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Fortunate was it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chivalrous valor of Charles Martel and the sword of the Cid. The crusades were the natural reprisals for the Arab invasions, and form the last epoch of that great struggle between the two principal families of the human race."
But when we speak of civilization, we cannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longest permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science, art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic, the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered to that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most useful and appropriate.
In many Spanish cabinets the influence of Saracenic art is very dominant; these have generally a plain exterior, the front is hinged as a fall-down flap, and discloses a decorative effect which reminds one of some of the Alhambra work quaint arches inlaid with ivory, of a somewhat bizarre coloring of blue and vermilion altogether a rather barbarous but rich and effective treatment.
News of stern conflicts with the infidels was brought by wandering palmers; but from sailor merchant, from peasant warrior, and from noble, scarred with Saracenic wounds, there was a death-like silence in regard to the little wanderers. Streaming eyes fixed upon the East looked in vain until all tears were quenched in death.
Space, like time, is limited, and much as I should love to conduct my readers all the long way on foot, to show them the monster olive tree at Beaulieu, which is seven yards in circumference, and reputed the largest of its species in the world, to pause a little amidst the Roman ruins of La Tarbia and the Saracenic remains of Eza and Roccabruna, I must hasten on to the capital of the Liliputian dominions of his Serene Highness Prince Florestan II.
Animated by so vigorous a principle of action, the only one which was capable of exciting the enthusiasm of their energetic but simple minds, Spaniards became the admiration of the world for their prowess, for the elevation of their sentiments, for their conquests in the East, where the Arragonese humilitated even the throne of the Cæsars, and, above all, for the innumerable series of exploits and sublime feats of valour and patriotism with which they succeeded in expelling from Europe the Saracenic dominion, then about to extend itself from the shores of the Garonne to those of the Tiber.
The cube, however, isn't beautiful, and the Moors elaborated it, as the Greeks had done, but in a different way. The latter broke the square from the cornices and pillars; the Moors with the Saracenic arch, minarets, and fretted stone, and then forced their model upon Spain. Still the primitive type survives longest and the Spaniards brought that to the New World."
We may not enter the mosque with boots on, and will not enter with them off, so we admire from the outside the half Indian, half Saracenic plaster-work in the interior of the arcade the stalactite domes, diapers, groins, modellings in situ, and wish the authority on plaster work, Mr William Millar, was here to enjoy the skill and beauty of the work. Next show the summer palace of Tippoo Sultan.
SARACENIC WOODWORK: Oriental customs Specimens in the South Kensington Museum of Arab Work M. d'Aveune's Work. Chinese and Japanese Furniture. We have been unable to discover when the Chinese first began to use State or domestic furniture.
Different Saracenic chieftains revolted from the "Father of the Faithful," and established separate kingdoms, or viceroyalties, nearly independent of the acknowledged successors of Mohammed. The Saracenic empire was early dismembered, and the sultans of Egypt, Spain, and Syria contested for preëminence.
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