under the command of experienced officers of tried fidelity. A Divan or Council was established. Receivers of taxes and magistrates were appointed to conduct the civil departments of the administration. Secure in the protection of their own laws and the enjoyment of their ancient religious privileges, the Mohammedan yoke was hardly felt by the Christian population, whose restrictions were confined to a show of outward respect for the institutions of their masters and the regular payment of tribute. All acts of violence and oppression were punished, and public confidence was restored. The peasants rebuilt their cottages; the labors of the agriculturist, interrupted by civil commotion and foreign encroachment, were resumed; the grass-grown thoroughfares of the cities once more echoed with the welcome sounds of traffic, and the sad traces of many successive years of warfare and devastation began to gradually disappear from the face of the Peninsula. But, however equitable was the civil administration of Abd-al-Aziz, its beneficent effects in the eyes of both Moslems and Christians were more than neutralized by the excesses and licentious violence of his private life. In the gratification of passions strong even for an Oriental, his conduct surpassed the ordinary limits of brutal tyranny. The fairest maids and matrons of the Gothic population crowded his seraglio; and even the homes of noble Arabians were not secure from the visitations of his eunuchs. Egilona, the queen of Roderick, having fallen into his hands, became first his concubine and afterwards his wife. She was indulged in the practice of her religion, an unusual privilege for one in her position; and, by the unbounded influence she soon acquired over her husband, succeeded in sensibly alleviating the miseries of her countrymen. Her beauty, her vast wealth, which she had secured by a timely submission and the payment of tribute, and her talents, which appear to have been of no mean order, added to the ambition once more to sit upon a throne, soon made themselves felt in the affairs of government. She began to direct the policy of the Emir, to the disgust and apprehension of the members of the Divan and the officers of the army. She imprudently attempted to introduce the ceremonial of the Visigothic court, which required the prostration of all who approached the throne of the monarch; a custom repugnant as yet both to the equality and independence recommended by the precepts of the Koran and to the proud spirit of the Arab. By her advice the treaty was concluded with Theodomir, who thereby acquired for life the sovereignty of the beautiful province of Murcia. The exercise of such authority was considered by pious Moslems as boding ill to the empire of Islam when enjoyed by a woman and an infidel. The rumor spread that Abd-al-Aziz, helpless under the fatal spell of this sorceress, was meditating apostasy and aspiring to independent power. These reports,