to the foot of the Fountain of Lions, where it disappears in a subterraneous conduit. This is certainly a kind of dwelling in which you would never be annoyed by the dust, and it is a matter of conjecture how these halls could be inhabited in the winter. The large cedar doors were no doubt then shut, the marble floor was perhaps covered with a thick carpet, and fires of fruit-stones and odoriferous wood lighted in the _braseros_, and it was thus that the return of the fine season was waited for, which is never long in coming at Granada. We will not describe the Hall of the Abencerrages, which is almost similar to that of the Two Sisters, and contains nothing particular, with the exception of its ancient door of wood arranged in lozenges, which dates from the time of the Moors. At the Alcazar of Seville there is another one made exactly in the same style. The _Taza de los Leones_ enjoys, in Arabian poetry, a wonderful reputation, and no terms of praise are thought too high for these superb animals: I must own, however, that it would be difficult to find anything less resembling lions than these productions of African fancy; the paws are mere wedges, similar to those bits of wood, of hardly any shape, which are used to thrust into the bellies of paste-board dogs to make them keep their equilibrium; the muzzles, streaked with transversal lines, doubtless to represent the whiskers, are exactly like the snout of a hippopotamus; and the eyes are designed in so primitive a manner, that they remind you of the shapeless attempts of children. Nevertheless, these twelve lions, if we look upon them not as lions, but as chimeras, as a caprice in ornamenting, produce, with the basins they support, a picturesque effect full of elegance, which aids you to comprehend their reputation, and the praises contained in the following Arabian inscription, of twenty-four verses of twenty-two syllables each, engraved on the sides of the basin into which the waters of the upper basin fall. We ask our readers' pardon for the somewhat barbarous fidelity of the translation:-- [Illustration: FOUNTAIN, COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA.]