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Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  On page 357, "On the verge of great beetling bastion" was changed
  to "On the verge of the great beetling bastion".

  On page 377, "on which occasion he have" was changed to "on which
  occasion he gave".

  On page 388, "the talisman that hangs around my neck" was changed
  to the talisman that hangs around thy neck".

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by +plus
  signs+.




THE ALHAMBRA




     MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

     LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
     MELBOURNE

     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

     NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
     ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO

     THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD

     TORONTO




  [Illustration: _Washington Irving's rooms, overlooking the Garden of
   Lindaraxa._]




     THE ALHAMBRA

     BY · WASHINGTON · IRVING
     WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
     ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL
     ILLUSTRATED WITH DRAWINGS
     OF THE PLACES MENTIONED
     BY JOSEPH PENNELL

     LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

     NEW YORK:  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY
     1911




     RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
     BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST.,
     AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

     _First Edition (Cranford Series), 1896. Reprinted, 1906, 1911.
     Pocket Classics, 1908_.




  [Illustration]

INTRODUCTION


It is not possible to forget Washington Irving in the Alhambra. With a
single volume, the simple, gentle, kindly American man of letters became
no less a figure in the Moor's Red Palace than Boabdil and Lindaraxa of
whom he wrote. And yet, never perhaps did a book make so unconscious
a bid for popularity. Irving visited Granada in 1828. He returned the
following year, when the Governor's apartments in the Alhambra were lent
to him as lodgings. There he spent several weeks, his love for the place
growing with every day and hour. It was this affection, and no more
complex motive, that prompted him to describe its courts and gardens and
to record its legends. The work was the amusement of his leisure moments,
filling the interval between the completion of one serious, and now all
but unknown, history and the beginning of the next.

Not many other men just then could write about Spain or anything Spanish
so naturally. For, in 1829, while, within the walls of Alhamar and
Yusef, he was listening to the prattle of Mateo and Dolores, in Paris,
Alfred de Musset was writing his _Contes d'Espagne_, and Victor Hugo was
publishing a new edition of his _Orientales_. A year later and the battle
of _Hernani_ was to be fought at the _Comédie Française_; a few more,
and Théophile Gautier would be on his way across the Pyrenees. Time had
passed since Châteaubriand, the pioneer of romance, could dismiss the
Alhambra with a word. Hugo, in turning all eyes to the East, had declared
that Spain also was Oriental, and to his disciples the journey, dreamed or
made, through the land where Irving travelled in single-minded enjoyment,
was an excuse for the profession of their literary faith. Irving, whatever
his accomplishments, was unencumbered with a mission and innocent of pose.
There is no reason to believe that he had ever heard of the Romanticists,
or the part Spain was playing in the revolution; though he had been in
Paris when the storm was brewing; though he returned after the famous red
waistcoat had been sported in the public's face. At any rate, like the
original genius of to-day, he kept his knowledge to himself.

Literary work took Irving to Spain. Several years before, in 1818, he had
watched the total wreck of his brother's business. This was the second
event of importance in his hitherto mild and colourless existence. The
first had been the death of the girl he was to marry, a loss which left
him without interest or ambition. There was then no need for him to work,
and his health was delicate. He travelled a little: an intelligent,
sympathetic and observant tourist. He wrote a little, discovering
that he was an author with _Knickerbocker_. But his writing was of the
desultory sort until, when he was thirty-five years old, his