, to eclipse the residence of the Moslem
kings. With all its grandeur and architectural merit, it appeared
to us like an arrogant intrusion, and, passing by it, we entered
a simple, unostentatious portal, opening into the interior of the
Moorish palace.

"The transition was almost magical: it seemed as if we were at once
transported into other times and another realm, and were treading the
scenes of Arabian story. We found ourselves in a great court, paved
with white marble, and decorated at each end with light Moorish
peristyles: it is called the Court of the Alberca. In the centre was
an immense basin or fish-pond, a hundred and thirty feet in length by
thirty in breadth, stocked with gold-fish and bordered by hedges of
roses. At the upper end of this court rose the great Tower of Comares.

"From the lower end we passed through a Moorish archway into the
renowned Court of Lions. There is no part of the edifice that gives
us a more complete idea of its original beauty and magnificence than
this, for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In
the centre stands the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster
basins still shed their diamond drops; and the twelve lions, which
support them, cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of
Boabdil. The court is laid out in flower-beds, and surrounded by light
Arabian arcades of open filagree work, supported by slender pillars
of white marble. The architecture, like that of all the other parts
of the palace, is characterized by elegance rather than grandeur;
bespeaking a delicate and graceful taste, and a disposition to
indolent enjoyment. When one looks upon the fairy tracery of the
peristyles, and the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls, it is
difficult to believe that so much has survived the wear and tear of
centuries, the shocks of earthquakes, the violence of war, and the
quiet, though no less baneful, pilferrings of the tasteful traveller:
it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular tradition, that the
whole is protected by a magic charm.

"On one side of the court, a portal, richly adorned, opens into a
lofty hall, paved with white marble, and called the Hall of the Two
Sisters. A cupola, or lantern, admits a tempered light from above, and
a free circulation of air. The lower part of the walls is encrusted
with beautiful Moorish tiles, on some of which are emblazoned the
escutcheons of the Moorish monarchs: the upper part is faced with t