CHAPTER XI
The Moors at Cordoba
T Cordoba we come upon the full splendour of the Moors, a whole world of chivalry, jonglerie, magic, and song, from the old East, their home. What noble devotion to their race! What unalterable faith! What generous courage in life, and silent constancy in death! What knowledge, could we but grasp it!
We know but what is left to us of their outward life in Andalusia and Granada. Their exquisite sense of proportion and colour, in palaces vermilion walled and vocal with many waters; the massive grandeur of barbicans of defence, the sensuous charm of lace-covered chambers and gigantic leap of arch, tower, and minaret, destined to live as their mark for ever.
Their whole existence in Spain is a romance anomalous but dazzling; a nation within a nation, never amalgamated; a people without a country; a wave of the great Moslem invasion cast into Europe; a brilliant phantasmagoria, various and rare!
The Moors took no solid root in Spain as the
