An esplanade, enclosed by railings, stretches all round the monument, and enables it to be seen on every side. Statues in this position have something elegant and graceful about them which pleases me very much, and which serves admirably to conceal the nudity of a terrace, a square, or a courtyard that is too large. The small statue on the porphyry column in the courtyard of the Palais des Beaux Arts, at Paris, will convey a faint notion of the ornamental effect which might be produced by arranging figures in this fashion; they assume, when so placed, a monumental aspect which they would otherwise not possess. The same thought struck me when I saw the Holy Virgin and Saint Christopher at Ecija. We were not greatly struck by the exterior of the Cathedral, and were afraid of being wretchedly disappointed. Victor Hugo's lines: "Cordoue aux maisons vielles A sa mosquée où l'œil se perd dans les merveilles." appeared before we had visited the building to be too flattering, but we were soon convinced that they were only just. It was the Caliph Abderama I., who laid the foundations of the Mosque at Cordova, towards the end of the eighth century, and the works were carried on with such activity that the whole edifice was completed at the commencement of the ninth; twenty-one years were found sufficient to terminate this gigantic monument! When we reflect that, a thousand years ago, so admirable a work, and one of such colossal proportions, was executed in so short a time by a people who have since fallen into a state of the most savage barbarism, the mind is lost in astonishment, and refuses to believe the pretended doctrines of human progress which are generally received at the present day; we even feel inclined to adopt an opinion diametrically opposite, when we visit those countries which formerly enjoyed a state of civilization which now exists no longer. I have always regretted, for my own part, that the Moors did not remain in possession of Spain, which certainly has only lost by their expulsion. Under their dominion, if we can believe the popular exaggerations so gravely collected and preserved by historians, Cordova contained two hundred thousand houses, eighty thousand palaces, and nine hundred baths, while its suburbs consisted of twelve thousand villages. At present it does not number forty thousand inhabitants, and appears almost deserted. Abderama wished to make the Mosque of Cordova a place of pilgrimage, a western Mecca, the first temple of Islamism, after that in which the body of the prophet reposes. I have not yet seen the _Casbah_ of Mecca, but I doubt whether it equals in magnificence and size the Spanish Mosque. One of the original copies of the Koran and a still more precious relic, a bone of one of Mahomet's arms, used to be preserved there.