaroni; the iupgles of Africa herd no blacker brutes than half-naked walk these streets, many with the tribal brand still scarring the shine on their sable jaws; and no more lustrous, sense ravishing eyes ever glowed through the pages of "Lalla Rookh" than burn like black diamonds in beds of pearl beneath the witching veils of the ineomparable Habanas. UncenseiousIy to itself here is life condi- toned and environed as weirdly as in Barbary; as romantically as in old Spain; as pitiably as with princes paupers; as couchant and asleep as in Morocco; as pastoral as pulses through "La Nencia;'' as narcotic as in the poppy lands of the Turks; often as cruelty oppressive as in Russia; as dreamful as in poem-painted Venice; as lustrous as in ethe- real Italy; and as brain -bewitchipg and trop- ically-sensuous as where, in perpetual May, the glowing enehantress, Armida, yielded her sweets to the enthralled Tancred-who ought to have been back there with Godfrey shying rocks at the heads of pagans oyer the walls of old Jerusalem.
 The architecture of the city lends much interest to street sights and scenes. There is no quarter ill Havana devoted wholly to business; none wholly to homes. They are delightfully."- commingled and often furnish most entertaining studies. There is an old
 
 always has special fascination for me, and in my wanderings here I find myself visiting it repeatedly The building, which has with stood the ravages of centuries, with the pla- ga in front, and indeed nearly the entire an- eient quarter about it, was once held by the eeclesiastics, and this then noble structure was the archbishop's palace and monastery of the San Franciscan brothers. Then it was seized by the government; eventually became the most famous hotel in Cuba, but finally fell into disuse and half ruin; and now in it's old age has become venerable posada or lodging-house, forgotten by the Spanish elite, but still housing many an old don who clings to it from motives of economy or the more sentimental habit of companionship.
 You could drive four coaches abreast through it's ground floor hall, and up it's broad stone staircase, hanked by pondrous ornaments in iron, brass and bronze. The building is but three stories high, but arrived at the second floor it's ancient noble interior is easily recognized. The court is perhaps two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide and opens to the matchless Cuban sky. Superb floors of tessellated marble, patched here and there with cheap earthen tiling, ex- tend to and through all the spacious sur rounding apartments. The walls from floors to galleries are set with wondrous Spanish tiling in blue and white, with surface like rare porcelain, while at every angle and niche is some relic of priceless statuary and bronze which once gave the spot an exalted ecclesi- astic interest and rich classic beauty. On this second floor is broad promenade run ming around the interior sides of the struc- ture, which must have been in the old times 8 luxurious lounging place for mediation or siesta. This is broidered on the one side by noble pillars and balustrades of curiously. wrought iron and brass, while opposite are entrances to what were once grand salons and apartments. Above the huge doors of these still remain many studies in co.ored glass decoration, which for brilliancy and luster of crystal, quaint arrangement of con- trasting and blending colors, and particular