ll the fatalism of the luxurious Moor, to whom
the past and future were as nothing, and the transient hour all in all;
yet they have outlasted him and his conqueror. The Spaniard, inglorious
and decayed, is now but the showman to this magnificence; time has seen
his greatness come and go, as came and went the greatness of the Moor,
but still, for all its fragility, the Alhambra stands hardly less
beautiful. Travellers have always been astonished at the small size of
the Alhambra, especially of the Court of Lions; for here, though the
proportion is admirable the scale is tiny; and many have supposed that
the Moors were of less imposing physique than modern Europeans. The
Court is surrounded by exquisite little columns, singly, in twos, in
threes, supporting horseshoe arches; and in the centre is that beautiful
fountain, borne by twelve lions with bristly manes, standing very
stiffly, whereon is the inscription: _O thou who beholdest these lions
crouching, fear not. Life is wanting to enable them to show their fury._

Indeed, their surroundings have such a delicate and playful grace that
it is hard to believe the Moors had any of our strenuous, latter-day
passions. Life must have been to them a masque rather than a
tragi-comedy; and whether they belong to sober history or no, those
contests of which the curious may read in the lively pages of Gines
Perez de Hita accord excellently with the fanciful environment. In the
Alhambra nothing seems more reasonable than those never-ending duels in
which, for a lady's favour, gallant knights gave one another such blows
that the air rang with them, such wounds that the ground was red with
blood; but at sunset they separated and bound up their wounds and
returned to the palace. And the king, at the relation of the adventure,
was filled with amazement and with great content.

* * *

Yet, notwithstanding, I find in the Alhambra something unsatisfying; for
many an inferior piece of architecture has set my mind a-working so that
I have dreamed charming dreams, or seen vividly the life of other times.
But here, I know not why, my imagination helps me scarcely at all. The
existence led within these gorgeous walls is too remote; there is but
little to indicate the thoughts, the feelings, of these people, and one
can take the Alhambra only as a thing of beauty, and despair to
understand.

I know that it is useless to attempt with words to give an idea of these
numerous chambers and court