head out under the bells to reconnoitre, and
Fortywinks, to match me, does the same
in the next loop. The result of my look is,
that I am in a cloistered turret, just above
the beautiful Moorish arcade that seems so
much Mechlin lace turned to stone. Above
this small corbel ledge runs a sort of band
of inlaid panel, in small patterned squares
and triangles, very pleasant to the eye. From
this, spring the five long-arched loops on each
side of the square,

Where the bells rock, swing, and sway,
In their merry wanton way,
Swinging in and swinging out,
With a clamour and a shout,
One and two, and one and two—
Clishing, clashing, brazen crashing,
With a tumult and a sound,
From the belfry to the ground,
Over roof and over tower;
With a maddened swelling power,
As if stern old Sultan Time,
Growing weary of the chime,
Were despotically intent
On his final message sent,
Crying with a savage clamour,
As he smites with brazen hammer,
Through the heat and through the gloom,
With mechanic voice of doom,
Careless as the headsman be,
Of the blow that sets us free—
"One-more-day-is-dead-and-gone—
One-more-day-is-dead-and-gone."

Having well noted the dark level of the
two side loops, and the beautiful ribbed
curve of the central doorway, the broad
cornice above, with the dark and white
lozenges of stonework, and the pierced
roundels which are mouth pieces for the
bell music to pour out of—now unable to
bear any longer the sight of Diego, who
makes me giddy by throwing himself
suicidally at the bell-cords, apparently trying
to hang himself, and plunge head foremost
over the battlements at the same time
—I mount the inner staircase, whose stone
steps are scooped out by generations of feet,
and get out into the breezier air of the
highest terrace of the Tower of Prayer,
though the lessening peaks go soaring eighty
or ninety feet still above me. I am now up
close to the green, iron tree-lilies, fixed in
huge Domdaniel iron jars, pierced with stars,
and mounted on stone pyramids of bells. I
can now, which is a satisfaction, put my
hand on the stone spheres and hollow urns or
lanthorns, that crown the parapet. Below
these, when I glance over, I see a panelling
of dark marked bands and small pediments
crowning the greater bell-arches below,
from which worn heads of guardian saints
look out, like men who are alarmed at night
by a sudden cry of fire—or like quiet people
who thought they had gone to bed at an inn,
but awoke suddenly in the night discovering
it to be a belfry. Behind me rises the
mysterious, unvisitable lesser turret, topped
by a balustraded parapet, fairer than all the
minarets of Seville. Fortywinks utters
nothing but the singular interjection,
"Scissars! " at minute-gun intervals.

As my eye travels up still further,
it sees a smaller turret rising from the last
I described. It is hollow, and supported
on parallel square shafts which force it up
to the round cornice, and the square sharp
ledges, bearing in great Roman letters the
scriptural legend from the Proverbs, xviii.
10, Nomen Domini fortissima turris, " God's
name is a strong tower (of defence)." A
beautiful consecration of it to God's services
by the monkish builder. Yet, here it does
not stop—no. The monk half way up to
heaven, stayed but to carve his prayer. Up
soars a smaller and finer turret—up like
a flower just shot from its cup and sheath
of leaves; up beyond the stone urns and
pierced filagree scroll-work, which give the
Giralda the look of one of those gothic
font-covers, or rich pinnacled tabernacle,
wrought by Venetian goldsmiths, who
prayed and struggled as they worked. Again,
from the round cable-girding and base of
moulding, rises, with fresh aspiration, another
hollow turret from the rim of vases; another,
small as the poop-lantern of an admiral's
ship, a mere airy cradle for the whistling
falcon to swoop round, and to watch its
young in. From the stone cup of this—not
larger does it look than my hat—rises a
coping of filagree work, then a shimmering
globe, that looks no larger than a gilt bolus,
and on this at last balances the great Italian
bronze figure of La Fé (Faith) just as it
was set there in fifteen hundred and
sixty-eight, by Bartolemè Morel. From my high
terrace of vantage it looks no larger than
a chimney-ornament; but, in truth, it
weighs, with its banner, five thousand
pounds, and though only a weathercock, is
fourteen feet high—in fact, preposterously
colossal.

This female weathercock figure of Faith is
a stock butt for the wits of Seville. A female
figure for Faith, say they, and not merely a
female figure, which might have been pardonable,
but a weathercock figure for what should
be fixed and immutable as the sure set
mountain! Protestants think it suitable to the
perpetual changes and contrivances of the
church, whose popes cancel each other's
deeds; who throw off perpetual fresh sects
and heresies, and call them new monastic
orders; who, if the age is cruel, are cruel; if
merciful, are merciful; who condemn new
truths, yet resuscitate old errors; who have
turned Christianity into a republic and eke
a despotism; whose vicegerent is supported
by foreign swords and bayonets. Even old,
fat, studious canons, nestled in cathedral
closes, have their pot shot at it and quote
Seneca: "What is more unstable than air?—
Lightning. What than lightning?—Fame.
What than fame ?— Woman. What than