338 PINE ARTS. 



the Adarves," with a peasant stretched in the shade of an overhang:- 

 ing vine, has infinitely more of the character of southern scenery 

 than the former plates ; but when we call to remembrance Lewis's 

 pictures of vintage-groups and pilgrims, and bring before our 

 memory's eyes the rich and glowing effect diffused over them, we 

 cannot but compare those former favourites, with the present pro- 

 ductions of the same pencil, and lament that it should seem to have 

 so lost its cunning. 



The " Court of jMyrtles," with its graceful and lofty colonnades of 

 slender pillars, again surmounted by open galleries, surrounding the 

 marble basin or fish-pond in the centre of the court, tells many a 

 story of by-gone beauty and romance to the lovers of Moorish lay 

 and legend ; but the figures with which Mr. Lewis has peopled 

 these scenes of faded grandeur and departed glory, are not of the 

 kind to please the poetic or legendary gazer. He only gives us a 

 few bandit-like peasants, with their dark-haired wives or loves 

 spinning beside them ; or a water-carrier, or comely old Padre, stroll- 

 ing amid the cool arcades and citron-groves of the Hill of Palaces : 

 and these are not the beings we meet in Moorish chronicles. To 

 the advocates of matter-of-fact realities, these sketches, showing all 

 the desolation, and we might add desecration, of the Alhambra as it 

 is, will be valuable for their fidelity of outline. To the more ima- 

 ginative, (among whom we beg to class ourself ), they serve as me- 

 morandums of localities. When we look over, or think over, the 

 histories of gay and gallant beings, once the worthy and fitting de- 

 nizens of such glorious places ; these faint resemblances will serve 

 as guides, in giving to the " airy nothings" of the legendary tale 

 " a local habitation and a name." They are maps of the Alhambra, 

 rather than pictures ; and to those who have the happy faculty of 

 supplying from the mind's rich storehouse all "appliances and 

 means to boot,*' to fill up, in imagination, the incomplete production 

 of the Painter, they would be all we require, (were the execution 

 equal to the design). To those tmpoetic persons who must needs 

 see every thing laid down in distinct lines, — who cannot, in fancy, 

 transform a water-carrier of Granada into one of the noble Aben- 

 cerrages, or a Spanish belle, with her fan and mantilla, into a jew- 

 elled sultana of peerless beauty, — ^for such Mr. Lewis is a most 

 unfit illustrator of this maze of enchanted palaces, haunted halls, 

 and fairy bowers. 



But to proceed with our " comments and reviews.'* The two 

 following plates are both taken in the " Court of Myrtles," and 

 give views of the Palace of Charles V., and the Tower of Com ares. 

 The arabesque ornaments on the arcades and walls of this court 

 are extremely rich, and for the most part in good preservation. 

 Mr. Lewis would have done well to attend more to the architectu- 

 ral peculiarities of the Moorish style ; his arches are rarely drawn 

 with accuracy. In the next plate, " Entrance to the Hall of Am- 

 bassadors," the beautiful door-way, with its elegant pendant orna- 

 ments like mimic stalactites, is greatly distorted from its "fair 

 proportions." Here our fanciful friends will readily imagine, in 



