THE MOSQUE AT CORDOVA.
This massive and splendid pile of architecture, in its original glory inferior only to the mosque at Mecca, was erected by the Khaliph Abderrahman in the year 786, and finished by his son Hishom about 800; succeeding sovereigns, however, added to its magnitude and splendour; so that the whole edifice was the work of eight monarchs of the house of Ummaiya. There is not, perhaps, upon the face of the habitable globe, any single scene so calculated to impress the mind of the spectator with a variety of distinct and powerful emotions, as that which the skilful and intelligent artist has here presented to our view. Whether we regard the city of Cordova as the ancient seat of learning, the birth-place of the two Senecas and the poet Lucan, or contemplate the heathen, Christian, and barbaric vestiges of former greatness, which it still retains, the mind is led onward in the history of men and nations, from one to another of those great land-marks, which the river of time has left unmoved by its perpetual ebb and flow.
Beyond the mosque, and stretching to the left, is a pile of building formerly called the Alcazor, but more fearfully known to modern times as the dungeon of the Inquisition.
Round the purple shadow
Of the twilight falls
O'er the sculptured marble
Of Cordova's walls.
Scarcely is the present seen,
Thinking over what has been—
Over the crowned glories,
Told in ancient stories,
Of the Moslem rule in Spain.
Dark across the waters
Came the gathered power,
Guided by Count Julian
In an evil hour.
Castled height and wooded dell,
Knew the armed infidel.
Maidens in the orange bowers,
Knights within their armed towers,
Owned the Moslem rule in Spain.
Stately rose their city—
Many towns are fair,
None rose like Granada
In the morning air.
There the Moorish princes swayed
Empire which themselves had made.
Like a dream their memory dwells
Where the carved marble tells
Of the Moslem rule in Spain.
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