HISTORY OF SPAIN, FROM THE EARLIEST AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS TO THE PRESENT TIMES; WITH A GEOGRAPHICAL VIEW OF the Peninsula. BY ALEXANDER BEAUMONT, ESQ. LONDON: Printed by W. Lewis, Paternoster-row; FOR S. A. & H. ODDY, OXFORD-STREET. PREFACE. THERE are two kinds of literary labourers. One brings to light new facts, or draws new conclusions from those which are already known; the other comprises, in an abridged and easy form, the discoveries of writers of a higher order. Each of these is useful in its peculiar departments. Without the first, our knowledge could not be increased; without the latter it could not be diffused-confined to the closets of the few who possess wealth and leisure, it could never become extensively useful to mankind. It is among the literary labourers of the latter class, that the author of the volume now offered to the public, has, for the present, arranged himself. His object has been, to give his readers a condensed narrative of the leading events in the history of an interesting country, where prosperity at home, and respectability abroad, have almost uniformly been in proportion to the degree of liberty enjoyed by the people. There is a species of originality, too, to which the author thinks he has some claim. The moral and political reflections, which perhaps occur in this volume more frequently than is in general in abridgments, are his own. These, being the result of much meditation on the struc→ ture of human society, are the parts of his work on which he looks back with most complacency; and on these, in conjunc tion with the circumstances of his narrá→ tive coming down to the present times, he grounds the hope, that his History of Spain will prove more interesting to the public than those which are already before it. But even if his claim to that species of originality which has been just mentioned, should not be admitted-if it should be found, that an imperfect memory (furnishing the general result of his reading, without recalling the circumstances of when and where, to enable him to trace each principle to its proper source), led the author to imagine, that he was draining from the stores of his own mind, when, in fact, he was only borrowing from others, still he will not regret the hours which have been spent in the compilation of this abridgment. By comprising, in one cheap volume, facts which have been selected from near an hundred, he has rendered an acquaintance with Spanish history, from the earliest to the present times, attainable by thousands, who, before, had neither money nor leisure for such an acquaintance— |