The balconies, furnished with blinds and ornamented with shrubs and vases of flowers, the vine-runners creeping from one window to another, the rose-bays raising their blooming flowers above the garden walls, the curious effect of the sun and shade, whose fantastic frolics remind you of Decamps's pictures representing Turkish villages, the women seated before the doors, the half-naked children playing and rolling about at their sides, the donkeys going backwards and forwards loaded with feathers and woollen tufts, give these lanes, which are nearly always up-hill and sometimes intersected with steps, a peculiar appearance which has a certain charm about it, and which compensates--nay, more than compensates for their want of regularity, by the novel and unlooked-for things you see. Victor Hugo, in his charming "Orientale," says of Granada,-- "Elle peint ses maisons de plus riches couleurs." This is perfectly true. The houses of persons at all well off are painted outside in the most fantastic manner with imitations of architectural embellishments, sham cameos on grey grounds, and false bas-reliefs. You have before you a medley of mouldings, modillions, piers, urn-like vessels, volutes, medallions ornamented with rose-coloured tufts, ovoloes, bits of embroidery, pot-bellied cupids supporting all sorts of allegorical figures, on apple-green, bright flesh-colour, or fawn-tinted backgrounds, all which, high art tells us, argues bad taste carried to its utmost limits. At first, you have some difficulty to bring yourself to look upon these illuminated façades as real dwelling-houses. You fancy you are walking among the scenery of a theatre. We had already seen houses illuminated in this manner at Toledo, but they are very much behind those of Granada in the extravagance of their decorations and the strangeness of their colours. As for myself, I do not dislike this fashion, which pleases the sight and forms a happy contrast with the chalky colour of the whitewashed walls.