entury, it was already an ancient Jewish city, about which tradition had long busied itself. To-day, as it sits on the summit of a barren hill, one looks in vain for traces of its ancient Goth

that King Recared formally abjured Arianism; and preserved in a cloister of the cathedral may still be seen the "Consecration Stone" which reads: that the Church of Santa Maria,-built probably on the foundation of the older church,-was consecrated under "King Recared the Catholic, 587 A.D." It also tells of the councils of the Spanish Church held there-at one of wh

England and France. Disputes regarding the succession were not infrequent, and sometimes there will occur an interval with apparently no king at all, followed by

who must wear the crown was then a laborer, living in the west, and that his name was Wamba. They traveled in search of this man almost to the borders of Portugal, and th

, I shall be King of Spain wh

n to bud, and in a few momen

a miracle, and with a Spanish Duke pressing a poniard against his brea

his new position. A rebellion, fomented by an ambitious Duke Paul, who gathered about his standard all the banished Jews, was a very formidable affair. But Wamba put it down with a firm hand

ng to a custom of the period Wamba's head was shaved, and he was clothed in the habit of a monk. The meaning of this was that if he died, he would, as was fitting, pass into the Di

t health, opened his eyes, he found that ins

in tranquility; or whether it was the work of the Royal Prince, who joyfully assumed the diadem which he had so unwillingly worn, nob