If You Had, I Could Easily Show You The Interior Of A
Damascene House By Referring You To The Alhambra Or Alcanzar Of
Seville.
The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlaying of many
colours and illuminated writing on the walls.
The floors are of
marble. One side of any room intended for noonday retirement is
generally laid open to a quadrangle, in the centre of which there
dances the jet of a fountain. There is no furniture that can
interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of the apartments.
A divan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs round the three
walled sides of the room. A few Persian carpets (which ought to be
called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates their
shape and dimensions) are sometimes thrown about near the divan;
they are placed without order, the one partly lapping over the
other, and thus disposed, they give to the room an appearance of
uncaring luxury; except these (of which I saw few, for the time was
summer, and fiercely hot), there is nothing to obstruct the welcome
air, and the whole of the marble floor from one divan to the other,
and from the head of the chamber across to the murmuring fountain,
is thoroughly open and free.
So simple as this is Asiatic luxury! The Oriental is not a
contriving animal; there is nothing intricate in his magnificence.
The impossibility of handing down property from father to son for
any long period consecutively seems to prevent the existence of
those traditions by which, with us, the refined modes of applying
wealth are made known to its inheritors.
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