“The Miracles of the Virgin” is not only the longest, but the most curious, of the poems of Berceo. The rest, however, should not be entirely neglected. The poem on the “Signs which shall precede the Judgment” is often solemn, and once or twice rises to poetry; the story of María de Cisneros, in the “Life of San Domingo,” is well told, and so is that of the wild appearance in the heavens of Saint James and Saint Millan fighting for the Christians at the battle of Simancas, much as it is found in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” But perhaps nothing is more characteristic of the author or of his age than the spirit of childlike simplicity and religious tenderness that breathes through several parts of the “Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross,”--a spirit of gentle, faithful, credulous devotion, with which the Spanish people in their wars against the Moors were as naturally marked as they were with the ignorance that belonged to the Christian world generally in those dark and troubled times.[35] [35] For example, when the Madonna is represented looking at the cross, and addressing her expiring son:-- Fiio, siempre oviemos · io è tu una vida; Io à ti quisi mucho, · è fui de ti querida; Io sempre te crey, · è fui de ti creida; La tu piedad larga · ahora me oblida? Fiio, non me oblides · è lievame contigo, Non me finca en sieglo · mas de un buen amigo; Juan quem dist por fiio · aqui plora conmigo: Ruegote quem condones · esto que io te digo. St. 78, 79. I read these stanzas with a feeling akin to that with which I should look at a picture on the same subject by Perugino. They may be translated thus:-- My son, in thee and me · life still was felt as one; I loved thee much, and thou lovedst me · in perfectness, my son; My faith in thee was sure, · and I thy faith had won; And doth thy large and pitying love · forget me now, my son? My son, forget me not, · but take my soul with thine; The earth holds but one heart · that kindred is with mine,-- John, whom thou gavest to be my child, · who here with me doth pine; I pray thee, then, that to my prayer · thou graciously incline. * * * * * I cannot pass farther without offering the tribute of my homage to two persons who have done more than any others in the nineteenth century to make Spanish literature known, and to obtain for it the honors to which it is entitled beyond the limits of the country that gave it birth.