Had not our religion suffered the violent schisms which are now so slowly healing, and had not our general life resolved itself for a time into a blind race between the various provinces of Europe, the reconquest of Barbary would have fallen naturally to the nations which regard each its own section of the opposing coast; as in the reconquest of Spain the Asturias advanced upon Leon, the Galicians upon Portugal, and Old Castille upon the southern province to which it extended its own name. Then Italy would have concerned itself with Tunis—with Ifrigya, that is—and with the rare fringe of the Tripolitan and its shallow harbours. The French would have occupied Numidia. The Spaniards would have swept on to re-Christianise the last province of the west from Oran to the Atlantic, and so have completed the task which they let drop after the march upon Granada. Such should have been the natural end of mediæval progress, and that reconstruction of the Empire (which was the nebulous but constant goal towards which the Middle Ages moved) would have been accomplished. But the most sudden and the most inexplicable of our revolutions came in and broke the scheme. The Middle Ages died without a warning. A curious passion for metaphysics seized upon certain districts of the north, which in their exaltation attempted to live alone: the south, in resisting the disruption of Europe, exhausted its energies; and meanwhile the temptation to exploit the Americas and the Indies drained the Mediterranean of adventurers and of navies. Islam in its lethargy acquired new vigour from its latest converts, and the Turks, with none but the Venetians to oppose them, tore away from us the whole of the Levant and rode up the Danube to insult the centre of the continent. The European system flew apart, and its various units moved along separate paths with various careers of hesitation or of fever. It was not until the Revolution and the reconstitution of sane government among us that the common scheme of the west could reappear. On this account—on account of the vast disturbance which accompanied the Reformation and the Renaissance—Europe halted for three centuries. When at last a force landed upon the southern shore of the Mediterranean, it was a force which happened to be despatched by the French. [Sidenote: The French]