The peculiar nature of the war in which the Spaniard for eight centuries had thus been engaged, exercised an important influence on the national character. Generation after generation had passed their lives in one long uninterrupted crusade. It had something of the same effect on the character of the nation that the wars for the recovery of Palestine had on the Crusaders of the Middle Ages. Every man learned to regard himself as in an especial manner the soldier of Heaven,--for ever fighting the great battle of the Faith. With a mind exalted by this sublime conviction, what wonder that he should have been ever ready to discern the immediate interposition of Heaven in his behalf--that he should have seen again and again the patron saint of his country, charging on his milk-white steed at the head of his celestial chivalry, and restoring the wavering fortunes of the fight? In this exalted state of feeling, institutions that assumed elsewhere only a political or military aspect wore here the garb of religion. Thus the orders of chivalry, of which there were several in the Peninsula, were founded on the same principles as those of Palestine, where the members were pledged to perpetual war against the infidel. As a consequence of these wars with the Moslems, the patriotic principle became identified with the religious. In the enemies of his country the Spaniard beheld also the enemies of God; and feelings of national hostility were still further embittered by those of religious hatred. In the palmy days of the Arabian empire, these feelings, it is true, were tempered by those of respect for an enemy who, in the various forms of civilization, surpassed not merely the Spaniards, but every nation in Christendom. Nor was this respect wholly abated under the princes who afterwards ruled with imperial sway over Granada, and who displayed, in their little courts, such a union of the courtesies of Christian chivalry with the magnificence of the East, as shed a ray of glory on the declining days of the Moslem empire in the Peninsula. But as the Arabs, shorn of their ancient opulence and power, descended in the scale, the Spaniards became more arrogant. The feelings of aversion with which they had hitherto regarded their enemies, were now mingled with those of contempt. The latent fire of intolerance was fanned into a blaze by the breath of the fanatical clergy, who naturally possessed unbounded influence in a country where religious considerations entered so largely into the motives of action as they did in Spain. To crown the whole, the date of the fall of Granada coincided with that of the establishment of the Inquisition,--as if the hideous monster had waited the time when an inexhaustible supply of victims might be afforded for its insatiable maw.