contest was waged upon the sea or on a foreign soil, it was at least
mitigated by the ordinary rules of warfare. But on Spanish soil it knew
no restraint, no limitation but the complete effacement of the Moorish
population. The story of the Morisco Rebellion, which we remember to
have first read with absorbed attention in Dunham's meagre sketch, is
here related with a fulness of detail that exhausts the subject, and
leaves the mind informed both of causes and results. Yet the march of
the narrative is rapid and unchecked, from the first outbreak of the
revolt, when Aben-Farax, with a handful of followers, facing the
darkness of night and the blinding snow, penetrated into the streets of
Granada, shouting the cry so long unheard in air that had once been so
familiar with its sound, "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is the
prophet of God!"--through all the strange and terrible vicissitudes of
the deadly struggle that ensued, the frightful massacres, the wild
_guerrilla_ battles, the fiery onslaughts of the Spanish chivalry, the
stealthy surprises of the Moorish mountaineers,--down to the complete
suppression of the insurrection, the removal of the defeated race, the
overthrow and death of Aben-Aboo, "the little king of the Alpujarras,"
and the ghastly triumph in which his dead body, clothed in the robes of
royalty and supported upright on a horse, was led into the capital
where his ancestors had once reigned in peaceful splendor, after which
the head was cut off and set up in a cage above the wall, "the face
turned towards his native hills, which he had loved so well."

On such a theme, and in such localities, Mr. Prescott is more at home
than any other writer, American or European. His imagination, kindled
by long familiar associations, burns with a steady flame. The
characters are portrayed with a free and vigorous pencil, the contrast
between the Orientalism of the Spanish Arab and the sterner features of
the Spanish Goth being always strongly marked. The scenery, painted