as I have not yet my master's permission to leave this country, I should wish to pass, if such be thy pleasure, some days ou the frontier, where I may be of use to thee and warn thee of peril as the sea-birds announce the approach of the tempest." The king suffered him to depart, and gave him the command of some troops. When Ibn Farüj saw himself near the Christian frontier, he wrote to his master, the sultan of Fez, these mysterious words-"There is fire kindled on a mountain; on the neighbouring one is a wood, and the wind blows between them." A contest which arose between some Moorish and Christian shepherds, and in which blood was spilt, afforded Ibn Faruj an opportunity of carrying his designs into execution; after demanding from the governor of Martos a satisfaction which was refused, the African chief resolved to take the law into his own hands, and the mode in which this was accomplished has already been related.

Returning to the heroine; Isabel passes the first days of her captivity at a place not distant from the frontier, with her Moorish maiden Arlaja, who endeavours by all possible means to assuage her grief. Ibn Faruj never presents himself before his captive, and avoids any thing that might increase her sorrow. At last, after some time, Isabel feels that her melancholy is fast dissipating, and her curiosity is somewhat raised by the accounts which Arlaja gives of her native soil, so that when she receives Ibn Farüj's intimation to prepare for a voyage to Granada, she is all anxiety, and seems to have forgotten her recent misfortunes. Arlaja tells

her

"You will not be there as I was in your country, with your feet bound in chains, and a mark of iron on your forehead. Look at me: even now the thought of what I bave endured makes my cheek blush with shame and indignation. I was born noble and rich; I was handsome and in the spring of life, and sought by the flower of the Granadian youth. I have nought to complain of the Conde de Cabra, my former master; he treated me with kindness if not with affection, and his memory shall always live in my heart; still less shall I forget the days I passed under your father's roof. But God Almighty is merciful. and just, and be repays two-fold the good that is done unto another: besides, the favours granted to the unfortunate Arlaja are not like the seed sown in sand. You shall live in my house, my child, and the name of slave shall never sound in your ears; perhaps good fortune and prosperity await you, for whatever is written must happen.”—p. 65.

The city of Granada opens to the view of the travellers, and Arlaja takes Isabel by the hand, and unable to repress the feelings which that magnificent sight creates in her mind, she bursts into glad exclamations:

"You see I have not deceived you; here we arrive at the land of joy and blessedness; and the merely treading which, drives away all care,

Behold the famous city which, crowning two hills, extends down to the plain to disappear amidst beds of flowers and thickets of odoriferous trees. That lofty range which you see whitening in the distance, is the mountains of the Sun and the Moon; and well do they deserve their name, for they are as brilliant and white as a block of ivory. Seen from the city, they look as if they could be touched with the hand, but it is very, very far otherwise. They serve as a boundary-wall to the royal city; they supply it with the coolest waters, the most precious minerals, and the finest marbles: they mitigate the heat of summer, and they purify the air even when it comes poisoned by the breeze of death."

The enthusiasm of the Moorish girl, the enchanting landscape, and the liveliness of youth, soon dissipate Isabel's melancholy; and we find her happy in the house of Arlaja, who bestows upon her all her care and affection. In the meanwhile, Ibn Faruj, whose captive Isabel was, in order to strengthen his favour and influence with the king, presents to him his valuable prize: and Abu1-Hasan is so much captivated with her beauty that he decides upon raising her to the throne. Arlaja and Isabel are lodged in the Alhambra; and the latter is by Abu-l-Hasan's directions surrounded with so many luxuries and delights, that she sinks as into a state of enchantment, and soon lends a favourable ear to the passion of the Moorish monarch.

However improbable this part of the tale may appear, for certainly it does seem incredible that a girl educated like Isabel, in the bosom of a family distinguished for their attachment to the Christian religion, by their hatred for the common enemy, and by that high sense of honour which was characteristic of the epoch, should, after a short time, and when the death of her father, husband, and friends, was still recent, yield without a struggle to those seductions, and wed the Moorish monarch, it is, nevertheless, a fact recorded by several writers. The author, who as we have already had occasion to observe, has kept as strictly as possible to the text of the Spanish chronicles, quotes by way of illustration a passage of Pedro de Salazar, in his history of the Gran Cardenal, book i. chap. 21; which mentions the incursion before alluded to and says that the two daughters of the governor of Martos fell into the hands of the Moors and were taken to Granada; where one of them, the eldest, became queen under the Moorish name of Zoraya. The fact is mentioned also by the Arabian writers, and is recorded by Conde, in his history of the Domination of the Arabs in Spaiu.-(vol. iii. p. 206.)

Another Arabic historian, Almaccari, says that Abu-l-Hasan

Now called the Sierra Nevada (Snowy Ridge). The Romans named them Orospeda; the Arabs, Sholair.

had by Zoraya male issue; and that having evinced all his life great predilection for his Christian captive, the good Mussulmans were afraid he would set aside the sons he had by the daughter of his uncle for those of the Christian. He did so; and this afterwards led to the civil war which broke out in Granada and hastened its fall.

As we have already related, Isabel consents to become the king's wife and the day for the ceremony is appointed, but Isabel has within the palace a terrible adversary to contend with. Abu-l-Hasan has another wife, called Aiesha, who, as may be easily imagined, is not much pleased to see her royal spouse bestow his affections upon a Christian slave. She swears revenge, and tries to rid herself of her rival.

"Towards the close of summer, Isabel and Arlaja were wont to take their night walks in one of the most luxuriant gardens which at that time surrounded the Alhambra. On such occasions the beauty and solitude of the spot invited the mind to repose and contemplation; the solemn silence of the night was only interrupted by the murmur of the waters along their pebbly bed, by the sound of the wind rustling amongst the trees, or a distant serenade given by the king for Isabel."-p. 124.

On one of these evenings the fair captive had been listening to a romance sung in her praise. The music had ceased; nature resumed its former stillness, and Isabel remained plunged in a sweet reverie, while Arlaja stood in silence by her side. Of a sudden they are roused by a slight noise from a neighbouring thicket; two gigantic figures dressed in black approach, and without uttering a word, seize them in their arms, and, drowning their cries in a khaik which they throw over their heads, bear them along through a subterranean passage, communicating with a distant part of the town. There the two assassins are on the point of taking away Isabel's life; but at the cries of Arlaja an old man appears, and the villains take flight, not without inflicting several wounds on their victim with their daggers. The king, in the meanwhile, finding that Isabel had left the Alhambra, orders his guards to go in search of her; she is found, and of course not dangerously wounded. Arlaja acquaints the king with all the circumstances of the assault, and Abu-l-Hasan divorces his wife Aiesha and marries Isabel.

By the preceding analysis our readers may have perceived that, as a novel, M. de la Rosa's work possesses no great interest. The incidents are trivial and common-place, and the narrative at times far from animated. We cannot deny him, however, great talents for description; and the lively and truly poetical picture he gives of the city of Granada, happily compared to an earthly paradise; of its Vega, which he assimilates to a field of emerald

strewed with pearls; of its castles and palaces rising like so many giants above the city which they are bound to protect, is in our opinion admirable, and impresses us with the idea that the author has lavished all his poetical powers on this description of his native soil. But he has not been equally successful in drawing the human characters, and we are at a loss to find one that is even tolerably delineated. That of the Moorish girl Arlaja, though one of the most prominent since she exercises a kind of spell over Isabel, creates neither interest nor sympathy; of Ibn Faruj the African zealot, always ready to run to arms and anxious to strike a blow on the Spanish frontier, and who in hopes of kindling war between the Christian and the Granadian monarchs makes an unseasonable incursion into the Castilian territory, no more is said in the subsequent portion of the narrative. In fact we do not see in this novel any of those vigorously-drawn characters, which present to the observer a true and faithful picture of life, a talent possessed in such perfection by the immortal authors whom M. de la Rosa has tried to imitate. It may be said that the novel not being complete, the characters represented have not yet acquired the strength and perfection they may hereafter exhibit. We hope, for the sake of the distinguished author's high reputation in literature, that it may be so: but in its present state we see nothing to make the book commendable, if we except the style; this, however, is by no means sufficient of itself to satisfy the reader.

It seems to us as if the Spanish language had, by the peculiar circumstances which contributed to its formation, acquired a degree of richness and flexibility not to be met with in any other tongue derived from the Latin: for while we find as many words of the latter in it as in the Italian, it possesses a vast quantity of others which have a Greek or Teutonic origin; and the number of those derived from the Eastern languages is not less than two thousand. No doubt therefore can be entertained that the Spanish, owing to its increase from the languages or dialects spoken by the different nations who settled in the Peninsula, is richer than most others in Europe: nor is it uncommon to find in it an idea expressed by three different words, borrowed severally from the languages formerly common in Spain, viz., the Latin, the Gothic, and the Arabic. Hence the great facility which Spanish affords for poetry, and the prodigious number of poets which Spain has produced. Hence too it naturally follows that prose has been written too much like poetry; that too much attention has been paid to what at different periods has been termed el buen estilo; that an idea is often sacrificed to a sound, perspicuity to the rounding of a sentence; and that many books in Spanish literature pre

sent nothing but a heap of words, sounding well to the ear, but conveying no meaning whatsoever to the mind. Quevedo's prose is bombastic and redundant; Boscan, Garcilaso, Gongora, wrote nothing but poetry. poetry. Indeed the literary axiom that poetical genius is incompatible with good prose writing, may appear paradoxical in our own literature, but it is too visible in the Spanish. Cervantes, who in graphic power still remains without a rival, made various attempts at verse but never composed one good one: Feijoo and Isla were equally unsuccessful; and Jovellano's Epistles are much too prosaic to deserve notice.

This, however, must be taken merely as a general observation, and not by any means in reference to the prose-style of M. de la Rosa, which on the contrary is pure without being antiquated, eloquent and vigorous without affectation, and will afford no small gratification to those who can appreciate the gems of Spanish literature. For our own part, as enthusiastically fond of Cervantes, it is with great pleasure that we have met now and then in M. de la Rosa's book with expressions borrowed from that immortal author, and which he has reproduced with great felicity. On this point we readily concede him an excellence seldom to be met with amongst modern Spanish writers, who in order to imitate the new French school in every particular, affect to neglect and disdain the beautiful and classic models afforded by the native authors of the sixteenth century.

ART. VI.-1. Antiquitates Americana; sive Scriptores Septentrionales rerum ante-Columbianarum in America. (American Antiquities; or Accounts from Northern Writers respecting America before the Time of Columbus.) Copenhagen. 1837. 2. Samling af de i Nordens Oldskrifter indeholdte Efterretninger om de gamle Nordboers Opdagelsesreiser til America, fra det 10de til det 14de Aarhundrede. (Collection of the Evidence contained in Old Writings, respecting the Voyages of Discovery made to America by the Ancient Inhabitants of the North, from the 10th to the 14th Century.) Published by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquarians. Copenhagen. 1837. We dare say that there are many who will learn with no less chagrin than surprise, that the discovery of America was made five centuries before Columbus. The fame of a hero is held so sacred by the bulk of mankind, that but little popularity can be