ections, too short to afford the elegance which here delights. This
is grand in its simplicity; nineteen aisles of slightly tapering
columns of beautiful marbles, jasper or porphyry, about nine feet in
height, supporting long vistas of flying horse-shoe arches, of which
the stones are now coloured alternately yellow and red, though
probably intended to be all pure white. Other still more elegant
scolloped arches, exquisitely decorated by carving the plaster, spring
between alternate pillars, and from arch to arch, presumably more
modern work.

The aisles are rather over twenty feet in width, and the thirty-three
cross vaultings about half as much, while the height of the roof is
from thirty to forty feet. In all, the pillars number about 500,
though frequently stated to total 850 out of an original 1419, but it
is difficult to say where all these can be, since the sum of 33 by 19
is only 627, and a deduction has to be made for the central court,
in which stands the church or choir. Since these notes were
first published, in 1890, I have seen it disputed between modern
impressionist writers which of them first described the wonderful
scene as a palm grove, a comparison of which I had never heard when
I wrote, but the wonder to me would be if any one could attempt to
picture the scene without making use of it.

Who but a nation of nomads, accustomed to obey the call to prayer
beneath the waving branches of African and Arabian palm-groves, would
have dreamed of raising such a House of God? Unless for the purpose of
supporting a wide and solid roof, or of dividing the centre into the
form of a cross, what other ecclesiastical architects would have
conceived the idea of filling a place of worship with pillars or
columns? No one who has walked in a palm-grove can fail to be struck
by the resemblance to it of this remarkable mosque. The very tufted
heads with their out-curving leaves are here reproduced in the
interlacing arches, and with the light originally admitted by the
central court and the great doors, the present somewhat gloomy area
would have been bright and pleasant as a real grove, with its bubbling
fountains, and the soothing sound of trickling streams. I take the
present skylights to be of modern construction, as I never saw such a
device in a Moorish building.

Most of the marble columns are the remains of earlier erections,
chiefly Roman, like the bridge over the Guadalquivir close by,
restored by the build