Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/551

Rh Bk. I. Ch. III. SPAEN. 535 otherwise it is an unsuccessful attempt to imitate the simplicity and power that belongs to more durable and more solid materials. It should therefore always be covered with ornament, and was never elaborated with more taste and consistence than here. At the upper end of this court is an oblong hall, called that of Judgment (d), and on either side two smaller rooms, that " of the Aben- cerrages " (e) on the south, and that called " of the Two Sisters " (f) opposite, the latter being the most varied and elegant apartment of the whole palace. The walls of all these are ornamented with geometric and flowing patterns of very great beauty and richness, and applied with unexceptionable taste for such a decoration ; but it is in the roofs and larger arcades that the fatal facility of plaster becomes most apparent. Instead of the simple curves of the dome, the roofs are made up of honeycombed or stalactite patterns, which look more like natural rock-work than the forms of an art, which should be always more or less formal and comprehensible at a glance, at least in its greater lines and divisions. There is perhaps no instance where a Saracenic architect has so nearly approached the limits of good taste as in these parts, and it requires all the countervailing elements of situation, and comparison with other objects, to redeem them from the charge of having exceeded those limits. Behind the Hall of the Two Sisters, and on a lower level, are situated the baths (g) — beautiful in some respects, and appropriately adorned, but scarcely worthy of such a palace. Besides the edifices mentioned above, there is scarcely a town in Spam, once occupied by the Moors, that does not retain some traces of their art. These traces, however, are generally found in the remains of baths, which from their nature were more solidly built than other edifices, and were generally vaulted with bricks — frequently with octagonal domes supported on twelve pillars, as those in the East. Tliese in consequence have survived, while the frailer palaces of the same builders have yielded to the influence of time, and their mosques have disappeared before the ruthless bigotry of their successors. None of the baths, however, seem to be of suflicient importance to require notice. In Spain we entirely miss the tombs which form so remarhable a feature of Saracenic architecture wherever any Turanian blood flows in the veins of the people. The Moors of Spain seem to have been of purely Semitic race, either importations from Arabia or the descend- ants of the old Phoenician settlers on the southern coast ; and among them, of course, it would be absurd to look for any indications of sepulchral magnificence. If the Moors of Spain had practised tomb-building to as great an extent as some of their brethren further east, this circumstance