[Illustration: HALL OF AMBASSADORS, ALCAZAR, SEVILLE.]
The chief attraction of this most interesting of the provinces of the Peninsula, consists in the numerous well preserved remains of Arab art. The most sumptuous of their palaces are, it is true, no longer in existence, nor the principal mosques, with the exception of the metropolitan temple of Cordova: but there remain sufficient specimens to shew, that their architecture had attained the highest excellence in two of the principal requisites for excellence in that science--solidity and beauty.
The superiority of the Arabs in this branch of science and taste is so striking, that all other departments of art, as well as the customs and peculiarities of that race, and the events of their dominion in this country, become at once the subjects of interest and inquiry. It is consequently very satisfactory to discover that one can examine almost face to face that people,--probably the most advanced in science and civilization that ever set foot in Europe; so little are the traces of their influence worn away, and so predominant is the portion of it still discernible in the customs, manners, and race of the population of this province, and even to a considerable extent in their language.
There is something so brilliant in the career of the Arab people, as to justify the interest excited by the romantic and picturesque (if the expression may be allowed), points of their character and customs. Their civilization appears to have advanced abreast with their conquests, and with the same prodigious rapidity; supposing, that is, that previously to their issuing from their peninsula, they were as backward as historians state them to have been: a point not sufficiently established. Sallying forth, under the immediate successors of Mahomet, they commenced, in obedience to the injunction of their new faith, a course of conquest unrivalled in rapidity. Their happy physical and mental organization, enabled them to appropriate whatever was superior in the arts and customs of the conquered nations; and whatever they imitated acquired during the process of adaptation, new and more graceful modifications. It has been asserted that they owed their civilization to the Greeks; and, certainly, the first subjected provinces being Greek, their customs could not but receive some impression from the contact; but it is not probable that the Greeks were altogether their instructors in civilization. Had such been the case their language would probably have undergone a change, instead of continuing totally independent of the Greek, and attaining to greater richness. They are known to have possessed poets of eminence before the appearance of Mahomet, consequently before they had any communication with the Greeks; shortly after the commencement of their intercourse with them, they shewed a marked superiority over them in geometry, in astronomy, architecture, and medicine, and it would probably be found, but for the destruction of so many Arab libraries, that they did not yield to them in eloquence and poetic genius.