It was a dreadful day for Seville, and indeed for Spain, when the Moors were driven out of the country; they had conquered it, and ruled eight hundred years. Four hundred thousand Moors, Jews and Arabs, left this city of Seville in a few days after it was surrendered to St. Ferdinand. Wealth, learning, taste, art, and the charm of Eastern life went out with them, and Spain has been lower in the scale of morals and manners ever since. This is no compliment to Mahometanism. To compare the present condition of Spain with any thing that has gone before it, and say that the former days were better than these, is saying very little for the better times. In this old city of Seville we found the Alcazar or palace, being the first specimen of Moorish magnificence we had seen. It consists of a group of palaces, on the banks of the Guadalquiver, and exhibits the same style of architecture and mural decorations that are so much admired and celebrated in the Alhambra. Indeed, the pavements and columns and arches and apartments have been preserved or restored with so much greater care than the Alhambra itself, that the latter appears to be a feeble example of Moorish taste and skill, compared with these glorious rooms in Seville. Fancy must people these chambers with men and women, of flesh and blood; clothe them in Oriental and gorgeous raiment, surround them with every luxury that gold and labor and power can give; hang these passages with curtains whose richness has not been excelled by any thing that modern art has produced. When the sleepy janitor opens the outer gate and leads you through these deserted and empty halls, in which your footfalls make the only sound, into apartments that for centuries have been silent as the grave, yet on every hand is beauty of coloring and carving and curiously wrought adorning that you must pause to admire; even in the midst of admiration one cannot but mourn that the barbaric splendor of Moorish glory has departed, and the degenerate race of effete Spanish civilization has taken its place. A thousand wives of a proud Moor once made these walls jocund with their mirth, and the adjoining gardens and the beautiful Guadalquiver were gay with their revels and song, and the moral tone of the palace was as high, and the happiness of the people just as great as when a dissolute queen and a profligate court, and an ignorant, depraved, and impoverished people, constituted the government and inhabitants of a nominally Christian kingdom.