aspect of his subject. The fictitious and romantic dress of his work
has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the
floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has
illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring
denied to sober history."*

*Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii. c. 15.


In the present edition I have endeavored to render the work more
worthy of the generous encomium of Mr. Prescott. Though I still
retain the fiction of the monkish author Agapida, I have brought my
narrative more strictly within historical bounds, have corrected and
enriched it in various parts with facts recently brought to light by
the researches of Alcantara and others, and have sought to render
it a faithful and characteristic picture of the romantic portion of
history to which it relates.

W. I.

Sunnyside, 1850.




A CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA.



CHAPTER I.