It is not a dream. Neither has history deceived us. We are in European lands, but among Oriental people. We are in the midst of the prime of the dark ages, but we are in the Southern part of Spain, in Andalusia, in the city of Cordova, a city of 200,000 houses, and 1,000,000 inhabitants, of hundreds of parks and public gardens, of menageries of foreign animals, of aviaries of rare birds, of factories in which skilled workmen display their art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom, in jewelry and in filigree works, in works of art, and in scientific instruments and apparatus. We are in the city that, even then, could boast of a college of music, of libraries, of public schools, of universities in which instructions were given in the sciences and philosophies and languages, and literatures and arts. We are in the city of art and culture and learning, the city made famous and beautiful by the literary and cultured Moors and Jews, whose prosperity continued as long as the followers of Mohammed and the followers of Moses were permitted to dwell in peace side by side, but whose glory vanished as soon as Christianity banished the Jews and Moors from Spain. But we must not indulge in any reflections now. Our raven locked guide, whose beautiful form, and winning countenance, and melodious voice involuntarily remind us of the beautiful lover of the love-inflamed Shulamite in "Solomon's Song," beckons, and we must follow. On we march, and with every step new and matchless beauties unroll themselves before us. We know not what we shall admire first, and most, whether the polished marble balconies that overhang luscious orange gardens, or the courts with the cascades of water beneath the shades of the cypress trees, or the artificial lakes, supplied with water by hydraulic works, replete with fish; whether the shady retreats with inlaid floors and walls of exquisite mosaic, vaulted with stained glass and speckled with gold, over which streams of water are continually gushing, or the fountains of quicksilver, that shoot up in glittering globules and fall with a tranquil sound like fairy bells; whether the apartments into which cool air is drawn from the flower gardens, in summer by means of ventilating towers and in winter through earthen pipes or caleducts imbedded in the walls--the hypocaust, in the vaults below, or the walls adorned with arabesque and paintings of agricultural scenes and views of paradise, or the ceilings corniced with fretted gold, other great chandeliers with their hundreds and hundreds of lamps; whether the columns of Greek, Italian, Spanish and African marble, covered with verd-antique and incrusted with lapis lazuli, or the furniture of sandal and citron wood, inlaid with mother of pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious malachite, or the costume of the ladies woven in silk and gold, and decorated with gems of chrysolites, hyacinths, emeralds and