Andalusian Proverb.

Granada, Wednesday, Nov. 17, 1852.

Immediately on reaching here, I was set upon by an old gentleman who wanted to act as guide, but the mozo of the hotel put into my hand a card inscribed “Don Mateo Ximenez, Guide to the celebrated Washington Irving,” and I dismissed the other applicant.  The next morning, as the mozo brought me my chocolate, he said; “Senor, el chico is waiting for you.”  The “little one” turned out to be the son of old Mateo, “honest Mateo,” who still lives up in the Alhambra, but is now rather too old to continue his business, except on great occasions.  I accepted the young Mateo, who spoke with the greatest enthusiasm of Mr. Irving, avowing that the whole family was devoted to him, in life and death.  It was still raining furiously, and the golden Darro, which roars in front of the hotel, was a swollen brown flood.  I don’t wonder that he sometimes threatens, as the old couplet says, to burst up the Zacatin, and bear it down to his bride, the Xenil.

Towards noon, the clouds broke away a little, and we sallied out.  Passing through the gate and square of Vivarrambla (may not this name come from the Arabic bob er-raml, the “gate of the sand?"), we soon reached the Cathedral.  This massive structure, which makes a good feature in the distant view of Granada, is not at all imposing, near at hand.  The interior is a mixture of Gothic and Roman, glaring with whitewash, and broken, like that of Seville, by a wooden choir and two grand organs, blocking up the nave.  Some of the side chapels, nevertheless, are splendid masses of carving and gilding.  In one of them, there are two full-length portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella, supposed to be by Alonzo Cano.  The Cathedral contains some other good pictures by the same master, but all its former treasures were carried off by the French.

We next went to the Picture Gallery, which is in the Franciscan Convent.  There are two small Murillos, much damaged, some tolerable Alonzo Canos, a few common-place pictures by Juan de Sevilla, and a hundred or more by authors whose names I did not inquire, for a more hideous collection of trash never met my eye.  One of them represents a miracle performed by two saints, who cut off the diseased leg of a sick white man, and replace it by the sound leg of a dead negro, whose body is seen lying beside the bed.  Judging from the ghastly face of the patient, the operation is rather painful, though the story goes that the black leg grew fast, and the man recovered.  The picture at least illustrates the absence of “prejudice of color” among the Saints.