excellence and unapproached by even the wisest teachers of antiquity; the vast libraries, filled with the stores of ancient learning; the lectures of the lyceum; the curious experiments of scientific observers; the entertaining scenes of social festivity; the animated disputations of learned assemblies. The jurisprudence of the orthodox believer was basely subservient to the claims of superstition. His cause was determined by the uncertain results of judicial combat, by the oaths of prejudiced compurgators, by the frivolous ordeals of water and fire. The sectary of Mohammed was tried by the kadi, a magistrate governed by established principles of law, and bound by religious as well as by temporal considerations to an impartial administration of justice. When a Christian became ill, attempts were made to exorcise the evil spirit to which his sufferings were attributed by binding him to the altar, by the invocation of saints, by the application of relics and consecrated amulets. The Moslem was conveyed to the hospital provided and maintained by royal beneficence; the cause of his complaint was ascertained; and during his stay he received gratuitously the assiduous attentions of the nurse and the intelligent care of the surgeon. While the priest-ridden peasantry of the Pyrenees and the Rhone denounced the Saracen as a foe of God and a scourge to humanity, the Christian who lived in security under his government, enjoyed his favor, shared his hospitality, profited by his instruction, knew but too well the calumny of these assertions, and that their maligned object exhibited upon occasion all the noble attributes of a faithful friend and a brave and chivalrous enemy. The dissensions of the Arabs, and their ungenerous treatment of those who voluntarily embraced their faith, were largely instrumental in preventing the amalgamation of races, even then far on the way towards accomplishment. Had not these causes intervened, only a few centuries would probably have elapsed before the subject nation, already closely united with the predominant caste by the bonds of marriage, consanguinity, and interest, by intimate mercantile associations, by the powerful influence of habits, education, and language, might have become thoroughly Mohammedanized. As it was, a greater affinity always existed between the Christian vassals of the Spanish khalifs and their lords than between the members of the several factions of the Arabs themselves, whose inextinguishable hatred, the fruit of countless generations of hostility, eventually compassed the destruction of their empire. CHAPTER XXVI THE MORISCOES 1492–1609