We now know Murillo, and rank him next to Titian, and in feeling and delicacy much above him. He could paint something besides Spanish-girl Madonnas, lovely as they are, and Spanish beggars, where he had only to copy from the streets; and whoever has not seen St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the Roman Senator and his Wife, the Guardian Angel, Moses striking the Rock, and its companion, the Loaves and Fishes, and the St. Antony of Padua, down to whom the Infant Christ lightly floats, encircled with child angels, has not yet seen the works of Murillo. Then Velasquez, most noble, and Zurbaran and Ribera, and Cano, Morales, and Moro, and others whom I never knew aught about before. At Toledo we passed two days and three nights, well filled with sights of Old World things hardly touched by the later ages; and there is the grandest of cathedrals; and yet the interior of that of Seville is rather more satisfying. These three, Burgos, Toledo, Seville, I should place in this ascending order, or bracketing the latter two. A journey overnight brought us at sunrise into Andalusia, at Cordova, which we passed (to take on the way from Granada), and so to Seville for breakfast, three happy, sunny, busy days there, and then to Malaga, two days, and then on to this place, which we reached after dark, and are now enjoying our second day in. There are two hotels up here, under the Alhambra walls, and we are at one of them. Yesterday the road which rises to the crown of the hill was crowded with people of the town below, going up to the cemetery with flowers and lamps and candles and drapery, to ornament the tombs and graves of relatives, which here is done on All Saints’ Day, and we saw the curious sight by day and walked up again in the evening, when all was alight, and in a chapel a sort of requiem service performing. We will not describe the Alhambra. I fancied I should think the work finical; but you are carried away by it. But of most interest was our visit to the Cathedral of Granada this morning and to the Capilla Real, to see all the relics and contemporary memorials of Ferdinand and Isabella, their effigies, sword, sceptre, etc., their noble tombs, more rich and beautiful, I think, than those of the Constable and his wife at Burgos, and then to descend into the vault and see their rude iron coffins, which have not been desecrated nor molested, and also those of Philip I. and his poor wife Joanna. (Let us tell you, some day, of a modern Spanish picture, at Madrid, of her and her husband’s coffin, which she wearily had carried with her.) All this, and what we see here on the spot of the Moorish life, and what we saw at the cathedral, gives a vivid reality that nothing else can. And here my sheet is full and my gossip must be cut short, with short space to add the kindest remembrances and love which my wife joins in sending to you and yours and daughters. TO J. D. HOOKER. HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, PARIS, November 14, 1880.