he central one. I entered by a low door, in one corner of
the corridor. A wilderness of columns connected by double arches (one
springing above the other, with an opening between), spread their dusky
aisles before me in the morning twilight. The eight hundred and fifty
shafts of this marble forest formed labyrinths and mazes, which at that
early hour appeared boundless, for their long vistas disappeared in the
shadows. Lamps were burning before distant shrines, and a few worshippers
were kneeling silently here and there. The sound of my own footsteps, as I
wandered through the ranks of pillars, was all that I heard. In the centre
of the wood (for such it seemed) rises the choir, a gaudy and tasteless
excrescence added by the Christians. Even Charles V., who laid a merciless
hand on the Alhambra, reproved the Bishop of Cordova for this barbarous
and unnecessary disfigurement.

The sacristan lighted lamps in order to show me the Moorish chapels.
Nothing but the precious materials of which these exquisite structures are
composed could have saved them from the holy hands of the Inquisition,
which intentionally destroyed all the Roman antiquities of Cordova. Here
the fringed arches, the lace-like filigrees, the wreathed inscriptions,
and the domes of pendent stalactites which enchant you in the Alcazar of
Seville, are repeated, not in stucco, but in purest marble, while the
entrance to the "holy of holies" is probably the most glorious piece of
mosaic in the world. The pavement of the interior is deeply worn by the
knees of the Moslem pilgrims, who compassed it seven times, kneeling, as
they now do in the Kaaba, at Mecca. The sides are embroidered with
sentences from the Koran, in Cufic characters, and the roof is in the
form of a fluted shell, of a single piece of pure white marble, fifteen
feet in diameter. The roof of the vestibule is a wonderful piece of
workmanship, formed of pointed arches, wreathed and twined through each
other, like basket-work. No people ever wrought poetry into stone so
perfectly as the Saracens. In looking on these precious relics of an
elegant and refined race, I cannot help feeling a strong regret that their
kingdom ever passed into other hands.

Leaving Cordova, our road followed the Guadalquivir, along the foot of the
Sierra Morena, which rose dark and stern, a barrier to the central
table-lands of La Mancha. At Alcolea, we crossed the river on a noble
bridge of black marble, out of all keepin