.

A FULLER VIEW OF THE CHARACTER OF BOABDIL .-- MUZA IN THE GARDENS OF HIS.
BELOVED.
Muza Ben Abil Gazan returned from his visit to Boabdil with a thoughtful and depressed spirit.

His arguments had failed to induce the king to disdain the command of the magic dial, which still forbade him to arm against the invaders; and although the royal favour was no longer withdrawn from himself, the Moor felt that such favour hung upon a capricious and uncertain tenure so long as his sovereign was the slave of superstition or imposture.

But that noble warrior, whose character the adversity of his country had singularly exalted and refined, even while increasing its natural fierceness, thought little of himself in comparison with the evils and misfortunes which the king's continued irresolution must bring upon Granada.
"So brave, and yet so weak," thought he; "so weak, and yet so obstinate; so wise a reasoner, yet so credulous a dupe! Unhappy Boabdil! the stars, indeed, seem to fight against thee, and their influences at thy birth marred all thy gifts and virtues with counteracting infirmity and error." Muza,--more perhaps than any subject in Granada,--did justice to the real character of the king; but even he was unable to penetrate all its complicated and latent mysteries.

Boabdil el Chico was no ordinary man; his affections were warm and generous, his nature calm and gentle; and, though early power, and the painful experience of a mutinous people and ungrateful court, had imparted to that nature an irascibility of temper and a quickness of suspicion foreign to its earlier soil, he was easily led back to generosity and justice; and, if warm in resentment, was magnanimous in forgiveness.