directly or indirectly affect the prestige of their order is calculated to cast suspicion over their entire narratives. When we add to these gross misrepresentations their meagre and confused accounts of the most important events, their profound ignorance of the hidden motives of human actions, their superstitious prejudices, and their incapacity of appreciating, or even of understanding, the principles of historical criticism, it may readily be perceived how arduous is the task of those who attempt to bring order out of this literary chaos. To the Arab writers, however, we can turn with a much greater degree of confidence. They make no attempts to disguise the magnitude of their reverses or to diminish the glory of their enemies. No contemporaneous account of the battle of Covadonga has descended to us. It was not for a century that its paramount importance became manifest. The attention of the clergy during that turbulent period was engrossed by the doubtful fortunes of the Church, and the exactions consequent upon the changes produced by a constant succession of rulers. The affairs of the entire Mohammedan empire were in a turmoil. In the East the chiefs of desperate factions were struggling for the throne of the khalifate. Africa was the scene of perpetual insurrection, provoked and maintained by the indomitable spirit of the Berbers. The Emirs of Spain, between the intervals of civil discord, were nursing extravagant dreams of ambition,--visions of the propagation of their faith, of the acquisition of new territories, of the subjugation of infidels, of the extension of empire. The glance of the viceroys was directed beyond the bleak Asturias towards the fertile plains of Southern France. The execution of the gigantic enterprise projected by the genius of Musa occupied their thoughts, and they were ignorant or careless of the aspirations of a handful of peasants, upon the issue of whose prowess and constancy were, even now, impending the existence of their dominion and the destinies of the Peninsula.