no interest for themselves there is nothing but fear; their situation excludes them from hope, and they have the perpetual sense of danger, and the dread of that inevitable hour wherein there shall be no distinction of persons. This fear they have felt and confessed; in youth it has embittered enjoyment, and it has made age dreadful. A dream, or the chance words of a song, or the figures of the tapestry, have terrified them into tears. Haroun Al Raschid opened a volume of poems, and read, Where are the Kings, and where are the rest of the world? They are gone the way which thou shalt go. O thou who choosest a perishable world, and callest him happy whom it glorifies, take what the world can give thee, but death is at the end! And at these words, he Elmacin. who had murdered Yahia and the Barmecides, wept aloud.

In these barbarous monarchies the people are indolent, because if they acquire wealth they dare not enjoy it. Punishment produces no shame, for it is inflicted by caprice not by justice. They who are rich or powerful become the victims of rapacity or fear. If a battle or fortress be lost, the Commander is punished for his misfortune; if he become popular for his victories, he incurs the jealousy and hatred of the ruler. Nor is it enough that wealth, and honor, and existence are at the Despot's mercy; the feelings and instincts must yield at his command. If he take the son for his eunuch, and the daughter for his concubine; if he order the father to execute the child, it is what Destiny has appointed, and the Mahommedan says, . . God's will be done. But insulted humanity has not unfrequently been provoked to take vengeance; the monarch is always in danger, because the subject is never secure; these are the consequences of that absolute power and passive obedience which have resulted from the doctrines of Mahommed; and this is the state of society wherever his religion has been established.

But when Islamism entered Spain, it was in its youth and vigor; its destructive principles had not yet had time to de

p. 153.

p. 23.

velop themselves; and its military apostles could safely challenge corrupted Christianity to a comparison of creeds. No nation had yet been able to resist them; they had gone on from victory to victory. With the majority of mankind the successful cause passes for the right one; and when there were so many motives for conversion, it is not to be wondered at that the greater number of the Spanish Goths became converts to a triumphant faith. When in the first years of that faith Amrou led an army against Gaza, the Governor asked, for what reason the city was attacked. Our Master, replied Amrou, has sent us to conquer you, unless ye receive our religion; do this and ye shall be our Elmacin. companions and brethren. If ye refuse this, pay a yearly tribute forever, and we will protect you against all invaders. If neither of these terms be accepted, there can be only the sword between us, and we must war upon you in obedience to the command of the Lord. This was the system of the Mahommedans, and hitherto no policy could have succeeded better. The Christians who retained their religion became a kind of Helots, who supplied the revenue and cultivated the land; they were everywhere the minority, and as Mahommedan states grew round them on all sides, it was not long before they disappeared. The Moors found the same obsequiousness in Spain as they had done in Africa and in the East. The main part of the men apostatized, and the women contentedly learnt a new creed, to qualify themselves for foreign husbands, or for the renegadoes who profited by the ruin of their country. But there yet remained Pelayo baffled them with

Gothic valor and Gothic genius.
a troop of mountaineers, the wreck and remnant of the na-
tion. This hero was strengthened by the accident of his
royal descent; but it was not for his birth that his fellow
soldiers lifted him upon a shield, and in the hour of difficulty
and danger acclaimed him King. In a strong country, with
the defiles of which he was well acquainted, he maintained
himself against the neighboring Moors. His own weakness

was his best security; foes like these were beneath the notice of the conqueror; he who had overthrown the kingdom of the Goths did not stop to exterminate a handful of banditti. Once already had Musa crost the Pyrenees and advanced as far as Carcassonne: he now proposed to overrun France, proceed through Germany and Hungary to Constantinople, and by this line of conquests, connect Spain with the Saracen empire. For this enterprise he was preparing when a courier seized the bridle of his horse, and commanded him in the Caliph's name to set out for Damas

cus.

c. 3.

There was retribution in this. Musa had imprisoned Tarif because he envied his glory; he himself was now arrested in his own career, and detained in Syria, while secret orders were sent to destroy his whole family. All who were in Africa were cut off. His son Abdalazis, a man worthy of a better fate, had been left governor in Spain; but the commanders of every town at this time exercised independent authority, and his power was little more than nominal. To strengthen himself by conciliating the Christians, he married Egilona, widow of the late King; her foolish bigotry was one occasion of his ruin. Finding it Bleda. 1. 3. impossible to convert her husband, she placed saint-images in all her apartments, and made the doors so low that he could not enter, without bowing his head before her idols. The Moorish Chiefs interpreted this as an artifice on his part to entrap them into a gesture which was an acknowledgment of their inferiority. His views were too generous for their comprehension. He wished to introduce the Gothic forms of freedom, and with that view assembled them in a Cortes. They murdered him, that the anarchy might continue. His head was sent to Damascus, and the Caliph bade Musa look, if he knew the face. The broken hearted Cardonne. 1. p. 93old man retired to Mecca, seeking there for that consolation, ii3. which, such is the blessed nature of religion, every religion however corrupted, can in some degree bestow; and there he ended his days.

Spain was so distant from the capital of the Caliphs, that they were continually exerting their authority there, lest their weakness should be discovered. For this reason it was their policy frequently to change the Governor, a system every way pernicious, which allowed integrity no time to be useful, and hurried avarice into rapacity. A few plundering expeditions were made beyond the Pyrenees, while tyranny and extortion provoked frequent commotions at home. At length Abderrahman, as well to employ a restless people as to gratify his own ambition, collected a prodigious army, and burst into France. The cause of civilized society has never been exposed to equal danger, since the Athenians preserved it at Salamis. Charles Martel met him by Tours, and destroyed him and his army. To revenge this defeat was for awhile the great object of the Moors, and Christendom was still saved by the same hero. Dissensions broke out between the original conquerors, and the Moors who had flocked over from Africa: an army of Syrians was called in, and they soon became a third party. Cardonne. Meantime Pelayo and the Spaniards strengthened themFerreras. selves in Asturias. Wherever they advanced they found a number of Christians ready to assist in recovering their country. Under Alonzo the Catholic, they became formidable, and then in their turn weakened themselves. His successor, Froyla, murdered one brother, and was himself murdered by another, who seized the throne. The insecure Usurper made himself vassal to the Moors, and his only wars were against the slaves in his own kingdom, who had Bleda. 3. 8. risen upon their Christian masters.

1. 136.

t. 4. p. 60.

Morales.

13. 13. 3.

The revolution which established the Abbassides in Syria, erected another dynasty and a new empire in Spain. Abdoulrahman, one of the Ommiades, fled from the massacre of his family, and hid himself, with his child and his brother, A. D. 749. in a forest beside the Euphrates. They were discovered, the boy was slain, the two brethren rode into the river. One, allured by the promise of his pursuers to spare him,

1. 181.

1. 196.

turned back from the dangerous passage, and was immediately murdered. Abdoulrahman swam on, and effected Cardonne. his escape. He got into Africa, and had found adherents there who promised to protect him against the Governor, when deputies came over from the Spanish Moors to invite him to the kingdom of Spain as his inheritance. His reign was a perpetual warfare against those who transferred their loyalty with the throne of the Caliphs, or against chiefs who fought for their own aggrandizement, and called it the cause of the Abbassides. Almanzor made one direct effort, and sent Ala with troops from Africa, and the whole weight of his authority, to destroy the last of a rival race. He was at Mecca when the head of Ala, salted and filled with camphor, was nailed against his palace door, and the sight made him rejoice that the sea rolled between him and his enemy. The Ommiade triumphed over every opposer; established Cardonne. his throne at Cordova, and left the undisputed sovereignty of all the Spanish Moors to his son. The race of Abdoul- A. D. 787. rahman should not go without their fame. An astrologer predicted to his successor Haccham, a happy and glorious reign, but only of eight years. In the belief of this prediction he reigned with the wholesome fear of death before his eyes, and no act of injustice or cruelty is of him recorded. Two elder brethren, to whom he had been wisely preferred by his father, attempted to dethrone him: he subdued them, and then settled ample revenues upon these dangerous rivals, when they were at his mercy. Haccham's armies were filled by soldiers who loved him; and when a father died, the sons received his pay till they also were of an age to serve. The Christians resisted him with courage; but he pursued them into their mountains, and burnt the palace of their Kings, and so reduced them, that when a wealthy Moor bequeathed his treasures to ransom his countrymen who were in captivity among the Spaniards, none could be found to profit by the bequest. The Pyrenees did not bound his exploits; he completed the great Mosque at Cordova with