Darro and Xenil.

"As night closes, the capricious scene assumes new features. Light
after light gradually twinkles forth; here a taper from a balconied
window; there a votive lamp before the image of a saint. Thus, by
degrees, the city emerges from the pervading gloom, and sparkles
with scattered lights, like the starry firmament. Now break forth
from court and garden, and street and lane, the tinkling of
innumerable guitars, and the clicking of castanets; blending, at
this lofty height, in a faint but general concert. 'Enjoy the
moment' is the creed of the gay and amorous Andalusian, and at no
time does he practice it more zealously than on the balmy nights of
summer, wooing his mistress with the dance, the love-ditty, and
the passionate serenade."

How perfectly is the illusion of departed splendor maintained in the
opening of the chapter on "The Court of Lions."

"The peculiar charm of this old dreamy palace is its power of
calling up vague reveries and picturings of the past, and thus
clothing naked realities with the illusions of the memory and the
imagination. As I delight to walk in these 'vain shadows,' I am
prone to seek those parts of the Alhambra which are most favorable
to this phantasmagoria of the mind; and none are more so than the
Court of Lions, and its surrounding halls. Here the hand of time
has fallen the lightest, and the traces of Moorish elegance and
splendor exist in almost their original brilliancy. Earthquakes
have shaken the foundations of this pile, and rent its rudest
towers; yet see! not one of those slender columns has been
displaced, not an arch of that light and fragile colonnade given
way, and all the fairy fretwork of these domes, apparently as
unsubstantial as the crystal fabrics of a morning's frost, exist
after the lapse of centuries, almost as fresh as if from the hand
of the Moslem artist. I write in the midst of these mementos of the
past, in the fresh hour of early morning, in the fated Hall of the
Abencerrages. The blood-stained fountain, the legendary monument of
their massacre, is before me; the lofty jet almost casts its dew
upon my paper. How difficult to reconcile the ancient tale of
violence and blood with the gentle and peaceful scene around!
Everything here appears calculated to inspire kind and happ