T was late in the evening and a heavy rain was falling when General Grant and his party reached Cordova. The governor of the city and the authorities were waiting at the station. After a long ride it was pleasant to rest, even in the indifferent condition of comfort provided in a Spanish inn. There was a visit to the theater, a ramble about the streets, which is General Grant's modern fashion of taking possession of a town; there was a stroll up the Roman bridge, the arches of which are as stout and fresh as if the workmen had just laid down their tools. There was a visit to a Moorish mill in which the millers were grinding wheat. There was the casino and the ascent of a tower from which Andalusia is seen spreading out before us green and smiling. And this sums up Cordova. What you read of its ancient

Roman and Moorish splendor, all traces of it have vanished, and feel as you you wind and unwind yourself through the tortuous streets that you are in a forgotten remnant of Spain; that civilization has changed its course, as rivers at home sometimes do, and run into a new channel, leaving Cordova to one side. The only evidence of modern life is the railway station.

I have been reading an account of Cordova as it flourished long before Columbus discovered America. I read that it was built by the Phoenicians, and that when Hannibal invaded Italy Cordova followed his standard. Here are the very words from the Latin historian relating that adventure; "Nec decus auriaferra―cessavit Corduba terra." Seneca and Lucan were born at Cordova. The Romans founded a celebrated university here. After Roman and Goth had had their empire it became a Moorish town, and under the Moors attained the height of its splendor. If you can believe the Moorish chronicles you could travel ten miles from the center of Cordova, the lights from the dwellings illuminating the way. Buildings ran twentysix miles in one direction and six in another. The country. dependent on it supported three thousand towns and villages. The people in those days were proud of their dress, the university, the wine shops, and especially gloried in their mosque. It is all that remains of their forgotten splendor. There were pleasure gardens with all kinds of fruits, among them the luscious peach, the very taste of which has gone from memory. There was a palace of which not a stone can be discovered, which, according to the chronicles, must have surpassed any achievement of modern royalty. In this palace were more than four thousand columns, and doors of varied decorations to the number of fifteen thousand. The Romans came and razed it to the ground, and there is no remnant of its glory nor any vestige of its ancient or medieval splendor but the stone bridges across the river built by the Romans, and the famous mosque, now called a cathedral, built by the Moors.

It was pleasant while at Cordova to meet Mr. Hett, the American Secretary of Legation at Paris, and his wife, who were returning to France from a holiday in the Peninsula. In

the morning the mosque was visited. We had thought that it might be better to visit the mosque alone, without state or ceremony, but the authorities of Cordova were in an advanced stage of courtesy, and our visit was in state. It seemed almost like a desecration-this dress and parade within these unique and venerable walls. The mosque is even now among the wonders of Europe. It stands on the site of an ancient temple of Janus. Eleven centuries ago the Moors resolved to build a temple to the worship of God and Mohammed his prophet, which should surpass

all other temples in the world. Out of this resolution came this building. You can see even now the mosque in its day justified the extravagant commendations of the Arabian historians. There was an inclosed court-yard, in which orange trees were growing and priests walking up and down, taking the morning air. This inclosure seemed to be a bit out of Islam, and it looked almost like a profanation of Moslem rites to see men in attendance wearing the garb of Rome-so cool, so quiet, so retired, so sheltered from the outer world that one could well imagine it to have been the place of refuge and rest which Mohammed intended as the special purpose of every mosque. you enter, the first impression is as of a wilderness of low

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MOSQUE AT CORDOVA.

551 columns that run in all directions. These columns were formerly whitewashed by the Christians after the taking of Cordova, but under Iasbella's government the whitewash was removed, and you now see the ancient red and white brick walls and precious stones of which they are made. There is a tradition that most of these columns were made out of the materials of the ancient Roman temple which stood on this site, and that some were sent from the temples of Carthage. It was easy to see that they were not the work of any one mind, but rather represent the enterprise of the builders in rummaging among other ruins, or the generosity of priests and rulers who showed their desire. to stand well with the governor of Cordova by sending a quantity of columns for the mosque. In this way it happens that some of the columns are of jasper, others of porphyry, others of choice marbles. Some you notice are short, and have had to be supplemented by mechanical contrivances. But although a close examination of the mosque shows these differences, and really adds to its interest, the general effect is unique and imposing. You note with impatience that the governors under Charles V. had a large part of this incomparable series of arches removed to build a modern chapel, and, although the chapel was not without interest in respect to woodwork and tapestry, its presence here seems a violence to all the laws of art, and one can understand the chagrin of Charles V., who, when he examined the mosque for the first time in 1526 and saw what had been done in the building of this chapel, said: "You have built here what any one might have built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world."

It is difficult to give an exact description of the mosque. Its value lies in the impression it makes on you, and in the fact that it is an almost perfect monument of Moslem civilization in Spain. There is the ever-recurring Oriental arch, the inventor of which you sometimes think must have found his type in the orange. There are elaborate and gorgeous decorations of the sacred places of the mosque, where the Koran was kept, where the guilty ones sought refuge and unfortunate ones succor, where justice was administered and the laws of the

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Koran expounded. It all seems as clear and fresh-so genial is this Andalusian atmosphere-as it came from the hand of the faithful kings who built it. As one strolls through the arches, studying each varying phase of Oriental taste, the voices of the priests chanting the morning service and the odor of incense

are borne upon the air. It is startling to find Christians in the performance of their sacred office within the walls of a building consecrated by the patience and devotion of the unfortunate Moors. The lesson you always learn in Spain is what you see to-day, and what you admire as the work of destiny are only phases of changing and vanishing civilizations. The Moor may have mused over the ruins of Roman splendor even as we are