The creations of the Moors in Spain form the most remarkable chapter in human art. To me, Spain has been a new discovery; a sudden revelation of a world within a world; the monuments of an extinct or departed race standing alone in a desert. The generation that now possesses the soil has nothing of the genius or taste or spirit of the barbaric tribes that were once their masters. And the Alhambra at Granada, the Mosque at Cordova, and the Alcazar at Seville, look like the wrecks of a stranded empire, whose people live only in their glorious ruins. In the language of a brilliant historian, “Spain stands to-day a hideous skeleton among living nations.” They have a legend here that Adam made a visit to the earth a few years ago, to see how his farm was getting on. He alighted in Germany, and found schools and colleges and books, and the people intent on learning. He soon left it for France, where the people dressed in fantastic styles, and were mad upon works of art and improvements unknown to our great ancestor. Disgusted with all he saw, he came down to Spain, and, with delight, exclaimed, “This is just as I left it.” Adam was nearly right. Of all the countries in Europe this is more _as it was_ than any other. The greatest calamity that ever happened to Spain was its expulsion of the Moors; and it will be a century, perhaps many centuries, before the arts and sciences will flourish on this soil as they did before that year, so memorable for the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and the overthrow of the kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. Both those events, forming the most momentous epoch in the history of Spain, occurred in the year 1492, from which period we may date the decline of an empire enriched by the untold wealth of a new world added to its possessions, and strengthened by the destruction of the last stronghold of its former conquerors and masters. Foreign capital and enterprise have forced railroads across her mountains and plains, but the capital and enterprise of the world cannot make them profitable, when the people have no industry and no ambition. The mines of Spain are so rich that she has no need of possessions in the gold fields of the western hemisphere; and they have been known and worked ever since the days of the Phœnicians, when Andalusia was the Tarshish of Holy Scripture. Yet Spain is more distinguished to-day, as being behind the world, than for aught it has done or is doing for itself or others. And it often seems to a traveller here in Spain that he is in the Orient, so many manners and customs, so many works, and, much more, such a want of things he is wont to meet with in the more civilized nations, remind him that he is among a people who have derived much of what they have and are from lands at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.