months that the place was invested. The walls had been weakened by the military engines, and a determined effort on the part of the besiegers would have easily carried it by storm. Alfonso, finding its citadel untenable, completed its destruction that it might not be occupied by the enemy, and, without any further demonstration, returned to his dominions. The retreat of the Moorish army was the signal for fresh intrigues on the part of the malcontents. They feared that the withdrawal of Yusuf in the face of the enemy would redound to his injury by diminishing his prestige and by impairing the confidence of the masses in his ability to contend successfully with the power of Castile. The Kadi of Granada was the most active of these conspirators. His treasonable designs were detected by his sovereign, and he was imprisoned, but afterwards escaped to Cordova. The fears of his comrades incited them to redoubled energy. The princes of Malaga and Granada were declared in an assembly of muftis and faquis to have forfeited their rights on account of alleged breaches of the law and persecutions of the expounders of religion; and Yusuf was enjoined, as the representative of justice and the avenger of the Faith, to seize their dominions. Encouraged by the assurances of these hypocritical partisans, the African prince with his entire army marched on Granada. Abdallah, the sovereign of that kingdom, was conspicuous for cowardice and incompetency among the degenerate Moslems of his time. He had inherited none of the martial virtues of his Berber ancestors. He was a patron of letters, but his studies had not awakened in him either the desire for glory or the patient resignation to the decrees of fate which are among the fruits of assiduous research and meditation. The models of Mohammedan greatness inspired him with no wish to imitate their exploits. The sight of a drawn sword threw him into convulsions. His habitual indecision, even in matters of trifling moment, provoked the derision of his courtiers. Unlike his race, he was insensible to the charms of female beauty, a defect which excited more contempt than his pusillanimity among a people with whom impotence is considered a judgment of God. He was able to write passable verses; he was familiar with the most celebrated Arab authors; he excelled in the art of chirography, and had copied and illuminated a Koran, whose reputed perfection was probably not wholly due to flattery in an age fertile in accomplished scribes. These arts, however meritorious, were far from qualifying a ruler for governing a kingdom during a period of universal disorder. To add to his embarrassment, the court of Abdallah was permeated with treason. The nobility and the people hated each other, but both hated and despised the King still more; and their mutual animosities were, for the time, suspended that they might avenge their wrongs on him whom they were accustomed to regard as a common enemy.