Waterbury evening Democrat., 1893-04-12
THE EscuRIAL.
Tho Great Palace and Monastery of the
 Spanish KInKS-


 spanish Kings.
 From the railway station a dusty road leads up to the village of Escorial, as the Spaniards write it At closer sight the apparent barrenness of the situation diminishes In front of the monastery are vast plantations of dark green trees; here and there are villas with gardens; the village itself, which from distance appears a mere gray spot on the mountain-slope, proves to be of considerable extent and, for Spain, it is neat and comparatively clean; the square in front of the town hall is planted with flowers, and the inhabitants look less beggarly than one would expect The fact is that Esco- rial is a summer resort for the Madrid people, who go there with their fami- lies to escape the heat of the capital. The state itself lets lodgings, and many families hire from the crown apart ments in the interminable buildings that surround the Real Sitio de San Lorenzo, as the Escurial is officially called.
 All along the Main street of the town, which rises and rises until it ends in mere path up the mountain side. the vast rectangular buildings of the de- pendencies of the convent palace con- tinue in gray monotony, block after block, joined together by gal leries and arches that span the lateral streets leading to the central area. On the chimney of one of these dependencies may be seen a stork's nest, the only feature which distin- guishes it from a hundred other chimneys Let us turn down this street, pass under the arch, and here we are with the gray granite leviathan before us The immensity of it takes your breath away; it is not palace, but a cyclopean town; and although the sun may be shining brilliantly, it looks sad and funereal with it's gray walls picked out with staring joints of white mortar, its leaden roofs, it's granite paved surroundings its vol canic aspect This impression of some thing burnt, blasted, plutonian, of something that has passed through ra- ging fire. struck me time after time as I looked upon the structure. Nor is this idea of fire inappropriate. The palace convent itself is built in the form of a gridiron turned upside down, and that in memory of the patron, San Lorenzo. who was broiled by Valerian on a slow fire, and, according to Prudentius, bore his martyrdom with coolness and even jocose irony. for when one side was roasted he had himself turned, and in- vited his cooks to try whether he tasted better underdone or we'll done.
 The plan is a rectangular parallelo- gram. At the four corners are towers with pointed roofs, which represent the feet of the gridiron; the church and the royal palace, which jut out on one facade, form the handle; the interior buildings, which unite together the two longer sides, form the crossbars. On two sides there are gardens, and on two other sides vast open spaces, paved with granite slabs, or strown with gravel, marked off by columns and chains, and further bounded by the immense dependencies which shut off the view of the Escurial from the will lage. After the pyramids, this is the hugest pile of granite that the hand Of man has constructed. Facades, doors, vestibules, domes, towers, all are in harmony with the grandeur and phara- onic character of the edifice. Even the gardens are somber and austere, for they consist exclusively of fountains surrounded by box trees cut in geomet- rical and labyrinthine designs We must not find fault with the building because it has not those qualities which it was never intended to have. The architect was ordered to raise q monument on the plan of gridiron in order to recall the instru- mcnt of torture on which St. Laurence suffered martyrdom. This strange in terfercnce of hagiography with archi- :"cturc is in keeping with the charac- ter of the founder. The vastness of the votive monument is in conformity with the temper of the king upon whose dominions the sun shone "all the twenty-four hours of the natural day" though we may also say, with | the old Duke Braganza, ''he who made such great VOW must have had great fear" Furthermore, we must remem- bcr that the accomplishment of the VOW made under the walls of St. Quen- tin was strengthened by Philips pious | desire to carry out the last wishes of | Charles w., who left for his son the care of providing fitting burial place for | his dynasty. Thus the Escurial is at | once a mausoleum, a monastery, and a palace.-Theodore Child, in Harper's | Magazine.