gates.  It was a civilising expedition more than a conquest, and a continual current of immigration was established over the Straits.  Over them came that young and vigorous culture, of such rapid and astonishing growth, which seemed to conquer though it was scarcely born:  that civilisation created by the religious enthusiasm of the Prophet, who had assimilated all that was best in Judaism and in Byzantine civilisation, carrying along with it also the great Indian traditions, fragments from Persia and much from mysterious China.  It was the Orient entering into Europe, not as the Assyrian monarchs into Greece, which repelled them seeing her liberties in danger, but the exact opposite, into Spain, the slave of theological kings and warlike bishops, which received the invaders with open arms.  In two years they became masters of what it took seven centuries to dispossess them.  It was not an invasion contested by arms, but a youthful civilisation that threw out roots in every part.  The principle of religious liberty which cements all great nationalities came in with them, and in the conquered towns they accepted the Church of the Christians and the synagogues of the Jews.  The Mosque did not fear the temples it found in the country, it respected them, placing itself among them without jealousy or desire of domination.  From the eighth to the fifteenth century the most elevated and opulent civilisation of the Middle Ages in Europe was formed and flourished.  While the people of the north were decimating each other in religious wars, and living in tribal barbarity, the population of Spain rose to thirty millions, gathering to herself all races and all beliefs in infinite variety, like the modern American people.  Christians and Mussulmans, pure Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians, Jews of Spanish extraction, and Jews from the East all lived peaceably together, hence the various crossings and mixtures of Muzarabes, Mudejares, Muladies and Hebrews.  In this prolific amalgamation of peoples and races all the habits, ideas, and discoveries known up to then in the world met; all the arts, sciences, industries, inventions and culture of the old civilisations budded out into fresh discoveries of creative energy.  Silk, cotton, coffee, oranges, lemons, pomegranates, sugar, came with them from the East, as also carpets, silk tissues, gauzes, damascene work and gunpowder.  With them also came the decimal numeration algebra, alchemy, chemistry, medicine, cosmology and rhymed poetry.  The Greek philosophers, who were nearly vanishing into oblivion, saved themselves by following the footsteps of the Arab conquerors.  Aristotle reigned in the university of Cordoba.  That spirit of chivalry arose among the Spanish Arabs, which has since been appropriated by the warriors of the north, as though it were a special quality belonging to Christian people.  While in the barbarous Europe of the Franks, the Anglo-Normans, and the Germans, the people lived in hovels, and the kings and barons in rocky