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[231]

Here you pass under superb rows of oaks and elms, whose size and regularity prove to you that they are the same where those proud kings walked who claimed to themselves the titles of emperor and sultan; and a little farther on, you find yourself in a thicket as wild as the original fastnesses of nature. Sometimes you meet with a fountain that still flows as it did when tales of Arabian nights were told on its borders, and sometimes you find the waters burst from their aqueducts and bubbling over the ruins of the palaces or pouring in cascades from the summit of the crumbling fortifications. Sometimes the architecture is preserved, even to the very minutest of its most delicate ornaments, as in the queen's toilet, the luxurious bathing-rooms, and the saloon of the ambassadors, and sometimes it has been broken by earthquakes into grand masses of picturesque ruins covered with the graceful drapery of the ivy and the vine; while, for a vast distance around, the remains of immense gardens are apparent in the garden flowers that still grow wild there, in the pomegranate and palm trees that spring up in every thicket, and in the profusion of waters that were the peculiar and characteristic luxury of the Arabs, and which still, brought by their aqueducts from the neighboring mountains, are everywhere seen winding down the sides of the hill and hastening to join the Xenil and the Douro in the fertile plain below.

I wandered here for hours, meeting at every instant something to delight and surprise me, resting under the shade of a palm-tree, sitting amidst the refreshing coolness of the minute fountains the Arabs invented only to temper the heat, or enjoying the magnificent view from the summit of the Generalife, which, taking in the plain below, traversed by four streams and bounded by mountains, is more like an original to Milton's description of Paradise than the Val d'arno, or anything else I have seen in Europe. At length, the sun set upon my unsatisfied eagerness, and the twilight began to fade below. I came down slowly and reluctantly; returned to the Archbishop's and talked it all over with him; went to bed and dreamt of it, and the next morning, at half past 5 o'clock, was again on the summit of the Generalife, with my eyes again fastened on the same enchanting scenery and prospect. The morning was as beautiful as the evening had been. The plain became gradually illuminated, and the mountains beyond passed from gray to purple, and from purple to gold, as I gazed upon them. The birds were everywhere rejoicing at the return of day, in the groves and gardens of the Alhambra, as gayly as if it were still the chosen seat of Arabian luxury; and the convents in the city and its environs were just ringing their matins. In the


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