The Moorish architecture, introduced into Europe by the Arabian conquerors of Spain, early attained a high development. One singular characteristic of this style,--the horse-shoe arch--must be specially mentioned, as a new feature in construction; and its shape was, perhaps, suggestive of the dome, universal in the later Mohammedan architecture. Slender pillars, profuse decorations in painting, mosaic, and stucco, with elaborate lattice and trellis-work, and perforated battlements, so intricate as to resemble network, are the other points for remark in Moorish buildings. The polish and refinement of the Saracens distinguished them wholly from the rude barbarians of the North. They did not invade to destroy, but to improve; and so early was the development of their architecture, that one of their most splendid remains, the mosque at Cordova, was erected in the beginning of the ninth century--a period which could show nothing so beautiful elsewhere. The celebrated Alhambra--the palace of the Moorish kings of Granada--is some three centuries later, and must be alluded to here as the highest development of the luxurious Eastern style. The perfect state in which parts of this celebrated Moorish palace still remain, is elegantly thus described by a modern writer,[12] in his notice of the “Court of Lions” and the surrounding halls:--“Here the hand of time has fallen the lightest, and the traces of Moorish elegance and splendor exist in almost their original brilliancy. Earthquakes have shaken the foundations of this pile, and rent its rudest towers; yet, see, not one of those slender columns has been displaced--not an arch of that light and fragile colonnade has given way; and all the fairy fretwork of these domes, apparently as unsubstantial as the crystal fabrics of a morning’s frost, yet exist, after the lapse of centuries, almost as fresh as if from the hand of the Moslem artist.”