become, in the general diffusion of luxury, that some authors have not
scrupled to refer to these causes principally the perdition of the Gothic
monarchy. An entire reformation in these habits was necessarily effected
in a situation, where a scanty subsistence could only be earned by a life
of extreme temperance and toil, and where it was often to be sought, sword
in hand, from an enemy far superior in numbers. Whatever may have been the
vices of the Spaniards, they cannot have been those of effeminate sloth.
Thus a sober, hardy, and independent race was gradually formed, prepared
to assert their ancient inheritance, and to lay the foundations of far
more liberal and equitable forms of government, than were known to their
ancestors.

At first, their progress was slow and almost imperceptible. The Saracens,
indeed, reposing under the sunny skies of Andalusia, so congenial with
their own, seemed willing to relinquish the sterile regions of the north
to an enemy whom they despised. But, when the Spaniards, quitting the
shelter of their mountains, descended into the open plains of Leon and
Castile, they found themselves exposed to the predatory incursions of the
Arab cavalry, who, sweeping over the face of the country, carried off in a
single foray the hard-earned produce of a summer's toil. It was not until
they had reached some natural boundary, as the river Douro, or the chain
of the Guadarrama, that they were enabled, by constructing a line of
fortifications along these primitive bulwarks, to secure their conquests,
and oppose an effectual resistance to the destructive inroads of their
enemies.

Their own dissensions were another cause of their tardy progress. The
numerous petty states, which rose from the ruins of the ancient monarchy,
seemed to regard each other with even a fiercer hatred than that with
which they viewed the enemies of their faith; a circumstance that more