The Gothic conquest of Spain was succeeded, in the eighth century, by one of equal, perhaps, greater, importance. The line it took was from south to north; so that its direction was different from that of the Goths. It was also made by a southern population. The Arabs who effected the first invasion under Musa, were the Arabs of an army; _i.e._, almost wholly males; probably, too, they were pretty pure in blood. Afterwards, however, larger swarms came over from Africa; and it cannot be doubted that, along with these there were females and families of mixed African as well as of pure Arab descent. The areas which were successively appropriated by these invaders are not exactly those that we expect, _à priori_. Murcia, or the March, was less modified by the conquest than Valencia and other countries northwards. It was held in a sort of imperfect independence by Theodemir, and under the name of _Tadmor_, into which that of the Gothic king was metamorphosed by the Arabs, long continued to be the most Gothic part of south-eastern Spain. In contrast to Grenada, and in consonance with what we expect from their geographical position, were the northern provinces of Asturias, Biscay, Navarre, and Galicia--Galicia, in respect to its ethnology, belonging almost as much to Portugal as to Spain. Into Asturias the arms of the Arab conqueror never penetrated: so that the original nationality was preserved in the kingdom of Oviedo, under the successors of Pelagius or Pelayo. Were these brave and independent mountaineers Goths or Romans? or were they original Iberians? And if of mixed blood, in what proportion were the different elements? They seem to have been second in purity of blood to the true and Proper Basques only. They were somewhat more Romanized than the latter, as is shown by their language; but both were equally free of Gothic admixture. This view rests partly on the previous details of their history, and partly on the names of the kings who succeeded Pelayo. They are not Gothic, like Euric, Wallia, or Roderic, nor yet Latin, like Pedro; but truly and properly Spanish (with the exception, perhaps, of Frivila), as Alonzo, Ordonio, Sancho, &c.; Spanish in the same way that Edward and Richard are German, or Arthur and Owen, Keltic. Pacheco, perhaps, is the truest Iberian designation. It occurs in Cæsar, as Paciecus. When the Arabs conquered Spain, their peculiar civilization was but partially developed. It grew up, to a great degree, within Spain itself.