Samuel Levy, treasurer to Don Pedro the Cruel, in 1357. The ornamentation of the ceiling and walls is delicate and beautiful. The eighty-fourth Psalm, in very elegant Hebrew letters, runs as a cornice round the building. "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God."

Space will only permit the mention of one more out of the innumerable places of profound interest in this most picturesque old city-the Alcazar. It was built soon after the Moorish occupation of Spain on the site of the Roman Arx, which probably had already superseded some yet earlier fortress-Carthaginian or Iberian. It was enlarged, strengthened, and beautified by successive monarchs of Spain down to the days of Charles V. and Philip II. It has been used as a palace, a fortress, and a prison, a poor-house in which paupers were employed in silk-weaving, and barracks for French troops. has been twice burned, and for many years has been left, roofless and neglected, to crumble into ruins. A feeble and desultory effort is now being made to restore it; but those who know how such matters are managed in Spain entertain little hope from such efforts. It is more imposing in ruins than in any restoration it is likely to receive at the hands of the Spaniards. The view from the top is superb.

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Leaving Toledo by the noble Moorish gateway, the Puerta del Sol, and crossing the Romano-Gothic bridge which spans the Tagus, we reach the station. Convenient as railways are everywhere, especially in Spain, one cannot but feel that a railway here is something of an incongruity and an anachronism. The vehement denunciations of the ferro carril by Ford seem almost justifiable at Toledo and Cordova.

To resume our journey southward we must retrace our steps to Castillejo, near Aranjuez, in order to rejoin the main line from Madrid for Cordova and Seville. Soon after doing so we cross the frontier of La Mancha, the towns and villages of which have been made familiar to us by the genius of Cervantes. He sketched from nature. His art was intensely realistic. Except in the character of the Don himself, almost every detail can be made out and verified at the present day. Here is Toboso, the home of the "neverto-be-enough-admired Dulcinea;" yonder the Venta de Quesada where the knight of the sorrowful countenance received the accolade. The lakes of Ruydera and the cave of Montesinos, the muleteers, and the windmills, and the wine skins, are all to be seen just as Cervantes described them.

Shortly after passing the Venta de Cardenas and the Torre Nueva the railway enters a wild and savage gorge, the Despeñaperros, or "Pitch the dogs over." This name it owes doubtless to some desperate, but forgotten, struggle between Moor and Christian in the times when this was the border-land between the two races. Down these precipitous cliffs "the infidel dogs" were hurled to perish in the depths below.

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Shortly after leaving the gorge of Despeñaperros, we pass the mineral district of Linares, the resources of which are being developed by English capital and energy, and enter the fertile plains of Andalusia. The traveller crossing Europe from north to south, can scarcely fail to be struck by the successive zones of vegetation through which he passes. Soon after entering France a few straggling vines remind him that he is reaching the vine country. These become more numerous as he continues his journey, till he reaches districts where the whole landscape is covered with vineyards as far as the eye can reach. Then come, in the south of France, first an occasional olive tree, with its meagre, grey, willow-like foliage. Groves of olives gradually take the place of single trees, till the hill-sides are covered with them for miles. As we approach Cordova the cactus and prickly-pear, which had been growing more common ever since we left Madrid, are now used as the fences of fields and gardens, and grow wild in dense masses on the embankments of the railway. Groves of oranges and lemons too begin to appear with their glossy leaves and golden fruit. And here and there a tall feathery palm-tree rises, the advanced guard of the great army of giants we shall meet farther south.

Reaching the old Moorish capital the road into the city leads us along a shady Alameda, with gardens on either side, where the cool plash of water from innumerable fountains, the fragrance of roses and orange-blossoms, the palms and bananas and oleanders in infinite profusion are doubly delightful after the weary monotony of brown bare hills over which we have been passing.

Cordova is now a poverty-stricken, decayed, and dilapidated city, of about forty thousand inhabitants, without trade, without manufactures, without life or movement of any kind. It has a dejected and deserted air, beyond almost any other town I have ever visited. Yet in the days of the Moors it was the capital of a kingdom which contained eighty large cities, three hundred towns of the second class, and innumerable villages. It is said, perhaps with an Oriental exaggeration and disregard of arithmetical accuracy, that twelve thousand hamlets stood on the banks of the Guadalquivir alone. The revenues of Abd-ur-rahman amounted to upwards of five million pounds annually, and he was one of the richest and most powerful monarchs in Europe. The city contained, if we may trust the statement of the Moorish chroniclers, six hundred mosques, fifty hospitals, eight hundred schools, nine hundred public baths, eighty thousand shops, two hundred and sixty-three thousand houses, six hundred inns, a library of six hundred thousand volumes, and one million of inhabitants. The surrounding country was laid out in parks, pleasure grounds, and forests. All this grandeur has disappeared. From one of the stateliest capitals in the world it has shrunk into an insignificant and pauperized town; and but for the activity and energy of some English firms carrying on business in the vicinity, there seems to be nothing to avert its further decadence.

One relic of its former glories it yet retains its incomparable Cathedral, which was erected shortly after the foundation of the western caliphate. Its founder resolved to give his capital the finest mosque in the world. He is reported to have himself traced the plan, and to have worked upon the building daily with hod and trowel, in order to set to his people an example of diligence, humility, and piety. The Arab historians say that it originally rested upon twelve hundred columns. On one side were nineteen gates, of which the centre was covered with gold plates, the others were of bronze beautifully decorated. The minarets terminated in gilt balls surmounted by golden

pomegranates. The vast edifice was lit by four thousand seven hundred lamps fed by oil perfumed with amber, aloes, and frankincense. They add numerous other marvels, which if only approximately true, justify the claim set up for it as one of the wonders of the world.

And enough remains to warrant us in crediting all which they report. Entering at any of the doors one is bewildered by a perfect forest of columns, which stretch away in every direction. Nearly a thousand of the original number are yet remaining. Their number seems greater than it really is, and the bewildering effect of the whole is increased by the artful arrangement of

the building. Twenty-nine naves run in one direction and nineteen in the other. A sort of geometrical pattern is thus traced, the intricacy of which produces a marvellous effect. The columns were brought from all the shores of the Mediterranean. The temples of Sicily, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Egypt, Phoenicia, were despoiled of their finest marbles to contribute to this masterpiece of Moorish art. They are of marbles of all hues, green and blood-coloured, black and white, red and yellow, of chalcedony, lapis-lazuli, porphyry, granite, serpentine, and verde antique-all monoliths, and all highly polished.

The building has suffered much from the tasteless and reckless zeal of the ecclesiastics who turned the mosque into a cathedral. They ran up an

enormous coro in the centre of the building, removing many of the finest columns to make way for it. They whitewashed the edifice from end to end, hiding the brilliant arabesques and delicate fretwork of the Arab artists who had been engaged upon it. And they have constructed about forty tawdry chapels, full of gaudy, tinsel ornament. When Charles V. visited Cordova and saw what mischief had been done, he reproached the bishop and chapter, saying "You have built here what you, or any one, might have built anywhere else; but you have destroyed what was unique in the world."

Only a few parts of the edifice remain uninjured by the hands of the spoiler. Amongst these is the Mih-rab or sanctuary, in the which the Koran was deposited. It is a recess lined with mosaics, said, with probable truth, to be the finest in the world. The roof is formed of a single block of pure white marble, carved into a shell. The cornices are inlaid with Arabic inscriptions in letters of gold. When lit up by the sacristan the recess seems a fairy cavern, radiant with gold and jewels. The brother of the Emperor of Morocco, visiting Spain a few years ago, traversed the Mih-rab on his knees, weeping bitterly and beating upon his breast at the

contrast between the past and present condition of his people as illustrated by this gem of art.

Like most other Moorish buildings, the exterior of the Cathedral is plain and unimpressive. But the Patio de los Narranjos, or Court of Oranges, is surpassingly beautiful. This is a large quadrangle enclosed within the Cathedral walls. The pavement is of coloured marbles arranged in mosaic patterns. Fountains fall into marble basins. Tall palm-trees rise in stately grace from amongst groves of orange, lemon, and citron trees, the great size and age of which give support to the tradition that they were planted by the Moors-some of them by Abd-ur-rahman himself. The air is heavy with the fragrance of the orange-blossoms, even when the branches are borne down with the weight of the ripe golden fruit. Spanish girls gather to gossip around the fountains as they fill their vessels, the forms of which are classical in design, handed down from the times of the Romans. Few things can be conceived more enjoyable than to sit in the cool shade of these noble trees, whilst the green light flickers around one from the glossy leaves, to inhale the fragrance, to let the eye wander from point to point, each of which seems more beautiful than the last, and to listen to the strains of the Cathedral organ and the choir, as they fall fitfully upon the ear.

The Cordovese take a special pride in the bridge which spans the Guadalquivir, with its sixteen buttressed arches. It seems to be a Moorish superstructure upon Roman foundations. Tradition ascribes it to Octavius Cæsar, which is probable enough. The Romans had an important settlement here, and the city took an

active part in the civil wars between Pompey and Cæsar. the two Senecas were born.

Here Lucan and

The city itself has small claims to beauty. The streets are even narrower, more crooked, and more dilapidated than those of Toledo. The walls which surround it present a curious patchwork; the brickwork of the Romans, the stonework of the Goths, and the tapia of the Moors join on to one another. The enclosure within the walls now is the same as in the days of the city's