The court is surrounded by the usual tiled verandah, supported by one hundred and twenty-two light and elegant white marble pillars, the arches between which show some eleven different forms. At each end is a portico jutting out from the verandahs, and four cupolas add to the appearance of the roofs. The length of the court is twice its width, which is sixty feet, and on each side lies a beautiful decorated apartment with the unusual additions of jets of water from the floor in the centre of each, as also before each of the three doors apiece of the long narrow Moorish rooms, and under the two porticoes. The overflows, instead of being hidden pipes, are channels in the marble pavement, for the Moors were too great lovers of rippling water to lose the opportunity as we cold-blooded northerners would.
To fully realize the delights of such a place one must imagine it carpeted with the products of Rabat, surrounded by soft mattresses piled with cushions, and with its walls hung with a dado of dark-coloured felt cloths of various colours, interworked to represent pillars and arches such as surround the gallery, and showing up the beautiful white of the marble by contrast. Thus furnished--in true Moorish style--the place should be visited on a hot summer's day, after a wearisome toil up the hill from the town. Then, lolling among the cushions, and listening to the splashing water, if strong sympathy is not felt with the builders of the palace, who thought it a paradise, the visitor ought never to have left his armchair by the fire-side at home.
If, instead of wasting money on re-plastering the walls until they look ready for papering, and then scratching geometrical designs upon them in a style no Moor ever dreamed of, the Spanish Government would entrust a Moor of taste to decorate it in his own native style, without the modern European additions, they would do far better and spend less. One step further, and the introduction of Moorish guides and caretakers who spoke Spanish--easy to obtain--would add fifty per cent. to the interest of the place. Then fancy the Christian and Muslim knights meeting in single combat on the plains beneath those walls. People once more the knolls and pastures with the turban and the helm, fill in the colours of robe and plume; oh, what a picture it would make!