And yet the circumstances which appear most conspicuous and vital in the consideration of this ethnological paradox would seem to point to an opposite conclusion. A community of customs generally existed in which those of the Arab always predominated. The harems of the Moslems were filled with Christian maidens who had, without hesitancy or compensation, renounced the faith of their fathers. The corrupted Latin dialect of the Visigoths, proscribed by Hischem I., was almost extinct. The law forbade it to be either written or spoken; and it survived only in the massive volumes of the Fathers or in the secluded intercourse of the occupants of monasteries and convents. By the same decree of the Khalif, education in the Arabian schools was made compulsory. Alvarus, who wrote about the middle of the ninth century, declares that not one Christian could be found among a thousand who could compose a letter in Latin. On the other hand, the popularity of the Arab writers, and the enthusiasm with which their compositions were perused by persons of all ages, were in the eyes of pious ecclesiastics a national scandal. The growing inclination to apostasy, the natural result of these associations, was also one of the crowning grievances of the Spanish clergy. As heretofore stated, it is a fact, well established by the reluctant testimony of the Fathers themselves, that the greater part of the conquered nation had fallen away from Christianity. Many causes had conspired to produce this lamentable condition of affairs. The geographical isolation of the Peninsula, which has always had a tendency to preserve unaltered the mental and physical characteristics of its people, has also had no unimportant influence upon the national faith. That country, even at the time of the Saracen invasion, was Christian only in name. It had never wholly discarded its Pagan forms or traditions. It was the last kingdom of Europe to nominally accept the new religion. Its creed had long been heterodox, and that creed it had abandoned, without remonstrance or regret, at the command of its sovereign. The despotic power of the hierarchy had never been able to abolish the ceremonies of Pagan antiquity which were incorporated with the ritual of the Church. The population, the offspring of a score of nations, each of which worshipped different divinities and was familiar with the fraudulent pretensions of many sacerdotal claimants to inspiration, was inclined to discredit and deride them all. To such a society religious professions and formalities were naturally matters of indifference. A nation which could spontaneously abandon the heresy of Arius would hardly hesitate to embrace the monotheistic doctrines of Mohammed. By the Moslems, so far as their tributaries were concerned, no open inducements were offered for apostasy. The practice of Islam discouraged the active proselytism advocated by other sects. The conversion of a Christian