The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-02-24
A SUNDAY IN SEVILLE.
EARLY MOANING SERYICE IN ONE OF THE GREATEST CATHEDRALS
In Christendom-TO the Top of Abu- YusuIs Muezzsn Tower, Built in the Year lI0G,

Special Correspondence of the Journa
 and Courier.)
 Seville, Spain, Jan. 21.-Such a clamo
 of bells as broke in upon my slumberS
 in the twilight of the morning Woule
 have awakened old Morpheus himself
 The shadoWy courtyard beneath my
 window was still in darkness, thougt
 doubtless the sun was at that momeh
 rising behind the green hills ot tht
 Guadalquvir. Was the city on lire
 Had a foreign foe arrived at the gates!
 Did an earthquake threaten? l had
 promised myself long Sundays rest
 to make up for yesterdays Wearlsome tramps through the winding streets ol
 Seville, but amid such tumult sleer
 was out of the question. So l hurriedly
 dressed and fared forth to see what was
 the matter No; 1t was not q Chicago conflagration, as one might suppose, nor | an Andean earthquake, nor Hawaiian
 volcanic eruption, but just the regular
 gentle way in which Sevlllians usher in
 their holy day. The worst of the rack
 ct, apparently bursting from the skies
 directly overhead came from the iron !
 lofty Giralda, assisted by the bells of a
 hundred churches and of innumerable
 convents and chapels-all swung and
 hammered and rattled and pounded to-
 gether in one ear-torturing tintinnabu- 1 latiou
 In the days of the ,Moors, when this
 Giralda tower was topped with great round globe, plated with burnished gold, | the morning call to prayer was less noi- | sy, but probably more effective. As the first rays of the rising sun illumined the golden ball, from the gallery ilnlnedi- ately below it sounded the muzzen cry,
 so familiar throughout the Moslem
 world: Great is Allah. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His
 prophet. Come to prayer. Prayer is better than sleep. Come to prayer. The cry was caught up and re-echoed from the towers of countless mosques through out the city The awakened people looked up and saw the beautiful Giraldi in the pure light of dawn the figure of the turbaned muzzep standing aloft clear and sharp against the sky, and high above all the gilded domes shining like new sun in the heavens; and men, women and children hastening to their devotions.
 But it appears that Jehovah is not so exacting as Mohammet. In spite of the modern clrnor, the faithful of to- day. if reused t all go to sleep again and the matin-service Is comparatively unttended. I found few black-robed women hurrying along the streets, each followed by her servant carrying the in dispensible prayer-rug, and beggars sleepily bestirring themselves to ply their vocation around the sanctuary doors, but not a man of the better class was to be seen, except here and there a priestly form under cowl or shovel hat. Evidently the gentlemen of Seville like the sterner and more sinful sex else where, expect to gain heavens clemency through the prayers of their female rel atives.
 Inside the great cathedral the effect of dimly lighted altars, magnificent dis. tances" and endless perspective of clus- tered columns is like the awe and gloom of a mighty forest in a moonless night. Even at sunniest midday it is pervaded by mysterious twilight, notwithstanding it's ninety-three enormous windows of stained glass, wrought by the most fla nous Flemish artists of the sixteenth l century, We know that this Seville ca l thedral is one of the largest in Chris | tendon, second only to St. Peters, in l Rome; that it's inner parallelogram is iS1 feet long, 315 feet wide and I'll feet | high from the central domesto the | checkered pavement of black and white | ,1 hot icIa oh large enough for church, innumerable | pillars supporting the slxty-five arches of the valued roof, thirty cbapels each l museum of art, and eighty-two altars, attended by an army of priests; but nere figures fail to convey any idea of ts vastness and massive grandeur. The colossal columns alone, so huge and ligh make one marvel, as do the pyra nids of Egypt, how human strength 'ould place such monstrous stones in an bright position and in symmetrical ows. Everything is on a gigantic scale rom the paschal candle, which contains nore than ton of wax, set on bronze 'andelabrun twenty-five feet high to he great organ of fiftyfour hundred 'ipes No wonder the editice was a lundred years in building, and after i've centuries is not yet pronounced omplete! The chapter which began it, n 1401, predicted that future ages would call them mad" for undertaking 0 vast a structure. It was the special york of four generations, and ten or welve generations have already wor- hipped in it and passed to their re- fard. Compared with such lapses of me, how little appears the life of one nan, or even of one generation. While he service was going on I knelt in a i'm corner and tried to realize the sur oundings and my own relat tive insignif- ,ance. To-day wanderer from the 1T off western world sits here full of edith and hope; tomorrow she has one her way. and In little time has from the face of the earth. he has vanished into the ocean of eter- ity and left not the smallest ripple pon the surface. Suddenly the great 'gan began to make the air trembe here are two of them in this cathe- I ral, both of size proportioned to the I lace, and of tremendous volume. At rst it emitted only faint whisperings of s mighty voice. gradually swelling in $ )mpass until it filled the lofty roof Y ith melody and the church militant | emed to join with the church trium- | lant-"Oh, Lamb of God. who taketh 0