Then their pathetic
resignation to persecution and exile lent dignity even to their
ridiculous religion; but it was of the first and not the second period
that Irving had to treat.
VI
The Alhambra is not so impressive by its glory or grandeur as by the
unparalleled beauty of its place. If it is not very noble as an effect
of art, the inspiration of its founders is affirmed by their choice of
an outlook which commands one of the most magnificent panoramas in the
whole world. It would be useless to rehearse the proofs by name. Think
of far-off silver-crested summits and of a peopled plain stretching away
from them out of eye-shot, dense first with roofs and domes and towers,
and then freeing itself within fields and vineyards and orchards and
forests to the vanishing-point of the perspective; think of steep and
sudden plunges into chasms at the foot of the palace walls, and one
crooked stream stealing snakelike in their depths; think of whatever
splendid impossible dramas of topography that you will, of a tremendous
map outstretched in colored relief, and you will perhaps have some
notion of the prospect from the giddy windows of the Alhambra; and
perhaps not.
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