What followed the extinction of the Nasrid monarchy is not pleasant reading. The rights and privileges guaranteed the conquered were soon swept aside. The mild Archbishop de Talavera, the humane Tendilla, were superseded in the government of the city by fanatics more after Isabella's heart. Systematic persecution of the luckless Moslems ensued. They revolted, and their revolt was quenched with their own blood. They were intimidated, browbeaten, imprisoned, condemned, and burned. Their language, costume, and creed were banned. They were ordered to embrace Christianity under pain of death, and forbidden to quit the country. They appealed to Egypt, but it is a long way from the banks of the Genil to those of the Nile. Finally (and one hears of it with relief) they were all expelled from the country. As a race they perished utterly. The art, the civilization, which they had learnt on Spanish soil, they left buried in Spanish ground, and it was a long time before it was disinterred. The price Spain paid for national unity was a heavy one, but it was worth it. When we turn to Turkey, can anyone say that a united Spain would have been possible, with the fairest of her provinces and cities and the whole of her southern seaboard in possession of a people alien in race, tongue and creed? With Oriental people, the history of the palace is the history of the State. At Granada every traveller turns instinctively towards the Alhambra as the point of supreme interest. The famous pile is to the city what the Mezquita is to Cordova--not quite, perhaps, since Granada contains more than one building of intrinsic interest. The Alhambra has been so often described (by the present writer among others) that it is not easy to say anything new in regard to it, or even to avoid identity of language with other writers in the description of certain of its parts. Yet it would be impossible to give any account of Granada without some notice of this famous building. To begin with, I must impress on those about to visit it for the first time that the Alhambra is not a single palace, but properly speaking is the name given to a fortified eminence lying to the south-east of the city, and including two palaces, a citadel, and a multitude of private residences. In its nature it may be compared with the Acropolis of Athens and the far-distant Castle of Bamborough. The name, as most people are aware, is derived from _Kalat al hamra_--"the Red Castle," to adopt a translation which I have never seen disputed. (While not pretending to rank as an Arabist, I have not failed to notice that an infinite number of words put forward as Arabic by writers on the Spanish Moors are unintelligible to Syrian and Egyptian Arabs, and, which is more to the point, to many Hindu students of Arabic.) In shape the hill has been cleverly compared by Ford to a grand piano. Rearward it abuts on the Cerro del Sol ("the Mountain of the Sun"), to which Washington Irving alludes so often.