Excerpt from The Last of the Abencerrages, or the Fall of Granada: With Other Poems If it in the least tend to keep alive those feelings of reverence for worth and genius, ever combined with an aspiring and indomi table energy and force of example -the noblest heritage of a proud people; if it awaken one glow of emulative Virtue and en thusiasm for the cause of truth, honour, and national independence, his dearest object will have been attained. To take a grate ful pride in the well earned fame of a noble ancestry is to give a pledge to fortune and to the future - a security for the principles which made them great. The heroic toils of our great-hearted benefactors purchased us our free and joyous rest amidst surround ing storms; the blood of England's martyrs became the life of our religion and our civil polity; and by their faith in truth and good were we made Whole. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.