Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/457

313 VIII. THE SPANISH ARABS. 313 race so degraded ; one which, during the five cen- chapter turies, that it has been in possession of the finest climate and monuments of antiquity, has so seldom been quickened into a display of genius, or added so little of positive value to the literary treasures descended from its ancient masters. Yet this peo- ple, so sensual and sluggish, we are apt to confound in imagination with the sprightly, intellectual Arab. Both indeed have been subjected to the influence of the same degrading political and religious insti- tutions, which on the Turks have produced the results naturally to have been expected ; while the Arabians, on the other hand, exhibit the extraordi- nary phenomenon of a nation, under all these em- barrassments, rising to a high degree of elegance and intellectual culture. The empire, which once embraced more than half of the ancient world, has now shrunk within its original limits ; and the Bedouin wanders over which it exhibits of the science his work entitled " Historia de la and mental culture of the Span- Dominacion de los Arabes en Es- ish Arabs. Several other native paiia." The first volume appeared scholars, among- whom Andres in 1820. But unhappily the death and Masdeu may be particularly of its author, occurring- in the au- noticed, have made extensive re- turnn of the same year, prevented searches into the literary history the completion of his design. The of this people. Still their political two remaining volumes, however, history, so essential to a correct were printed in the course of that knowledge of the Spanish, was and the following year from his comparatively neglected, until Se- own manuscripts ; and, although iior Conde, the late learned libra- their comparative meagreness and rian of the Academy, who had confused chronology betray the given ample evidence of his ori- want of the same paternal hand, ental learning in his version and they contain much interesting infor- illustrations of the Nubian Geogra- mation. The relation of the con- pher, and a Dissertation on Ara- quest of Granada, especially, with bic Coins published in the fifth vol- which the work concludes, exhib- ume of the Memoirs of the Roy- its some important particulars in al Academy of History, compiled a totally different point of view VOL. I. 40