IT is pleasing to the student of Spanish history to turn from the chronicles of its ancient ignorance and barbarism, or of its recent torpor, to so glorious an epoch as was the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. If it ever be proper to speak of any period in a nation's history as a "golden age," certainly the epithet may be pertinently applied to this. Under the kind and wise administration of these sovereigns, Spain awoke miraculously from the long night of her slothful sleeping, to a noon-day of energy and glory. Honor and success were at once hers, both at home and abroad. We are surprised that in so short a time, and apparently by the labor of two individuals, so much could have been so gloriously achieved. The triumphant conquest of Grenada, the eventful Discovery of America, and innumerable acts of wise domestic policy, all united to contribute to the national renown; yet, amid all the delight so natural to the perusal of such events, how sad to be forced to grieve that in all this glory there was any shame! But who can read on with pride, or rather who shall not mourn over, the terrible bigotry of those days and its terrible effects? It cannot be forgotten, perhaps it should not be, that this age of splendor, the age of Ferdinand and Isabella, was the age also of the Spanish Inquisition. That it was the age of fearful religious persecutions, of racks and swords and stakes-that Isabella herself, lovely and amiable, wise and lenient, as she usually seemed, deserves our pity, if not our hate, that she sanctioned an institution so fatal and so accursed. Well has her historian said, in speaking of the blighting effects of the institution, "How must her virtuous spirit, if it be permitted the departed good to look down on the scene of their earthly labors, mourn over the misery and moral degradation entailed on her country by this one act!" Yet tears cease not here, for there is further cause of grief. The Inquisition was not the only sad offspring of this dark spirit of bigotry; it produced still another, which was as great a curse to the nation-the Expulsion of the Jews. It is of it, that we would speak.

This event occurred in the month of March, of the year 1492; or, rather, that was the date of the publication of the edict for expulsion; the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, as their historian nar. rates, "inscribing it, as it were, with the same pen which drew up the glorious capitulation of Grenada and the treaty with Columbus." The edict was mainly as follows: "that all unbaptized Jews, of whatever sex, age, or condition, should depart from the realm by the end of July next ensuing; prohibiting them from revisiting it, on any pretext whatever, under penalty of death and confiscation of property." It was a most cruel and disastrous measure. Aside, for the present, from its gross injustice and inhumanity to the Jews, it was most unwise and most destructive of the interests of Spain. It deprived the nation, which, most of all others under heaven, needed them, of the most useful and valuable classes of her citizens. It deprived her of order, of industry, of all her great mechanical skill, of much wealth, and of not a little learning; these were all centered in her Jews. It gave a blow to her prosperity, from which, under the most favoring circumstances and the wisest of rulers, she still could not recover. Even the Discovery of America, the greatest event of time, made immediately afterwards by her own adventurers, and the benefits of which she might have greatly monopolized, could not arouse her enterprise and industry. She was without them. Nor has she since recovered, as has been sufficiently manifest in the subsequent slow progress of her arts and the lamentable inactivity of her people.

But upon the Jews, how sad, how undeservedly cruel, were the effects! It came upon them with all the surprise and the disaster of the avalanche. They were crushed, because they were unprepared. True, their position hitherto among the Spaniards had not been altogether desirable. There had been former persecution and injury of their numbers. They had been despised before this as infidel dogs, and all the severest tortures of the Inquisition had been at times employed against them, to persuade them from their infidelity to Christianity. And although they bitterly remembered these instances of past maltreatment, they had striven earnestly to prevent them in future, and hoped that they had succeeded. Long had they looked upon Spain, as a home of pleasantness and a refuge from misery. All their affections, all their reminiscences, were connected with it. Though it was not the land of their old fathers, it was the land of their birth, and of many of their ancestors. Though not the cherished land of their inheritance, it seemed more than the land of their adoption. Here they had lived, in a measure aliens although natives, denied many political rights and privileges, it is true, but still had lived with general happiness and prosperity. Here, their artisans had pursued their useful callings, their merchants accumulated wealth, their scholars acquired learning, their families been reared in every refinement. Here was their home and their country, each with its own endearments. And from all these they were to be severed by a blow, to be driven forth as outcasts and wanderers, ay more, with a brand of infamy upon them, among nations in whom they should find no friends, but all enemies.

And as if all this was not enough, the Spanish sovereigns, in strange contradiction of their previous conduct, not only issued their edict of immediate expulsion, but subjoined to it such provisions as most painfully affected the Jews. They were to be rendered not exiles only, but paupers too. They were forbidden to carry away with them their enormous sums of silver and gold, the earnings of their toil, although bills of exchange, the substitute granted them, as their persecutors well knew, could only be partially obtained. They were obliged to sell their houses and lands, their goods and chattels, for a mere pittance, or leave them behind unsold. They sacrificed upon compulsion all that wealth, which could alone have proved an alleviation of their distress. Against the enforcement of the edict, the Jews strove earnestly but vainly. They sent immediately their ambassadors to their Sovereigns' feet, to lay before them their tale of agony and their plea for mercy. They remonstrated, they entreated, they wept before them. They told them that they had ever been orderly and peaceable subjects, that they had never raised voice nor arm against the safety of the realm. They were to be banished for no transgression, no crime of their people. The old charges, which were now afresh revived against them, had long since been disproved. They had never lacked in loyalty; they had never misused their prosperity; they had never, as old traditions said, kidnapped and crucified Christian children; they had never, as physicians, poisoned Christian patients; they had never sought alliances with Christian Spaniards; they had never done aught, in deed or word, against the Christian's religion, and if they had not become its votaries, it was only because they could not yield to its persuasions to renounce the darling faith of their fathers and themselves. Why should they be banished? They offered presents of their gold; (the ambassadors had with them 30,000 ducats, which their brethren had already contributed to defray the expenses of the Moorish war;) they professed a willingness to suffer any sacrifice, to submit to any honorable test of their fidelity and loyalty. And when Isabella, forgetting in the occasion her assumed severity, and moved by the sorrowful entreaty, might perhaps have forbidden her decree; at the moment of her indecision, the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, frantic with zeal and rage, trusting in the power of his position, rushed boldly into her presence, and holding high aloft his crucifix, in a voice choked with passion, told his Sovereigns, "Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of silver-your highnesses would sell him for thirty thousand; here he is, take him and barter him," and rushed as madly forth; the seal was fixed upon the destiny of the Jews, and they were expelled from Spain.

All remonstrance, all entreaty, all efforts of any kind whatever, were now fruitlessly ended, and the Jews bore the fate, from which they could not escape, with sorrowful, but that proverbially Jewish resignation. They maintained their unwavering constancy amid all the misfortune. Although the priests were continually thundering forth invectives against their Hebrew religion, or gently striving, by bribe and entreaty, to persuade them to a Christian faith, the commands of their