On each side of the passage are the rooms of the guard and the Moorish nobles.  Within, all is pure Saracenic, and absolutely perfect in its grace and richness.  It is the realization of an Oriental dream; it is the poetry and luxury of the East in tangible forms.  Where so much depends on the proportion and harmony of the different parts—­on those correspondences, the union of which creates that nameless soul of the work, which cannot be expressed in words—­it is useless to describe details.  From first to last—­the chambers of state; the fringed arches; the open tracery, light and frail as the frost-stars crystallized on a window-pane; the courts, fit to be vestibules to Paradise; the audience-hall, with its wondrous sculptures, its columns and pavement of marble, and its gilded dome; the garden, gorgeous with its palm, banana, and orange-trees—­all were in perfect keeping, all jewels of equal lustre, forming a diadem which still lends a royal dignity to the phantom of Moorish power.

We then passed into the gardens laid out by the Spanish monarchs—­trim, mathematical designs, in box and myrtle, with concealed fountains springing up everywhere unawares in the midst of the paven walks; yet still made beautiful by the roses and jessamines that hung in rank clusters over the marble balustrades, and by the clumps of tall orange trees, bending to earth under the weight of their fruitage.  We afterward visited Pilate’s House, as it is called—­a fine Spanish-Moresco palace, now belonging to the Duke of Medina Coeli.  It is very rich and elegant, but stands in the same relation to the Alcazar as a good copy does to the original picture.  The grand staircase, nevertheless, is a marvel of tile work, unlike anything else in Seville, and exhibits a genius in the invention of elaborate ornamental patterns, which is truly wonderful.  A number of workmen were busy in restoring the palace, to fit it for the residence of the young Duke.  The Moorish sculptures are reproduced in plaster, which, at least, has a better effect than the fatal whitewash under which the original tints of the Alcazar are hidden.  In the courts stand a number of Roman busts—­Spanish antiquities, and therefore not of great merit—­singularly out of place in niches surrounded by Arabic devices and sentences from the Koran.

This morning, I climbed the Giralda.  The sun had just risen, and the clay was fresh and crystal-clear.  A little door in the Cathedral, near the foot of the tower, stood open, and I entered.  A rather slovenly Sevillana had just completed her toilet, but two children were still in undress.  However, she opened a door in the tower, and I went up without hindrance.  The ascent is by easy ramps, and I walked four hundred yards, or nearly a quarter of a mile, before reaching the top of the Moorish part.  The panoramic view was superb.  To the east and west, the Great Valley made a level line on a far-distant horizon.  There were ranges of hills in the north and south, and those