Córdova is as different a place from Toledo as Monte Carlo is from Manchester. Toledo, sombre, austere, overpowering in its impressive solemnity; and Córdova, gay, vivacious, flashing its pervading whitewash in the sunshine beneath the clearest sky in Europe. And yet Córdova is one of the most ancient of cities; its record of all the races that have fought for it, made it, died for it during twenty centuries, are visible on every side. A thousand years ago it boasted upwards of a million inhabitants, three hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and six hundred fondas. Its cathedral was formerly a mosque: before that it had been a basilica: and it had commenced life as a Roman temple dedicated to Janus. The Carthagenians styled the city the “Gem of the South.” Cæsar half destroyed it, and slaughtered 28,000 of its inhabitants, because it had sided with Pompey. Under the Goths its importance diminished; but it became, under the Moors, the Athens of the West, and was the

successful rival of Bagdad and Damascus as a seat of learning, and the centre of European civilisation. It was the birthplace of Seneca, Lucan, Averroes, and Juan de Mena, the Chaucer of Spain; and here, in the Church of San Nicolas, Gonzalo de Córdova, the great captain of Spain, was baptised.

To-day Córdova is no more than an overgrown village in size and rank, a village with open-air market-places, and winding, uneven streets. Theophile Gautier wrote, in his delightful graphic style of the streets of Córdova, that “they have a more thoroughly African appearance than those of any other town in Spain. One threads one’s way between interminable whitewashed walls, their scanty windows guarded by heavy iron bars, over a pebbly pavement so rough that it is like the bed of a torrent, littered with straw from the burdens of innumerable donkeys.” These streets are traversed by happy, light-hearted people, who would seem to have no memory of the past, and no thought for the morrow. But the city contains a mosque which gives one a better idea of the power and magnificence of the Moors than anything else in Spain, not excepting even the Alhambra. This wondrous Arab temple—huge, wonderful, fairy-like in its Eastern gorgeousness—with its thousand marble columns, is unique in beauty as it is in curious detail. It is said that these columns were brought, already shaped, from various centres of the old civilised world—Carthage, Constantinople, Alexandria, Nîmes, and Narbonne—while others came from the marble quarries of the Sierra Morena, from Loja and Cadiz. Black, gray, dark green, and dull red in colour, they stretch out on every side, and form a seemingly boundless forest of marble pillars.

Concerning the impression made by this many-columned mosque, Gautier says: “You appear to be walking about in a roofed forest rather than in a building: whichever direction you turn to, your eye strays along rows of columns, which cross each other, and lengthen out endlessly, like marble trees that have risen spontaneously from the soil.” De Amicis has written of it in similar terms: “Imagine a forest; fancy yourself in the thickest portion of it, and that you can see nothing but trunks of trees. So, in this mosque, on whichever side you look, the eye loses itself among the columns. It is a forest of marble, whose confines one cannot discover.” It stands, this dazzling Mezquita, in the centre of the Court of Orange Trees, whose rows were planted to correspond with the lines of the columns in the mosque. Above the dark, shining foliage and flame-colour fruit rises the creamy delicate belfry-tower, rival of Sevilla’s Giralda.

Some day, when “the wandering footsteps of my life” take me again to Spain, I shall go to Córdova, and seek out this Patio de los Naranjos; and among its pleasant fountains, and its blithesome, indolent gossipers, I shall recall the impressions of my former visit. And, if possible, I shall again visit the city in May. The guide-books warn the traveller against going there in that month, when the annual fair is held. I know that fair, as the suspicious Brother Goldfinch used to say, with its booths erected under the trees, its band and its coloured lanterns, its dear dates and its cigar lotteries, its gaiety, its gaudy mantillas, its laughing, dark-eyed girls and gesticulating men, and its culminating display of fireworks. I know it, and I can conceive no reason why the guide-book makers should endeavour to

deprive other visitors of the enjoyment I got out of the innocent and exhilarating experience.

Everything about Córdova—the streets, the squares, the houses, with their patios—are small, lovely, mysterious, and Eastern. The ground-work is white—white and smooth are the walls and the houses—but the detail is a blaze of colours—roses, and oranges, and pinks forming a colour scheme of Nature’s own designing. The youthful gaiety of the town has overgrown its ancient might and sombreness, even as gay flowers, burst from between the ancient stones of a ruined castle. It has a charm that fills the heart with a sad pleasure; a mysterious spell that one cannot resist. The cathedral is a fortress from without, but within it is a palace of enchantment; the town is a citadel become a pleasure garden; it is a museum of Roman and Arabian antiquities, peopled with blithesome men and women. Within a mile or two of Córdova once flourished Medina Az-zahra, which was one of the most marvellous works of architecture, the most superb earthly palace, and the most delicious garden in the world, and Zahira, built by the powerful Almansur, the governor of the kingdom. Both these superb cities have been destroyed, and not even the ruins are to be found.

The Castiles.

SOME of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated in the two Castiles—silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind; and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the Burgos of the older province. Burgos, a representative Gothic Castilian city, was long the capital of the kingdom of Castile and León, and its cathedral ranks among the finest in Spain. What voyager that crosses the Pyrenees is not acquainted with Burgos Cathedral? The train that hurls the traveller across the mountainous boundary dumps him in Burgos, and being there, he proceeds forthwith to inspect the Cathedral. He is, it may be assumed, new to Spain, the Spanish cathedrals have the charm of novelty, and the first one he visits he does thoroughly. Unless he is an architect, or an archæologist, he will expend over this first specimen of the Peninsula’s religious edifices an amount of enthusiasm that would, if properly apportioned, carry him with interest round all the cathedrals of Spain. As an illustration of this contention I may mention the experience of an American whom I encountered in Seville. He was enthusiastic about the bull-fighting, delighted with the Alcázar, and fascinated with the Sevillian patios; but when I spoke to him of the cathedral, he replied, in an off-hand manner and a shrug of the shoulders: “Oh, I haven’t seen it, except from the outside. I got so full up of cathedrals at Burgos that I haven’t been inside another.”

Burgos Cathedral is certainly a magnificent specimen to get, to quote my American acquaintance, “full up on.” Although by no means large in comparison with many others in Spain, it appears to fill half the town. In addition to its conspicuousness and inviting aspect, it is the principal surviving monument to the ancient wealth and grandeur of the province, and one of the most beautiful structures in Europe. It was begun in 1221, and it was not finished till 1567, so that the period of its erection extends over three centuries and a-half, during which Gothic architecture passed through its successive stages in what we regard as Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. The exterior is greatly admired for the variety and richness of its outline, which embraces a whole forest of pinnacles, spires, and towers; but unfortunately it is so hemmed in with houses that it is not easy to find a point from which the eye can take in the whole sweep of the building from one end to the other. The Capilla del Condestable, the most interesting portion of the interior, might vie, for elevation and spaciousness of proportion, with many a church; while its magnificent tombs, profusion of sculpture and other decoration, combined with its general sumptuousness, render it worthy to be the sepulchre of kings. Burgos, like all other Spanish cathedrals, or all that I have visited, abounds in magnificent iron-work, a department of art which appears to have been cultivated with more ease in this country than in all the rest of Christendom. Almost every chapel (and some cathedrals contain no fewer than twenty) is fenced about by grilles of most graceful design and admirable workmanship; while the high altar is enclosed on two sides by railings, and in front by gates of the same material, each portion being a perfect marvel of the metal-worker’s art. Some of these gates stand thirty feet high; and when constructed of iron, as is usually the case, are not only richly gilt, so as to convey the effect of light and shade, but covered in addition with profuse ornamentation and heraldic devices.

There is a Christ in Burgos Cathedral—the Christ it is called in Burgos—and it is claimed for it that it bleeds every Friday. It hangs behind a curtain over the altar in one of the chapels. When the curtain was drawn, I expected to see a figure of painted wood or marble, such as one sees elsewhere, and the spectacle filled me with horror. For this effigy is covered with skin, and is so terribly real that one recoils from it involuntarily. The beard, the hair, and the lashes are real, the hair is matted with clots of blood, the wounds gape in the side and the hands, and the pose is a marvel of realism. It has well been designated “the Christ”—to see it is to lose all desire to look upon it again.

In one of the rooms of the old sacristy the visitor is shown the broken and worm-eaten coffer in which the Cid carried his treasure in his wars against the Moors. The Cid, it would appear, was the original exponent of the confidence trick. Being in need of ready money, he filled the coffer with metal and stones, and pawned it to a Jewish usurer, making a stipulation that it should not be opened until the loan was repaid. Seeing that the Cid would, in all probability, have kept the trick to himself if he had redeemed the goods, we may assume that he never paid his debt. People have been filling portmanteaus with bricks and living at hotels on the good faith of their worthless luggage ever since.

But Burgos, though magnificent in its cathedral and severe as a judge by temperament, is somewhat like an ancient and irrepressible comedian in appearance. Its situation, on the slope of the mountain is sufficiently impressive; its narrow, winding streets are serious and unresponsive in character; but its colouring is strangely genial, even to the verge of facetiousness. No two houses together are of the same colour; but orange and blue, red and grey and green confront the eye from doors, and railing, and windows, and from every bit of decoration that can bear its dollop of paint. No design is allowed to restrict the freedom of the artist’s fancy; the paints are daubed on irrespective of all the laws of colour harmony, and without any reference to the feelings of the family that live over the way. But the effect is decidedly cheerful and waggish, and the cathedral uprears its head in the midst of it like a Salvini in the middle of a crowd of Gaiety choristers. The silence of Burgos arises in part from the lack of vehicular traffic, and, in a measure, from the scarcity of women to be seen in the streets. Such ladies as are about keep their eyes to themselves, and pass along unheedful of the signs of life about them. But in the security of their miradores, or high-balconied windows, they regard mankind with perfect composure and entire freedom. So long as the beauty of Burgos can only be contemplated by throwing back the head and gazing up at “skied” windows, it is not a bad thing that carriages should be few and far between.

La Granja wakes up for three months in the year, viz., in July, August, and September, when the Court seeks in the altitude of the Palace a relief from the heat of the capital. Madrid has no reason to be ashamed of her elevation, but the Royal Residence of La Granja stands nearly 1,500 feet above the Palace of Madrid, and the Spanish people are well pleased that the King should desire so exalted a spot in which to live. The palace is a cheerful, if theatrical-looking French chateau, the antithesis of the severe Madrid palace, or the proud, gloomy Escorial. The interior is pretty rather than magnificent; agreeable rather than impressive. But if French art has reared the building, the natural surroundings are truly Spanish, and unmistakably Castilian. Around the palace on all sides are rocks, and forests, and crystal streams, and adjoining it are the palace gardens, which are at once among the finest, as they are certainly the most costly in the kingdom. These gardens, which cover an area of 360 acres, are an imitation, on a smaller scale, of the gardens of Versailles. The formal cut of the ground plan, the regularity of its avenues, the artificiality of the numerous fountains, marble vases and statuary, and its dwarf-like vegetations is all in striking contrast with the wild scenery on every side. In order to form these grounds, rocks were levelled and bored for the water pipes to feed the fountains, and hollowed to admit the roots of trees. One fountain—the Baños—which shoots up water to a height of 130 feet, cost Philip V. three millions of pesetas (over £100,000), but that monarch confessed that the display had amused him for three minutes. The cost of the gardens alone reached the enormous total of forty-five million pesetas; and on the death of Philip V. his debts were found to be within a couple of pesetas of that amount.

After the magnificent scenery of the Alpine Nava Cerrada, the chain of pine-clad mountain and the road, indescribably beautiful, that winds through the dark woods to La Granja, the 6 miles that still separate the traveller from Segovia are flat and uninteresting. But the dull, bare country changes as if by magic when a sharp corner is turned and the city bursts upon the view. The first sight of Segovia from La Granja fills one with a thrill of rapturous awe. The rocky gorge, by which the city is approached, is spanned by Trajan’s noble aqueduct; and beyond it, from the bosom of a soft, green vale, rises the rocky ridge upon which the fine old Castilian stronghold commands the surrounding country. The prospect is indescribably impressive, and one fears that the magic of the spectacle will disappear as we near it. But in this one is agreeably disappointed. The drive under the huge aqueduct gives one a momentary flash of realisation of the might of its Roman builders; and then the road struggles ever upwards, past red, sunlit plazas and curiously-fronted houses, beneath nodding roofs and under archways, into the Plaza Mayor, over which lies the shadow of the grim Gothic cathedral. The wonderful fairy-like “Puente del Diablo,” with its 320 arches, which rise, tier upon tier, to a height of 102 feet, is constructed of granite, without cement or lime. It is indeed a lasting monument to the enterprise, the resolution, and the architectural genius of its creators. The great cathedral, one of the largest in Spain, the old Alcázar which successfully stood out against the plundering Comuneros who sacked the city in 1520, and the eighteen lesser churches, are for antiquarians and ecclesiologists: but the aqueduct is a separate ecstacy that appeals alike to the layman and the expert.

Although it has points in common with Segovia, Cuenca, and all these ancient cities of Castile, Avila, the home of the saint-like Teresa, Spain’s lady patroness, with its granite approach and its massive granite walls, its memories, its fortified cathedral, and its severe menacing air, is as well worthy a visit as any city in Spain.

The Avila of to-day is the Avila of a thousand years ago—a mediæval wall-girt city. Its frowning ramparts wear a strangely forbidding appearance, and its countenance is an index of its character. Protected by walls forty feet high and twelve feet thick, pierced by ten gateways, and studded by no less than eighty-six towers, commanding at every point the plain below, it stood from its foundation, until the era of artillery, a city impregnable. Local tradition has it that Avila was originally called Abula, after the mother of Hércules, and it is not incongruous to associate this brave old fortress town with all the heroes of mythology. The earliest authentic records of the city date back to B.C. 1660. The cathedral, dedicated to San Salvador, the Prince of Peace, reminds one of the futile voice that cries

“Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. Nor did Alva Garcia, its architect, gamble on its peace prospects; for its strong cimborio was evidently built for defence, and its apse, with castellated machicolations, forms one of the towers of the city walls. From the general character of the cathedral it is evident that although it was commenced in A.D. 1091, it was not completed until the early part of the thirteenth century, and it is much disfigured by some poor patchwork restoration. Don Ramon of Burgundy, who rebuilt the city at the same time as the cathedral, endeavoured to secure peace by preparing for war, and the old church was pressed into the defence of the town.

The “Royal City” or Ciudad-Real is a fledgling among the cities of Castile, being little more than 650 years old. It was styled “royal” by Juan II. in 1420, and Cervantes called it “imperial,” and “the seat of the god of smiles.” Ciudad-Real may, in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, have worn a regal appearance, but the touch of a hand that is dead no longer lingers about this dull, poverty-stricken, backward town. The cathedral is vast, bare, and uninteresting; and when it has been hurried through, there is nothing else of interest to detain one in Ciudad-Real. Quite recently the tower of the cathedral partially collapsed, damaging, but happily only to a slight extent, in its fall, the beautiful dome of the building. The authorities, with commendable promptitude, engaged a small army of workmen, and at considerable risk removed the rest of the dangerous portion,

and prevented further injury to the dome. As the tower was regarded in the light of a national monument, a proposal to rebuild it is now under consideration. Within ten miles of the city is Almadén, a town that boasts no antiquity, and reflects not the shadow of a departed glory, but rather provides the substance of a matter-of-fact to-day. For at Almadén, on the confines of La Mancha, Estremadura, and Andalucia, is the great and apparently inexhaustible quicksilver mine, which is one of the few real sources of direct income to the State. These mines are Crown property; and of the £250,000 worth of the mineral which Almadén produces annually, a profit of £160,000 goes to the Government.

Rock-girt Cuenca is more picturesquely situated than either Ronda, or Granada, or even Monserrat. It is built on a granite height, the base of which is girdled by two graceful rivers, the Huecar and the Jucar, that run their green courses through the most luxuriant of valleys, filled with paths and groves of handsome trees. Terraced fruit gardens, rising like a grand staircase of verdure, stretch up to the perpendicular rock columns on one side of the city; and on the other it is guarded by abrupt, wild crags that fringe it in a hundred weird forms, their nakedness being modified, like the points of Monserrat, by lichens, ivy and other trailing vines.

From the city one looks across the river-washed valley, over the line of cliffs that merge into the distant mountains, and compose a scene of grandeur and loveliness, of slope, and precipice, and fairy-like verdure—a scene as grand and beautiful as one shall find in Spain. Time was when Cuenca was known to the world by its literature, its arts, and its manufacures; to-day it is no more than a back-cloth, a spectacle, an empty stage. Its trade has deserted it; its artists and authors have never been replaced. Time was when its mountains were the fastnesses in which the brave Celtiberians waged their desperate guerilla warfare against the Romans; to-day the Idubedan ranges are devoid of the vigorous spirit of either Roman or Celtiberian. The

race of rich traders who peopled these localities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is extinct. The beautiful pinares de Cuenca still remain with their immemorial glades and rocks, their wild poetical scenery, and their myriad squirrels. All that is left to Cuenca is its history and its beauty, and if its history was great, its beauty is even greater and more enduring.

Granada and the Alhambra.

Darro. To-day this vast source of revenue is practically neglected; although, after the rains, a number of gold-fishers may be seen puddling in its eddies. The beautiful and magnificent cathedral, the burial place of the Catholic kings of mediæval Spain, the religious monuments—the superb Cartoja, the Montesacro, containing the grottos of the martyrs, the tomb of Gonzales di Córdova in the Church of San Geronimo, the Convents of St. Dominie and of the Angels—and, above all, the Alhambra, remain to link the city with its mighty past, but the only living survival of its ancient activity is represented by the sand washers on the banks of the Darro. Granada has gone to sleep. She is content to doze in the midst of her beautiful gardens, encircled by her noble mountains, rejoicing in the fruits that a fertile ground grows of its own accord—content in her idleness and the variety of her beauty. If she is reproved upon her condition, she replies with a yawn, and says, as a witty Italian writer puts it: “I gave to Spain the painter Alonzo Cano, the poet Luis de León, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the sacred orator Luis de Granada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas; I have paid my debt; leave me in peace!”

So the visitor leaves sleepy Granada in peace in the hollow, and breasts the hill, on the summit of which the Alhambra mounts guard over the city. From the distance it presents, as do so many Oriental palaces, the appearance of a fortress, and the approach is so planned that one comes right under the shadow of its walls without obtaining another view of it. A curve in the road brings one suddenly at the entrance to a grove, the trees of which are so thickly planted that a man may scarcely pass between them, and their mighty branches interlacing overhead defy the sun to penetrate their foliage. An avenue pierces this park of verdure; the shade is deep, but the air is soft and fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and at the end we stand before a large square tower, dark coloured and crowned with battlements, and entered by an arched door. It is dowdy, commonplace, and unimpressive, but it is the Door of Justice, the principal entrance to the Alhambra. But if the visitor feels a shock of disappointment at this first close acquaintance with the world-famed structure, it will certainly not be allayed when, having passed through the gateway and ascended an embanked road, he is brought up before a great ruined palace in the style of the Renaissance, beyond which stand some miserable-looking little houses. The palace was erected by that arch-vandal, Charles V., who, to his everlasting shame, planted a Gothic Church in the middle of the Mosque at Córdova. The Alhambra has had its full share of vicissitudes and desecrations. For a number of years it was inhabited by smugglers and vagabonds, the French soldiers stabled their horses there during their occupation, earthquakes have visited it, and a gunpowder explosion destroyed some of the ceilings, but it remained for Charles V. to outstrip the earthquake and the invading armies in the work of ignorant spoilation. “But this,” one inquires, aghast, “this rubbishly palace is not the Alhambra?” It is a relief to be reassured that it is not; but the consolation is changed to amazement when one learns that the Alhambra itself is contained among the wretched hovels that lie beyond. But the suspense is nearly at an end; there is a little door to be entered, a little courtyard to be crossed, and one is in the marvellous apartment, which is at once a hall, a courtyard, and a garden—the Court of the Myrtles. Two rows of Moorish arches, upheld by light columns, stretch out on the right of the entrance one above the other, while a tower rises on the opposite side; and in the centre, extending right across the width of the patio, is a large rectangular basin of water, which reflects, as in a mirror, the arches and arabesques, and the superb mosaics which

ornament the walls. The deep thrill of emotion and delighted surprise that one experiences in gazing round this beautiful Eastern interior is repeated again and again as one proceeds through the halls and courts of this fairy palace. Moorish patios, with every variety of mosaic marble columns, fountains, and flowers, may be seen in other cities of Spain, but here are whole suites of courts, and gardens, and halls, vying with each other in splendour, in regal magnificence and lavish expenditure; while the situation of the palace is the most romantic and picturesque in Europe.

The Tower of the Ambassadors, which contains two halls, one of which is the great Hall of the Ambassadors, would alone earn for the Alhambra its reputation for unsurpassed beauty. The walls and the ceilings are covered with an enormous tracery of embroideries in the form of garlands, roses, branches, and leaves, so blended as to make one magnificent whole so delicate and intricate that the visitor could spend hours in examining its inextricable network, and yet gain no more than a vague impression of its detail. Gautier has compared these ornamentations to “a kind of tapestry worked into the wall itself;” and De Amicis, employing the same simile, writes of it: “The walls seem woven like a cloth, rich as a brocade, transparent as lace, and veined like a leaf.” The Hall of the Ambassadors is a spacious square apartment lighted by nine arched windows, which, by reason of the thickness of the walls, form nine alcoves, each supported by a little marble column and surmounted by two exquisite small arches, surmounted in their turn by two little arched windows. The views from these windows are entrancing; and one turns from the handsome workmanship of the interior to the magnificent landscape without in an ecstacy of sensuous pleasure.

The Court of Lions is one of the most beautiful edifices in Granada, and the finest and most elegant piece of Mussulman architecture of the Nazarite period. There is not a more magnificent and fantastic example, in or out of Spain, on which the artistic genius of the Arabs might pride itself; and certainly its builder, the famous architect Aben Cencid, is worthy a place with the most noted architects of all time. Transparent arcades, columns which have been grouped together in large and small numbers in order to share the weight of the beautiful arches and ceilings, seven fountains, two high ornaments in the form of temples, which advance majestically to relieve the monotony of the cloister, four golden cupolas which gleam in the rays of the sun, eleven different forms of arches gaudily decorated, constitute, as Don Rafael Contreras, who restored the Alhambra, says, a magical and delicious whole, even though seven centuries have elapsed. In the centre of the Court is a great marble basin, surrounded by a little paved canal, and supported by twelve lions—lions fashioned in the strictest accordance with the injunction of the Koran, which forbids its followers to make an image of any living thing. A glance at these lions shows how faithfully the sculptors

of these ill-shaped, grotesque, ridiculous monstrosities observed the tenets of their creed.

Perhaps the most beautiful apartment in the Alhambra is the hall of the “Two Sisters,” which, in its exuberance of ornamentation, richness, and variety of carving and manifold combination of every line that can produce beauty and grace, is beyond description. Fergusson has described it as “the most varied and elegant apartment in the whole palace.” The proportions are so graceful, the colours so bright and gay, yet subdued into such exquisite harmony that it soothes while it enchants the eye; and every portion, down to the tiles, bears the stamp of such refined taste and infinite invention, that one looks around with a sort of despairing wonderment, unable either to classify the various objects that challenge admiration on every side, or to carry off anything more distinct than a dream-like recollection, in which every element of decoration is blended in a bewildering chaos of beauty.

The ancient Moors made art a virtue, and bathing an art. They did not bathe from a sense of duty, but because bathing was a luxury. Here between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Myrtles is the Sala de Reposo, where the favourites of the Kings prepared themselves for their bath, or rested themselves after it. This hall, which was restored by Spanish artists on the ruins of the old one, is in keeping with the rest of the palace. A fountain occupies the centre of the apartment, alcoves are set in the multi-coloured walls, and the atmosphere of the whole place is cool, fragrant, and delicious. Around this hall are the little bath rooms, each bath formed out of a solid slab of marble. The rooms are lit by means of holes in the wall in the shape of stars and flowers, a device which admits the glow of the sun without its rays. Soft light and perfumes, rose-coloured curtains and music, contributed to the sensuous delights of the Sultanas’ ablutions. They may not have been a particularly intelligent class of women, these dainty, languid-eyed sultanas; but they must, as an American tourist observed, have been a “wonderfully sweet and wholesome kind of female to have about one.”

From the baths one proceeds to the Tocador de la reina (the Queen’s toilet), situated at the top of a tower from which one obtains a magnificent view of the surrounding country. This royal boudoir is perched on the edge of an abyss. It is open on all sides and on all sides a spectacle of amazing beauty is spread out to the view. Immediately below lies the city of Granada, the houses interspersed with groups of trees and huge bunches of foliage which seem to fight with the buildings for every yard of land that the hand of man has snatched from nature. Beyond the city is an immense green plain, over which endless rows of cypresses, pines, and oaks thread their ways amid groves of oranges and a riot of flowers. The deep valley of the Darro is almost hidden by the profusion of vegetation that runs right down to the water’s edge, and the silver Genil shimmers amid the groves and gardens. Beyond the plain are the hills, their green sides torn by the rugged boulders that thrust their way through the trees; and to the south rise the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, white and dazzling in summer sunshine. The spectacle is one that can never fade from the mind; the thrill it produces can never quite be lost.

The huge wall which surrounds the vast precincts of the Alhambra is studded with towers which retain their original names. The Torre de las Infantas is one of the best preserved outwardly, and presents that severity of outline which characterises the exterior of the palace, and contrasts so strongly with the prodigal magnificence visible everywhere in the interior. The Alhambra would be inexpressibly beautiful if it had been

set up in the Arabian desert, or the wastes of Siberia; but situated as it is in one of the most lovely spots on earth, it is as though the Moors had discovered Paradise and made it habitable. I am told that there is no time in the year when Granada is not beautiful; but beyond question the best time to be there is when the song of the nightingale and the fragrance of the orange blossom fill its groves with melody and sweetness: when the eye, penetrating the foliage of its elm-planted alameda, rests on the dazzling crest of Mulahacen with a sense of refreshment, to which the contrast of green leaves and summer snow lends an unwonted charm: when day is Elysium, and night a dream-land of romance, illumined by the warm beams of a southern moon: when the Alhambra assumes a garb of beauty to which, amid the glare of noon, its courts and bowers are strangers. At that hour, as Irving tells us, “Every rent and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and weather-stain, disappears. The marble resumes its original whiteness: the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams: the halls are illumined with a softened radiance, until the whole edifice reminds one of the enchanted palace of some Arabian tale.”

Another American author, G. P. Lathrop, has acknowledged the supreme spell of the Alhambra in a passage of remarkable descriptive power: “When the Madonna’s lamp shone bright amid the engulfing shadows of the Tower of Justice, while its upper half was cased in steely radiance, we passed in by Charles’s Palace, where the moon, shining through the roofless top, made a row of smaller moons in the circular upper windows of the dark gray wall. In the Court of the Pond a low, gourd-like umbellation at the north end sparkled in diamond lustre beneath the quivering rays; while the whole Tower of Comares behind it, repeated itself in the gray-green water at our feet, with a twinkle of stars around its reversed summit—the coldness of the moonlight on the soft, cream-coloured plaster in this warm, stilly air is peculiarly impressive. As for sound, absolutely none is heard but that of dripping water: nor did I ever walk through a profounder, more ghost-like silence than that which eddied in Lindaraxa’s garden around the fountain, as it mourned in silvery monotones of neglected grief. The moon-glare coming through the lonely arches shaped gleaming cuirasses on the ground, or struck the out-thrust branches of citron trees, and seemed to drip from them again in a dazzle of crystals.... From the Queen’s Peinador we saw long shadows from the towers thrown out over the sleeping city, which, far below, caked together its squares of hammered silver, dusked over by the deep gray of roofs that did not reflect the light. But within the Hall of Ambassadors reigned a gloom like that of the grave. Gleams of sharp radiance lay in the deep embrasures without penetrating; and at one, the intricacies of open work above the arch were mapped sharp figures of light on a space of jet-black floor. Another was filled nearly to the top by the blue, weirdly-luminous image of a mountain across the valley. Through all these openings I thought the spirit of the departed would find entrance as easily as the footless night breeze. I wonder if the people who lived in this labyrinth of art ever smiled? In the palpitating dark, robed men and veiled women seemed to steal by with a rustle no louder than that of their actual movement in life: silk hangings hung floating from the walls: scented lamps shed their

beams at moments through the obscurity, and I saw the gleam of enamelled swords, the shine of bronze candlesticks, the blur of coloured vases in the corners: the kasidas, of which poetry-loving monarchs turned the pages. But in such a place I could not imagine laughter. I felt inclined to prostrate myself in the darkness before I knew not what power of bygone, yet ever present things—a half-tangible essence that expressed only the solemnity of life and the presentiment of change.”

It were endless to describe all the various courts, balconies, galleries, and baths contained within the circuit of the Alhambra. The Mosque alone, with its exquisite niche where the Koran is deposited, would long detain an archæologist. Yet that is but one Mosque; there are the remains of three others to be seen. There are the ruins of the house of the Cadi, the Water-tower, the Tower of the Prisoner, the Tower of the Candil, a dozen other towers besides the house of Mondejar—what is left of it—the military quarters, the gardens, the promenades, the—but the list is endless, the sights are inexhaustible. One may live in the Alhambra itself, as Washington Irving lived, and echo his plaint, “Oh, that I had seen the Alhambra!”