If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these
phantom knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile
and Leon, by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval,
bishop of Pamplona, where he will find it recorded in the History of
King Don Alonzo VI, on the hundred and second page. It is too precious
a legend, to be lightly abandoned to the doubter.
Poets and Poetry of Moslem Andalus.
DURING the latter part of my sojourn in the Alhambra I was more than
once visited by the Moor of Tetuan, with whom I took great pleasure in
rambling through the halls and courts, and getting him to explain to
me the Arabic inscriptions. He endeavored to do so faithfully; but,
though he succeeded in giving me the thought, he despaired of
imparting an idea of the grace and beauty of the language. The aroma
of the poetry, said he, is all lost in translation. Enough was
imparted, however, to increase the stock of my delightful associations
with this extraordinary pile. Perhaps there never was a monument
more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged
fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its
battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its
halls. One is irresistibly transported in imagination to those times
when Moslem Spain was a region of light amid Christian, yet
benighted Europe- externally a warrior power fighting for existence,
internally a realm devoted to literature, science, and the arts, where
philosophy was cultivated with passion, though wrought up into
subtleties and refinements, and where the luxuries of sense were
transcended by those of thought and imagination.
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