st outside of this large alcove, which is very similar to a side
chapel in a modern cathedral, there was pointed out to us the finest
piece of mosaic in the world. It originally came from Constantinople,
and was the gift of the Emperor Romanus II. It contains, in accordance
with the Moslem faith, no representation of any living thing; but is
perfection in its graceful vines, leaves, and scroll work. The deep
glowing colors, crimson and green dominating, are as bright to-day as
when it first came, perhaps two thousand years ago, from the artist's
hand. It recalled the contemporary productions exhumed at Pompeii, and
now to be seen in the Museum at Naples. These latter however, as we
remember them, are neither so large nor so choice as this masterpiece in
the Cordova Mosque. The cathedral, as a whole, has been pronounced by
experienced travelers to be the greatest architectural curiosity in
Europe. It is a strange conglomerate and jumble of incongruities,
half-Christian, half-Saracenic, reminding one strongly of the Church of
St. Mark at Venice,--having, like that remarkable structure, borrowed
many of its columns and ornaments from the far East. Inside and out it
is gloomy, massive, and frowning, forming the most remarkable link
between the remote past and the present existing in Spain. It appears to
be nearly as large upon the ground as St. Peter's at Rome, and contains
fifty separate chapels within its capacious walls. It has, in its
passage through the several dynasties of Roman, Moorish, and Spanish
rule, received distinctive architectural marks from each. Its large,
cool court of orange-trees, centuries old; its battlemented wall and
huge gateway; its famous fountains and its mingled palms and tall
cypresses, all combine to perfect a picture suggestive of the dead and
buried races connected with its history.

This famous court-yard is of scarcely less interest than the interior of
the great Cathedral-Mosque itself. It has at each end a colonnade of
marble pillars supporting circular arches, and the grounds are broad and
spacious. Here a battalion of professional beggars were drawn up in
battle array as we entered, numbering fifty or sixty of both sexes, and
of all ages. The poor creatures formed both a pitiable and a picturesque
group, composed of the lame, the halt, and the blind. On the greensward
just back of them, under the shade of the dark-leaved orange-trees,
played troops of careless children, who had been se