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Others strove to console the king, but his tears were not to be restrained.

“Allah achbar!” he exclaimed again; “when did misfortunes ever equal mine?”

The hill where this took place afterwards became known as Feg Allah Achbar; but the point of view where Boabdil obtained the last prospect of Granada is called by the Spaniards “El ultimo suspiro del Moro” or “The last sigh of the Moor.”

As Boabdil thus took his last look at beautiful Granada, it behooves us to take a final backward glance at Arabian Spain, from whose history we have drawn so much of interest and romance. In this hospitable realm civilization dwelt when few traces of it existed elsewhere. Here luxury reigned while barbarism prevailed widely in Europe. We are told that in Cordova a man might walk ten miles by the light of the public lamps, while centuries afterwards there was not a single public lamp in London streets. Its avenues were solidly paved, while centuries afterwards the people of Paris, on rainy days, stepped from their door-sills into mud ankle-deep. The dwellings were marked by beauty and luxury, while the people of Europe, as a rule in that semi-barbaric period, dwelt in miserable huts, dressed in leather, and lived on the rudest and least nutritive food.

The rulers of France, England, and Germany lived in rude buildings without chimneys or windows, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, at a time when the royal halls of Arabian Spain were visions of grace and beauty. The residences of the Arabs had marble balconies overhanging orange-gardens; their floors and walls were frequently of rich and graceful mosaic; fountains gushed in their courts, quicksilver often taking the place of water, and falling in a glistening spray. In summer cool air was drawn into the apartments through ventilating towers; in winter warm and perfumed air was discharged through hidden passages. From the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung. Here were clusters of frail marble columns, which, in the boudoirs of the sultanas, gave way to verd-antique incrusted with lapis lazuli. The furniture was of sandal- or citron-wood, richly inlaid with gold, silver, or precious minerals. Tapestry hid the walls, Persian carpets covered the floors, pillows and couches of elegant forms were spread about the rooms. Great care was given to bathing and personal cleanliness at a time when such a thought had not dawned upon Christian Europe. Their pleasure-gardens were of unequalled beauty, and were rich with flowers and fruits. In short, in this brief space it is impossible to give more than a bare outline of the marvellous luxury which surrounded this people, recently come from the deserts of Arabia, at a time when most of the remainder of Europe was plunged into the rudest barbarism.

Much might be said of their libraries, their universities, their scholars and scientists, and the magnificence of their architecture, of which abundant examples still remain in the cities of Spain, the Alhambra of Granada, the palace which Boabdil so reluctantly left, being almost without an equal for lightness, grace, and architectural beauty in the cities of the world. Well might the dethroned monarch look back with bitter regret upon this rarest monument of the Arabian civilization and give vent, in farewell to its far-seen towers, to “The last sigh of the Moor.”