There is something cold and forlorn about the little city of Leon, that one-time capital of Spain; something chill and wintry, not explained even by the snowy peaks of Asturias bounding the horizon on the north. It is the chill of age. Other cities there are, even in Spain, older than Leon, but with them time has dealt more gently. It was but natural that this town should wither and grow old. Very much out of the world it lies, in as remote a situation as could be found in southern Europe. It has long outlived its destiny--and that was an honourable one. The blood of no new race has ever been infused into its veins. Founded by S. Sulpicius Galba in 70 A.D. as the headquarters of the Seventh Legion (Legio Septima), when it grew into a town, doubtless its first inhabitants were the unconquerable Celts of the Cantabrian Mountains. When the wild Suevi took refuge in this north-western corner of the peninsula, _Legio_, as it was then called, was nominally subject to them. Leovigild added it to the dominions of the Visigoths in 540, but despite this change of masters it probably remained Celtic to the core. The Moorish yoke endured here but twenty-five years. So near to the great mountain barriers, where the new Spain was born, which contained the nucleus of the new monarchy and nation, it was naturally among the first prizes of the kings of Pelayo’s line. Issuing from those passes which had proved a death-trap to the Moorish hordes, the Christians of Asturias wrested this city from the invader in the year 742, and with a very brief interval it was henceforward to know none but a Spanish yoke. We do not hear of much effort on the part of the Saracens to recover or to hold it. We can fancy that the spirit and resolution of those children of the South were numbed in these wintry plains, within sight of the everlasting snows, almost within reach of the tempests of the northern seas. But it was a place that suited well the temper of the champions of Christendom in Spain. It was grim, it was stern, it was rude and simple. Behind was the glorious cradle of the nation, the citadel of Spanish freedom; before were the plains whereon to do battle with the Moor, the streams that flowing south pointed the way for the Spanish knight. Leon was the first stage of a journey which was to end only at the Pillars of Hercules. Every town in the peninsula marks a forward step of the Christian, a backward step of the Moslem. Leon was outpost first, capital after. It seems to have been attacked and perhaps destroyed by the enemy during the ninth century, for we read that Ordoño I. rebuilt it. Under Alfonso III. the frontier of the nascent kingdom was carried forward to the Douro. At Leon men slept more peacefully. Alfonso, upon his abdication in 912, pursuing the policy afterwards so harmful to Spain, divided his dominions among his children. Leon was allotted to Garcia; and two years later, on the death of that prince and