At each corner of these ancient houses
frequently is a tower, the roof of which rises in a square pyramidal
form, or, if the tower be round, in a round pyramidal form. Arched
passages, gloomy and grimy, pass from one street to another. The lower
town creeps with busy life, and swarms like an ant-hill; but if you climb
the half-precipitous streets, you find yourself among ancient and stately
mansions, high roofed, with a strange aspect of grandeur about them,
looking as if they might still be tenanted by such old magnates as dwelt
in them centuries ago. There is also a cathedral, the older portion
exceedingly fine; but it has been adorned at some modern epoch with a
Grecian portico,--good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping with the
edifice which it prefaces. This being a Protestant country, the doors
were all shut,--an inhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is
funny enough that a stranger generally profits by all that is worst for
the inhabitants of the country where he himself is merely a visitor.
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