The proverbial instability of the tribes of Northern Africa, habitually dominated by the most abject superstition, the prey of successive generations of religious impostors, incapable of systematized civil organization, of moral consistency, of personal loyalty, was now to be again demonstrated by a revolution that, in the principal circumstances of its origin and progress, was almost the counterpart of the one preceding it, which had made the polished and intellectual population of Spain--justly proud of the traditions of the khalifate--tributary subjects of a foreign and barbaric potentate. As with every race brought suddenly in contact with the highest civilization without passing through the intermediate phases incident to the regular and predestined development of nations, the corruption and degeneracy of the Berbers advanced with amazing rapidity. Amidst the hitherto unknown allurements of luxury and vice, the primitive virtues of generosity, courage, and hospitality disappeared. The fetichism of the Desert was replaced by a spurious and absurd Mohammedan belief, which retained, as essential parts of its doctrine, the most objectionable and offensive principles of Paganism. The religious teachers of the people, more deeply contaminated than their disciples and closely allied with the Jews, whose worship and whose dogmas they held up to reprobation in public and connived at in secret, had become monsters of extortion, profligacy, and injustice. The martial tastes of Yusuf had not descended to his son, who daily exhibited, to the delight of the clergy and the astonishment of the people, the abasement of a devotee, an example sufficiently edifying in a saint but strangely unbecoming in a sovereign whose throne was sustained by arms, and whose subjects were accustomed to subsist by conquest and rapine. No faqui desirous of obtaining a reputation for piety prayed and fasted with more persistent regularity than Ali. The greater part of his time was passed in the mosque, and the administration, meanwhile, was usurped by the clergy and the ladies of the court. The direct intervention of women in public affairs was a practice heretofore unknown to the Moslem constitution. During the reign of Ali, however, the wives and concubines of great officials virtually controlled, by favor and purchase, the policy of the government, trafficked in appointments of the civil and military service, capriciously deposed high dignitaries, and pardoned brigands and other malefactors condemned for atrocious crimes. The contradictory mandates, and the uncertain execution of the laws resulting from the conflicting interests and the indecision of ambitious and corrupt females, produced inextricable confusion, and provoked the scorn and resentment of the people. In Spain, far removed from the capital of the empire, the prevalent disorder and oppression reached its culmination; and even constant familiarity with military