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civilization and the civilization of Northern Europe of that date is sharply-accentuated by the fact that, while the literature of the Arabs was such as to remain for our instruction to this day, Charlemagne, the greatest monarch of, the West, could not write. One of the principal things in which Cordova was said to surpass all other cities was the "sciences therein cultivated." It was reported to have more books than any city on earth. Andalusia was converted into a great literary market, and the most skilful men in learning of every clime were invited to Cordova and welcomed there for their attainments. The catalogue of the library at Cordova consisted of forty-four volumes. The Saracens left much, and would have left more had their records not been destroyed by fanaticism; but if they left one word, and if only that word were all, it lives in the annals of our British Empire—the word "Admiral". The Arab word for Admiral (Amir-al-Bahr) means "Emir of the Sea". I take it that a British Admiral is Emir of the Sea; that the office, British Admiral, is the highest given to any subject of any nation on earth. Long may he remain so, and long may a British Admiral's flag be feared, respected, and admired! The collapse of the Mohammedan power in Spain, destroying, as it did, the high state of commercial organizations and systems of civilization, is a calamity from which the civilized world has not recovered to this day. Religious fanaticism, to which the world seemed to have been given over, made it a matter of conscience to destroy the literature which centuries of enlightenment had amassed in the libraries of the Mohammedans. The condition of barbarous ignorance and sloth into which Europe was plunged after the downfall of the Roman Empire and the expulsion of the Saracens from Spain were a great set-back to both commerce and civilization; but commerce again rose supreme, and at the hands of the Florentines and the Venetians a new era for trade begau. After the fall of the Saracens in Spain the growth of sacerdotalism and fanaticism in all their bald narrow-mindedness culminated in a set-back to commerce and a stagnation of civilization. The darkness of the Middle Ages has often been referred to; and the marvellous
