The Christians of the north were as unlike this as can well be conceived. Though descended from an older kingdom, the northern states had most of the qualities of new nations. They were rude and uncultivated; few of their princes possessed the elements of what could be called education, and they were too poor to indulge in the refined luxuries of the Moorish sovereigns. The Christians were simply rough warriors, as fond of fighting as even their Moslem antagonists, but even better prepared by their hard and necessarily self-denying lives for the endurance of long campaigns and the performance of desperate deeds of valour. They had no idea of the high standard of chivalrous conduct which poets afterwards infused into their histories; they were men of the sword, and little besides. Their poverty made them any man's servants; they sold their valour to him who paid them best; they fought to get a livelihood. We have seen how the great minister Almanzor won his victories against Leon and took Santiago with the aid of a large contingent of the Leonese themselves, who perceived clearly enough on which side their fortunes were to be made. The history of the eleventh century in Spain is full of such examples of the employment of Christian _chevaliers d'industrie_ by Moorish princes; but of these none has ever attained such celebrity as the Cid, the national hero of Spain. The Cid's proper name was Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, and he was called the _Cid_ because that was the title which his Moorish followers naturally gave him. A Mohammedan gentleman is still addressed in Egypt and elsewhere by the title _Sīd_, which is a corruption of the word _Seyyid_, meaning "master." The Cid, or "master," was also styled _Campeador_, which signifies "champion," or, more accurately, "challenger," because his exceeding prowess made him the natural challenger in those single combats which in Spanish wars commonly preceded a general engagement between two armies. A famous warrior would advance before the ranks, as Goliath of Gath stood forth before the armies of Israel, and challenge the opposing forces to send him out a champion; and none was more renowned for his triumphs in this manner of warfare than Rodrigo Diaz, "myo Cid el Campeador," as the old chronicler affectionately calls him. It is not easy to decide how much of the splendid history which has gathered round the exploits of the Cid is true. The Christian chroniclers stopped at nothing when they began to describe their national hero; and the enthusiasm that did not shrink from relating how the King of Leon seized Paris, and conquered the French, Germans, Italians, and even the Persians, can be trusted still less when it sounds the glories of the beloved Cid. The Spanish ballads surround their hero with a saintly aureole of all the virtues, and forget that many of these virtues would not have been understood or appreciated by the Cid himself or his contemporaries in Castile. The