se sharply, and we passed through a dense grove of tall elms planted
many years ago by the Duke of Wellington. These trees have grown in such
a rank, wild fashion, hung with ivy from the highest branches to the low
interlacing stems, as to recall a Singapore jungle or the densely wooded
district near Jeypore, in India. The trees have never been trimmed or
thinned out since they were planted, and cannot, therefore, become
individually grand, but they appear all the more natural for this
seeming neglect. Presently the hotel, named the Washington Irving, was
reached, an extremely neat and comfortable establishment. It was
necessary to suppress our ardor and impatience, as night had settled
down over Granada; and there being no moon, nothing could be seen to
advantage outside of the house. We retired early, more fatigued by the
slow, dragging railroad journey of seventy miles than after
accomplishing the same distance over the primitive roads of California,
behind four dashing horses in a jolting stage, between Madeira and
Coarse Gold Gulch.

It is not for us to describe in detail so well-known a monument as this
royal palace of the Moors, those regal sovereigns who had not only a
love for the beautiful in art, but also the means of indulging it. With
all preconceived ideas it was still a revelation, and, next to the Taj
at Agra, the most poetical embodiment of architecture we had ever seen.
Surprises met us at every turn within its enchanting precincts. The
names of its various halls and courts, the Hall of Justice, Court of
Blessings, Hall of the Abencerrages, Court of the Lions, Hall of the Two
Sisters, etc., were all familiar, but only so in pictured dreams. Here
was the tangible reality; it was no disillusion. As we passed from court
to court, from hall to hall, lingering here and there, how the very
atmosphere teemed with historical reminiscences of that most romantic
period of history, the mediaeval days, when the Moors held regal court
and lorded it in Andalusia. A lurking sympathy stole over us for that
exiled people who could render life such a terrestrial paradise.
Surrounded by fruit, flowers, and dark-eyed houris, the Mohammedan but
typified his idea of a higher heaven. In the Alhambra he might have
closed his eyes to the outer world, and fancied that he was already in
that sensuous and perpetual home which the Arabian poets so glowingly
describe. It is difficult to realize that the Moors possessed such
admirab