At Cordoba we come upon the full splendour of the Moors, a whole world of chivalry, _jonglerie_, magic, and song, from the old East, their home. What noble devotion to their race! What unalterable faith! What generous courage in life, and silent constancy in death! What knowledge, could we but grasp it! We know but what is left to us of their outward life in Andalusia and Granada. Their exquisite sense of proportion and colour, in palaces vermilion walled and vocal with many waters; the massive grandeur of barbicans of defence, the sensuous charm of lace-covered chambers and gigantic leap of arch, tower, and minaret, destined to live as their mark for ever. Their whole existence in Spain is a romance anomalous but dazzling; a nation within a nation, never amalgamated; a people without a country; a wave of the great Moslem invasion cast into Europe; a brilliant phantasmagoria, various and rare! The Moors took no solid root in Spain as the [Illustration: PANTEON DE LOS REYES, THE BURIAL PLACE OF THE ANCIENT KINGS OF LEON.] Saxons in England or the Arabs in Sicily, but lived as an exotic race, divided from the Christians and from the Jews by impassable barriers of religious customs and laws; their occupation but a long chivalric struggle for a foothold in the land they had _gained_ but never conquered. Not all the fiery valour of the African was proof against the obstinate resistance of the Goths. Never was defence more complete! In the midst of apparent victory loomed defeat! A new era opens in Cordoba, with its million inhabitants and three hundred mosques, in the reign of the Caliph Abdurraman, of the race of the Ummaÿa, who overthrew the rival princes sent by the Sultan of Damascus. After him from A.D. 756 to A.D. 1000, ten independent sultans reigned in Cordoba, their wealth and luxury like the record of a tale. Most notable among these were three other Abdurramans, Hakin, surnamed “the bookworm,” Hisham, and Hazin, not to forget the great Sultan and statesman Almanzor, a Moorish Lorenzo de’ Medici, collecting books all over the world, and drawing learned men to his court even from remote Britain. While the north, in perpetual warfare, was plunged in the darkness of the Middle Ages, solid learning, poetry, and elegant literature charmed the minds of the enlightened Moors, the pioneers of civilisation in Europe. At Cordoba Averroës, the great Grecian scholar, translated and expounded Aristotle. Ben Zaid and Abdulmander wrote histories of the people at Malaga. Ibn el Baal searched the mountains and plains to perfect a knowledge of botany; the Jew Tudela was the successor of Galen and Hippocrates; Albucaris is remembered as a notable surgeon, some of whose operations coincide with modern practice; and Al Rasi and his school studied chemistry and rhetoric.