In spite of the somewhat vaunting spirit of his appeal, the wager of
battle decided against the Arab; it was the Crescent that fell, the
Cross that prevailed; in the very heart of Abderrahman's mosque a
Christian cathedral rises. Yet in the very heart of Philip's temple to
the spirit of the cloister, the desert, the martyrdom, one feels that a
great deal could be said on Abderrahman's side. This is a world which
will not be renounced, in fact, and even in Christian Spain it has
triumphed in the arts and sciences beyond its earlier victories in
Moslem Spain. One finds Philip himself, with his despatches in that high
nook, rather than among the bronze-gilt royalties at the high altar,
though his statue is duly there with those of his three wives. The group
does not include that poor Bloody Mary of England, who should have been
the fourth there, for surely she suffered enough for his faith and him
to be of his domestic circle forever.




IV


It is the distinct merit of the Escorial that it does not, and perhaps
cannot take long in doing; otherwise the doer could not bear it. A look
round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high
altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the
infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the
funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though
there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the
chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes
startling canvases, there is not much that need really keep you from the