ead has towered
for centuries beside her Christian sister, they still seem as
irreconcilable as their faiths a thousand years ago. It has been a
strange companionship. The oriental loveliness and splendor of the
Giralda, like that of Seville, are best felt at the twilight hour, when
her jewels sparkle in the last rays of the setting sun. With the waning
light the coloring becomes purple, then indigo, while the silhouette
still stands out in startling clearness and strength against the
spotless blue of the evening sky. You feel as if the whole mountain of
masonry were slowly but surely leaning more and more from its base and
about to bury you in its fall. The vermilion and ochre coloring are like
the petals of the rose. Nowhere is the surface uniform, but passes
gradually from light cream and buff through warmer amber to brilliant
orange and carmine and crimson lake, even to the color of the
pomegranate's heart. The exquisite surface of delicate tinting, mellowed
by the storms and suns of centuries, is everywhere relieved by the
brilliant sparkle, the delicate play of light and shade, of the Moorish
designs. When the low rays of the Andalusian sun illumine the Giralda,
just touched here and there with dots of molten gold like the orange
trees from whose green bed it rises, you see the boldest creation of
Moorish imagination in all its splendor. The great Cathedral itself
becomes a modest nun with rich, but sombre, cape over her shoulders,
beside this dazzling creature glowing with Saracenic fire.

The Giralda is the greatest of all the monuments of that enlightened
civilization. She is so different from any other tower that comparison
becomes difficult. There is a robustness, an appearance of adequate
solidity and strength which are lacking in the Italian towers of Saint
Mark's, of Pistoja, or of Florence. This holds true even in relation to
other Moorish towers, or such edifices as the Mosque at Cordova, the
Alcazar at Seville, or the pillared halls of Granada; all other Moorish
work seems to have a certain feminine weakness, a timidity and
insecurity, when compared with the tower which dominates Maria
Santissima. The Giralda is your first and last impression of this
corner of the world, for it embodies all the grace and strength that can
be combined in architecture. Old Spanish authorities assert that it was
in the very year when believers throughout Christendom were anxiously
expecting the end of the world that the Mo