Now that we have given this description, we think it our duty to destroy another illusion. All these magnificent things are made neither of marble nor of alabaster, nor even of stone, but simply of plaster! This interferes very much with the ideas of fairy splendour that the name alone of the Alhambra creates in the most positive imaginations; but it is true, for all that. With the exception of the columns, which are nearly all made of a single piece, and which are hardly ever more than from six to eight feet in height, of a few flag-stones, of the smaller basins of the fountains, and of the little chapels where the slippers used to be left, there has not been a single bit of marble employed in the construction of the Alhambra. The same thing may be said of the Generalife: the Arabs surpassed all other nations in the art of moulding, hardening, and carving plaster, which acquired in their hands the firmness of stucco, without having its disagreeable shiny appearance. The greater part of these ornaments were made in casts, so that they could be reproduced without any great trouble as often as the symmetry of the place required it. Nothing would be easier than to reproduce an exact likeness of any hall of the Alhambra; to do this, it would suffice to take casts of all the ornaments contained in it. Two arcades of the Hall of Justice, which had fallen down, have been reconstructed by some Granadian workmen, in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. If we were anything of a _millionaire_, one of our fancies would be to have a duplicate of the Court of Lions in one of our parks.