TO the majority of travellers who visit Spain the Alhambra is Granada. They visit the city in order to see the wonders of the old Moorish palace, and unless they can spend many months in the neighbourhood they have no time to see anything else. A celebrated French artist declared that a man might worthily devote a life-time to the study of the Alhambra. Washington Irving, who lived for six years in Spain, and nearly the whole of it in Granada, complained, in 1829, that the Alhambra had been so often described that little remained to be said. Irving added to the literature of the subject his great and fascinating work, and it might have been thought that with this book the last word had been spoken. Hundreds of thousands of words in all languages have been written since then about the Alhambra, and yet I am not deterred from adding my few pages to the pile. There are many sights, like moonlight on running water, or the dancing shadows of feathery trees on a lawn, or the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Alhambra, which inspire one with cacoethes scribendi, and the mania is not to be resisted.

Granada, which has been called the city of running waters, is another monument of Spain’s decayed glories. Under the Moors it boasted a population of half-a-million inhabitants; to-day it has but little more than a tenth of that number. There must have been more virility in the district under the Romans, who ever congregated where wealth was obtainable, and who reaped a rich harvest by washing the gold in the sands of the

Darro. To-day this vast source of revenue is practically neglected; although, after the rains, a number of gold-fishers may be seen puddling in its eddies. The beautiful and magnificent cathedral, the burial place of the Catholic kings of mediÆval Spain, the religious monuments—the superb Cartoja, the Montesacro, containing the grottos of the martyrs, the tomb of Gonzales di CÓrdova in the Church of San Geronimo, the Convents of St. Dominie and of the Angels—and, above all, the Alhambra, remain to link the city with its mighty past, but the only living survival of its ancient activity is represented by the sand washers on the banks of the Darro. Granada has gone to sleep. She is content to doze in the midst of her beautiful gardens, encircled by her noble mountains, rejoicing in the fruits that a fertile ground grows of its own accord—content in her idleness and the variety of her beauty. If she is reproved upon her condition, she replies with a yawn, and says, as a witty Italian writer puts it: “I gave to Spain the painter Alonzo Cano, the poet Luis de LeÓn, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the sacred orator Luis de Granada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas; I have paid my debt; leave me in peace!”

So the visitor leaves sleepy Granada in peace in the hollow, and breasts the hill, on the summit of which the Alhambra mounts guard over the city. From the distance it presents, as do so many Oriental palaces, the appearance of a fortress, and the approach is so planned that one comes right under the shadow of its walls without obtaining another view of it. A curve in the road brings one suddenly at the entrance to a grove, the trees of which are so thickly planted that a man may scarcely pass between them, and their mighty branches interlacing overhead defy the sun to penetrate their foliage. An avenue pierces this park of verdure; the shade is deep, but the air is soft and fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and at the end we stand before a large square tower, dark coloured and crowned with battlements, and entered by an arched door. It is dowdy, commonplace, and unimpressive, but it is the Door of Justice, the principal entrance to the Alhambra. But if the visitor feels a shock of disappointment at this first close acquaintance with the world-famed structure, it will certainly not be allayed when, having passed through the gateway and ascended an embanked road, he is brought up before a great ruined palace in the style of the Renaissance, beyond which stand some miserable-looking little houses. The palace was erected by that arch-vandal, Charles V., who, to his everlasting shame, planted a Gothic Church in the middle of the Mosque at CÓrdova. The Alhambra has had its full share of vicissitudes and desecrations. For a number of years it was inhabited by smugglers and vagabonds, the French soldiers stabled their horses there during their occupation, earthquakes have visited it, and a gunpowder explosion destroyed some of the ceilings, but it remained for Charles V. to outstrip the earthquake and the invading armies in the work of ignorant spoilation. “But this,” one inquires, aghast, “this rubbishly palace is not the Alhambra?” It is a relief to be reassured that it is not; but the consolation is changed to amazement when one learns that the Alhambra itself is contained among the wretched hovels that lie beyond. But the suspense is nearly at an end; there is a little door to be entered, a little courtyard to be crossed, and one is in the marvellous apartment, which is at once a hall, a courtyard, and a garden—the Court of the Myrtles. Two rows of Moorish arches, upheld by light columns, stretch out on the right of the entrance one above the other, while a tower rises on the opposite side; and in the centre, extending right across the width of the patio, is a large rectangular basin of water, which reflects, as in a mirror, the arches and arabesques, and the superb mosaics which

ornament the walls. The deep thrill of emotion and delighted surprise that one experiences in gazing round this beautiful Eastern interior is repeated again and again as one proceeds through the halls and courts of this fairy palace. Moorish patios, with every variety of mosaic marble columns, fountains, and flowers, may be seen in other cities of Spain, but here are whole suites of courts, and gardens, and halls, vying with each other in splendour, in regal magnificence and lavish expenditure; while the situation of the palace is the most romantic and picturesque in Europe.

The Tower of the Ambassadors, which contains two halls, one of which is the great Hall of the Ambassadors, would alone earn for the Alhambra its reputation for unsurpassed beauty. The walls and the ceilings are covered with an enormous tracery of embroideries in the form of garlands, roses, branches, and leaves, so blended as to make one magnificent whole so delicate and intricate that the visitor could spend hours in examining its inextricable network, and yet gain no more than a vague impression of its detail. Gautier has compared these ornamentations to “a kind of tapestry worked into the wall itself;” and De Amicis, employing the same simile, writes of it: “The walls seem woven like a cloth, rich as a brocade, transparent as lace, and veined like a leaf.” The Hall of the Ambassadors is a spacious square apartment lighted by nine arched windows, which, by reason of the thickness of the walls, form nine alcoves, each supported by a little marble column and surmounted by two exquisite small arches, surmounted in their turn by two little arched windows. The views from these windows are entrancing; and one turns from the handsome workmanship of the interior to the magnificent landscape without in an ecstacy of sensuous pleasure.

The Court of Lions is one of the most beautiful edifices in Granada, and the finest and most elegant piece of Mussulman architecture of the Nazarite period. There is not a more magnificent and fantastic example, in or out of Spain, on which the artistic genius of the Arabs might pride itself; and certainly its builder, the famous architect Aben Cencid, is worthy a place with the most noted architects of all time. Transparent arcades, columns which have been grouped together in large and small numbers in order to share the weight of the beautiful arches and ceilings, seven fountains, two high ornaments in the form of temples, which advance majestically to relieve the monotony of the cloister, four golden cupolas which gleam in the rays of the sun, eleven different forms of arches gaudily decorated, constitute, as Don Rafael Contreras, who restored the Alhambra, says, a magical and delicious whole, even though seven centuries have elapsed. In the centre of the Court is a great marble basin, surrounded by a little paved canal, and supported by twelve lions—lions fashioned in the strictest accordance with the injunction of the Koran, which forbids its followers to make an image of any living thing. A glance at these lions shows how faithfully the sculptors

of these ill-shaped, grotesque, ridiculous monstrosities observed the tenets of their creed.

Perhaps the most beautiful apartment in the Alhambra is the hall of the “Two Sisters,” which, in its exuberance of ornamentation, richness, and variety of carving and manifold combination of every line that can produce beauty and grace, is beyond description. Fergusson has described it as “the most varied and elegant apartment in the whole palace.” The proportions are so graceful, the colours so bright and gay, yet subdued into such exquisite harmony that it soothes while it enchants the eye; and every portion, down to the tiles, bears the stamp of such refined taste and infinite invention, that one looks around with a sort of despairing wonderment, unable either to classify the various objects that challenge admiration on every side, or to carry off anything more distinct than a dream-like recollection, in which every element of decoration is blended in a bewildering chaos of beauty.

The ancient Moors made art a virtue, and bathing an art. They did not bathe from a sense of duty, but because bathing was a luxury. Here between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Myrtles is the Sala de Reposo, where the favourites of the Kings prepared themselves for their bath, or rested themselves after it. This hall, which was restored by Spanish artists on the ruins of the old one, is in keeping with the rest of the palace. A fountain occupies the centre of the apartment, alcoves are set in the multi-coloured walls, and the atmosphere of the whole place is cool, fragrant, and delicious. Around this hall are the little bath rooms, each bath formed out of a solid slab of marble. The rooms are lit by means of holes in the wall in the shape of stars and flowers, a device which admits the glow of the sun without its rays. Soft light and perfumes, rose-coloured curtains and music, contributed to the sensuous delights of the Sultanas’ ablutions. They may not have been a particularly intelligent class of women, these dainty, languid-eyed sultanas; but they must, as an American tourist observed, have been a “wonderfully sweet and wholesome kind of female to have about one.”

From the baths one proceeds to the Tocador de la reina (the Queen’s toilet), situated at the top of a tower from which one obtains a magnificent view of the surrounding country. This royal boudoir is perched on the edge of an abyss. It is open on all sides and on all sides a spectacle of amazing beauty is spread out to the view. Immediately below lies the city of Granada, the houses interspersed with groups of trees and huge bunches of foliage which seem to fight with the buildings for every yard of land that the hand of man has snatched from nature. Beyond the city is an immense green plain, over which endless rows of cypresses, pines, and oaks thread their ways amid groves of oranges and a riot of flowers. The deep valley of the Darro is almost hidden by the profusion of vegetation that runs right down to the water’s edge, and the silver Genil shimmers amid the groves and gardens. Beyond the plain are the hills, their green sides torn by the rugged boulders that thrust their way through the trees; and to the south rise the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, white and dazzling in summer sunshine. The spectacle is one that can never fade from the mind; the thrill it produces can never quite be lost.

The huge wall which surrounds the vast precincts of the Alhambra is studded with towers which retain their original names. The Torre de las Infantas is one of the best preserved outwardly, and presents that severity of outline which characterises the exterior of the palace, and contrasts so strongly with the prodigal magnificence visible everywhere in the interior. The Alhambra would be inexpressibly beautiful if it had been

set up in the Arabian desert, or the wastes of Siberia; but situated as it is in one of the most lovely spots on earth, it is as though the Moors had discovered Paradise and made it habitable. I am told that there is no time in the year when Granada is not beautiful; but beyond question the best time to be there is when the song of the nightingale and the fragrance of the orange blossom fill its groves with melody and sweetness: when the eye, penetrating the foliage of its elm-planted alameda, rests on the dazzling crest of Mulahacen with a sense of refreshment, to which the contrast of green leaves and summer snow lends an unwonted charm: when day is Elysium, and night a dream-land of romance, illumined by the warm beams of a southern moon: when the Alhambra assumes a garb of beauty to which, amid the glare of noon, its courts and bowers are strangers. At that hour, as Irving tells us, “Every rent and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and weather-stain, disappears. The marble resumes its original whiteness: the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams: the halls are illumined with a softened radiance, until the whole edifice reminds one of the enchanted palace of some Arabian tale.”

Another American author, G. P. Lathrop, has acknowledged the supreme spell of the Alhambra in a passage of remarkable descriptive power: “When the Madonna’s lamp shone bright amid the engulfing shadows of the Tower of Justice, while its upper half was cased in steely radiance, we passed in by Charles’s Palace, where the moon, shining through the roofless top, made a row of smaller moons in the circular upper windows of the dark gray wall. In the Court of the Pond a low, gourd-like umbellation at the north end sparkled in diamond lustre beneath the quivering rays; while the whole Tower of Comares behind it, repeated itself in the gray-green water at our feet, with a twinkle of stars around its reversed summit—the coldness of the moonlight on the soft, cream-coloured plaster in this warm, stilly air is peculiarly impressive. As for sound, absolutely none is heard but that of dripping water: nor did I ever walk through a profounder, more ghost-like silence than that which eddied in Lindaraxa’s garden around the fountain, as it mourned in silvery monotones of neglected grief. The moon-glare coming through the lonely arches shaped gleaming cuirasses on the ground, or struck the out-thrust branches of citron trees, and seemed to drip from them again in a dazzle of crystals.... From the Queen’s Peinador we saw long shadows from the towers thrown out over the sleeping city, which, far below, caked together its squares of hammered silver, dusked over by the deep gray of roofs that did not reflect the light. But within the Hall of Ambassadors reigned a gloom like that of the grave. Gleams of sharp radiance lay in the deep embrasures without penetrating; and at one, the intricacies of open work above the arch were mapped sharp figures of light on a space of jet-black floor. Another was filled nearly to the top by the blue, weirdly-luminous image of a mountain across the valley. Through all these openings I thought the spirit of the departed would find entrance as easily as the footless night breeze. I wonder if the people who lived in this labyrinth of art ever smiled? In the palpitating dark, robed men and veiled women seemed to steal by with a rustle no louder than that of their actual movement in life: silk hangings hung floating from the walls: scented lamps shed their

beams at moments through the obscurity, and I saw the gleam of enamelled swords, the shine of bronze candlesticks, the blur of coloured vases in the corners: the kasidas, of which poetry-loving monarchs turned the pages. But in such a place I could not imagine laughter. I felt inclined to prostrate myself in the darkness before I knew not what power of bygone, yet ever present things—a half-tangible essence that expressed only the solemnity of life and the presentiment of change.”

It were endless to describe all the various courts, balconies, galleries, and baths contained within the circuit of the Alhambra. The Mosque alone, with its exquisite niche where the Koran is deposited, would long detain an archÆologist. Yet that is but one Mosque; there are the remains of three others to be seen. There are the ruins of the house of the Cadi, the Water-tower, the Tower of the Prisoner, the Tower of the Candil, a dozen other towers besides the house of Mondejar—what is left of it—the military quarters, the gardens, the promenades, the—but the list is endless, the sights are inexhaustible. One may live in the Alhambra itself, as Washington Irving lived, and echo his plaint, “Oh, that I had seen the Alhambra!”

EL GENERALIFFE.