The 600,000 volumes of Cordova, and the enormous collections of the learned cities of the Moors, perished by Christian and Gothic hands. The library of Tunis was destroyed by Charles V.; Muley Hassan lamented it more than his city. After the ravages of war had ceased, Cardinal Ximenes, the munificent patron of literature, consigned to the flames 88,000 African manuscripts. Lastly came the capture of the library of the King of Morocco, a portion of which constitutes the collection of the Escurial, and this again has suffered by fire.
Thus have been swept away the literary records of this quarter of the globe, as completely as devouring sands and the human ravages of more recent times have effaced all local signs. The curiosity of the traveller is arrested on its inhospitable shores; the research of the antiquarian baffled by the scantiness or uncertainty of data. Her history remains what her interior still is: we can wander, guided only by the stars—little points of light that shine only because of the surrounding darkness.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] A late Queen of Spain, speaking of colonization, said,—“Spaniards now-a-days have no roots.”
[108] Stellatus cuspide fulva ensis erat. Æn.
[109] The antique Turkish galleys, some of which still continued to navigate the Black Sea fifteen years ago, had their stems and sterns largely ornamented in Venetian glass.
[110] In Turkish, jam is applied generally to glass: the Arabs restrict it to the bowl when empty.
[111] The Egyptians “were not only acquainted with glass, but excelled in staining it of diverse hues, and their ingenuity had pointed out to them the method of carrying devices of various colours directly through the fused substance.”—Wilkinson. Abulfaragus says, it was known to the Egyptians soon after the flood; and Diodorus says the Ethiopians used it.
[112] Josephus, scouting the arrogance of the Greeks, who might be said “to be of yesterday,” in presuming to speak of Jewish history, refers them to the “Phœnicians and Egyptians.”
[113] Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 421.