y a fixed arrangement of the accented syllables. If you
would look over the poems in these volumes, beginning even with the
nursery rhymes, it would not take you long to become familiar with
all the different forms.

While study of this kind may seem tiresome at first, you will soon
find that you are making progress and will really enjoy it, and you
will never be sorry that you took the time when you were young to
learn to understand the structure of poetry.

THE GOVERNOR AND THE NOTARY

_By_ WASHINGTON IRVING

In former times there ruled, as governor of the Alhambra[20-1], a
doughty old cavalier, who, from having lost one arm in the wars, was
commonly known by the name of El Gobernador Manco, or the one-armed
governor. He in fact prided himself upon being an old soldier, wore his
mustachios curled up to his eyes, a pair of campaigning boots, and a
toledo[20-2] as long as a spit, with his pocket handkerchief in the
basket-hilt.

He was, moreover, exceedingly proud and punctilious, and tenacious of
all his privileges and dignities. Under his sway, the immunities of the
Alhambra, as a royal residence and domain, were rigidly exacted. No one
was permitted to enter the fortress with firearms, or even with a sword
or staff, unless he were of a certain rank, and every horseman was
obliged to dismount at the gate and lead his horse by the bridle. Now,
as the hill of the Alhambra rises from the very midst of the city of
Granada, being, as it were, an excrescence of the capital, it must at
all times be somewhat irksome to the captain-general, who commands the
province, to have thus an _imperium in imperio_,[21-3] a petty,
independent post in the very core of his domains. It was rendered the
more galling in the present instance, from the irritable jealousy of the
old governor, that took fire on the least question of authority and
jurisdiction, and from the loose, vagrant character of the people that
had gradually nestled themselves within the fortress as in a sanctuary,
and from thence carried on a system of roguery and depredation at the
expense of the honest inhabitants of the city. Thus there was a
perpetual feud and heart-burning between the captain-general and the
governor; the more virulent on the part of the latter, inasmuch as the
smallest of two neighboring potentates is always the most captious about
his dignity. The stately palace of the captain-general stood in the
Plaz