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CHAPTER VII. Story of the Marvelous and Portentous Tower. | HE morning sun shone brightly upon the cliff-built towers of Toledo, when King Roderick issued out of the gate of the city at the head of a numerous train of courtiers and cavaliers, and crossed the bridge that bestrides the deep rocky bed of the Tagus. The shining cavalcade wound up the road that leads among the mountains, aud soon came in sight of the necromantic tower. Of this renowned edifice marvels are related by the ancient Arabian and Spanish chroniclers, " and I doubt much," adds the venerable Agapida, " whether many readers will not consider the whole as a cunningly devised fable, sprung from an Oriental imagination ; but it is not for me to reject a fact which is recorded by all those writers who are the fathers of our national history; a fact too, which is as well attested as most of the remarkable events in the story of Don Roderick. None but light and inconsiderate minds," continues the good friar, " do hastily reject the marvelous. To the thinking mind the whole world is enveloped in mystery, and everything is full of type and portent. To such a mind the r ecromantic towerof Toledo will appear as one of those wondrous monuments of the olden time ; one -if those Egyptian and Chaldaic piles, storied with hidden wisdom and mystic prophecy, which have been devised in past ages, when man yet enjoyed an intercourse with high and spiritual natures, and when human foresight partook of divination." This singular tower was round and of great height and grandeur, erected upon a lofty rock, and surrounded by crags and precipices. The foundation was supported by four brazen lions, each taller than a cavalier onhorseback. The walls were built of small pieces of jasper and various colored marbles, not larger ...
