Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/731

20, 1863.] 



to be seen the spoils of many secularised monasteries; the long corridors are hung all over with saints, virgins, and martyrs, treated in every imaginable variety of style; over the glassless windows pictures are hung, which, thus cruelly neglected, are fast rotting, the paint cracking and falling off, from both canvass and panel. Some originals of Juan de Joanes, the chief of the Valencian school, are worthy of all admiration; his style is Raphaelesque, and his productions have the same monotony, as those of that great master; endless are the representations of “Christ holding the wafer,” and “The Last Supper,” which hardly differ from each other in the minutest particular. Borras, whose imagination and handling were freer than his master’s, has here some splendid pictures, of which in a short time not a trace will remain, though we vainly tried to instil some respect for them into the minds of the guardians, by offering 1000l.. all round. The monastery itself is a grand old building, built in quadrangular form round a fine old garden, where a group of old palms tower over a ruined fountain, overgrown with ferns. The many palms, aloes, and prickly pears which grow about Valencia, together with its blue and white tiled mosques, give it an Eastern look. The view from the cathedral tower is very curious: the town lies so compactly together, that it seems like a child’s toy packed in a box. From the height, whence you survey it, the streets are scarcely discernible, and it appears a mass of red tiled roofs. Rich plains stretch on every side down to the sea, and to the not very distant range of mountains, enlivened by white houses, sparkling among mulberry and orange groves. The cathedral itself is not very attractive. Like all other Spanish churches it has no chairs, and it was amusing to watch the different worshippers when the time came to kneel down: plump on the hard pavement knelt the devout peasant; the dandy carefully spread a handkerchief before him to preserve his cherished pantaloons from contact with the dust and mud, and then knelt cautiously down, resting his hands on the handle of his cane, while the