Source identified1
Image design Lavender
Read & copy
“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.”
Meaning & context
Irving describes historical memory as transforming ruins into a vivid imaginative encounter with lives and cultures that are no longer physically present.
Source details
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.