Walking across the tower, we look down into a court, where a guard of soldiers is keeping watch over a prison! And, to our amazement, we find that we are in the very midst of the walls that contain four or five hundred _political_ prisoners, who are here in durance vile for real or suspected offences. It is not the fashion at present to put to death political offenders, and the poor fellows that are shut up in these walls, hopeless and helpless, are perhaps on the whole disposed to think themselves better off than if they had lost their heads. Once the late queen punished the whole of her congress, some hundred and fifty, and sent them to prison, or foreign parts, thinking that their room was worth more than the advice they were disposed to give her. Some of the prisoners here confined are men of high social standing and of commanding influence in the country, but in the miserable strife for power and wealth, and the game of politics, which is more corrupt, if possible, here in Spain than in our own country, they have fallen victims to successful rivals, and are now wasting away in the dungeons of the Alhambra. Some of them had obtained the special favor of working in the gardens and among the flowers and shrubbery; and, under the genial beams of the bright sun in winter, they found a grateful mitigation of their sufferings. We had seen enough for one day, and took a ride over the city. Bensaken pointed out, as we passed the modest mansion in which the late beautiful Empress of the French was born. Her father, Count Montejo, fell in love with a daughter of the British consul at Malaga, Mr. Kirkpatrick, whose name unites Scotland and Ireland. The count married her, and Eugenie is their daughter. Her grandfather is therefore a Scotch-Irish-English gentleman. Some of her relatives are not of much account. One of them asked of me the gift of a glass of whiskey. Not far from the Alhambra, and a pleasant walk across the fields, is the Generaliffe, a pleasure-palace in olden time, a retreat in the country from the more stately grandeur and closer confinement of the citadel. It has been preserved with greater care, or perhaps restored from time to time, and is now one of the most interesting remnants of the Moorish dynasty. Its courts are paved with marbles, gladdened with fountains and flowers, and from some of them tall cypresses rise, which in other countries would rather adorn a burial-place than a palace court. One of them is the famous tree under which the beautiful Sultana Zoraya was sitting when one of the Abencerrages came to prefer a petition, and being seen to kneel before her, was suspected of making love, and her life and that of all his family was the forfeit. Bensaken was greatly provoked by the evident disposition of the writers of historical tales to insinuate that the Queen was actually receiving a lover, while he makes out a case of innocence and positively merciful virtue that would melt a heart of stone.