They made glass out of a silicious clay and used it for fashioning vessels, and also in glazing those beautiful tiles--for which Valencia is still famous--called _azulejos_, which they employed in embelishing floors and wainscoting. The best leather was made by the Jews and Arab-Moors in Cordova, and hence Spanish leather is still called _Cordovan_, which has given to English shoemakers their name of "Cordwainers." The still celebrated "Morocco" leather--the secret of its manufacture having been carried to Morocco, after their expulsion from Spain,--speaks to this day of Moorish and Jewish skill in this branch of industry. The "Toledo Blade," famous in the past and famous still, the invention of, and the plentiful and lucrative manufacture of cotton and linen paper, that blessed boon to civilization, which alone made the printing press possible and beneficial, the introduction of gunpowder and artillery, of the magnet and the mariner's compass, of mechanical and scientific apparatus and instruments, these and many more still speak in eloquent terms of Moorish and Jewish industry in Spain, and, more eloquently still, they tell the tale of Spanish ingratitude.[36] [36] For details see Copee's "Conquest of Spain," volume II chapter VIII and Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," volume I, chapter VIII. The Jews were the most skillful physicians, the ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers; while they were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of natural science. They were also the chief interpreters to western Europe of Arabian learning. But their most important service, and that with which we are now most especially concerned, was in sustaining commercial activity. For centuries they were its only representatives. By travelling from land to land till they became intimately acquainted both with the wants and the productions of each, by practising money-lending on a large scale and with consumate skill, by keeping up a constant and secret correspondence and organising a system of exchange that was then unparalleled in Europe, the Jews succeeded in making themselves absolutely indispensable to the Christian community, and in accumulating immense wealth and acquiring immense influence in the midst of their sufferings. When the Italian republics rose to power, they soon became the centres to which the Jews flocked; and under the merchant governments of Leghorn, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, a degree of toleration was accorded that was indeed far from perfect, but was at last immeasurably greater than elsewhere. (From Lecky's "Rationalism in Europe," part II, Chapter VI.).