to her character.  The sacristan removed the matting from a part of the floor, disclosing an iron grating underneath, A damp, mouldly smell, significant of death and decay, came up through the opening.  He lighted two long waxen tapers, lifted the grating, and I followed him down the narrow steps into the vault where lie the coffins of the Catholic Sovereigns.  They were brought here from the Alhambra, in 1525.  The leaden sarcophagi, containing the bodies of Ferdinand and Isabella, lie, side by side, on stone slabs; and as I stood between the two, resting a hand on each, the sacristan placed the tapers in apertures in the stone, at the head and foot.  They sleep, as they wished, in their beloved Granada, and no profane hand has ever disturbed the repose of their ashes.

After visiting the Church of San Jeronimo, founded by Gonzalvo of Cordova, I went to the adjoining Church and Hospital of San Juan de Dios.  A fat priest, washing his hands in the sacristy, sent a boy to show me the Chapel of San Juan, and the relics.  The remains of the Saint rest in a silver chest, standing in the centre of a richly-adorned chapel.  Among the relics is a thorn from the crown of Christ, which, as any botanist may see, must have grown on a different plant from the other thorn they show at Seville; and neither kind is found in Palestine.  The true spina christi, the nebbuk, has very small thorns; but nothing could be more cruel, as I found when riding through patches of it near Jericho.  The boy also showed me a tooth of San Lorenzo, a crooked brown bicuspis, from which I should infer that the saint was rather an ill-favored man.  The gilded chapel of San Juan is in singular contrast with one of the garments which he wore when living—­a cowl of plaited reeds, looking like an old fish basket—­which is kept in a glass case.  His portrait is also to be seen—­a mild and beautiful face, truly that of one who went about doing good.  He was a sort of Spanish John Howard, and deserved canonization, if anybody ever did.

I ascended the street of the Darro to the Albaycin, which we entered by one of the ancient gates.  This suburb is still surrounded by the original fortifications, and undermined by the capacious cisterns of the Moors.  It looks down on Granada; and from the crumbling parapets there are superb views over the city, the Vega, and its inclosing mountains.  The Alhambra rose opposite, against the dark-red and purple background of the Sierra Nevada, and a canopy of heavy rain-clouds rested on all the heights.  A fitful gleam of sunshine now and then broke through and wandered over the plain, touching up white towers and olive groves and reaches of the winding Xenil, with a brilliancy which suggested the splendor of the whole picture, if once thus restored to its proper light.  I could see Santa Fe in the distance, toward Loxa; nearer, and more eastward, the Sierra de Elvira, of a deep violet color, with the woods of the Soto de Roma, the Duke of Wellington’s