The foundation of that dynasty marks a great epoch in the history of Europe. Of its noble deeds, in both war and peace, every individual of Moslem faith or Arab lineage may well be proud; proud of its long line of illustrious princes; proud of its conquests; proud of its civilization, which surpassed the splendors of Imperial Rome, and whose arts modern science has found it impossible to successfully imitate; proud of its unequalled agricultural prosperity; proud of the exquisite beauty of its edifices, still pre-eminently attractive even in their decay; proud of its mighty capital; proud of its academical system, with its perfect organization, its colleges, its lyceums, its libraries; proud of the vast attainments of its scholars, its surgeons, its chemists, its botanists, its astronomers, its mathematicians; proud of the theories of its philosophers, which for a thousand years, amidst the incessant fluctuations of human opinion and the infinite variations of religious belief, have retained their original form, and are accepted as correct by the most enlightened thinkers of the present age. The destruction of this wonderful empire was an event of more than national significance; it was a misfortune to be deplored by every lover of learning for all coming time. For evil was the day for human progress when from his battlemented walls the Moor looked down upon the signing of a truce craftily devised for the betrayal of his kindred; evil was the day when upon the red towers of the Alhambra, decorated by the emirs with profuse and unexampled magnificence, and which for seven centuries had been the stronghold of Moslem power, the home of Moslem art, were raised the victorious banners of the Spanish monarchy, suggestive, it is true, of incredible achievement, of undaunted valor, of heroic self-sacrifice, of imperishable renown, yet at the same time harbingers of an endless train of national calamities which, like avenging and relentless furies, stalked unseen in the wake of the exultant conqueror.

INDEX

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