Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/355

 The indescribable delicacy and daintiness of Arabian architecture charms and delights us after the gloomy solidity of the Gothic structures reared by the conquering Spaniards.

THE COURT OF THE LIONS IN THE ALHAMBRA Photograph by Harlow D. Higinbotham

It is said, I know not how truly, that it is the custom of the descendants of the Moors who once dwelt within this fortress and palace, to petition Allah that they may one day repossess it and dwell again in the earthly paradise. Americans, who by virtue of Washington Irving's poetic pages, must ever feel a sense of ownership in the beautiful Alhambra, look upon the acropolis of Granada as a shrine to which they owe a pilgrimage; and surely, not all "good Americans" will "go to Paris when they die." Some of the more romantic of our disembodied compatriots will—if choice be allowed them—haunt the towers and halls and battlements of the storied Alhambra. Certainly, the artists and the lover of the beautiful must ever regret the Christian conquest of this exotic kingdom of the Moors.