From the point of view of historical accuracy, _Ferdinand and Isabella_ is a solid piece of work. The original sources to which Prescott had access were numerous and valuable. Discrepancies and contradictions he sifted out with patience and true critical acumen. He overlooked nothing, not even those "still-born manuscripts" whose writers recorded their experiences for the pure pleasure of setting down the truth. Ford very justly said, regarding Prescott's notes: "Of the accuracy of his quotations and references we cannot speak too highly; they stamp a guarantee on his narrative; they enable us to give a reason for our faith; they furnish means of questioning and correcting the author himself; they enable readers to follow up any particular subject suited to their own idiosyncrasy." It is only in that part of the book which relates to the Arab domination in Spain that Prescott's work is unsatisfactory; and even there it represents a distinct advance upon his predecessors, both French and Spanish. At the time when he wrote, it would, indeed, have been impossible for him to secure greater accuracy; because the Arabic manuscripts contained in the Escurial had not been opened to the inspection of investigators; and, moreover, a knowledge of the language in which they were written would have been essential to their proper use. In default of these sources, Prescott gave too much credence to Casiri, and especially to Condé's history which had appeared not long before, but which had been hastily written, so that it contained some serious misstatements and inconsistencies. Condé, although he professed to have gone to the original records in Arabic, had in reality got most of his information at second hand from Cardonne and Marmol. Hence, Prescott's chapters on the Arabs in Spain, although they appear to the general reader to represent exact and solid knowledge, are in fact inaccurate in parts. In other respects, however, the most modern historical scholarship has detected no serious flaws in _Ferdinand and Isabella_. Such defects as the book possesses are negative rather than positive, and they are really due to the author's cast of mind. Prescott, was not, and he never became, a philosophical historian. His gift was for synthesis rather than for analysis. He was an industrious gatherer of facts, an impartial judge of evidence, a sympathetic and accurate narrator of events. He could not, however, firmly grasp the underlying causes of what he superficially, observed, nor penetrate the very heart of things. His power of generalisation was never strong. There is a certain lack also, especially in this first one of his historical compositions, of a due appreciation of character. He describes the great actors in his drama,--Ferdinand, Isabella, Columbus, Ximenes, and Gonsalvo de Cordova,--and what he says of them is eminently true; yet, somehow or other, he fails to make them live. They are stately figures that move in a majestic way across one's field of