Nor was the earth below less gracious than the heaven above it; for the scene, over which that cloudless sun was setting so serenely, was no other than the lovely vegas of Granada, watered with its sparkling rivulets, tributaries to the broad and fair Xenil; waving with its almost tropical luxuriance of foliage, odorous with the sweets of ten thousand gardens—verily the paradise of earth surrounding, as with a girdle of immortal beauty, the loveliest of earthly cities, crowned by the wonder of wonders, the glorious Alhambra. So much has been already written in many tongues, both in prose and verse, of the glories of this inimitable spot—still inimitable, even under the indolent and careless culture of the Spaniard, yet how unlike to what it was under its Moorish masters—above all so eloquently has it been described by the graceful pen of Irving, that all the details of its scenery, nay! of its architecture and internal decorations, are, it may be presumed, as familiar to the mind of the reader, as many places which he has actually seen with his own eyes. To dwell longer, therefore, on the features of that sweet, mountain-girdled plain on which the sunbeams lingered, as though they loved it, would be superfluous at least, if not impertinent. Not so, to depict one who gazed across that plain under that lovely sunset, soft herself as the genial clime, serenely bright as the calm eventide—the Lady Ayesha, a princess of the unmixed race, a visitor from the distant walls of Mequiñez to the kindred royalty, which in the person of the unfortunate but as yet unconquered Boabdil, still sat sublime on the fairy towers of the Alhambra.
She sat alone in a small octagonal apartment in the very summit of one of the loftiest of the palace turrets, overlooking and commanding a view so extensive, that the eye swam dazzled or ere it reached the hills, which bounded it on every side. Walled, vaulted, floored with pure snow-white marble, all wrought and pierced with that exquisite arabesque tracery, which made the cold, hard stone resemble the finest and most delicate lace-work; lighted on each of its eight sides by a tall window, headed by the peculiar horse-shoe arch of Moorish architecture, and surrounded a little lower down the turret by a balcony, filled as a hanging garden with every loved and lovely plant and flower, no happier retreat could be devised for Southern beauty; none half so beautiful, half so luxurious, is dreamed of in her most voluptuous musings by the most famed fair one of our utilitarian days and country.