ed by other objects. He passed several days wandering among the
mouldering piles of Moorish architecture, those melancholy monuments
of an elegant and voluptuous people. He paced the deserted halls of
the Alhambra, the paradise of the Moorish kings. He visited the great
court of the lions, famous for the perfidious massacre of the gallant
Abencerrages. He gazed with admiration at its mosaic cupolas,
gorgeously painted in gold and azure; its basins of marble, its
alabaster vase, supported by lions, and storied with inscriptions.

His imagination kindled as he wandered among these scenes. They were
calculated to awaken all the enthusiasm of a youthful mind. Most of
the halls have anciently been beautified by fountains. The fine taste
of the Arabs delighted in the sparkling purity and reviving freshness
of water; and they erected, as it were, altars on every side, to that
delicate element. Poetry mingles with architecture in the Alhambra. It
breathes along the very walls. Wherever Antonio turned his eye, he
beheld inscriptions in Arabic, wherein the perpetuity of Moorish power
and splendour within these walls was confidently predicted.

Alas! how has the prophecy been falsified! Many of the basins, where
the fountains had once thrown up their sparkling showers, were dry and
dusty. Some of the palaces were turned into gloomy convents, and the
barefoot monk paced through these courts, which had once glittered
with the array, and echoed to the music, of Moorish chivalry.

In the course of his rambles, the student more than once encountered
the old man of the library. He was always alone, and so full of
thought as not to notice any one about him. He appeared to be intent
upon studying those half-buried inscriptions, which, are found, here
and there, among the Moorish ruins, and seem to murmur from the earth
the tale of former greatness. The greater part of these have since
been translated; but they were supposed by many at the time, to
contain symbolical revelations, and golden maxims of the Arabian sages
and astrologers. As Antonio saw the stranger apparently deciphering
these inscriptions, he felt an eager longing to make his acquaintance,
and to participate in his curious researches; but the repulse he had
met with at the library deterred him from making any further advances.

He had directed his steps one evening to the sacred mount, which
overlooks the beautiful valley watered by the Darro, the fertile plain
of the Veg