Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/47



several hundred years after the great Saracen invasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small, but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited by races, the most dissimilar in their origin, religion, and government, the least important of which has exerted a sensible influence on the character and institutions of its present inhabitants. At the close of the fifteenth century, these various races were blended into one great nation, under one common rule. Its territorial limits were widely extended by discovery and conquest. Its domestic institutions, and even its literature, were moulded into the form, which, to a considerable