Let us heed the warning and briefly state what yet remains to be told. You have 'ere this surmised what we are about to prove, the imperishable monuments which the Moors and Jews have erected to their name and fame in the arts and sciences, in literature and philosophy bear witness, not only to their great intellectual wealth, but also to vast material possessions. Wherever learning is zealously fostered there wealth exists, and where wealth abounds, there agriculture and commerce and industry must have had prior existence. Thus it was in Moorish Spain. Never before, nor ever since, did Spain enjoy a prosperity equal to that which blessed her lands, when Moorish and Jewish skill and diligence and enterprise made her, in glaring contrast with the rest of Europe, the granary and the industrial and the commercial center of the world. We have not yet forgotten how, when in the introductory chapters of this volume, we thought ourselves back some eight or ten centuries in the world's history, and hastened across the wild Atlantic to learn of the condition of Europe and her people, how spell-bound we stood, as we suddenly beheld wonders and beauties in Spain, scarcely equalled to-day in all Europe. And when we reflected upon the present condition of Spain, among the poorest of all European countries, its people proverbially indolent and ignorant, we had to assure ourselves, again and again, that it was Spain, indeed, which suddenly disclosed to us these unexpected, and still unequalled, proofs of industry and learning and cultured taste. Nor have we yet forgotten, when gliding upon the majestic Guadalquivir along fertile valleys, and luxuriant fields and graceful groves, and fragrant parks, and glittering palaces, and busy factories, and restless mines, we passed out of Spain, and visited the other countries of Europe how dreary and wretched and appalling the scenes were which met our gaze everywhere. Scarcely a city anywhere. Nothing that could, even with the broadest stretch of leniency, be designated as agriculture. Everywhere pathless deserts and howling wastes, and death-exhaling swamps. Wretched, windowless and chimneyless and floorless hovels sheltered man and beast under the same roof. Everywhere men with squalid beards, and women with hair unkempt and matted with filth, and both clothed in garments of untanned skin, that were kept on the body till they dropped in pieces of themselves, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench and rags. Everywhere beans and vetches and roots and bark of trees and horseflesh furnished largely the means of supporting life. Nowhere even a trace or semblance of industry. Everywhere the word commerce an unintelligible term. Such was the condition of the rest of Europe when Spain was basking in the sunshine of a most wonderful state of prosperity under the skill and enterprise of the Jew and the Moor.