moonlit Grenada fashion, without the sparkle and colour of Seville or the mundane savour of Madrid, Toledo incarnates in its cold, detached, proud, pious way all that we feel as Spain the aristocratic, Spain the theocratic.  To this city on a crag there once came, by way of Venice, a wanderer from Crete.  Toledo was the final frame of the strange genius of El Greco; he made it the consecrate ground of his new art.  It is difficult to imagine him developing in luxuriant Italy as he did in Spain.  His nature needed a sombre and magnificent background; this city gave it to him; for no artist can entirely isolate himself from life, can work in vacuo.  And El Greco’s shivering, spiritual art could have been born on no other soil than Toledo.  He is as original as the city.

The place shows traces of its masters—­Romans, Goths, Saracens, and Christians.  It is, indeed, as much Moorish as Christian—­the narrow streets, high, narrow houses often windowless, the inner court replacing the open squares that are to be found in Seville.  Miscalled the “Spanish Rome,” Gautier’s description still holds good:  Toledo has the character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of a seraglio.  The enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visigothic Christianity, is, next to Seville’s, the most beautiful in Spain.  Such a facade, such stained glass, such ceilings!  Blanco Ibanez has written pages about this structure.  The synagogues, the Moorish mosque, the Alcazar are picturesque.  And then there are the Puente de Alcantara, the Casa de Cervantes, the Puerta del Sol, the Prison of the Inquisition, the Church of Santo Tome—­which holds the most precious example of Greco’s art—­the Sinagogo del Transito, the Church of San Vicente—­with Grecos—­Santo Domingo (more Grecos); the Convent, near the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, contains the Museo Provincial in which were formerly a number of Grecos; many of these have been transferred to the new Museo El Greco, founded by the Marquis de la Vega-Inclan, an admirer of the painter.  This museum was once the home of Greco, and has been restored, so that if the artist returned he might find himself in familiar quarters.  Pictures, furniture, carvings of his are there, while the adjoining house is rebuilt in a harmonious style of old material.  Remain various antique patios or court-like interiors, the sword manufactory, and the general view from the top of the town.  El Greco’s romantic portrayment of his adopted city is as true now as the day it was painted—­one catches a glimpse of the scene when the contrasts of light and shadow are strong.  During a thunderstorm illuminated by blazing shafts of Peninsular lightning Toledo resembles a page torn from the Apocalypse.