Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THE THIRD. OP SPAIN. AND THE INVASION OTf THAT KINGDOM BY THE ‘MOORS. JL HE beautiful kingdom, which now attracted the notice of the Musulman general, had experienced an uncommon variety of changes and reverses. It had been invaded by the Carthaginians and Romans successively, but was abandoned by the former of these powers at the end of the second Punic war. From this period, the Romans had possession of the whole peninsula excepting Biscay and the mountains of the Asturias; and Spain, under these conquerors, became civilized, and as celebrated for her cities and artists, as she had been for her wealth and battles, in the times of the Carthaginians. The Romans held the country for a period of about six hundred years, when they were dispossessed by the Vandals, the Alans, and the Suevi, all known under the general appellation of,Goths. The different provinces had been divided between these three nations, and continued so till towards the f close of the sixth century, when Euric, one of the Gothic princes, united them under one sceptre, and transmitted them in this state to his descendents. But these descendents did not long retain the virtues to which their ancestors had been indebted for these valuable possessions. The mildness of the climate, and the fertility and wealth of the soil, had enervated both their minds, and the minds of the people, and introduced vices, to which, in the progressive advancement of their power, they had been utter strangers. All history is but a painful recapitulation of these deplorable consequences of rapid and redundant prosperity. The dominions of the Goths, comprised not only the country, which lay between the Pyrennees and the sea, but extended also into Africa and Gaul; in the former of which they possessed the coast…