y exhausted. Granada gave me an impression that it wished
merely to be left alone to drag out its remaining days in peace, away
from the advance of civilisation and the fervid hurrying of progress: it
seemed like a great adventuress retired from the world after a life of
vicissitude, anxious only to be forgotten, and after so much storm and
stress to be nothing more than pious. There must be many descendants of
the Moors, but the present population is wan and lifeless. They are
taciturn, sombre folk, with nothing in them of the chattering and
vivacious creatures of Arab history. Indeed, as I wandered through the
streets, it was not the Moors that engaged my mind, but rather Ferdinand
of Arragon and Isabella of Castille. Their grim strength over-powered
the more graceful shadows of Moordom; and it was only by an effort that
I recalled Gazul and Musa, most gallant and amorous of Paynim knights,
tilting in the square, displaying incredible valour in the slaughter of
savage bulls. I thought of the Catholic Kings, in full armour, riding
with clank of steel through the captured streets. And the snowy summits
of the Sierra Nevada, dazzling sometimes under the sun and the blue sky,
but more often veiled with mist and capped by heavy clouds, grim and
terrifying, lent a sort of tragic interest to the scene; so that I felt
those grey masses, with their cloak of white, (they seemed near enough
to overwhelm one,) made it impossible for the town built at their very
feet, to give itself over altogether to flippancy.

And for a while I found little of interest in Granada but the Alhambra.
The gipsy quarter, with neither beauty, colour, nor even a touch of
barbarism, is a squalid, brutal place, consisting of little dens built
in the rock of the mountain which stands opposite the Alhambra. Worse
than hovels, they are the lairs of wild beasts, foetid and oppressive,
inhabited by debased creatures, with the low forehead, the copper skin,
and the shifty cruel look of the Spanish gipsy. They surround the
visitor in their rags and tatters, clamouring for alms, and for
exorbitant sums proposing to dance. Even in the slums of great cities I
have not seen a life more bestial. I tried to imagine what sort of
existence these people led. In the old days the rock-dwellings among the
cactus served the gipsies for winter quarters only, and when the spring
came they set off, scouring the country for something to earn or steal;
but that is long ago. For