There is no place in the world like the Alhambra, so graceful, so perfect, so sad. No words can describe it, no pencil can portray it; it remains apart in the heart and fancy, like some second, more golden youth, that has come for a brief season, and made us happy and passed away.

The gardens are bordered with violets and myrtle, and shadowy with orange and lemon trees; the marble floors, the dried fountain, the slender alabaster columns, the gorgeous ceilings, the walls covered with delicate arabesques and verses, the airy courts, the sunny fish-ponds, the luxurious baths, the silence and desolation that have fallen over all, are indeed indescribable, and grow upon one like the graces of a most musical poem.

It is a fairy tale for men and women of all countries and religions—a realization of beauty, the most inconceivable and the most intoxicating —a sweet and subtle embodiment of Eastern thought and art. The Alhambra is so ruined as a whole, and yet so perfect in parts, so bare here, so rich in colour there, so desolate and yet so haunted by voices, that it reminds one most, I think, of beautiful antique jewellery. Some of the jewels have dropped out, the gold is tarnished, the clasp is broken, the crown is bent, but gaze a little while, and all becomes as it once was. Pearl and amethyst, emerald and opal, blaze out on some lovely throat, a golden clasp is wound on some round white arm, and a crown shines on some golden head, perhaps of a goddess, perhaps of a woman.