William Hickling Prescott was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1796. His first great historical work, "The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," published in 1838, was compiled under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty. During most of the time of its composition the author was deprived of sight, and was dependent on having all documents read to him. Before it was completed he recovered the use of his eyes, and was able to correct and verify. Nevertheless, the changes required were few. The "Conquest of Mexico" and "Conquest of Peru" (see _ante_) followed at intervals of five and four years, and ten years later the uncompleted "Philip II." He died in New York on January 28, 1859. The subjects of this work, Ferdinand and Isabella, were the monarchs who united the Spanish kingdoms into one nation, ended the Moorish dominion in Europe, and annexed the New World to Spain, which during the ensuing century threatened to dominate the states of Christendom. _I.--Castile and Aragon_ After the great Saracen invasion, at the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states. At the close of the fifteenth century, these were blended into one great nation. Before this, the numbers had been reduced to four--Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada. The civil feuds of Castile in the fourteenth century were as fatal to the nobility as were the English Wars of the Roses. At the close, the power of the commons was at its zenith. In the long reign of John II., the king abandoned the government to the control of favourites. The constable, Alvaro de Luna, sought to appropriate taxing and legislative powers to the crown. Representation in the cortes was withdrawn from all but eighteen privileged cities. Politically disastrous, the reign was conspicuous for John's encouragement of literature, the general intellectual movement, and the birth of Isabella, three years before John's death. The immediate heir to the throne was Isabella's elder half-brother Henry. Her mother was the Princess of Portugal, so that on both sides she was descended from John of Gaunt, the father of our Lancastrian line. Both her childhood and that of Ferdinand of Aragon, a year her junior, were passed amidst tumultuous scenes of civil war. Henry, good-natured, incompetent, and debauched, yielded himself to favourites, hence he was more than once almost rejected from his throne. Old King John II. of Aragon was similarly engaged in a long civil war, mainly owing to his tyrannous treatment of his eldest son, Carlos.