The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-23

broken; the great stone hand will react
 down and grasp the key-and then the
 whole pile will tumble to pieces, and al
 the moslem treasures buried beneath il
 will be revealed.
 Passing beneath the double arches oi the portal, through the two-leaved doors of bronze, which still swing on theil
 pivot set into the ground, exactly as
 when Ferdinand's conquoring army
 went through we step at once into an other age and the scenes of Arabian story This great space,-paved with white marble and surrounded by long
 lines of elegant colonnades of richly
 emblazoned horse shoe arches resting upon delicately slender pillars-we rec
 ognize at once as the oft-described 1 Plaza de los Algibes, or Court of Myr- i ties. In its centre is an immense basin 1 130 feet long by 30 broad, in which in 1 numerabe gold fish are darting about. ! Yes, there must be magic in the place, | for the instant our shadows fall upon the ater--Presto! the gold fish have all disappeared and the basin appears empty of every living thing! Retreat a few steps, and back they come, sporting
 gaily as before in the sunshine; but
 nothing shall induce us to believe that they are merely every day time gold fish, frightened at human approach The sides of the tank are lined with roses and beyond are hedges of orange trees and myrtle and Japanese med dars. Arabic inscriptions cover the walls and galleries; and in the latter
 1A +Ir ;EJa JpJo
 that once screened from vulgar gaze the
 charms of the Sultan's harem This
 court of Myrtles was the only part of
 the palace to which the public was ever
 admitted; and we read that even while
 the common enemy the Christian, was
 laundering at the gates, 1t became the
 theatre of frequent intrigues between
 hostile Moslem factions, to whose bitter
 feuds may be ascribed the downfall of
 the kingdom. Here were received the
 picturesque envoys of the distant East,
 who brought gifts and greetings from
 the lords of Ispahan and Cairo. Here also upon grand occasions were enter
 tained the flower of Castilian chivalry
 who came to compete for the prize of Abul Hacen, surrounded by his several hundred wives, listened with gloomy forebodings to the predictions of the astrologer who announced the loss of his empire, and the extinction of his race. He ordered the sees to be bow strung at once, and endeavored to for get his fears in the caresses of his beau- tiful Zorayda, "Star of the Morning.; but all the same, the feet of the Neme- sis overlook him.
 Everywhere in the Alhambra we are struck with evidences that the architec- ture of the Arabs was essentially relig- ious and the offspring of the Koran, as Gothic architecture is of the Bible. The Koran's prohibition to represent any animal life must have hardly hamper ed those Moslem sculptors, Probably that is the reason why the twelve lions, so-called, which have given name to the gem of the palace, the Court of Lions look less like the king of beasts than like dragons intended to scare away the Evil One. They have quadrangu- lar legs, heads without manes the front 1 of the fact as thick as the back, the nose hardly distinguishable from the cheeks, and water pipes that look like
 
 wonder all the lions have left the neigh of Morocco and hace retired in disgust to the interior of Africa! Yet those Moors were wonderful sculptors, as testified by the miles of mural arabv asques that somehow remind one of the intricacier of modern music, and the floral recommendations which Iautier says are "a kind of marble tap astry worked into the wall itself'' The | yeometrical adornments were undoubt- edly taken from the loom. It would | for a settled life--in strik- | solid form,--had transferred the lux lrious shawls and hangings of cash nere which adorned their former dwell- ngs, to the new temple, changing the | for the marble columns, the 'ilken tissue for gilded plaster Be- ween the flowers and designs, on every nch of wall, appear sentences from the Koran, intended to keep it's maxims constantly in the hearts of behonders. Thousands of times this motto occurs: Va-la glalibs-illa- a-Allah--"There is no onquerer but Allah''-the words which bn-l-A Ahmar answered to his sub ects when they came forth to meet him $ he returned victorious to Grenada, )ver and over again we read Cthat is if 7e understand the Cufic characters), Allah is our refuge in every trouble" The glory, the empire, belong to AL ah." Praise be to Allah for the bless 1gs of Islamism'' ".There are no gifts mong you but those nf Allah" A per etual empire for the owner of this pal ce." "Glory to our Lord the Sultan -bul Hachach (Jusuf I.). prince of the Ioslims, or Abu Abdflla Mohammad " l." There is no doubt that the Moors ere intensely religious, in their own ay; and yet in these very rooms, whose 7alls were inscribed with sacred senti- rents, what tragedies have been enact l-what scenes of cruelty, last and : arbarity, The Hall of Ambassadors, le largest in the Alhambra, occupies 1e whole of the tower of Comares and ,
 seventy-ffve feet high This was the /, of the Caliph. Its walls re of immense thickness, so that the indow recesses are like small rooms , he ceiling was originally a wonderful . ucco, inlaid With mother of pearl, DOT r hyry and jasper; but most of this has cen destroyed, and like King Solo, ans palace, 1t is "cisled in cedar and ainted with vermilion." We stand in l