hts I would sit for hours at my window
inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered
fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in the
elegant memorials around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the
clock from the distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight
hour, I have sallied out on another tour and wandered over the
whole building; but how different from my first tour! No longer
dark and mysterious; no longer peopled with shadowy foes; no longer
recalling scenes of violence and murder; all was open, spacious,
beautiful; everything called up pleasing and romantic fancies;
Lindaraxa once more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of
Moslem Granada once more glittered about the Court of Lions! Who
can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and such a
place? The temperature of a summer midnight in Andalusia is
perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; we
feel a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of
frame, which render mere existence happiness. But when moonlight is
added to all this, the effect is like enchantment. Under its
plastic sway the Alhambra seems to regain its pristine glories.
Every rent and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and
weather-stain, is gone; the marble resumes its original whiteness;
the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams; the halls are
illuminated with a softened radiance,--we tread the enchanted
palace of an Arabian tale!

"What a delight, at such a time, to ascend to the little airy
pavilion of the queen's toilet (el tocador de la reyna), which,
like a bird-cage, overhangs the valley of the Darro, and gaze from
its light arcades upon the moonlight prospect! To the right, the
swelling mountains of the Sierra Nevada, robbed of their
ruggedness and softened into a fairy land, with their snowy summits
gleaming like silver clouds against the deep blue sky. And then to
lean over the parapet of the Tocador and gaze down upon Granada and
the Albaycin spread out like a map below; all buried in deep
repose; the white palaces and convents sleeping in the moonshine,
and beyond all these the vapory vega fading away like a dreamland
in the distance.

"Sometimes the faint click of castanets rise from the Alameda,
where some gay