le architectural skill, and produced such splendid palaces,
centuries upon centuries ago; and quite as remarkable that Time, the
great iconoclast, should have spared for our admiration such delicate,
lace-like carvings and such brilliant mosaics. Magnificence with them
was an art in itself, and, combined with beauty, was one of their
highest aims. Minuteness of finish and perfection of detail were
lavished with Oriental profuseness. If we carefully examine the
fret-work upon the walls of the various corridors and apartments, it
becomes evident that it represents flowers and geometrical lines, though
at a casual glance it has rather a confused appearance. The various
spaces are filled with lines from the Koran; the words "There is no
conqueror but God" occurring many hundred times in the various parts of
the structure, in the delicately lined work over the horse-shoe arches,
upon the plainer side walls and over latticed jalousies, and along the
architraves.

Out of a gracefully arched window, with stucco work framing it about
like curtains of crystallized lace, from whence the beauties of the
harem must have often gazed upon the court below, we looked upon a
setting of leafy verdure in white marble, surrounded by fountains, like
an emerald set in diamonds upon a lady's hand. We looked from the
boudoir of the Sultana, the Chosen of the Harem. Here were thriving
orange and fig-trees mingled with glistening, dark-leaved myrtles,
which were bordered by an edging of box so high and stout of limb that
the main stems were more like trees than shrubs. The guide told us they
were centuries old. Here were also clusters of hawthorn in blossom, and
little patches of blue star-like flowers looking up from the ground like
human eyes, as though having hardly the courage to assert themselves
amid the more pretentious bloom. The sun lay warm and lovingly in this
fragrant area of the grand old palace, and the air was very soft and
sweet. It was the same scene which had gladdened witching eyes centuries
ago, when the notes of the lute mingled with the careless, happy voices
of the beauties of the harem.

The guide had twice to summon us before we left the spot. Then we
climbed up the winding, marble steps, lighted here and there by little
loop-hole windows, to a balcony that commanded a view far and near over
the village-dotted plain of Granada, backed by the snowy summits of the
Sierra Nevada. The city, in all its brown, turreted, and ti