of Tarik after the settlement of his controversy with Musa. Had he been prominent thereafter in either good or evil fortune, it is certain that the Arabian chroniclers would have mentioned the fact. It is probable that he was permitted to pass the remainder of his life in obscurity and comfort, if not in luxury; and it is beyond question that he was not intrusted with any important employment; for the jealous court of Damascus feared the ambition and the ability of the distinguished general who had achieved the most splendid conquest of his time. And thus disappeared from the stage of the world the second of those noted characters to whom was due the acquisition of the beautiful land of Iberia by the crown of the Khalifate. Of Count Julian, the third and last of them, whom the undiscerning prejudice of monkish writers and the animosity of churchman and Spaniard, intensified by baffled ambition and injured pride, have for thirty-six generations branded with the name of traitor, we have accounts but little less unsatisfactory. His nationality, his antecedents, his relations to the Goths, the origin of his appointment as governor of Ceuta, the scope of his authority, his obligations to the court of Toledo, are, for the most part, matters of conjecture. Even the story of the outrage to his family, the immediate cause of his defection, though supported by the testimony of almost every Arab chronicler, has been disputed. There are excellent reasons for presuming that he occupied the position of a mere tributary of the King of the Visigoths, and had voluntarily surrendered his daughter as a pledge of his fidelity. Under these circumstances his allegiance could not have been deeply grounded; and his conduct appears under a less odious aspect than the treason of an hereditary vassal would have done, especially when it is remembered that he was not the aggressor. The general and unqualified abhorrence with which his name is associated can be traced to ecclesiastical writers, who have neglected no opportunity to blacken the character of every political adversary, heretic, and apostate in the eyes of posterity.