d at each end with light Moorish peristyles. It
is called the court of the Alberca. In the center was an immense basin,
or fish-pool, a hundred and thirty feet in length by thirty in breadth,
stocked with goldfish, 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 center
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
filigree work, supported by slender pillars of white marble.

[Illustration: THE COURT OF LIONS]

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 we
look 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, pilferings of
the tasteful traveler. 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 incrusted with
beautiful Moorish tiles, on some of which are emblazoned the escutcheons
of the Moorish monarchs: the upper part is faced with the fine stucco
work invented at Damascus, consisting of large plates cast in molds and
artfully joined, so as to have the appearance of having been laboriously
sculptured by the hand into light relievos and fanciful arabesques,
intermingled with texts of the Koran, and poetical inscriptions in
Arabian and Celtic characters. These decorations of the walls and
cupolas are richly gilded, and the interstices paneled with lapis lazuli
and other brilliant and enduring co