a
loathsome mass of vermin, stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a
minister of state, or the associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would
have offered such a spectacle as the corpse of Thomas a Becket when his
haircloth shirt was removed. They taught us the use of the often-changed
and often-washed under-garment of linen or cotton, which still passes
among ladies under its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not
unwilling to add ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes
was the love of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of
silk, embroidered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were
the Moorish women of gay colours and the lustre of chrysolites,
hyacinths, emeralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the
interior of any public building in which they were permitted to appear
looked like a flower-meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain.

[Sidenote: They cultivate literature, music,] In the midst of all this
luxury, which cannot be regarded by the historian with disdain, since in
the end it produced a most important result in the south of France, the
Spanish khalifs, emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, and in
this strongly contrasting with the popes of Rome, were not only the
patrons, but the personal cultivators of all the branches of human
learning. One of them was himself the author of a work on polite
literature in not less than fifty volumes; another wrote a treatise on
algebra. When Zaryab the musician came from the East to Spain, the
Khalif Abderrahman rode forth to meet him in honour. The College of
Music in Cordova was sustained by ample government patronage, and
produced many illustrious professors.

[Sidenote: but disapprove of European mythology.] The Arabs never
translated into their own tongue the great Greek poets, though they so
sedulously collected and translated the Greek philosophers. Their
religious sentiments and sedate character caused them to abominate the
lewdness of our classical mythology, and to denounce indignantly any
connexion between the licentious, impure Olympian Jove and the Most High
God as an insufferable and unpardonable blasphemy. Haroun al Raschid had
gratified his curiosity by causing Homer to be translated into Syriac,
but he did not adventure on rendering the great epics into Arabic.
Notwithstanding this aversion to our graceful but not unobjectionable
ancient poetry, among them originated the Tensons, o