House and Garden 
S PAIN can boast a wealth ot gardens, 
especially in Andalusia, where the Moor 
has left the clearest and most exquisite traces 
of his ancient reign. The high-bred Caliphs, 
whose palaces and mosques shame Christian 
art by their airy loveliness, took a peculiar 
delight in gardens. Nothing was too pre¬ 
cious for their enrichment. That fairy palace 
of Abd-er-Rahman III., in the environs 
of Cordova, possessed marvelous gardens 
abounding in jets ot sparkling water, but 
these he chose to have outshone by a central 
fountain of quicksilver, whose glitter in the 
sun was too dazzling tor eye to bear. The 
Cordova palace and pleasure-grounds have 
vanished like a dream of the Arabian Nights, 
but the gardens of the Generalife in Granada, 
with their avenues of giant cypresses, and ot 
the Alcazar in Seville, still whisper, when the 
wind blows from the south, memories of the 
beauty-loving Arab. 
Upon the Alcazar gardens, as upon the 
palace, successive Catholic kings have set 
their stamp; but even Ferdinand, who so 
despised the learning and literature of the 
Moors as to burn, in an open square of Gra¬ 
nada, more than one million Arabian books, 
all that he could collect throughout Spain, 
refrained from obliterating the work of the 
Alcazar artists. 
The Alcazar lies in the southeast corner 
of Seville. In the time of the Moors this 
royal residence covered a much larger area 
than at present, reaching to the banks of the 
Guadalquivir. The far-famed Torre del Oro, 
the Golden Tower, was one of the defenses 
of the outer wall—a wall of which some ruins 
may yet be seen. At present the gardens 
form an irregular triangle. To the eastward 
stretches away the partially open land given 
up to slaughter-house, barracks, cannon- 
foundry, railway-station and other such ugly 
adjuncts of the romantic city. Along the 
south side runs the street of San Fernando, 
separating the gardens from the immense 
Tobacco Factory, which covers more ground 
than the Cathedral and gives employment, 
/such as it is, to five thousand women. Be¬ 
yond the Tobacco Factory is the palace of 
Santelmo, with its own magnificent extent of 
parks and gardens, and beyond these the 
river. To the northwest of the Alcazar lies 
the city, the Cathedral conspicuous in the 
foreground. 
The southern facade of the Alcazar, over¬ 
looking the gardens, is shown in the illustra¬ 
tion on the following page. Just behind 
soars the Giralda, the Moorish prayer-tower, 
dominating all Seville with irresistible beauty. 
The wall known as the Gallery of Pedro the 
Copyrighted 1904 by Henry T. Coates &= Co. 
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