were warm and generous, his nature calm and gentle; and,
though early power, and the painful experience of a mutinous people and
ungrateful court, had imparted to that nature an irascibility of temper
and a quickness of suspicion foreign to its earlier soil, he was easily
led back to generosity and justice; and, if warm in resentment, was
magnanimous in forgiveness. Deeply accomplished in all the learning
of his race and time, he was--in books, at least--a philosopher; and,
indeed, his attachment to the abstruser studies was one of the main
causes which unfitted him for his present station. But it was the
circumstances attendant on his birth and childhood that had perverted
his keen and graceful intellect to morbid indulgence in mystic
reveries, and all the doubt, fear, and irresolution of a man who pushes
metaphysics into the supernatural world. Dark prophecies accumulated
omens over his head; men united in considering him born to disastrous
destinies. Whenever he had sought to wrestle against hostile
circumstances, some seemingly accidental cause, sudden and unforeseen,
had blasted the labours of his most vigorous energy,--the fruit of his
most deliberate wisdom. Thus, by degrees a gloomy and despairing cloud
settled over his mind; but, secretly sceptical of the Mohammedan creed,
and too proud and sanguine to resign himself wholly and passively to the
doctrine of inevitable predestination, he sought to contend against
the machinations of hostile demons and boding stars, not by human but
spiritual agencies. Collecting around him the seers and magicians
of orient-fanaticism, he lived in the visions of another world; and,
flattered by the promises of impostors or dreamers, and deceived by his
own subtle and brooding tendencies of mind, it was amongst spells and
cabala that he thought to draw forth the mighty secret which was to free
him from the meshes of the preternatural enemies of his fortune, and
leave him the freedom of other men to wrestle, with equal chances,
against peril and adversities. It was thus, that Almamen had won the
mastery over his mind; and, though upon matters of common and earthly
import, or solid learning, Boabdil could contend with sages, upon those
of superstition he could be fooled by a child. He was, in this, a kind
of Hamlet: formed, under prosperous and serene fortunes, to render
blessings and reap renown; but over whom the chilling shadow of another
world had fallen--whose soul curdled back i