INTRODUCTION.

THE great difficulty that besets even the most modest compiler of anything like a comprehensive History of Spain, is the difficulty of concentration of interest. The regions to be traversed are so immense and so boundless, the byways are so numerous and so inviting, that it is often hard to know which is the great central track that must be taken, if the end is ever to be reached.

The development and decline of the Roman Empire, the overrunning of Europe by the Northern Barbarians, the origin of the political power of the Christian Church, the rise and fall of Mohammedanism in Western Europe, the discovery and colonisation of America; these are five of the most interesting and most important of the phases of human progress during the last two thousand years; and with each one of these the History of Spain and of the Spaniards is indissolubly connected.

The origin and language of the Basques, and their identification with the early Iberians, the wandering civilisation of the early Celts, the commerce and industry of Tyre and Sidon, the rise and fall of Carthage, though they are to some extent outside the History of Spain, assuredly each and all claim some share of our attention. The lives of Hannibal and of Scipio, of Pompey and of Cæsar, are all largely Spanish; and each one of them is a study in itself. For hard upon seven hundred years the fortunes of Spain are so intimately connected with the greatness and the decline of the Roman Republic and of the Roman Empire, a subject of the utmost complexity of interest and of detail, that it is impossible to avoid being drawn into that most fascinating of labyrinths; and a hundred years before the Imperial troops had left the Province, we are suddenly confronted by a new and strange

civilisation, on the arrival of the Goths with their German i stitutions, their Adrian Faith, their Northern laws, their hop of regenerating the old world-their disappointment, the demoralisation and their decay. When at length, after thre hundred years of tolerably straightforward progress—-thoug the country, it must be admitted, is for the most part an un explored wilderness-something like unity seems at length t be reached, the scene suddenly changes with the rapidity of theatrical transformation, and we are carried away in a moment to farthest Araby, to wander hopelessly over whelmed by the vast range of new interests, with a new race a new civilisation, a new religion, and the most tremendous power that has arisen in the world during the last nineteen hundred years.

The spread of Mohammedanism, whether considered as a religious or a political phenomenon, is as yet but very imperfectly understood. The East has been contented to accept, and the West has not cared to study it. The History of Islam has yet to be written. To ascertain and set down the true story of the conquest and civilisation of the Peninsula by the Arab, many years and many volumes would be necessary; but in a Short History of the Spanish People-I have not ventured to adopt the well-known words on my title pagethe amount of space that may be devoted to the rise and progress, and to the decline and fall, of the Empire of the Moslem in Spain, must necessarily be small.

The intrigues and the rebellions of the Alfonsos and the Sanchos are in themselves, perhaps, of no greater interest than the intrigues and the rebellions of the Yusufs and the Mohammeds against whom they contended. But out of the freebooters of Aragon and Navarre, out of the cut-throats of Leon and Castile was evolved that great nation, before whose arms the last Moslem was driven out of United Spain. The Mohammeds and the Yusufs came and went. We may admire their valour; we may respect their civilisation; we mourn over their destruction. But they are gone. And their history is in no wise the history of the Spanish people.

To give a connected and intelligible account of the rise and progress of the various Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula is a task of far greater difficulty than the treatment, be

it brief or be it full, of the splendour and the decay of the Moslem. A well-known writer has sought to evade the difficulty by writing, under the name of a History of Spain, seven histories of the various States that rose and fell in the Peninsula from the eighth to the sixteenth century; so that the reader who has in the first volume arrived at the year 1631, finds himself on opening vol. ii. relegated to 718; and having reached 1516 by the end of this second volume, he is confounded at finding himself beginning in vol. iii. with the history of 885. A system of alternate chapters-with such dissertations and digressions as appeared necessary-as far as possible in chronological order, will probably be found at once more convenient and more artistic in its plan.

With regard to the actual scheme of the work, however carried out, my object has been to present Spanish history, as I believe it never to have been presented before in moderate limits, as one continuous whole; to tell the story of the growth and development of a great nation; and I have sought to show how Trajan and Hadrian, how Martial and Theodosius the Great, how Quintilian and Prudentius, how St. Vincent and the uncanonised Hosius of Cordova were all as truly Spanish heroes as the Cid or Berengaria; that Averroes, for all that he believed in Mohammed, was no less an Andalusian than Seneca; that St. Leander and St. Dominic, St. Isidore and St. Raymond Lull were all the fellow countrymen of Ximenez, and that Viriatus was but the forerunner of the Great Captain.

I would moreover, had I not been dissuaded therefrom by those whose opinion is of far more value than my own, have entitled my work a history of The Making of Spain, or The Making of the Spanish People. The limit of a sketch so conceived, would naturally be the accomplishment of the great national work of construction or of evolution; but if it was the conquest of Navarre that put the finishing touch to the making of Spain, it was the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, within a year or two of this crowning act of policy, that left the United Spanish People for the first time in history, to be governed by a single sovereign.

That the legitimate Queen of Spain was judged incapable of wielding the sceptre; that her more magnificent and more

fortunate son preferred a German Diadem to the Crown ever of United Spain; that he kept his mother a prisoner, and made her kingdom a province of his Empire; these things belong rather to the marring than to the making of Spain.

With regard to the actual execution of the work, the spelling of the Proper Names of places, has been to me a constant difficulty. I set out upon my work with the intention of writing a book in the best English that I could command, and of using as few foreign words as was possible without obscurity. After many diversions and excursions, and much hesitation and consideration, I am of opinion that this principle was, and is, the right one; and I have endeavoured to conform to it faithfully and reasonably in my completed work.

I was pleased at one time with the idea, which at least as far as I am concerned was original, of writing the names of Places as they were known to those who from time to time inhabited them. The Celtiberian Salduba became Cæsarea Augusta under the Romans and Sarakostah under the Arabs, to develop into Zaragoza in the language of modern Spain. The method, as it suggested itself to me, was picturesque, but after many endeavours to carry it out, it proved too subtle for practical use. To write of Aquæ sexta on page 200 and of Aix on page 350 would have marked the transition from the Roman to the French supremacy; but it might possibly have puzzled an unlearned reader, who did me the honour to take up my book, with the very laudable design of informing himself upon the history of Spain. The change from Hispalis to Seville again might have been too abrupt to be appreciated; while between my last reference to the river Anas and my first notice of the Guadiana it would have been necessary to speak of the Wady 'al 'Ana, which would have caused still further confusion-to say nothing of the fact that in the case of all the Arabic names of places from A.D. 711 at least as far down as A.D. 1252 there would have been the further immense difficulty of transliteration.

Whenever, therefore, the name of any place outside the limits of our own country has an equivalent in our own language, I have invariably spoken of it by that name; and have thus written Corunna, Gallicia and Carthagena instead of La Coruña, Galicia and Cartagena; but when the place, as most