In Malaga I went into a Spanish bookstore and asked for English books on Spain. The bibliopole sent me into the garret of his shop, where in a corner was heaped a pile of odds and ends of English literature, such as might have been left behind by some poor invalids who had perished in their perusal, while seeking to get a new lease of life in this delicious clime. But among them were several copies, in paper covers, of Irving’s “Tales of the Alhambra,” whose uncut leaves showed them to have been unread and kept for sale to passing pilgrims like myself. I carried one off. It would be pleasant to read on the spot: and I have read them with fresh delight, while every court and wall and tower, every fountain, stream, plain, hill is linked with the stories that the old master told while he dreamed within the ruins of the palace that his fiction has made more famous than its history. But reading tales about the Alhambra do not tell us what it is, and it is quite likely that my account will give you no more intelligible an idea of it. We have ascended the hill through a long avenue shaded with elms, and approach a massive gate, the gate of judgment, a seat of justice in olden times, where in the open air, as was common in Oriental climes, the magistrates, the elders, were accustomed to administer the law. “Then he made a porch, where he might judge, even a porch of judgment.” I Kings, vii. 7. Many other passages of Scripture allude to the same custom. A square tower surmounts the gate, and the pillars are inscribed with Arabic legends. The horse-shoe arch has a mighty hand in bas-relief, with the fingers pointing upward, and on the second arch is a key in stone, and the tradition is that the gate was impregnable until the stone hand should take the stone key and unlock the gate for the enemy to enter. Without waiting for such a miracle, we pass through the two-leaved gates, and by a winding and still ascending path we reach the terrace on which the palaces and villas of the Moorish kings were built. This plateau is about half a mile long, and narrow, surrounded by red walls six feet thick and thirty feet high, and made strong by many towers, each one of which was the residence of some of the household of royalty. The various styles of architecture within and on these walls are the best illustrations of the successive races and tastes and power of the men who have ruled on this lofty eminence. Rome and Carthage has each in its turn been master here, and left his sign-manual in characters that time has spared. More incongruous than any thing else is the Tuscan palace of Charles V., and a modern parish church has risen on the ruins of a mosque. Napoleon’s soldiers were followed by the English, and modern war is not a whit more mindful of the proprieties of art and sentiment than the old savagery which we despise. Ruin, desolation, decay is now the spirit of the place. It is impressive, eloquent indeed;