It is impossible to approach and to enter Granada without a thousand associations,--half reality, half romance,--being awakened within us: many centuries are suddenly swept from the records of time; and the events of other days are pictured in our imagination. A page of history is written upon every object that surrounds us. We see the Vega covered with the Christian camp, and the silken pavilion of Queen Isabella rising above the tents of the Spanish nobles: we see the queen, and the ladies of the court, and a gorgeous cavalcade, ride forth towards the Moorish city; and we see the Moorish cavalry pour through the gates into the plain, headed by the warrior Muza Ben Abel Gazan; and we see Boabdil, the last of the Moors, uncrowned and exiled, leave the city of his affections--the glory of a fallen empire--and turn round from the last eminence, to gaze yet once more upon the towers of the Alhambra; and we hear the fallen king, as he turns in silence and sorrow from the contemplation, exclaim, “Allah achbar!” God is great. I will endeavour to convey to the reader some idea of the situation of Granada, in a matter-of-fact description. The Vega of Granada is about ten miles long, and seven miles broad; and being subjected to irrigation, is covered with perpetual verdure, with grain of every description, with gardens, with olive plantations, and with orange groves; and it is thickly studded with villages, and country houses, and cottages. This plain is bounded on the south-east, the east, and north-east, by a semi-circular range of high mountains called the Sierra Nevada, the summits of which are always less or more covered with snow; and when we call to mind the latitude of Granada, this informs us, without the assistance of trigonometry, that the elevation of these mountains is great. Upon the outposts of the Sierra stands the city of Granada--for the most part, built upon the gentle acclivities that lie between the mountains and the Vega; but some part of it standing upon the Vega itself. Two rivers, the Xenil and the Daro, flow through the city, and traverse the Vega. Although the mountains seem from the plain to rise directly behind the city, this is not precisely the fact; two ridges, from four hundred to six hundred feet in height, separated from each other by the Daro, lie between the city and the base of the Sierra: these directly overlook the city; and upon one of them is situated the chapel of St. Michael, while the other is entirely covered by the ruins of the Alhambra. Not only are these heights covered with wood and with verdure, but the whole city is intermingled with gardens and orangeries; and, inclosing within it so many _monticules_, which are mostly occupied by convents and convent gardens, there is a picturesqueness about the city itself, abstracted from its Alhambra or its environs, that is peculiarly its own.