“Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown Matted and mass’d together, hillocks heap’d On what were chambers, arch crush’d, column strown In fragments, chok’d up vaults, and frescos steep’d In subterranean damps, where the owl peep’d, Deeming it midnight: Temples, baths, or halls? Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap’d From her research hath been, that these are walls--” _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_, Canto IV. [Illustration: GARDEN OF THE GENERALIFE.] [Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE GARDEN OF THE GENERALIFE.] [Illustration: ELEVATION AND GROUND PLAN OF THE PORTICO OF THE GENERALIFE.] What is pointed out as “the trysting place of the Sultána,” is a grove of cypress trees, enormous in their proportions, and old as the Moors themselves. The beautiful Zoraya, surnamed “The Morning Star,” to whom reference has been already made, is said to have been discovered under their spreading branches with her lover, the Abencerrage, but this is a calumny of the _Romanceros_, and they are false witnesses. The tradition is, but with little to substantiate it, that the Sultána was condemned to be burnt alive, if, [Illustration: MOSAIC, PORTICO OF THE GENERALIFE.] within thirty days, she did not produce four knights to defend her cause against her four accusers. The fatal day arrived; no knights appeared, when, just at the supreme moment, there came upon the scene Don Juan de Chacon, Lord of Carthagena (whom she had implored to become her champion) accompanied by three other Christian knights, all in Saracenic armour. They fought and conquered, and the last of the conspirators, with his dying breath, confessed his invention of the false charge against the Abencerrage and the innocent Sultána. The reader who is desirous of perusing the circumstantial narrative of this supposed transaction may be referred to the late Mr. Henry Swinburne’s account in his _Travels in Spain_, while Mr. Peyron, in his _Essays on Spain_, has given a translation of an Arabian document purporting to be an official report concerning it.