The masterpiece of the Alhambra is the "Court of the Lions." It occupies the centre of the palace and is surrounded by a spacious courtyard, once paved with blocks of snow-white marble, fragments of which remain. Around it on each side are galleries and pavilions, which, in their elegance and lightness, are the despair of architects and the admiration of the world. They are supported by no less than one hundred and twenty-four marble columns, apparently too slender and delicate to bear even the fairy-like arches that rest upon them. The Alhambra looks as though it had risen from the earth, like a palace of fairies, at the mere wave of an enchanter's wand. In reality it required one hundred years to ripen slowly to perfection. The amount of labor expended on it was enormous. Some one has well suggested that it is possible to find in this style of architecture a trace of the former wandering habits of the Moors. In exchanging their nomadic for a settled life in Spain, did they not imitate in their architecture the luxurious shawls and hangings of their former dwellings, - erecting, instead of a tent-pole, a slender marble column and covering their walls with colors and gilding in place of the silken tissues of Damascus?

Yet, if the tourist anticipates grand proportions and massive Gothic pillars in the Alhambra he will be disappointed. Moorish art has its own distinctive character and conditions, within which it is unrivaled. Moreover, it should be always borne in mind that the Alhambra was a southern palace, whose architecture, unlike the Gothic forest of the north, resembles rather an Oriental flower, glowing with all the vivid colors and redolent with the sweet perfumes of Asia.

In the centre of the Court of the Lions stands its crowning beauty, like a precious stone mounted in a most brilliant setting. It is an alabaster fountain, the spray from which once fell almost within the galleries themselves. The basin of this fountain is one solid piece of alabaster, ten and a half feet thick, and rests upon twelve strangely sculptured lions, which give to the court its name. Around its edge is an Arabic inscription, on which the eyes of many a Moorish caliph and sultana must have often rested. A portion of it reads as follows: "Look at this solid mass of pearl spreading through the air its prismatic shower! One might imagine it to be a block of glistening ice, with crystal water melting from it." Its concluding words doubtless express the un-uttered prayer of every visitor to the Al-hambra: "The blessing of God be with thee evermore; may thy pleasures be multiplied, and thine enemies destroyed."

The Summer Palace Of The Moors, Granada.

"But how is it possible," every tourist asks at first, "that the Moors, whose architecture is replete with elegance and grace, could have ever sculptured such strange-looking animals as these and called them lions?" It is easily explained. The Koran expressly forbids any representation of animal life, lest it should lead the Moslems to idolatry, - thus cutting them off at once from both painting and sculpture, in which perhaps the Arabs would have excelled as wonderfully as in architecture.

Columns Of Alabaster.

It really seems, however, as if these beasts could be safely worshiped without violating one of the old Hebrew Commandments, at least; for they resemble nothing either in heaven above or the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.

It was by moonlight in this lovely court that I took my farewell look at this gem of Moorish art and Oriental beauty. The rays of the crescent moon (the glorious symbol of Islam), striking these slender pillars obliquely, gave to them the transparency of alabaster, yet clothed them with a dust of gold. Through the perforated carvings of the galleries, the moonbeams darted in like silver arrows, as if to pierce the once richly gilded capitals of the marble shafts. As I gazed, I felt as if I were removed from the world of reality, and were wandering in a moonlit palace of alabaster in the time of the Arabian Nights. Lingering here, I asked myself, how could a brave and cultivated race like this have been so utterly destroyed and driven out of Spain, where they had ruled for a period almost as long as that which has elapsed since the conquest of England by William the Conqueror? To solve this mystery, I rose and passed beneath a graceful arch into a room which, although exquisitely decorated, is haunted with appalling memories. It is the Hall of the Abencerrages,- named thus in honor of the bravest and most brilliant family that ever graced the court of the Alhambra. Yet at this fountain, it is said, thirty-six princes of that clan were treacherously murdered, - beheaded, one by one, as they were admitted to an audience with their jealous sovereign.