was the main source of his prosperity and greatness, was never more prominently displayed than after the conquest which transferred the sceptre of Sicily from one race of foreign adventurers to another. No more striking antagonism of national customs, religious prejudices, habits, and traditions could be conceived than that existing between the victor and the vanquished. One came from the borders of the Arctic Circle; the original home of the other was in the Torrid Zone. Both traced their lineage to tribes steeped in barbarism and idolatry; but the Norman, though he had changed his system of worship, still retained many of its objectionable and degrading features, while the Arab professed a creed that regarded with undisguised abhorrence the adoration of images and the invocation of saints. In the arts of civilization, there was no corresponding advance which could suggest resemblance or justify comparison. Poverty, ignorance, ferocity, still remained the characteristics of the Norman, as when, with a handful of resolute companions, he scattered to the winds the armies of the Sicilian Mussulman. The latter, however, if inferior in endurance and martial energy to his conqueror, was possessed of accomplishments which justly entitled him to a prominent rank in the community of nations. No circumstance of honor, of distinction, of inventive genius, was wanting to exalt his character or magnify his reputation. The fame of his military achievements had filled the world. His commercial relations had made his name familiar to and respected by remote and jealous races, to whom the Christian kingdoms of Europe were unknown. His civil polity was admirably adapted to the character and necessities of the people its laws were intended to govern. Under those laws, administered by a succession of great princes, Moslem society had become opulent, polished, and dissolute beyond all example, but eventually and inevitably enervated and decadent. Political and social disorganization had not, however, entirely destroyed the prestige earned by ages of military glory and intellectual pre-eminence. The schools of Cordova had been swept away by hordes of African fanatics. Her libraries had been scattered or destroyed. Her incomparable palaces had been levelled with the ground or had succumbed to the gradual decay to which they had been abandoned by ferocious chieftains, alike ignorant of the arts and indifferent to the claims of civilization. But the glory of the fallen metropolis had been reflected upon the provincial capitals of a distracted and dismembered monarchy. Malaga, Granada, Toledo, Seville, were still celebrated as seats of learning; civil war had interrupted but not extinguished the pursuit of science; a taste for letters counteracted in some degree the thirst for blood which prompted the atrocities of tribal hate and hostile faction; and the chivalrous intercourse established at intervals between the two races contending for national superiority afforded a