Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“It was one of those hours and scenes in which memory asserts an almost magical power, and, like the evening sun beaming on these mouldering towers, sends back her retrospective rays to light up the glories of the past.”
- Source
- The Alhambra
- Date
- 1832
- Local voice
- Voice · Washington Irving (travel narrator)
Meaning of “It was one of those hours and scenes…”
Irving describes historical memory as transforming ruins into a vivid imaginative encounter with lives and cultures that are no longer physically present.
Where does it come from?
The Alhambra, in Irving’s authorial travel narrative, represented by Project Gutenberg #49947. The sentence occurs during an evening meditation amid the palace ruins; its “magical power” is literary imagery about memory and historical imagination, not a factual claim about memory science.
Why the local voice matters
The Alhambra. Irving speaks in his first-person travel-narrator voice while meditating among the palace ruins; the sentence is literary description rather than a fictional character’s speech.