how eminent his work as artist would have been, had he decided to
cultivate that field instead of literature.

[Footnote 1: The complete title of the work is _Historia de los
Templos de España, publicada bajo la protección de SS. MM. AA. y muy
reverendos señores arzobispos y obispos--dirigida por D. Juan de la
Puerta Vizcaino y D. Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. Tomo I, Madrid, 1857.
Imprenta y Estereotipia Española de los Señores Nieto y Compañía._]

Essentially an artist in temperament, he viewed all things from the
artist's standpoint. His distaste for politics was strong, and his
lack of interest in political intrigues was profound. "His artistic
soul, nurtured in the illustrious literary school of Seville," says
Correa, "and developed amidst Gothic Cathedrals, lacy Moorish and
stained-glass windows, was at ease only in the field of tradition. He
felt at home in a complete civilization, like that of the Middle Ages,
and his artisticopolitical ideas and his fear of the ignorant crowd
made him regard with marked predilection all that was aristocratic and
historic, without however refusing, in his quick intelligence, to
recognize the wonderful character of the epoch in which he lived.
Indolent, moreover, in small things,--and for him political parties
were small things,--he was always to be found in the one in which were
most of his friends, and in which they talked most of pictures,
poetry, cathedrals, kings, and nobles. Incapable of hatred, he never
placed his remarkable talent as a writer at the service of political
animosities, however certain might have been his gains."[1]

[Footnote 1: Ramón Rodriguez Correa, _Prólogo_, in _Obras de
Becquer_, vol. I, xvi.]