Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... cult to deal with than the agitation of previous years.-- Speech in House of Lords (Compensation for Disturbance Bill), August 3, 1880. Alhambra. Let us enter Alhambra! See ! here is the Court of Myrtles, and I gather you a sprig. Mark how exquisitely everything is proportioned; mark how slight, and small, and delicate! And now we are in the Court of Columns, the far-famed Court of Columns. Let us enter the chambers that open round this quadrangle. How beautiful are their deeply-carved and purple roofs, studded with gold, and the walls entirely covered with the most fanciful fret-work, relieved with that violet tint which must have been copied from their Andalusian skies. Here you may sit in the coolest shade, reclining on your divan, with your beads or pipe, and view the dazzling sunlight in the court, which assuredly must scorch the flowers, if the faithful lions ever ceased from pouring forth that element, which you must travel in Spain or Africa to honour. How many chambers! the Hall of the Ambassadors ever the most sumptuous. How fanciful its mosaic ceiling of ivory and tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl and gold! And then the Hall of Justice with its cedar roof, and the Harem, and the baths: all perfect. Not a single roof has yielded, thanks to those elegant horse-shoe arches and those crowds of marble columns, with their oriental capitals. What a scene! Is it beautiful? Oh! conceive it in the time of the Boabdils; conceive it with all its costly decorations, all the gilding, all the imperial purple, all the violet relief, all the scarlet borders, all the glittering inscriptions and precious mosaics, burnished, bright, and fresh. Conceive it full of still greater ornaments, the living groups, with their splendid and vivid and...