policy, its religion, its authority, to the extreme limits of a world as yet unknown; to humble the pride of the most renowned sovereigns of Europe; to perfect the most formidable engine for the suppression of free thought and individual liberty which the malignity of superstition has ever devised; to perform achievements and accomplish results unparalleled in the most fantastic creations of romance; and to devote to extermination entire races whose sole offence was that they had never heard of the God of their persecutors,--a people whose civilization was far inferior to their own. The terror inspired by the approach of the Saracens, after the battle of the Guadalete, had driven great masses of fugitives to the north. Such of these as escaped the hardships of flight and the swords of their pursuers sought refuge in the most secret recesses of the Asturian mountains. They carried with them their portable property, their household gods, all the relics of the saints, all the sacred furniture of the altars, which they had been able to rescue from the sacrilegious grasp of the infidel. The refugees had forgotten alike, in the presence of universal misfortune, the long-cherished prejudices of race and the artificial distinctions of rank; and Goth, Roman, Iberian, and Basque, master and slave, mingled together upon a friendly equality. Received by the frank and hospitable mountaineers with a sympathy which was strengthened by the bond of a common religion, the unhappy fugitives became reconciled to the privations of a life which secured to them immunity from infidel oppression; and, by intimate association and intermarriage with their benefactors, formed in time a new nation, in which, however, mixture of blood and altered physical surroundings produced their inevitable effects, causing the traits of the Iberian to predominate, in a conspicuous degree, over those of the Latin and the Goth. As the rest of the Peninsula submitted to the domination of the Moors, the population of this province was largely augmented. Persecution, arising during the civil wars, still further increased immigration; deposed prelates, ruined artisans, and discontented slaves sought the companionship and aid of their fellow-sectaries; many, in apprehension of future evil, voluntarily abandoned their possessions; and the Asturias became the common refuge of all who had suffered as well as of all who were willing to renounce a life of comparative ease and dependence for the toils and privations which accompanied the enjoyment of political and religious liberty. With the advantages of freedom were also blended associations of a more sacred character. The greater number of the most celebrated shrines of a country remarkable for the virtues of its relics and the splendor of its temples had been desecrated by the invader. He had destroyed many churches. Others he had appropriated for the uses of his own religion.