of the
growing youth of an old-time city, especially so early as the middle of
the twelfth century, was poor and sordid. The cares of the citizens are
presumed to have been mainly for material concerns, and, indeed, mostly
for the wants of the body. They were only making a start on the way from
barbarism to something like our glorious culmination of civilization. As
"the heirs to all the ages in the foremost files of time" we are
necessarily far in advance of them, and we are only sorry that they did
not have the opportunity to live to see our day and enjoy the benefits
of the evolution of humanity that is taking place during the eight
centuries that have elapsed.

As a matter of fact, there was much more of abiding profound interest in
real civilization in many a medieval city, much more general
appreciation of art, much more breadth of intelligence and sympathy with
what we call the humanities, than in most of our large cities. The large
city, as we know it, is eminently a discourager of breadth of
intelligence. Specialism in the various phases of money-making obscures
culture. Maimonides, born in Cordova, was brought up amid surroundings
that teemed with incentives of every kind to the development of
intelligence, of artistic taste, and everything that makes for
cultivation of intellect rather than of interest in merely material
things.

It is well said that it is hard to judge the Cordova of old by its
tawdry ruins of to-day. The educated visitor still stands in awe and
admiration of the great mosque which expressed the high cultivation of
the Moors of this time. It is a never-ending source of wonder to
Americans. The city itself has many reminders of that fine era of
Moorish culture and refinement of taste and of art expression, which
made it in the best sense of the word a city beautiful. The Arab
invaders had found a great prosperous country which had been the most
cultured province of the Roman Empire, and on this foundation they made
a marvellous development. "The banks of the Guadalquivir," says Mr. S.
Lane-Poole in "The Moors in Spain" (London, 1887), "were bright with
marble houses, mosques, and gardens, in which the rarest flowers and
trees of other countries were carefully cultivated, and the Arabs
introduced their system of irrigation which the Spaniards both before
and since have never equalled." The greatest beauty of the city, of
course, had come, and some of it had gone, before Maimonides' time. So