Page:Impressions of Spain in 1866.djvu/59

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Koran was kept. The beauty and delicacy of the moresque work, with its gold enamel and lovely trefoiled patterns, its quaint lions and bright-coloured 'azulejos' (tiles), exceeds anything of the sort in Europe. The roof is in the form of a shell, and exquisitely wrought out of one single piece of marble. The mosaic border was sent to Cordova by Romanus II., from Constantinople. When the brother of the king of Morocco came there a year or two ago, he went round this 'Holy of Holies' seven times on his knees, crying bitterly all the time. The inscriptions in this mosque are in Cufic, and not in Arabic. The whole carries one back to Damascus and the East in a way which makes it difl&cult to realise that one is still in Europe. The choir is a horrible modern 'churriqueresque' innovation, stuck in the centre of the beautifiil forest of Saracenic columns, many of which were destroyed to make room for it. Even Charles V. protested against the bad taste of the chapter when he saw it completed in 1526, and exclaimed: 'You have built a thing which one can see anywhere; and to do so, you have destroyed what was unique in the world.' The carving of the choir is certainly fine, but the incongruity of the whole jars on one's taste too keenly for any kind of admiration. The only beautiful and solemn