Note 4 — Royal Funeral Rites at Manila

Its ground space and arch occupied all the space of the principal chapel, until it met the very ceiling of the temple; and had the capacity of the place allowed more, the execution of so extensive a contrivance would not have been confined to so narrow limits. The height of the socle was six feet, and it was thirty-nine feet wide. In the center of it arose the catafalque, which was octagonal in form. It was composed of two structures made after the best ideas of architecture. The first structure was composed of sixteen columns, with foundations on a like number of bases and pedestals crowned with beautiful and curiously wrought capitals. On top of them arose the entablatures with their friezes, architraves, fluted mouldings, and pediment of the arch crowned with balusters—all regulated to the requirements of art without detracting one jot from the idea [that they expressed]. That structure ended in a cupola,4 which well supplied the place of the sky, when it was seen reflecting the lights, and bathed in splendor. The cornices, mouldings, representations of fruit, mouldings above, and brackets, were of a bronze color, so cunningly done that they appeared rather the work of nature than the imitation of art. The pedestals and capitals, touched with beaten gold, heightened the fiction of the bronze which the brush and hand of the artist feigned and imitated. The shafts of the columns, with their pedestals, friezes and architraves were so vivid an imitation of jasper that one would believe them to have been cut from that mineral; or that they had stolen the confused variety of its colors, so that one’s sight was mistaken in it. Their beauty was heightened by the brilliancy of silver work or broken crystals with which they were wreathed. In the center of that structure shone forth majestically the urn, which was placed under a canopy of solid silver covered with a rich violet cloth of gold, with two cushions of the same material, and and her of white cloth of gold, on which reposed the royal crown. On its pedestal was seen a stanza of ten verses, as follows: