placed four brazen apples, east by an Arab
alchemist of Sicily, costing fifty thousand
pounds, and which were, in thirteen hundred
and ninety-five, thrown down by an earthquake,
such as has just been felt in Seville
since my visit. It was here (to purge
ourselves of the intolerable torment of facts and
dates) that, in our Henry the Third's reign,
San Fernando took the city finally from the
Moors, a Scottish knight first ascended the
Giralda. and proclaimed the conquest, just as
Cardinal Mendoza did from the bell-tower
of the Alhambra. Fortywinks is a painfully
inquiring man.

Higher and higher: curator, longing to
throw us out of a loop; but, by strong
screwings up, contriving to be sullenly civil.
Suddenly drags us into a sort of cupboard-room,
unlocks a door in the wall, and shows
us, with the proud triumph of a Beafeater
showing the regalia to a group of country
people, a clock made by José Cordero in
seventeen hundred and sixty-four—the
greatest lion of Seville—but which replaced
a curious old jotter of Time's breathings, date
fourteen hundred, the first ever made in
Spain. I, having no mechanical head, see
nothing but a skeleton world of shining brass
wheels, indented cogs, steel weights, and
shining metal surfaces. Fortywinks sees no
more in it, though I know he really believes,
that, if he gave his mind seriously to it, he
could invent a new steam-engine. The curator
scowls at us as two brainless, atheistic
idiots, and shuts the clock-case with a
contemptuous bang, giving us a look as if he had
struck us: which Fortywinks returns with a
grand glance of austere defiance. Already we
are above the old Moorish shields of the tower;
those last square loops in the roof, light the
last tier of the Moorish brickwork; and now,
passing a walled passage, which outside is
arcaded with pointed engrailed arches, go
through a door and come out on the
airy and lofty bell turret; the last height
but one that we can get to below the high
globe on which the Italian figure of Faith
stands. Above our heads is the roof, with
the parapet crowned by stone globes and
urns and carved bells, and, at the four corners
the huge iron lilies, four or five feet high,
which are attributes of the Virgin, the
guardian and special deity of Seville. From
this again, rise the four lessening pierced
turrets, which nobody but the builders have
ever ascended.

But, in the bell turret, we are in a semi-dark
covered passage, built round the core of the
roots of the upper tower, lighted on each of the
four sides by five long arched loops for bells.
Here the Mueddin once summoned the faithful
to prayers, crying, with sonorous voice. " Come
to prayer—come to prayer. Prayer is better
than sleep—prayer is better than sleep "—
and then the short battle-creed, " La allah
illaha, wa Mahmúd rasool ullah;" "There is
but one God, and Mohammed is his
prophet."  Here, where the hawks wheel and
whistle, are the baptised bells, the names of
their particular saints inscribed over them.
I read Saint Barbara, Saint Peter, and Santa
Maria. Each bell has a special purpose as well
as a special name. This bell is for marriage,
that bell for death, this for fire, that for
baptism. I think of Schiller as I read their
names, and wonder at the worthy patriarch
of them, La Gorda (the fat one).

I should mention that the Spanish bell-ringing
is (like the Italian) only a jostling clash
and clamour, without regard to time, chime,
sequence, or harmony. It is merely meant to
scare the devil during thunder, to invite rain,
and frighten goblins—which I should think
it might well do. The large mouthed, loud
voiced bells are hung on great green
cross-beams of wood, with a counterbalance rising
from them in a straight line with the bell.
To the top of these counterweights, the bell-rope
is fastened; so that when the ringer
wants to sound, he twists the rope round and
round this, till all the rope is wound out.
Once at the end of the tether away it goes
back again, the bell tumbling head over heels
with a clatter enough to waken the Cid.
Sometimes, when the bell is large, these lazy
bunglers simply tie a rope to the clapper,
and so beat out their sacred music.

As I am staring about, in a helpless
traveller way, at the suspended bells above
my head, a sadder and stranger object than
even that fantastic fiction, Quasimodo, comes
through a door-way towards us, in a blank,
purposeless way, apparently to ring the bell
of the hour, for it is just noon. He is a lean,
shambling, pale stripling, perhaps twenty,
but not looking more than seventeen; so
puny and faded is his youth. As he
approaches nearer to the great bell, I see, by
the way he feels the walls with his hands,
as well as—now he comes nearer—by the
dimness and pulpiness of his eyes, that he is
blind. This is poor Diego, the blind idiot,
who is the bellringer of the Giralda. Poor
and blind, he loves the bells like his own
brothers, and has names for all of them. He
knows all their tricks and all their voices:
chiding, warning, loving, wooing, praying,
summoning, or alarming. He likes to be up
there when there is lightning; and he spends
hours there on summer evenings high above
the flocks of brown burnt roofs: which he
calls his sheep. He comes there too to cower
from the fierce deluge rain of the south.

Mercy of heaven ! see him now, how he
springs up in that high arch under the
big bell, and winds the cord round the
counterweight; how he throws himself at
the rope, and plunges almost through the
loop, laughing vacantly as the great bell
tosses and tumbles and clamours above his
head! It is terrible to see the strong recoil
of the rope, as each stroke all but sucks him
through the opening, more than two
hundred feet to the stones below. I put my