the sixty-fifth year of his age Almanzor found it necessary, after an undecided and hard-fought battle, to retreat, and cross the Duero in the night; and in this retreat he died, less of his wounds, it is said, than for grief and irritation at being thus repulsed. They buried him like a Mussulman martyr, in his bloody garments, as they had borne him from the field; and they covered him in his grave with the dust of his fifty campaigns. There were other fine parts in Almanzor's character: he was the patron of letters; he was merciful to the conquered; he suffered no injury to be inflicted upon the defenceless; and once, upon receiving tidings of success from his son in Africa, he manifested his gratitude to the Giver of all victory by liberating 1500 Christian men and 300 women. But with all his virtues there was a worm at the core: ambition, even more than religious and military enthusiasm, was his ruling passion; it made him jealous of any who seemed to disapprove his measures, and none could excite his displeasure with impunity. He was not scrupulous in observing his word. He kept the king as a sort of prisoner in his harem and his gardens, ignorant of business, careless of all public events, immersed in sloth and sensuality. It was not doubted that Almanzor's intention in this was to prepare the way insensibly for a transfer of the throne to his own family, which appeared the more feasible as Hixem had no child. But this ambition proved fatal to the Ommeyades, to his own family, and eventually to the Moors in Spain. The son whom he had intended for his successor succeeded to his power, and held it during seven years, when he died, not without suspicion of poison. Another son, Abderahman by name, then assumed the same station. In person he was the living image of Almanzor; and he is said to have been generous, brave and capable, though dissolute; like his father he governed the imbecile king, who placed implicit confidence in his keepers, contented that they should take the cares of royalty, and leave him to its enjoyments. But Abderahman, less prudent than his father and his brother, resolved that, on his return from his first expedition against the Christians, Hixem should publicly adopt him for his successor. The Ommeyad family discovered this; and no sooner had he left Cordoba than they got possession of the city and of the royal person, and deprived Abderahman of his office. He returned instantly, fully expecting to recover his authority: a severe struggle took place in the streets; he was severely wounded, and made prisoner; and Muhamad, who was the leader of the opposite party, ordered him immediately to be crucified. This," says the Moorish historian, "was the fate of Abderahman, the son of the great Almanzor, the brother of the 66 illustrious Abdemelic; and yet there are those who trust in the ungrateful and inconstant people!" A series of revolutions ensued, such as are only found in the most turbulent ages of Mohammedan history: aspirant after aspirant rose, and was precipitated Crown me to-day, and as the wheel of fortune went round. kill me to-morrow, if my stars will have it so," was the desperate exclamation of one of the last Ommeyades, to those who would have dissuaded him from an ambitious course, which could end in nothing but his speedy destruction; but thus he replied to their advice, and after that day he was heard of no more, nor is it known how he perished. Thus, says the historian, the dominion and the fortunes of the Ommeyades past away. Happy are they who have done righteously, and praise be to Him whose kingdom hath no end! In these words the author whom Señor Conde has followed in the most interesting part of his work, terminates his history. During this anarchy some of the rival claimants called the Almoravides to their aid. These Africans came, like the first invaders, with the strength and enterprising spirit of a new dynasty. The Christians could not have made head against them, if they had not found allies among the Moorish kings, who established at this time short-lived sovereignties; and who, when the Africans were finally expelled, fell themselves an easy prey. The Almohades delayed their ruin for a while, but it was only to accelerate it afterwards, by leaving another contending faction in the country when their supremacy was overthrown, The Christian states meantime acquired strength, and assumed a settled and regular form. Portugal was the first that cleared its appointed limits of the misbelievers; and when Joam I. captured Ceuta, and began a system of corquest in Africa, an end was put to all further danger from that quarter. Aragon completed its work soon afterwards; and Granada was at length the only kingdom left to the Mahommedans. With the conquest of that city Señor Conde concludes his work: it is to be wished that he had given us the Moorish account of the subsequent transactions, until the final expulsion of the Moriscoes. The two latter volumes, which form about half the history, would undoubtedly have received some improvement if the author had lived to carry them through the press, or even to prepare them for it: from the portion however which he did publish, his merits may be fairly estimated. He has added much, very much, to a most interesting and important part of the history of Spain: but in showing us the value of the Moorish historians, he has shown also how important it is that the whole of their remains should be secured from further danger, and published under the direction of the Spanish Aca demy of History. Twenty years ago this might have been hoped and looked for ;-twenty years hence,-alas, the present temper of parties in that country, their obstinacy and their mutual errors, may induce a fear that Spain may be in as miserable a state of anarchy and barbarism as when the empire of the Ommeyades was broken up! ART. II. On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition; and particularly on the Works of Ernest Theodore William Hoffman. 1. Hoffmann's Leben und Nachlass. 2 vols. Berlin, 1823. 2. Hoffmann's Serapions-brüder. 6 vols. 1819-26. 3. Hoffmann's Nachtstücke. 2 vols. 1816. No source of romantic fiction, and no mode of exciting the feelings of interest which the authors in that description of literature desire to produce, seems more directly accessible than the love of the supernatural. It is common to all classes of mankind, and perhaps is to none so familiar as to those who assume a certain degree of scepticism on the subject; since the reader may have often observed in conversation, that the person who professes himself most incredulous on the subject of marvellous stories, often ends his remarks by indulging the company with some well-attested anecdote, which it is difficult or impossible to account for on the narrator's own principles of absolute scepticism. The belief itself, though easily capable of being pushed into superstition and absurdity, has its origin not only in the facts upon which our holy religion is founded, but upon the principles of our nature, which teach us that while we are probationers in this sublunary state, we are neighbours to, and encompassed by the shadowy world, of which our mental faculties are too obscure to comprehend the laws, our corporeal organs too coarse and gross to perceive the inhabitants. All professors of the Christian Religion believe that there was a time when the Divine Power showed itself more visibly on earth than in these our latter days; controlling and suspending, for its own purposes, the ordinary laws of the universe; and the Roman Catholic Church, at least, holds it as an article of faith, that miracles descend to the present time. Without entering into that controversy, it is enough that a firm belief in the great truths of our religion has induced wise and good men, even in Pro testant countries, to subscribe to Dr. Johnson's doubts respecting supernatural appearances. "That the dead are seen no more, said Imlac, I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another could not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers, can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues, confess it by their fears." Upon such principles as these there lingers in the breasts even of philosophers, a reluctance to decide dogmatically upon a point where they do not and cannot possess any, save negative, evidence. Yet this inclination to believe in the marvellous gradually becomes weaker. Men cannot but remark that (since the scriptural miracles have ceased,) the belief in prodigies and supernatural events has gradually declined in proportion to the advancement of human knowledge; and that since the age has become enlightened, the occurrence of tolerably well attested anecdotes of the supernatural character are so few, as to render it more probable that the witnesses have laboured under some strange and temporary delusion, rather than that the laws of nature have been altered or suspended. At this period of human knowledge, the marvellous is so much identified with fabulous, as to be considered generally as belonging to the same class. It is not so in early history, which is full of supernatural incidents; and although we now use the word romance as synonymous with fictitious composition, yet as it originally only meant a poem, or prose work contained in the Romaunce language, there is little doubt that the doughty chivalry who listened to the songs of the minstrel, "held each strange tale devoutly true," and that the feats of knighthood which he recounted, mingled with tales of magic and supernatural interference, were esteemed as veracious as the legends of the monks, to which they bore a strong resemblance. This period of society, however, must have long past before the Romancer began to select and arrange with care, the nature of the materials out of which he constructed his story. It was not when society, however differing in degree and station, was levelled and confounded by one dark cloud of ignorance, involving the noble as well as the mean, that it need be scrupulously considered to what class of persons the author addressed himself, or with what species of decoration he ornamented his story. Homo was 66 then a common name for all men," and all were equally pleased with the same style of composition. This, however, was gradually altered. As the knowledge to which we have before alluded made more general progress, it became impossible to detain the attention of the better instructed class by the simple and gross fables to which the present generation would only listen in childhood, though they had been held in honour by their fathers during youth, manhood, and old age. It was also discovered that the supernatural in fictitious composition requires to be managed with considerable delicacy, as criticism begins to be more on the alert. The interest which it excites is indeed a powerful spring; but it is one which is peculiarly subject to be exhausted by coarse handling and repeated pressure. It is also of a character which it is extremely difficult to sustain, and of which a very small proportion may be said to be better than the whole. The marvellous, more than any other attribute of fictitious narrative, loses its effect by being brought much into view. The imagination of the reader is to be excited if possible, without being gratified. If once, like Macbeth, we sup full with horrors," our taste for the banquet is ended, and the thrill of terror with which we hear or read of a night-shriek, becomes lost in that sated indifference with which the tyrant came at length to listen to the most deep catastrophes that could affect his house. The incidents of a supernatural character are usually those of a dark and undefinable nature, such as arise in the mind of the Lady in the Mask of Comus,-incidents to which our fears attach more consequence, as we cannot exactly tell what it is we behold, or what is to be apprehended from it : "A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire, On sands, and shores, and desart wildernesses." Burke observes upon obscurity, that it is necessary to make any thing terrible, and notices" how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings." He represents also, that no person "seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity, than Milton. His description of Death, in the second book, is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and colouring, he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors. |