UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
CORDOVA
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT CITY WHICH THE CARTHAGINIANS STYLED THE “GEM OF THE SOUTH,” WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS
GAY-LOOKING, vivacious in its beauty, silent, ill-provided, depopulated, Cordova was once the pearl of the West, the city of cities, Cordova of the thirty suburbs and three thousand mosques; to-day she is no more than an overgrown village, but she still remains the most Oriental town in Spain.
Cordova, once the centre of European civilisation, under the Moors the Athens of the West, the successful rival of Baghdad and Damascus, the seat of learning and the repository of the arts, has shrunk to the proportions of a third-rate provincial town; but the artist, the antiquary and the lover of the beautiful, will still find in its streets and squares and patios a mysterious spell that cannot be resisted.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT
LIFE OF CERVANTES