For One Thing I Did Not
Know Where The Place Of The _Quemadero_ Was; And I Do Not Yet Know Where
Those Protestant Churches Are.
II
If I went again to Seville I should try to visit them - but, as it was,
we gave
Our second day to the Alcazar, which is merely the first in the
series of palaces and gardens once stretching from the flank of the
cathedral to the Tower of Gold beside the Guadalquivir. A rich
sufficiency is left in the actual Alcazar to suggest the splendor of the
series, and more than enough in the gardens to invite our fatigue, day
after day, to the sun and shade of its quiet paths and seats when we
came spent with the glories and the bustling piety of the cathedral. In
our first visit we had the guidance of a patriotic young Granadan whose
zeal for the Alhambra would not admit the Alcazar to any comparison, but
I myself still prefer it after seeing the Alhambra. It is as purely
Moorish as that and it is in better repair if not better taste. The
taste in fact is the same, and the Castilian kings consulted it as
eagerly as their Arabic predecessors in the talent of the Moslem
architects whom they had not yet begun to drive into exile. I am not
going to set up rival to the colored picture postals, which give a
better notion than I could give of the painted and gilded stucco
decoration, the ingenious geometrical designs on the walls, and the
cloying sweetness of the honeycombing in the vaulted roofs.
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