268 



GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



The Cordova palaces and pleasure grounds have vanished like a dream 

 of the Arabian Nights, and the once splendid Alcazar is now a nursery gar- 

 den with just a few pools and fountains to remind us of its past glory ; 

 but fortunately the Spanish kings had suihcient taste to spare some works 

 of Moorish art. Even Ferdinand, who so despised the learning and literature 

 of the Moors as to burn in an open square of Granada all the Arab books 

 he could collect throughout Spain, refrained from destroying all their build- 

 ings, so we can still enjoy 

 the Alhambra and the Gene- 

 ralife with their cool shady 

 terraces and endless streams 

 of water, and the sweetly 

 scented court of oranges in 

 front of the old mosques at 

 Cordova and Seville. The 

 feathery palms and fountains 

 of the gardens of the Alcazar 

 at Seville still remain to give 

 some faint idea of what gar- 

 den design has once been and 

 might be again, if only the 

 Spaniard could awaken to a 

 sense of the beautiful in art, 

 and consent to take a lesson 

 from the beauty-loving Arab. 

 Granada, " the city of 

 groves and mountains," rising 

 3,000 feet above the level of 

 the sea, was compared by the 

 old Arabian historians to a " goblet of silver full of emeralds " and con- 

 sidered by them far superior in extent and productiveness to the celebrated 

 ghauttah, or meadow of Damascus. 



The remains of the gardens are unfortunately very few, but there is 

 quite enough left to enable the authorities to restore them to their original 

 Moorish form at no very great expense, and thus add immensely to the charm 



MARBLE TAZZA, PATIO DE LOS ARRAYANES, 

 ALHAMBRA. 



