26 MEMOIR OF BRUCE. 



scripts deposited in the monastery of St. Laurence 

 and the famous library of the Escurial at Madrid. 

 Having a slight acquaintance with that tongue, he 

 might perhaps have brought to light some of their 

 hidden treasures ; although little could be expected 

 from Bruce after the laborious researches of Michael 

 Casiri, who was at that very time engaged in com- 

 piling his celebrated work the Billiotheca Aralico- 

 Hispana Escurialensis, in which he has classed and 

 given copious extracts from no fewer than one thou- 

 sand eight hundred and fifty-one Arabic manuscripts, 

 But the jealousy of the Spanish government pre- 

 vented him from gaining admission into that vast 

 sepulchre of oriental learning, except upon a condi- 

 tion with which his unsettled imagination could not 

 comply, that of attaching himself to the Spanish 

 court. 



After sojourning there for a few months, he de- 

 parted for Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre, where 

 he arrived on Christmas day, 1757> on ^ s wa j to 

 France. Crossing the Pyrenees, he reached Bour- 

 deaux, where he tarried for some time, delighted 

 with the cheerful vivacity of French society. From 

 that city he traversed the country eastward to Stras- 

 burg, and then following the course of the Rhine to 

 its confluence with the Maine, he visited Frankfort. 

 Returning northward, he passed through Cologne 

 to Brussels, having a strong desire to visit the Aus- 

 trian Netherlands. On the second day after his 

 arrival he innocently inveigled himself in a duel 

 with a stranger ; and having wounded his antagp 



