must within a few years have fallen to pieces. The deterioration of the Berber soldiery was so rapid and complete after its exposure to the temptations and luxury of Andalusia that Ali was compelled to enlist, for his own security, recruits from the infidel populations of Europe. Even the Greeks of Constantinople, the most superstitious of Christians, the most perfidious of men, were to be found in the armies of the natural enemy of the Church and the reformer of the Mohammedan religion. The government officials were selected by the women of the harem, who sold lucrative employments to the highest bidder or shared the profits of extortion, while the monarch prayed and fasted or listened to the exhortations of the clergy. The Almoravide empire fell with the same rapidity that was so conspicuous in its foundation. Not many years were to elapse before its African domain was to be usurped by a race of savage fanatics, and the kingdoms of Spain, with one exception, be permanently subjected to the sceptre of the dreaded and execrated Christian. The years of Yusuf, prolonged far beyond the ordinary term of human existence, included a full century, three ordinary generations of man. His active life, his abstemious habits, his freedom from those vices which waste the body and enfeeble the mind, enabled him to retain to the last the enjoyment of all his faculties. Although pitiless in the treatment of his enemies, it is related of him that during his entire reign, through motives of mistaken humanity, he never signed the death-sentence of a single criminal. Small indulgence was shown to the two tributary sects which, under the law of Islam, were permitted the exercise of their worship. From both, the contributions established by the successors of Mohammed were rigorously exacted. The Christians were prohibited from making proselytes. All their churches of recent erection were destroyed. A tradition of obscure origin, long current in the Peninsula, was made the excuse for a new and ingenious tax upon the Jews. It was said that the Hebrews had promised Mohammed that if the Messiah did not come before the year 500 of the Hegira their nation would become Mussulman. The time had not yet expired, but Yusuf imposed upon the Jews of his dominions the payment of an immense sum, by which they and their descendants were released from an act of apostasy which they had never contemplated, based upon a tradition probably invented by some idle and mendacious theologian.