advantage, while his enemies expected in constant terror the appearance of the squadrons which had annihilated the knights of the monastic orders, the pride of Christian Spain, and had trampled under foot the Castilian chivalry, already illustrious for endurance and prowess among the famous warriors of Europe. An attempt, indeed, was made upon Toledo, the original object of the invasion, behind whose walls the fugitives of Alarcos had taken refuge; but the old Visigothic capital, which had issued victorious from a hundred sieges, was not to be hastily reduced by an enemy ignorant as yet of the destructive force of gunpowder. A few days demonstrated the futility of an attack where the deficiencies of military engineering could not be compensated by superiority in numbers, and the King of Castile was fortunate enough to negotiate a truce with the Sultan, now alarmed by reports of sedition in his own dominions. The return of the latter preceded only a short time his sudden and unexpected death. He was a prince who, of all the descendants of African dynasties, was most worthy of the honors of imperial greatness, and it was not without propriety that he assumed the title of Al-Mansur, The Victorious. Under his reign his countrymen probably attained to the highest degree of civilization and intellectual development of which their race is capable. Experience had repeatedly proven that the innate savagery of the Berber was incorrigible. The benefits of education, habitual association with the learned and the polite, familiarity with the finest literary productions of preceding ages, the daily presence of architectural monuments of unrivalled splendor, were unable to efface the barbarous instincts inherited through unnumbered generations of roving banditti. Like the Arab, a freebooter by birth and inclination, the Berber abandoned with reluctance and resumed with delight the unsettled and precarious existence of his forefathers. No political affinity existed between the various divisions of the African race. Of such components an enduring empire could not be constructed. When temporarily united, they were held together solely by the unnatural and artificial influences of force and fear; the principles of mutual co-operation, of national pride, of devoted loyalty, which constitute at once the security and the glory of a nation, were absent. The first three princes of the Almohade line were pre-eminently conspicuous for their talents, their firmness, their political sagacity. Their reigns, while characterized by more or less severity, the consequence of peculiar political conditions, were neither oppressive nor unjust. No restrictions were laid on commerce. The burdens of taxation were lightened and illegal impositions abolished. Many internal improvements were planned and perfected. The administration of justice was purified and corrupt magistrates punished. The religious sentiment, dominant