the thick and cave-like
architecture which of old protected the inhabitants of Thebes and
Memphis from the rays of the African sun, than to the transparent heaven
and light pavilions of the graceful orientals of Granada.

Leila stood within this chamber, pale and breathless, with her lips
apart, her hands clasped, her very soul in her ears; nor was it possible
to conceive a more perfect ideal of some delicate and brilliant Peri,
captured in the palace of a hostile and gloomy Genius. Her form was of
the lightest shape consistent with the roundness of womanly beauty; and
there was something in it of that elastic and fawnlike grace which a
sculptor seeks to embody in his dreams of a being more aerial than those
of earth. Her luxuriant hair was dark indeed, but a purple and glossy
hue redeemed it from that heaviness of shade too common in the tresses
of the Asiatics; and her complexion, naturally pale but clear and
lustrous, would have been deemed fair even in the north. Her features,
slightly aquiline, were formed in the rarest mould of symmetry, and her
full rich lips disclosed teeth that might have shamed the pearl. But
the chief charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of
softness and purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies
that cast of loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and
dreamy languor of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the
statue had received a soul.

After a few minutes of intense suspense, she again stole to the lattice,
gently unclosed it, and looked forth. Far, through an opening amidst the
trees, she descried for a single moment the erect and stately figure of
her lover, darkening the moonshine on the sward, as now, quitting his
fruitless search, he turned his lingering gaze towards the lattice of
his beloved: the thick and interlacing foliage quickly hid him from
her eyes; but Leila had seen enough--she turned within, and said, as
grateful tears trickled clown her cheeks, and she sank on her knees upon
the piled cushions of the chamber: "God of my fathers! I bless Thee--he
is safe!"

"And yet (she added, as a painful thought crossed her), how may I pray
for him? we kneel not to the same Divinity; and I have been taught to
loathe and shudder at his creed! Alas! how will this end? Fatal was the
hour when he first beheld me in yonder gardens; more fatal still the
hour in which he crossed the barrier, and told Leila that she was
beloved by the