SEVILLE
ALCAZAR—COURT OF THE DOLLS.
infancy of the art. The Alhambra does not suffer from these incongruities, because it has not suffered a great transformation similar to that which the alcazar underwent at the hands of Don Pedro. It has not been altered to suit the requirements of a Christian court, and it has never been occupied by great personages, with large revenues at their disposal, to reconstruct it according to their caprice.
The ornaments of the ceilings of the alcazar are magnificent, because, as Contreras points out, the Moorish workmen were beginning to understand all the majesty and grandeur that Christian art stamped upon the complicated and minute assemblage of Mussulman edifices; they began to make rich coverings, with bolts or stays with apertures, and with hollows in the form of an arch, and keystones imitating rhombus, stars, and bow ornaments. The famous Gothic roofs and ceilings of the Bretonne buildings of the ninth century have never been able to equal this one, because here one finds more beautiful specimens than in the other edifices, when the vaults with little stalactites had not yet acquired their complete development. The perfectly-worked and carved designs of the doors give a great relief to the palace. One remarks here that the ceilings are less magnificent or luxurious, when the ornamentation is less classic, and, as at Fez, the walls were covered with hangings instead of reliefs in plaster; and then they used more gold in the cornices, in the friezes, in the domes, in the lintels, and in the crownings, whilst the walls remained bare, as in the Moz-Arabian constructions. There was here such a mixture of styles, such a confusion of ideas, and such a number of little quadrangular windows, which interrupt the general line of the ornamentation, as one does not see anywhere else. One sees, too, walls covered with arabesques, stretching like pieces of tapestry or coverings of bright colours, and which produce a rich effect, beautiful and varied, thought-out and elegant—but not at all simple—which is the chief condition of art in the epochs of great culture.
In going through this alcazar one sees nothing but square saloons, one following the other, of the same shape and dimensions, occasionally varied by the composition of the arabesques traced there. Symmetry has been sacrificed to convenience, and the central arches to the alignment of the doors. In the time of the Arabs the alcazar constituted a series of constructions, flanked by the walls and the towers, which surrounded the town, which had not the symmetrical form of the rectangular plan of the buildings of the Renaissance. Neither does it resemble the palaces of Egypt or of Syria. These quays, placed side by side, give this edifice the appearance of a Christian house of the fifteenth century; and one can only confidently give the name “Arab” to the Court of the Damsels, the Hall of Ambassadors, and the apartments immediately adjoining it.
The Court of the Banners, and of the Hunters, lead to the Court of the Principal Façade, where one sees the first specimen of Mussulman decoration! In all these divisions the monument is only revealed by the vestiges of battlements of the towers and of the walls, in which the original doors were opened, and where the sultans had the chambers for judging the quarrels of their subjects,—a custom perpetrated by the Christian monarchs. In the Court of the Hunters one can still see the apartment named the Hall of Justice, where all writers suppose that the audiences were held. Here Don Pedro held his tribunal; and the traveller, Don Antonio Ponz, asserts that he saw one of the columns of the memorable seat occupied by the monarch when he held those famous audiences, which were an imitation of the