History Itself Is Often Of Two Minds About The Facts, Or The Truth From Them, And When You Have Stored Away Its Diverse Conclusions, And You Begin To Apply Them To The Actual Conditions, You Are Constantly Embarrassed By The Misfits.

What did it avail me to believe that when the Goths overran the north of Spain the Vandals overran

The south, and when they swept on into Africa and melted away in the hot sun there as a distinctive race, they left nothing but the name Vandalusia, a letter less, behind them? If the Vandals were what they are reported to have been, the name does not at all characterize the liveliest province of Spain. Besides, the very next history told me that they took even their name with them, and forbade me the simple and apt etymology which I had pinned my indolent faith to.

I

Before I left Seville I convinced a principal bookseller, much against his opinions, that there must be some such brief local history of the city as I was fond of finding in Italian towns, and I took it from his own reluctant shelf. It was a very intelligent little guide, this _Seville in the Hand,_ as it calls itself, but I got it too late for use in exploring the city, and now I can turn to it only for those directions which will keep the reader from losing his way in the devious past. The author rejects the fable which the chroniclers delight in, and holds with historians who accept the Phosnicians as the sufficiently remote founders of Seville.

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