———— T HE history of Spain offers us a melancholy contrast. Twelve hundred years ago, Tarik the Moor added the land of the Visigoths to the long catalogue of kingdoms subdued by the Moslems. For nearly eight centuries, under her Mohammedan rulers, Spain set to all Europe a shining example of a civilized and enlightened State. Her fertile provinces, rendered doubly prolific by the industry and engineering skill of her conquerors, bore fruit an hundredfold. Cities innumerable sprang up in the rich

W HEN the armies of Alexander the Great were trampling upon the ancient empires of the East, one country remained undisturbed and undismayed. The people of Arabia sent no humble embassies to the conqueror. Alexander resolved to bring the contemptuous Arabs to his feet: he was preparing to invade their land when death laid its hand upon him, and the Arabs remained unconquered. This was more than three hundred years before Christ, and even then the Arabs had long been established in independence i

"O C OMMANDER of the Faithful, these are not common conquests; they are like the meeting of the nations on the Day of Judgment." Thus wrote Mūsa, the Governor of Africa, to the Khalif Welīd, describing the victory of the Guadalete. There is little wonder that the Saracens stood amazed at the completeness of their triumph. Leaving the regions of myth, with which the Spanish chroniclers have surrounded the fall of Roderick, it is matter of sober history that the victory of the Guadalete gave all S

T HE victory of Charles Martel, in 733, had set a bound to the Saracens' invasion of Europe; they no longer thought of further conquest, but turned to the work of consolidating the kingdom they had acquired. After the brief and disastrous incursion of Charlemagne, they were left in almost undisturbed possession of their new territory for a period of three hundred years. It is true the descendants of the expelled Goths still held out in stubborn independence in the mountainous districts of the no

F OR six hundred years the greater part of the Mohammedan Empire was nominally under the authority of a central ruler called a Khalif, a title which signifies a "successor" or "substitute." At first this authority was real and powerful: the Khalif appointed the governors of all the provinces, from Spain to the borders of the Hindu Kush, and removed any of them at his pleasure. But the empire was too large to hold together round a central pivot for any length of time, and gradually various local

MOORISH IVORY CASKET OF THE 11TH CENTURY IN THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. MOORISH IVORY CASKET OF THE 11TH CENTURY IN THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. T HE Sultan Hakam died in 822, after a reign of twenty-six years. He left a comparatively tranquil inheritance to his son Abd-er-Rahmān II .; the renegades of Cordova had been subdued and exiled, the bigots had been given a lesson that they were not likely to forget, and there only remained the chronic disturbances on the Christian borders to be occasional

M Y readers may perhaps be disappointed that so far we have but few records of noble deeds or great wars, and that instead of individual heroes we have been chiefly interested in large movements of races and religions. We had, it is true, a stirring outset with Tārik and his Berbers, whose brilliant conquests are no more legendary than is the history of the nineteenth century. We had the great and decisive battle of Tours, but of this the details, which might have proved of surpassing interest,

A BD-ER- R AHMĀN III .'s principle of government consisted in retaining the sovereign power entirely in his own hands, and administering the kingdom by officers who owed their elevation wholly to his favour. Above all, he took care to leave no power in the hands of the old Arab aristocracy, who had so ill served previous rulers. The men he appointed to high places were parvenus, people of mean birth, who were the more attached to their master because they knew that but for him they would be tram

"C ORDOVA ," says an old Arab writer, "is the Bride of Andalusia. To her belong all the beauty and the ornaments that delight the eye or dazzle the sight. Her long line of Sultans form her crown of glory; her necklace is strung with the pearls which her poets have gathered from the ocean of language; her dress is of the banners of learning, well knit together by her men of science; and the masters of every art and industry are the hem of her garments." So did the Oriental historian clothe the ci

ANCIENT KORAN CASE. (Escurial Library.) ANCIENT KORAN CASE. (Escurial Library.) A BD-ER- R AHMĀN III . was the last great Sultan of Cordova, of the family of the Omeyyads. His son, Hakam II ., was a bookworm, and although bookworms are very useful in their proper place, they seldom make great rulers. A king cannot be too highly educated; he may know everything under the sun, and, like several of the Cordovan Sultans, he may employ his leisure in music and poetry; but he must not bury himself in

T HE best constituted countries will occasionally fall into anarchy when the will that has guided them is removed; and this is one of the strong arguments of those who hold that a State is best governed by the mass of its people. Keep a people in leading strings, it is said, and the moment the strings break, or are worn out, the people will not know where to go. The theory, however, is only a general statement of an obvious truth, and its application depends greatly upon the character of the peo

I T is time to glance at the opponents of the Moors in the North. We have seen how Pelayo gathered together the remnant of the Goths in the inaccessible caves and fastnesses of the Asturian mountains; how this remnant soon advanced beyond its early boundaries, and, taking courage from the indifference or the disunion of the Berber tribes who were quartered on the frontiers of the Mohammedan dominions, gradually recovered most of the territory north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and there establis

W ITH such soldiers as the Cid, and such kings as Fernando and Alfonso, the recovery of all Spain by the Christians was only a matter of time. Every nation, it appears, has its time of growth and its period of efflorescence, after which comes the age of decay. As Greece fell, as Rome fell, as every ancient kingdom the world has known has risen, triumphed, and fallen, so fell the Moors in Spain. Their time was now near at hand. They had been divided and undisciplined before the Almoravide annexat

T HE capture of Boabdil by the Christian sovereigns was a fatal blow to the Moorish power. The loss of the prince himself was the smallest part of the misfortune. Boabdil, though he could show true Moorish courage in the battle-field, was a weak and vacillating man, and was perpetually oppressed by the conviction that destiny was against him. He was known as Ez-Zogoiby, "the Unlucky;" and he was ever lamenting his evil star, against which he felt it was useless to struggle. "Verily," he would ex

B OABDIL'S "last sigh" was but the beginning of a long period of mourning and lamentation for the luckless Moors he had ushered to destruction. At first, indeed, it seemed as if the equitable terms upon which Granada had capitulated would be observed, and freedom of worship and the Mohammedan law would be upheld. The first archbishop, Hernando de Talavera, was a good and liberal-minded man, and forcible conversion formed no part of his policy. He strictly respected the rights of the Moors, and s