t not to
beast. He would have abhorred such a form of amusement, for the origin
of which we must look to the barbarous Kelt; or perhaps, as is more
probable, to the mysterious Iberians, since among the Latin peoples
of Europe bull-fighting is found in Spain alone. Well was it for Spain
that her rough, untutored ancestors were kept hiding in the mountains
for centuries, while that brilliant Oriental race planted their
Peninsula thick with the germs of high thinking and beautiful living.

As the spider, after his glistening habitation has been destroyed by
some ruthless footstep, goes patiently to work to rebuild it, so the
Moor in Granada, with his imperishable instinct for beauty, was making
of his little kingdom the most beautiful spot in Europe. The city of
Granada was lovelier than Cordova; its Alhambra more enchanting than
had been the palaces in the "City of the Fairest." This citadel,
which is fortress and palace in one, still stands like the Acropolis,
looking out upon the plain from its lofty elevation. Volumes have been
written about its labyrinthine halls and corridors and courts, and the
amazing richness of decoration, which still survives--an inexhaustible
mine for artists and a shrine for lovers of the beautiful. But Granada
cultivated other things besides the art of beauty. Nowhere in Europe
was there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such advanced
thinking, and a knowledge so akin to our own to-day, as within the
borders of that Moorish kingdom.

CHAPTER XV.

There were other reasons beside the growing peacefulness of the
Spaniards why Granada was left to develop in comparative security for
two centuries. It was impossible that adjacent ambitious kingdoms,
such as Navarre, Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Portugal, with indefinite
and disputed boundaries, and, on account of intermarriages between the
kingdoms, with indefinite and disputed successions, should ever be at
peace. In the perpetual strife and warfare which prevailed on
account of royal European alliances, the fate of foreign princes and
princesses were often involved, and hence European states stood ready
to take a hand.

Castile and Aragon had gradually absorbed the smaller states,
excepting Portugal on the one side and Navarre on the other. The
history of Spain at this time is a history of the struggles of these
two states for supremacy. The most eventful as well as the most lurid
period of this prolonged civil war was while P