An exact picture of society in Spain at this period has been preserved in the Etymologies of Isidore Pacense. The Visigoths were a primitive, barbarous people, who had imposed upon themselves the outward appearances of Roman, or rather of Byzantine, civilisation. The contemptuous reference of Hallam to this “obscure race” is undeserved. Even in their earlier stages of development the Goths manifested many noble qualities--notably, a clemency towards their enemies--which were not conspicuous in the more polished nations of the South. And though they never properly assimilated the culture of the Latins, they attained to a degree of refinement and civilisation which compares favourably with that reached by contemporaries. “Spain,” remarks the author of “Toledo” in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España,” “may then fairly and proudly claim that, while in Central Europe art had acquired no distinctive form--in the midst of the bitterness of slavery, when, before the abjuration of Reccared, the fusion of the races was not legally recognised--the Iberian Peninsula had developed a definite and evident artistic and literary individuality. That individuality must have been the result of the fortuitous conjunction and union of Latin traditions, more or less degenerate, with influences originally Byzantine and with those other transformed elements introduced by the Germanic hosts of Atawulf; but, even then, it remains an individuality, which asserts itself in the surviving examples of Visigothic culture, and which was transmitted to the generations succeeding the Moslem conquest.”