l-Makkari, who, after enlarging upon "the running streams, the
luxuriant gardens, the stately buildings for the accommodation of the
guards and high functionaries--the throngs of soldiers, pages,
eunuchs, and slaves, attired in robes of silk and brocade, moving to
and fro through its broad streets--and the crowds of judges, katibs,
theologians, and poets, walking with becoming gravity through the
spacious halls and ample courts of the palace,"--concludes with a
burst of pious enthusiasm. "Praise be to God who allowed those
contemptible creatures (mankind) to build such palaces, and to inhabit
them as a recompense in this world, that the faithful might be
stimulated to the path of virtue, by reflecting that the pleasures
enjoyed by their owners were still very far from giving even a remote
idea of those reserved for the true believers in paradise!"

"Abdurrahman," as Al-Makkari sums up his character, "has been
described as the mildest and most enlightened of sovereigns. His
meekness, generosity, and love of justice, became proverbial: none of
his ancestors surpased him in courage, zeal for religion, and other
virtues which constitute an able and beloved monarch. He was fond of
science, and the patron of the learned, with whom he loved to
converse.... We should never finish, were we to transcribe the
innumerable anecdotes respecting him which are scattered like loose
pearls over the writings of the Andalusian poets and historians,"--but
as the "pearls" selected possess but little novelty in the
illustration of the kingly virtues which they commemorate, we prefer
to quote once more the oft-repeated legacy to posterity, in which this
"Soliman of the West," as he was called by his contemporaries,
confessed that, like his eastern prototype, he had found all his
grandeur "but vanity and vexation of spirit."--"After his death a
paper was found in his on handwriting, in which were noted those days
he had spent in happiness and without any cause of sorrow, and they
were found to amount to fourteen. O, man of understanding! consider
and observe the small portion of happiness the world affords, even in
the most enviable position! The khalif An-nasir, whose prosperity in
mundane affairs became proverbial, had only fourteen days of
undisturbed enjoyment during a reign of fifty years, seven months, and
three days. Praise be given to him, the Lord of eternal glory and
everlasting empire! There is no God but he!"

In the fulness of ye