of Granada. The view includes some
fifteen villages, dotting plains more fertile than any other we had seen
in the country. The atmosphere was clear, rendering the comprehensive
view very fine, taking in as its foreground both the Alhambra and the
Generalife. The visit to the Moor's Seat was not hurried. Time was taken
to impress the outspread picture it afforded lastingly on the memory,
for we could not reasonably expect to ever behold it again.

After coming down we reviewed the picture gallery of the Generalife,
though hardly a "gallery," made up as it is of a series of daubs
representing the kings and queens of Spain, with other members of the
royal family, of some possible historic interest, but otherwise not
worth the canvas on which they are painted. The guide was well supplied
with legends about the Generalife as to the Sultana Zoraya and her
guilty Abencerrage lover, and so forth; but we had listened to one about
the tower not far away, and had so much occupation for the eyes that the
ears were permitted to rest. All show places, and especially royal
palaces, have their romantic legends: what would guides and guide-books
otherwise amount to? But without exception let it be understood, these
stories are a tissue of nonsense, founded on a modicum of truth. Take as
a fair example the universally accepted Byronic legends of the Bridge of
Sighs at Venice, which Mr. Howells so quietly but thoroughly explodes by
adducing the simplest historical facts.

Between the Alhambra and the Generalife, but not in a direct line, were
located the headquarters of the gypsies of Spain, some four or five
thousand of whom live in the rock caves adjoining the city, where the
valley of the Darro affords a warm, sunny shelter. Holes excavated in
the sloping mountain side form the homes of this singular and strongly
individualized people, where they have had a recognized habitation for
centuries. They are just the same renegade race that are found in other
parts of Europe and the British Isles: picturesque in their rags,
lawless in the extreme, and living almost entirely in the open air. In
the faces of the men, who are as coarse and uncultured as men can
possibly be, there was expressed much of the same savage instinct that
marked the features of those captured tigers exhibited at Jeypore. They
are lazy and reckless, but fiery if roused to anger. Terrible domestic
tragedies sometimes occur among them, as the guide explained to us. They