Serenus, and the account seems to express that he led the Jews out of Spain, not that they went to join him. The miserable end which must have awaited the expedition is no where stated.

The Spaniards were not able to profit by the disunion of their invaders at this time; but it afforded them an interval of comparative rest. There is no other example in the modern history of Europe of so complete an overthrow as that by which the dominion of the Wisigoths was subverted and swept away. The slaughter had been very great, for they fought well, and in the pursuit no mercy was shown: during three days, the Caliph was assured the edge of the sword had not been turned aside from the fugitives the apostasy it may be believed was greater, for the Moors went as the armed missionaries of the Prophet; and in whatever country they established themselves they were joined by that portion of mankind to whom all professions are alike. The women who fell into the hands of the conquerors, whether they retained their own religion or forsook it, became the mothers of Mahommedan children. And the great body of the people who submitted and lived as tributaries, gradually lost their language, though they preserved their faith, and adopting with the speech of the Moors many of their customs, acquired the name of Muzarabes. When the kingdom of the Wisigoths was destroyed, their very name as a living people was extinguished. The disappearance of an appellation by which the kings and lords and military part of the nation had proudly and jealously distinguished themselves during three centuries of dominion, seems to indicate that the character which they had acquired during their supremacy, rendered the name inconvenient after their downfall, and that they were glad to merge it in the general appellation of Spaniards, toward which no enmity was borne by the people of those provinces wherein they found shelter, neither by the Basques or old Iberian race, nor by the Sueves and Alans, whose descendants were in possession of Galicia and the adjacent parts of Portugal. The hypothesis which would find a remnant of the Spanish Goths in the Cagots of the Pyrenees, is as gratuitous and as untenable as that which derives the origin of these miserable people from the Moors, who escaped after the great defeat by Charles Martel. The only probable supposition concerning the Cagots is, that they were lepers, who were originally separated from society on account of their malady; and whose descendants inherited the obloquy and odium attached to that disease, after the disease had worn itself out. This supposition is supported by every thing that appears concerning their history, and even by the name which is given them in certain laws: Gajos they are there called. M. Ramond, in his very interesting volume upon the

Pyrenees, writes the word Caffos, following some erroneous authority. It would otherwise have reminded him that Gafo is the Spanish word for a leper.

The lesson which the Moors received from Charles Martel was not lost upon them. Before that memorable event the character which they gave of the people of Afranc was, that they were infinite in number, prompt in attack, courageous in fight, but heartless and fearful in defeat. After this battle they remarked, that "he who struggles against the eternal decrees of fate, wearies himself in vain." Under the indefinite name of Afranc every thing beyond the Ebro appears to be designated in these volumes: some conquests they made beyond that river, and retained them; but when they reached the Pyrenees, plus ultra was not to be their motto. Narbonne, which they called one of their many Medinas, they were not able to maintain; and when a powerful dynasty was at length established in the Peninsula, any zeal which arose for an Aliget or Anti-Crusade, found sufficient employment upon the Leonese and Galician frontiers. The revolution which introduced that dynasty, and with it the splendid age of Mahommedanism in Spain, is one of the most remarkable in Oriental history. Merwaun, the last caliph of the Ommeyah race, was a man of great experience, and distinguished for ability as well as courage: his general was unrivalled in military reputation, and his minister is said to have been second to no statesman upon earth in sagacity and political skill. "Had these things been otherwise," says the thoughtful historian, whom Major Price has followed, "man in his short-sighted and imperfect survey of events, would have ascribed the result to the ordinary operation of weak counsels, pusillanimity, and indolence. But God so ordained it, to afford us an awful example, that the fate of states and empires doth not depend upon the degrees of human capacity, but upon the inscrutable operations of his mysterious providence." Merwaun had been warned of danger in time by the chief on whom he relied most, and who deserved his confidence. warning was given in verse:-" I have seen sparks among the cold ashes-I fear they may kindle into a flame. If it be not extinguished by a timely hand, that flame will consume not trees and forests, but the lives of men. I saw this and said, oh! who can tell me whether the representative of Ommeyah sleeps, or is awake and watchful ?"-Many poems and fragments of poetry are inserted by Conde in his history, as connected with it, and illustrative of the Moorish character; but much to their injury he has presented them in verse, which he should not have done without annexing a literal translation, even if he had been more confident of his skill in his own language,

The

The Caliph Merwaun was not awake; he disregarded more urgent representations till ruin was near and inevitable. When he understood his danger it roused him to an act of cruelty, he seized the representative of the house of Abbas, and put him to death by tying up his head in a bag of quick lime. His own head was soon embalmed and sent to the brother and successor of the Imaum, whom he had thus execrably destroyed. A creature of the weasel species carried off his tongue when in the process of embalming it was torn out and thrown away, and verses were made upon the occasion, stigmatizing him for the blasphemies which that tongue had uttered; for many of the Ommeyads are said not to have believed in the religion of which they were the popes. The house of Abbas had injuries to revenge; and the black standard which they hoisted in the revolution, and the black attire wherein their adherents were ordered to appear from head to foot, manifested the spirit in which vengeance would be exacted. Their odious oppressors, they said, should be slaughtered under every rock and every stone to which they might fly for concealment. This determination was carried into effect with such relentless inhumanity, that exclusive of those who were slain in battle, six hundred thousand persons are said to have been put to death by one of their commanders: that number is positively stated for the sake of human nature we may believe it has been exaggerated, but how enormous must it have been to have occasioned such exaggeration! Abul Abbas, the first of the Abbasside Caliphs, obtained the dreadful appellation of Asafah the Bloody. Ninety members of Ommeyah's unhappy race had submitted, and were living in honour and, as they hoped, in security at Damascus, where Abdallah Ben Aly, the uncle of the Caliph held his court. They were assembled at a banquet to which he had invited them, when one of the victorious party entered the hall, and addressed Abdallah in a poem composed for the occasion. He called for vengeance upon these guests in the name of the Imaum, and of the other Abbassides whom the Ommeyades had put to death. "Destroy the root," said he, "that no scion may spring up! Towards thee they are daggers which are sharpened, and are athirst for blood. We who love thee and are alarmed for thy danger, see them treading on thy carpets! Away with them! God has cast them down-why dost not thou trample upon them!" This abominable exhortation found willing ears. Abdallah ordered the men whom he had invited, ninety in number, to be beaten to death in his presence; and when the last had fainted under the executioner, the bodies of the dead and dying were piled together to construct a horrible platform, upon which carpets were spread, and on these carpets

this monster and his guests sate at their repast, careless of the groans and the agony beneath them! Wherever any of this proscribed race could be found they were slain and thrown to the dogs. The bones of the deceased Caliphs were disinterred, and the single corpse which the grave had not consumed, was fastened to a stake and burnt. But Omar II. had left so saintly a reputation for his innocence and virtuous life, that even these enemies refrained from offering any insult to his remains.

"Blessed," says the historian of the Spanish Ommeyades, “be that Lord who giveth might, and majesty, and dominion to whom it pleaseth him, and taketh them froin whom he will. Lord God, thy kingdom alone is eternal, and subject to no change! Thou only art Almighty! It was written on the secret table of thine eternal decrees, that in spite of the Beni Alabas, and of their determination to destroy the whole family of the Beni Ommeyahs, already despoiled of the caliphate and the sovereignty of the Mussulman empire, a branch from that famous trunk should be planted in the West, and there strike root and flourish." One of that race, by name Abderahman Ben Moaviah, had submitted to the new dynasty, and with his kinsman Suleiman was living at Damascus, (probably before the tragedy of the banquet,) when Abul Abbas the Bloody sent for both their heads. Abderahman received at the same time from some faithful friend tidings of his own danger and of Suleiman's fate. Jewels were given him to secure his subsistence, and horses provided for his escape. Knowing that there could be no safety for him in Syria, he sought refuge among the Bedoweens in Egypt. He was in the twentieth year of his age, and had been nursed in the lap of luxury; but he accommodated himself at once to the change of his fortunes. In Egypt, however, he felt himself in continual danger of discovery, strict search being made for him; his nights even in the desert were past in fear, and at daybreak he was always the first to bridle his horse: he removed, therefore, to the province of Barca, and became a favourite with the tribe which received him there. The governor of that province had received a description of his person, with orders to search for him in all directions, and a party of horsemen upon that quest arrived at the tents in which he was sheltered. Providentially he was absent, and the Arabs apprehending from the manner of inquiry that there was an intention of killing him, sent the horsemen to seek him in a wrong direction, while six of their young men accompanied him upon his flight to the Zenata tribe. The last Ommeyad Caliphs, who were connected in blood with the Greek emperor, the Great Khan of the Tartars, and the old royal family of Persia, derived no advantage in their hour of need from this illustrious consanguinity: but Abderahman, who

had hitherto concealed his name and persecuted extraction, declared them when he reached his tribe, because his mother was of their stock, and he was at once acknowledged by them as a kinsman, and received into their protection. From thence he was invited by the chiefs of the Syrian and Arabian parties in Spain, to come among them as the representative of the Ommeyades, and put an end to the anarchy in that country by establishing himself there as their Caliph. Abderahman did not hesitate to accept this invitation; the old sheik of the Zenates gave him his blessing. "My son," said he, "since God has called thee into this path, follow it bravely; and in truth it is with the horse and the spear that the honour of a lineage is to be maintained." The young men of the tribe volunteered to follow him. He landed with a thousand horsemen, and in a few days was joined by twenty thousand men.

Abderahman's reception in Spain resembles in many respects the restoration of our Charles the Second; there was something of a similar hereditary attachment, a similar anarchy preceded, and the like necessity of a settled government was acknowledged. Two chiefs resisted-Jusuf, the one, was slain in battle; the other made his peace, was apprehended afterwards upon a true or false accusation, and was put to death in prison. The history of Jusuf's son Abulaswad is extraordinary enough for romance, and might form the subject of a tragic poem. He was young enough to have his life spared in compassion after his father's death; but this compassion extended only to his life, and he was closely imprisoned at Cordoba in one of the towers of the wall, where his brother's head was exposed on a hook over the city gates. Hard hearts will sometimes be softened by the patient sufferings of the innocent and helpless; and after many years his keepers took upon themselves the responsibility of allowing him to come out into the light and air! Whether he had premeditated a scheme of escape if opportunity should ever be afforded him, or whether the hope and the design at that moment instantaneously occurred, on coming into the light, he moved his arms and eyes as if long confinement in darkness had extinguished the sense of sight; and so well he acted a blind man's part, that more indulgence was given him, and he was at length permitted to pass the night in a lower apartment, which was cooler than his prison, and to fetch water for his own use from the cistern. Some friends of his family obtained access to him, with whom he concerted his plans, escaped from a window of the staircase which led to the cistern, swam the Guadalquevir, found a horse and garments ready for him, and fled first to Toledo, then to the mountains of Jaen, where a body of outlaws were ready to