But her greatest prosperity and
glory came to Seville with the discovery of America. Not Columbus only,
but all his most famous contemporaries, sailed from the ports of her
coasts; she was the capital of the commerce with the new world, ruling
and regulating it by the oldest mercantile tribunal in the world, and
becoming the richest city of Spain. Then riches flowered in the letters
and arts, especially the arts, and Herrera, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo,
and Zurburan were born and flourished in Seville. In modern times she
has taken a prominent part in political events. She led in the patriotic
war to drive out the armies of Napoleon, and she seems to have been on
both sides in the struggle for liberal and absolutist principles, the
establishment of the brief republic of 1868, and the restoration of the
present monarchy.
Through all the many changes from better to Worse, from richer to
poorer, Seville continued faithful to the ideal of religious unity which
the wise Isabel and the shrewd Ferdinand divined was the only means of
consolidating the intensely provincial kingdoms of Spain into one nation
of Spaniards. Andalusia not being Gothic had never been Aryan, and it
was one of her kings who carried his orthodoxy to Castile and
established it inexpugnably at Toledo after he succeeded his heretical
father there.
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