Vifigoths, who had established their throne in Narbonne, and held the fovereignty of Rouffillon, Catalonia and Arragon, opposed their attempt, and driven them back to Galicia.

These Goths emboldened by fuccefs, and the empire having none but weak and effeminate generals and troops to oppose to them, found no difficulty in driving the Romans almost entirely out of Spain: they ruined the little kingdom of the Suevi alfo, and remained undisturbed poffeffors of the monarchy. They reigned there an hundred and thirty years. Roderic was the last of their kings; the famous battle of Xeres, in 712, put the Moors in poffeffion of The greatest and finest part of Spain. the hiftory of Roderic is enveloped in an infinity of fables. He is faid to have entered a grotto at Toledo, where he found a theet upon which was painted a man of gigantic ftature, in an African habit, and holding an infcription, fignifying that Spain should one day be sub

jugated

jugated by such a race of men. A fable repeated by feveral hiftorians, as is also that of the daughter of Count Julian, undoubtedly more natural and probable, but which, according to the moft judicious critics, is equally void of truth. We know that Roderic having ill treated Cara, a young and beautiful lady of his court, and treated with indignity Count Julian her father, who demanded fatisfaction for her injured honor; the latter, then governor for the Goths of that part of Africa which terminates at the Streights, invited the Moors into Spain to be revenged on his fovereign.

However this may be, other Moors, Arabs, Saracens or Africans, fucceeded to the first, and conquered without difficulty all the fine provinces of Spain, except those of the north, where steep and barren mountains were always an afylum of liberty for the inhabitants, and ferved as a nursery to that race of kings who were one day to be the aven

gers

gers of Spain and religion for the inva-· fion and oppreffion of the Moors.

These, however, becoming quiet poffeffors of their brilliant and rapid conquefts, the dawn of the refplendent reigns of the fovereigns of Cordova, Seville, and Granada, began to appear. The court of Abdalrahman was the center of arts, sciences, pleasures and gallantry. Tournaments, the image of war, in which love and address were substituted for valour and courage, continued for feveral centuries the amusements of a rich and fortunate people. The women were conftantly present at games the only end of which was to please them, and excited a tender emulation. They distributed to the conquerors fcarfs and ribbons which their own hands had embroidered. The voluptuous Arabs aimed at fplendid atchievements to render themselves more worthy of their miftreffes. To them are we indebted for plaintive romance, in which feductive love affumes the air

of

of melancholy, the better to intereft our affections: poetry and music were favorite arts with the Moors. The poet, in this climate, in which pleasure and imagination jointly reigned, fhared in the veneration which the public had for his works; the number of academies and univerfities increafed in Cordova and Granada; even women gave public lectures on poetry and philofophy; and literary refources abounded in proportion to the progress of fcience. I recollect to have read, that at that time there were feventy public libraries in Spain. Toledo, Seville, Granada and Cordova, which now prefent nothing but ruins and depopulation, certainly contained from three to four hundred thousand inhabitants; and the country, peopled with labourers, abundantly furnished them with every neceffary and convenience of life.

Granada is the only place in which veftiges of the fplendid reign of the Moors are to be found. The Alhambra

and

and Generatif would alone be fufficient to authenticate the brilliant descriptions preferved to us in a great number of Arabian Tales; and there is no exaggeration in saying that poets took for models the monuments erected by architects, or that the latter built edifices according to the imagination of poets.

Nothing can be more confufed than the dynasties of the Moors or Arabs who reigned in Spain. That of the Christian monarchs who difputed with them the kingdom, and, taking advantage of their divifions, drove them out of it, is not lefs fo. Doctor Caffiri has given a list of the former in his famous library of Arabian manufcripts in the Efcurial, a work which does equal honor to the reigning monarch and the author: it is tranflated from cotemporary Arabian authors; but however exact it may be, it has too much precision, and leaves much to be defired. The work is not less worthy of the greatest eulogium; it is neceffary to read it to conceive