the name of its former owner, the years of his reign, and of his age. Muza's own fate is one of those stories which might serve to point a moral in a school-boy's declamation. The riches which he had amassed in his conquests were seized by the Caliph, he was beaten, he was exposed in the sun, and finally thrown into prison, while orders were sent into Africa and Spain, for putting all his sons to death. And here we have an example of the morality which the Mahommedan religion inculcates. These orders were delivered to two commanders in Spain, they were both intimate friends of Muza, and of his son Abdalaziz, who was then governor of that country. They happened to be together when the despatches arrived, and the letters, it is said, fell from their hands, when they saw the fatal contents. "Is it possible," said one of them," that the enmity and envy of Muza's rival can have been carried so far, and prove so successful as to procure this recompense for his services!" But they concluded in the true spirit of their false religion,-" God is good, and he enjoins us to obey the Caliph's commands." In order, therefore, to bring about the destruction of Abdalaziz, which, because of his popularity, was an enterprise of considerable danger, they raised against him a false accusation that Roderick's queen, whom he had taken to wife, had perverted him from the faith, and that he favoured the Christians for the purpose of revolting against the Caliph, and obtaining the kingdom of Spain for himself. And by this artifice the soldiers were induced to execute the Caliph's order, and put him to death. His head was preserved with camphor, and sent in a precious casket to Damascus, when the Caliph, with Oriental inhumanity, uncovered it in Muza's presence, and asked him if he recognized the face! The father turned away his eyes and answered, "I know it well! the curse of God be upon him who has assassinated a better man than himself!" He was then permitted to go whither he would, and grief and indignation soon brought him to the grave.

This act of Mahommedan policy was far from strengthening the authority of the Caliphs in Spain. The Turkish writer, Ewlia, accounts, entirely to his own satisfaction, for the numberless mutinies and revolutions which have occurred in Constantinople, by the unfortunate position of the heavenly bodies when Constantine laid the foundation of his imperial city. The sun was in Cancer, therefore what but obliquity, and commotion, and insurrection, could be expected? Had Ewlia been asked to explain by what fatality it was that the same evils have continually disturbed the capitals of every Mahommedan government, he would have found some fanciful solution as satisfactory to himself, and quite as valid, rather than have looked for the real cause in the institutions

of a false religion, with which polygamy and despotism are inseparably connected. Polygamy makes the succession insecure, so that in the most regular governments of this kind, the sultan commences his reign as naturally by putting his score or two of brothers to death, as the queen bee commences hers by darting her sting into every cell that contains a princess-royal. Despotism takes away all security for life or property; but the irresponsible ruler is not more secure than the unprotected subject, and the effect of the system upon those who are armed with power, is to render them reckless and merciless while their authority lasts. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," is the philosophy of a Mahommedan governor, though he may, perhaps, be sincere enough in his belief, to substitute some other mode of indulgence for drinking. A different result is produced upon the great body of the people, whose better fate it is to suffer injuries rather than to inflict them; they learn a habit of obedience; they acquire a passive fortitude which is not to be overcome, a spirit of resignation under all trials, which, though forced upon them, and made as it were a part of their nature by unhappy circumstances, partakes, nevertheless, of religion, whereon it rests, and in the perfect submission which it induces to the will of God, brings with it, we may be allowed to hope, a saving as well as a consoling virtue. There are parts of the world in which Islam has produced good, and nothing but good; this it has done in the interior of Africa, where it has reclaimed men or freed them from such horrors as are practised among the Giagas, the Ashantees, and the people of Dahomey. There are other parts in which it may be doubted whether the good or evil of its triumph has been greater, and some there are where the evil plainly and greatly preponderates; but every where this effect is found, this resignation to the will of Providence; and this is the redeeming part of the Mahommedan religion.

By the removal of Muza, and the murder of Abdalaziz his son, the Caliphs accelerated that sort of anarchy to which such governments uniformly tend, and to which Spain was then more liable than any other part of their dominion, being the most remote from the seat of empire, and divided from all other parts of the Mahommedan world by the sea. The conquerors were no longer kept together by old habits of respect or of attachment to the representative of a distant Caliph, and they arrayed themselves in factions according to their different countries, Syrians or Arabs, Egyptians or Moors: they did not yet proceed to hostilities against each other, but they plundered the Christians without mercy; and the unhappy Goths, who had submitted to the yoke, had reason to envy the condition of their braver brethren,

who maintained their independence in the Pyrenees, in Asturias, and in Galicia. An Emir was sent from Africa with an army of Mograbins, composed chiefly of men who were too mutinous to be safe subjects in their own country. He found that the best means of restoring subordination was to divide the land, and to settle the different nations, and even different tribes, in such parts of Spain as most resembled the land of their nativity. Spain has been blest with so many natural advantages, that the Moors delighted in comparing it with all the most fortunate parts of their known world: it was Syria, they said, in the beauty of its sky and the fertility of its soil; Yemen the happy, for its temperature; India for its flowers and aromatic plants; Hegiaz for its fruits and other produce; China for its precious mines; Adem for the utility which its coasts afforded. But even Spain had its favoured provinces, and there was a competition between the Syrians and Arabs for the country about Cordoba, which was terminated by the Emir's authority. In the compromise which he adjusted, Murcia was allotted to some of the Arabs, and the allotment brought to the proof that good faith of the conquerors which Señor Conde has unthinkingly extolled.

There was a Gothic baron, by name Theudemir, who made a brave stand against the invaders after the defeat and disappearance of Roderick. Voltaire, upon very insufficient grounds, has endeavoured to identify him with Pelayo; following in this, the Archbishop Pierre de Marca, who not only contrived to persuade himself that Theudemir's successor, Athanagild, is the same person as the first Alfonso; but endeavoured to persuade others, that Athanagild and Alphonso were the same name, because the last syllable of the former is found in Ildefonso. M. De Marlès supports Voltaire in this opinion. Had there been any thing more than a mere gratuitous supposition in its favour, the statement of the Arabian writers, whom Rodrigo Ximenes followed, and of those from whom Conde's materials are drawn, would be sufficient to disprove it: the scene of Theudemir's actions being there as distinctly placed in the south of Spain, as those of Pelayo are in the north, by all the Spanish historians. It may here be observed, that the stratagem which Theudemir is said to have practised at Orihuela, making the women disguise themselves as men, and mount the walls, and obtaining good terms by this false display of strength, is like the story of William Tell and the apple, a twice-told tale, borrowed from earlier Mahommedan history; Khaled," the sword of the Lord," having been deceived by a similar artifice at Yemaumah, after the defeat and death of Mozeilama. This, however, is certain, that Theudemir succeeded in concluding with the Moors more favourable terms

than were accorded to those who submitted after less opposition, or opened their gates to the invaders; the payment of a fixed tribute was to leave his vassals free, not only from any other demand, but from all interference. This treaty, which had been made by the Moors with all formality" in the name of God," was now set aside; and the Mussulmen reconciled their consciences to a direct and gross breach of faith, by maintaining, that though it was binding so long as Theudemir lived, they were not bound to observe it with his successor. Accordingly they took posses sion of his domains, and divided them among themselves.

The partition was not made with more violence than the Normans exercised, when they took possession of England; nor did it approach within any measurable degree to the iniquity and cruelty practised by the Spaniards of a later age in their Indian repartimientos. But the feudal system of the northern nations carried with it seeds of improvement which sprang up wherever that system was established, though some of them fell among thorns, and some upon stony ground. Mahommedanism has carried with it tares and poisonous weeds. Except in the co-extension of the language with the religion of the Koran, and the feeling of religious fellowship which the pilgrimage to Mecca, and the importance attached to that point upon the globe may induce, its whole tendency is barbarizing. Everywhere where it found civilization, it has checked it, and keeps it down to its own low standard. Despotic governments have been called patriarchal by an abuse of language and of reasoning, because they are a corruption of the patriarchal form; and there is this resemblance between a family and such a government, that the members of a household are not more dependant for their comfort upon the disposition and conduct of the master, than the subjects of a despotic state are upon the personal character of the despot. They enjoy a season of prosperity under a benevolent ruler, if vigour be found in him united with benevolence; but the union is rare: it is the natural effect of despotism to destroy both in those who are in a station which places them above all restraint; and when the sceptre is in a weak hand, the weight of tyranny is felt everywhere. In this age the Caliphs were not weak; but they were distant from Spain, and the effect of distance was what that of weakness would have been. Therefore this was an age of anarchy, and the Moorish writers have told us what was the condition of the people. The sole object of the chiefs was to maintain their own authority, which, under such circumstances, could only be done by allowing their followers full license. The inferior governors looked upon the people committed to their care as sheep, whom they were not to protect, but to fleece. Their only occupation

was in passing from place to place, with an armed force, to collect tributes, and levy arbitrary imposts. The great part of the Mahommedan population suffered little less than the tributary Christians. The independent Christians are spoken of as having no other asylum than the defiles and recesses of the mountains, where they were hunted like wild beasts. Wild beasts they are called, and the war against them is described as a chase. The time came when the Spaniards took up the metaphor in their

turn.

It is likely that this state of general lawlessness and insecurity disposed the Spanish Jews to the extraordinary movement which took place among them in this first age of anarchy. The Moorish conquest had been a desirable event for them, and great numbers of this ill-fated race had migrated in consequence from Africa into Spain; many of them were, probably, the survivors or descendants of those who had been driven out by persecution. They were wealthy as well as numerous; this is expressly noticed. Doubtless the greatest part of the plunder had passed through their hands, as regular dealers in whatever was exportable. At present the wealthier and more cultivated Jews hold but loosely to their religion; and indifference brings about gradually and imperceptibly a change of profession in their families, while the inferior classes are thoroughly debased by the most sordid pursuits of gain. For this reason it is, that in latter times appeals to their national faith have been made in vain; Richard Brothers excited no stir among them by his prophecies and promises; and when Napoleon felt the pulse of the Jewish people, he found no encouragement for proceeding in the projects which he might have formed for restoring them to the Promised Land. The love of gain naturally became their besetting sin, when they were shut out from the more honourable ways of ambition. But in former ages it had not eaten into the core of the nation; that stubbornness which one of our old divines has so finely called "a strong hope malignified," was then not only a lively, but an active principle, alert and always expecting the fulfilment of its impossible hope, and therefore every one, whether impostor or madman, who appealed to that hope, found multitudes to follow him. The Moorish history tells us, that all the Spanish Jews, and many of the same nation from France, set out for Syria, with the intention of joining one of their countrymen there, by name Zonaria, who called himself the Messiah: it is added, that they forsook every thing for this expedition, and that the whole of their property was taken possession of by the Emir, for the use of the state. The fact is confirmed by a manuscript which the Archbishop Pierre de Marca had consulted, but the impostor is there called

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