[6] From the _Alhambra_.--See also, _Supplement_ published with
the present Number.
_Enjoyment in Travelling_.--We travelled in true contrabandista style,
taking every thing rough and smooth as we found it, and mingling with
all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship.
_A Miracle_.--Near Archidona is a mysterious path by which the Virgin
Mary is said to have led Queen Isabella to attack an old Moorish castle
on the summit of the mountain: you see this path like a riband up the
mountain side; but the miracle is, that though it can be seen at a
distance, when you come near it disappears!
_Imaginary Treasures_.--The thirsty man dreams of fountains and running
streams; the hungry man of ideal banquets; and the poor man of heaps of
hidden gold: nothing certainly is more magnificent than the imagination
of a beggar.
_Spaniards_.--There is a natural talent or mother wit, as it is called,
about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable
companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however
imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never
vulgar, nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity of spirit.
_Garden of Lindaraxa_.--"How beauteous is the garden!" says an Arabic
inscription, "where the flowers of the earth vie with the stars of
heaven, what can compare with the vase of yon alabaster fountain, filled
with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in her fulness, shining in the
midst of an uncloudless sky!"
_Transitions of Decay_.--I have often observed that the more proudly a
mansion has been tenanted in the day of its prosperity, the humbler are
its inhabitants in the day of its decline, and that the palace of the
king, commonly ends in being the nestling place of the beggar.
_A Factotum_.--A portly old fellow with a bottle nose, who goes about in
a rusty garb with a cocked hat of oil-skin and a red cockade. He is one
of the legitimate sons of the Alhambra, and has lived here all his life,
filling various offices; such as deputy alguazil, sexton of the
parochial church, and marker of a fives-court established at the foot of
one of the towers. He is as poor as a rat, but as proud as he is ragged,
boasting of his descent from the illustrious house of Aguilar, from
which sprang Gonsalvo of Cordova, the grand captain. Nay, he actually
bears the name of Alonzo de Aguilar, so renowned in the history of the
conquest. It is a whimsical caprice of fortune to present, in the
grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a namesake and descendant of
the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of Andalusian chivalry, leading
an almost mendicant existence about this once haughty fortress, which
his ancestor aided to reduce: yet such might have been the lot of the
descendants of Agamemnon and Achilles, had they lingered about the ruins
of Troy.
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