The whole story, somewhat solemnly divided into seven books, is dull, from want both of sufficient variety in the details, and of sufficient spirit in the style. But it is of some importance, because it is the first in a class of fictions, afterwards numerous, which--relying on the curiosity then felt in Spain about Italy, as a country full of Spaniards enjoying luxuries and refinements not yet known at home, and about Algiers, crowded with thousands of other Spaniards suffering the most severe forms of captivity--trusted, for no small part of their interest, to the accounts they gave of their heroes as adventurers in Italy, and as slaves on the coast of Barbary. Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and several more among the most popular authors of the seventeenth century, are among the writers of fictions like these. The other form of grave fiction, which appeared in the time of Philip the Second, was the proper historical romance; and the earliest specimen of it, except such unsuccessful and slight attempts as we have already noticed, is to be found in “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by Ginés Perez de Hita. The author of this striking book was an inhabitant of Murcia, and, from the little he tells us of himself, must not only have been familiar with the wild mountains and rich valleys of the neighbouring kingdom of Granada, but must have had an intimate personal acquaintance with many of the old Moorish families that still lingered in the homes of their fathers, repeating the traditions of their ancient glory and its disastrous overthrow. Perhaps these circumstances led him to the choice of a subject for his romance. Certainly they furnished him with its best materials; for the story he relates is founded on the fall of Granada, regarded rather from within, amidst the feuds of the Moors themselves, than, as we are accustomed to consider it, from the Christian portion of Spain, gradually gathered in military array outside of its walls.