Recaredo, his son and successor, solemnly abjured Arianism before the third Toledan Council, as the inscription on his statue outside the Alcázar records. We may imagine this unhappy son and brother weary for the moment of bloodshed and strife, and anxious to put an end to dissension in his kingdom. It would suffice to explain the wise and eloquent speech he addressed to his subjects, exhorting all to be of one faith, to enter the bosom of the Church, and accept its dogmas as he had done. His speech must have been miraculously persuasive, and his influence over his people almost magnetic, since nearly all to a man yielded to the earnest prayer of a tired and suffering heart, and consented to make his religion theirs. And thus it might be hoped, after the terrible domestic tragedy Recaredo had been obliged to witness, powerless to prevent it, the reign of violence, persecution, and discord was over, and the religious power of Toledo permanently established upon tolerant lines. But this was to count without the spirit of the times. After the first shock of misery and bereavement had passed, the turbulent sense of revolt on one side, and determination to crush it on the other, broke out in all its malignant force. The Arian bishops, goaded on by Leovigildo's widow, hurled their vote of resistance to the establishment of Roman influence. Here we have another instance of the charming inconsistency of the prolix Spanish historians. Leovigildo was nothing less than a monster, because he punished conspiracy and rebellion, and his Catholic son, condemned justly by the laws of the day to death, was a haloed martyr. Recaredo remains a just and magnanimous sovereign when he cuts off the heads and hands of the Arian conspirators; and the premature death of the queen dowager, Gosvintha, is deeply lamented, because her step-son was thus deprived of the duty of cutting off her rebellious head. Why was she less of a saint, one asks, than Hermengildo? She, too, rebelled on behalf of principle, and surely a step-son is a more natural antagonist in the field than a father! But for the historian conspiracy against a legitimate heretical sovereign may be an article of faith and duty, whereas the heretic who conspires against the monarch of the right faith is a fiend. It is this hopeless lack of logic and sense that renders so dreary and unillumined a task the reading of Spanish history. The humorists, alas! wrote dramas and novels, and history was left to the terrible Mariana, the credulous Masdeu, and the one-sided Gamero.