they repaid the hospitality they received with such wisdom as they possessed. The Saracenic conquests in Spain brought in vast stores of oriental knowledge, and frequent intercourse with that land, and with Palestine, for devotional or commercial purposes, tended greatly to increase the treasure, and a taste for its enjoyment. But Arabian literature was a forced plant in Europe, and was as transient in its bloom as it was unnatural in its maturity. Some traces of a more substantial cultivation, however, were yet extant within the walls of Bagdad, and thence the crusaders secured whatever could be advantageously employed. But the fire of inventive genius, expressed in literary and scientific research, which once characterized the Arabians, had passed away; the seeds of preliminary culture had been sown, and their mission ended with the predestined work of their hands. The arts and sciences of the Arabians were as unique as their authors; too practical to be elegant, and too fanciful for ordinary use. To their skill in medicine, and the exactness of arithmetic, they added the vagueness of the talisman and horoscope. Astronomy was lost in astrology, chemistry in alchymy, and medicine in empiricism. But amid the darkness of their errors dwelt gleams of scientific light superior to any the world had yet seen. The principal utility lay in the fact that these dim intimations prompted western Europe to break through habitual associations in matters of taste and knowledge, and rendered her the instrument of her own intellectual resuscitation, by exciting an ardor in mental pursuits hitherto unknown.