avenues were solidly paved, while centuries afterwards the people of
Paris, on rainy days, stepped from their door-sills into mud ankle-deep.
The dwellings were marked by beauty and luxury, while the people of
Europe, as a rule in that semi-barbaric period, dwelt in miserable huts,
dressed in leather, and lived on the rudest and least nutritive food.

The rulers of France, England, and Germany lived in rude buildings without
chimneys or windows, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, at a
time when the royal halls of Arabian Spain were visions of grace and
beauty. The residences of the Arabs had marble balconies overhanging
orange-gardens; their floors and walls were frequently of rich and
graceful mosaic; fountains gushed in their courts, quicksilver often
taking the place of water, and falling in a glistening spray. In summer
cool air was drawn into the apartments through ventilating towers; in
winter warm and perfumed air was discharged through hidden passages. From
the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung. Here
were clusters of frail marble columns, which, in the boudoirs of the
sultanas, gave way to verd-antique incrusted with lapis lazuli. The
furniture was of sandal- or citron-wood, richly inlaid with gold, silver,
or precious minerals. Tapestry hid the walls, Persian carpets covered the
floors, pillows and couches of elegant forms were spread about the rooms.
Great care was given to bathing and personal cleanliness at a time when
such a thought had not dawned upon Christian Europe. Their
pleasure-gardens were of unequalled beauty, and were rich with flowers and
fruits. In short, in this brief space it is impossible to give more than a
bare outline of the marvellous luxury which surrounded this people,
recently come from the deserts of Arabia, at a time when most of the
remainder of Europe was plunged into the rudest barbarism.

Much might be said of their libraries, their universities, their scholars
and scientists, and the magnificence of their architecture, of which
abundant examples still remain in the cities of Spain, the Alhambra of
Granada, the palace which Boabdil so reluctantly left, being almost
without an equal for lightness, grace, and architectural beauty in the
cities of the world. Well might the dethroned monarch look back with
bitter regret upon this rarest monument of the Arabian civilization and
give vent, in farewell to its far-seen towers, to "The last sigh of