In An
Instant The Court Of Lions Glistened With The Flash Of Arms," Insomuch
That The American Lady Whom We
Saw writing a letter beside a friend
sketching there must have been startled from her opening words, "I am
sitting
Here with my portfolio on my knees in the beautiful Court of the
Lions," and if Muley Aben Hassan had not "overheard the tumult and
forbade all appeal to force, pronouncing the person of the ambassador
sacred," she never could have gone on.
V
I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the
beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light of
the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well
away from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that
Irving says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and I
could almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the
custodian demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the
ground the demand of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was
not too much for a devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise
other travelers to buy themselves off from a vain regret by giving it.
If ever a memory merited the right to levy tribute on all comers to the
place it haunts, Washington Irving's is that memory. His _Conquest of
Granada_ is still the history which one would wish to read; his _Tales
of the Alhambra_ embody fable and fact in just the right measure for the
heart's desire in the presence of the monuments they verify or falsify.
They belong to that strange age of romance which is now so almost
pathetic and to which one cannot refuse his sympathy without sensible
loss. But for the eager make-believe of that time we should still have
to hoard up much rubbish which we can now leave aside, or accept without
bothering to assay for the few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving
had just the playful kindness which sufficed best to deal with the
accumulations of his age; if he does not forbid you to believe, he does
not oblige you to disbelieve, and he has always a tolerant civility in
his humor which comports best with the duty of taking leniently a
history impossible to take altogether seriously. Till the Spaniards had
put an end to the Moorish misrule, with its ruthless despotism and
bloody civil brawls, the Moors deserved to be conquered; it was not till
their power was broken forever that they became truly heroic in their
vain struggles and their unavailing sorrows. Then their pathetic
resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to their
ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second period
that Irving had to treat.
VI
The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the
unparalleled beauty of its place.
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