The laborious investigations of distinguished Orientalists, and among them the exhaustive and valuable researches of Dozy, have established beyond peradventure the existence and the deeds of the Cid. From Arabic manuscripts, undeciphered until the middle of this century, have been gradually collected and compiled the incidents which compose his eventful and stirring career. The evident authenticity of these memorials, the absence of any motive to exaggerate the prowess or the accomplishments of an enemy, the well-known accuracy of the Arab historians, the interesting phases of life which they depict, the honest indignation of the writers, unaccustomed to the systematic disregard of solemn engagements, the detailed enumeration of the spoils of the battle and the foray, place them among the most valuable contributions of mediæval antiquity. Their publication and study have removed the idle myths, the absurdities, the irreconcilable contradictions, which until then had obscured the story of the idolized hero of Old Castile. Of his titles, by which he is much better known to readers than by his family name, that of the Cid, now distinctively applied to him, was an honorable appellation, a corrupted form of the Arabic Sidi, or Lord, once given indiscriminately to persons of rank by the Moslems. Its prevalent use during the Middle Ages was principally due to the fact that public documents, epistles, and treaties, addressed to or executed by Castilian and Moorish dignitaries, were drawn up conjointly in Latin and Arabic, and not infrequently in the latter language alone. The other title, Campeador, was derived from the custom of chosen warriors defying each other to single combat in the face of their respective armies, a favorite mode among semicivilized nations of exhibiting individual bravery and address, and older than the famous encounter between David and Goliath. The political disorganization of the entire Peninsula, even more apparent in the Christian than in the Moslem states, the still doubtful and unsettled relations between ruler and subject, the dangerous liberties enjoyed by ambitious individuals who had the courage and the insolence to demand them, the imperative necessities the monarch was under to propitiate his powerful vassals, the presence and example of foreign adventurers, unaccustomed to legal restraint and acknowledging no authority but that of the sword, all of these abnormal social conditions rendered it a matter of little difficulty for a man of valor and energy to rise to great power and eminence in the state. In those days personal prowess was the highest title to distinction. There was no room in the disposition and calling of the rude soldier of fortune for the exercise of the milder virtues. War was conducted with a revolting brutality that would have disgraced a race of savages. Familiarity with scenes of blood had blunted all the nobler instincts of human nature, and even gentle women countenanced by