so unlike anything else in the world, that, like Karnak and Baalbec, those
only know the Alhambra who see it. When you can weave stone, and hang your
halls with marble tapestry, you may rival it. It is nothing to me that
these ornaments are stucco; to sculpture them in marble is only the work
of the hands. Their great excellence is in the design, which, like all
great things, suggests even more than it gives. If I could create all that
the Court of Lions suggested to me for its completion, it would fulfil the
dream of King Sheddad, and surpass the palaces of the Moslem Paradise.

The pavilions of the Court of Lions, and the halls which open into it, on
either side, approach the nearest to their original perfection. The floors
are marble, the wainscoting of painted tiles, the walls of embroidery,
still gleaming with the softened lustre of their original tints, and the
lofty conical domes seem to be huge sparry crystalizations, hung with
dropping stalactites, rather than any work of the human hand. Each of
these domes is composed of five thousand separate pieces, and the pendent
prismatic blocks, colored and gilded, gradually resolve themselves, as you
gaze, into the most intricate and elegant designs. But you must study long
ere you have won all the secret of their beauty. To comprehend them, one
should spend a whole day, lying on his back, under each one. Mateo spread
his cloak for me in the fountain in the Hall of the Abencerrages, over the
blood-stains made by the decapitation of those gallant chiefs, and I lay
half an hour looking upward: and this is what I made out of the dome. From
its central pinnacle hung the chalice of a flower with feathery petals,
like the "crape myrtle" of our Southern States Outside of this, branched
downward the eight rays of a large star, whose points touched the base of
the dome; yet the star was itself composed of flowers, while between its
rays and around its points fell a shower of blossoms, shells, and sparry
drops. From the base of the dome hung a gorgeous pattern of lace, with a
fringe of bugles, projecting into eight points so as to form a star of
drapery, hanging from the points of the flowery star in the dome. The
spaces between the angles were filled with masses of stalactites, dropping
one below the other, till they tapered into the plain square sides of the
hall.

In the Hall of the Two Sisters, I lay likewise for a considerable time,
resolving its misty glories into shape. T