Europe and Africa.  Both in his physical traits and in his character, the Spaniard shows his relation to the North African type—“the child of a European father by an Abyssinian mother” he has been called.  This is true.  Lithe and vigorous, with long-shaped heads and rich pigmentation of skin—the type is clearly seen in the pictures of Murillo and Zurbaran, and with a more vivid expression in the portraits of El Greco—the Spaniard has more points of contact with the Eastern than with the Western races.  Seldom indeed is he entirely a European.

But it is among the women that the resemblance stands out most clearly.  There are women with dark long African faces.  You will see them among the flamencas of Seville, or in the gipsy quarter of the Camino del Sacro Monte at Granada—women with slow, sinuous movements, which you notice best when you see them dance, and wonderful eyes that flash a slow fire, quite unforgettable in their strange beauty.

In dress we still find the Oriental love of bright and violent colours.  The elegant Manilla shawls and the mantilla, which give such special distinction to the women of Spain, are modifications of the Eastern veil.  The elaborately dressed hair, built up with combs, with the rose or carnation giving a note of colour, has also a very ancient origin.  Then, the men in some districts still retain the fashion of loose, baggy trousers such as women wear in the East.

We see the Moorish influence in the Oriental seclusion of the houses, with the barred windows and high gates, often studded with bosses, seeming to forbid an entrance.  The Spaniard still constructs his house as the Moors built their houses, around the inner court, or patio, those gardens of colour and rest, sometimes quite hidden from the passer-by, as at Toledo; sometimes visible through an openwork iron gateway, like the gay patios of Seville.  Each house still has its buzon, and is fronted with a zaguán, or vestibule of wood.

In every department of Spanish life we meet with this persistence of the Moorish influence.  This need not surprise us.

The coming of the Moors into Spain was a civilizing expedition more than a conquest.  It was the Orient entering Europe.  The invaders—for the most part Berbers with a few Arabs—were a race of young and vigorous culture, of such astonishing and rapid growth that, although in Africa they had hardly emerged from savagery, in Spain they manifested a truly wonderful receptivity, and absorbed and developed the best elements they found in the life of the country.

In two years the Moors became masters, and under their dominion, from the eighth to the fifteenth century, the most elevated and opulent civilization flourished.  All the arts, sciences, industries, inventions, and culture, of the old civilization budded out into fresh discoveries of creative energy.  Religious toleration came with them, and was lost with them.  The spirit of chivalry arose among the Moors, and was afterwards appropriated by the Christian warriors of the North.  A Moorish knight was in every respect like a Spanish knight.  It was religion alone that divided them—one called on the name of Allah, the other on that of Christ.

We must remember that the primitive Iberians of Spain were themselves of Berber stock, and this affinity in racial origin explains the peaceful amalgamation of the conquerors with the conquered.  Afterwards by the constant mingling of their bloods the Moors and the old Spaniards became one.  The Moor gave to the Spaniard and he took from him, and they contributed to the same work of national civilization.

Ganivet has said truly that those who deny the Moorish influence show themselves unable to comprehend the Spanish character.  The Moorish dominion ended, passing almost as swiftly as it came.  But the spirit of their exquisite civilization, perhaps the most exquisite that the world has yet seen, moulded their Christian conquerors into its likeness.  And penetrating the Spanish character, and the daily life and habits of the people, this influence remains; indeed, it is not overstating the truth to say that to-day the pulse of the land still beats with Moorish life.

It is in the gardens of Spain that the stranger will find best the reflection of the Moorish spirit.  The Moors made their cities places of gardens and waters.  The very names that they gave to their pleasure places speak of joy.  “The Meadow of Murmuring Waters,” “The Garden of the Water-wheel”—what magic lingers in the suggestion of the words!

Many of these old gardens have perished.  Cordova has lost all except its Orange Court and the old garden of the ruined Alcázar.  In Seville the parks are new.  But in Granada the gardens have triumphed over the devastations of the Christians; and it is one of the exquisite surprises of the place to come suddenly on some fragment of a delicious garden where the Moorish tradition lives almost undisturbed.

There are few cities, even in Spain, that hold so many gardens.  There is the Alameda of the Alhambra, the green garden which lies around the Moorish citadel; the paseos on the banks of the Genil, planted with trees and cooled by fountains, the pleasure-grounds of the people; and the Jardín de los Adarves, on the south terrace of the Alhambra hill, a trellised retreat, with climbing vines and flowers, and splendid view of Vega and distant snow-capped hills.  Everyone will find in these gardens something that makes special appeal to him.

But the most exquisite haunt even among the gardens of Granada is the Generalife—the summer palace of the Moorish Princes, at the foot of the Cerro de Sol, and to the east of the Alhambra hill.  Here you have the charm of small and perfect gardens laid out in terraces, with great clipped cypresses, myrtles, and orange-trees, and the glow of flowers, with that of the delicate Moorish architecture, of richly coloured tiles and rare inscriptions.  And everywhere is the joyous sound of flowing water; the fountains are always playing, and water runs in channels made of inverted tiles placed on the top of the balustrades.  One of the charms of Moorish life was the love of pure water.

An old legend says that the name Generalife in Arabic signifies the “house of love, of dancing, and of pleasure,” and, further, that it was built by one Omar, a passionate lover of music, that he might retire here and entirely give himself up to that amusement.  The story is probably untrue, and the name, as the chronicles state, is a corruption of the Arabic “Djennat-al^’-Arif,” which means “the garden of Arif.”  But romance so often is more beautiful than fact.  One likes to think that this exquisite palace and gardens were designed as a place wherein a man could give his soul