INDEX.

LLISHMENTS.

F

▪RGE FREDERICK HANDEL, en- Fog-Seas of the Moon-Chambers' Journal,

Food, some talk about-Fraser's Magazine,

France of To-day, the Imperial,

Franklin's Plans, Lady,

Fuller, Andrew-Truan,

NY LIND, engraved by Sartain.

HAMMED, SHAH OF PERSIA, en-

IS AGASSIZ, engraved by Sar-

A

Alps-Element of Power

G

Gold in its Natural Sources-London Quarterly

PAGE

276

204

281

425

326

355

269

Germany, Life in—Dublin University Magazine, 38

Review,

PAGE

German Love-Fraser's Magazine,

Jazine,

H

an-Leisure Hour,

-London Quarterly Re-

169

Magazine,

548

B

History and Religion, the Mutual Relation of—

National Review,

158

How China is peopled-Albion,

473

er's Magazine,

532

I

—North British Review, 27 Insanity, Disease, and Religion-London Quar-

ms-London Quarterly Review, 492 Sea, Physical Geography of the-Edinburgh Re-

114

COLUMBUS, from the grave still confers new and very s upon Spain. In the fif he gave her the New nineteenth, that New ck historians to Spainnot only investigate and ecoming enthusiasm her d her conquests in that which is their country, he destinies of Spain herent source, upon her own ast annals of Europe. It that we have, in our own he most extensive survey ture and the most captivof Spanish political hisand the Catholic, Isabella les V., and Philip II., incuriosity and interest to tic historians as the exn Mexico, or of Pizzarro

TIMES.

Nor is this the only circumstance worthy of remark in the volumes now before us. These historians of European or American Spain are neither Spaniards nor Catholics. They belong to another race; they profess another faith; they speak another tongue. Washington Irving, Prescott, and Ticknor, are (so to speak) Englishmen and Protestants; for the sons of Protestant England are now the rulers of that continent which was discovered and conquered nearly four hundred years ago, by the ancestors of Catholic Spain. The history of Spain has fallen, like her Transatlantic empire, into the grasp of foreigners and of heretics.

Is this, then, one of the strange caprices of fate in the destinies of nations? Or is it one of those mysterious designs of Providence upon mankind which remain impenetrable, even after the lapse of ages? Not so: it is a natural and consequential fact, which may be fully explained by the history of Spain and of Europe for four centuries-it is a sentence warrantably Reign of Philip the Second, pronounced and justified by the course of

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. 2 vols.

Dutch Republic; a History. By
LEY. 3 vols. London: 1856.

events.

When Charles V., wearied with power, with public affairs, with mankind, and

peo

f, pronounced his third abdica- | then said to contain 350 walled towns,
sought, in the Monastery of and more than 6000 small towns or burghs.
repose he needed for his body Antwerp boasted of 100,000 inhabitants;
l, he bequeathed to his son, and even the Venetian ambassador, in
the most vast and powerful spite of his national predilections, did not
which Christendom had ever scruple to compare that city to the Queen
Europe, Spain, the north and of the Adriatic. Such was the activity of
Italy, and the Low Countries the manufacturing population in these
o say, Holland, Belgium, and towns of Flanders, that, according to
est of the present departments Guicciardini, children of five or six years
and north-east of France. In old were profitably employed; and in the
ral of the most important posi- rural districts, amidst fields tilled and
northern coast, Oran, Tunis; watered as carefully as the plain of Gre-
western coast, the Cape Verde nada, the intellectual culture of the
the Canaries. In Asia, the ple was so diffused, that, if we may believe
of the Philippines, and several the same authority, it was rare to meet a
ce Islands. In America, the peasant who could not read and write.
of the West Indies, Mexico, Thus, in the Spanish empire, the arts of
those unexplored territories war and the arts of peace flourished with
omish theocracy had assumed equal splendor; and the same sovereign
grant in fee to Spanish ambi- had at his disposal the gold of Mexico
o was also the husband of the and Peru, the infantry of Spain, the indus-
ngland. The empire of Ger- try of Flanders, the science, the taste, and
à his father had not succeeded the statecraft of Italy.
ng with his personal sceptre,
his uncle Ferdinand-an ally
he rather resembled a vassal.
mperial dignity, Philip suc-
I the dominions of his father,
en, to borrow a fine expression
ieu, the world expand to
field of his greatness;" and it
is reign that the pride of his
t boasted that the sun never
s territories.

period of the world, and in vith the contemporary wealth ions, the internal prosperity essions was not less brilliant. fficial document, of 1492, sets pulation of the kingdom of at 6,750,000-about double estimated by Mr. Hallam to at that time the population y. The permanent revenue of Castille, which in 1474, at of Isabella, was only 885,000 sen in 1504 to 26,253,334 supplies voted by the Cortes added 16,113,014 reals-in 3 reals, or about £400,000. of America, and the intern the several portions of the 1 given a rapid impulsion to al activity of Spain; her merreckoned, towards the close h century, nearly 1000 veseater was the progress and of the Flemish provinces,

These resources lay at his disposal, in Spain at least, without contention and without control. Ferdinand and Isabella, in the first instance-after them Charles V.-had vanquished the adversaries, and crushed the obstacles, which had formerly limited the authority of the Crown. No divisions existed between the kingdoms of Spain. No unbelievers shared the territory with the Christian people. With the exception of Portugal, marriage and conquest had reduced the Peninsula to a single state. Unity had triumphed in the government as well as in the territory. The Mendozas, the Guzmans, the Ponces de Leon-those haughty nobles who could arm, one against the other, a thousand pikemen, ten thousand men-at-arms, and who burned in Seville fifteen hundred houses of their foes-had been subdued by the Crown, and were now arrayed about it for its honor and its service. The Commons of Castille, and that heroic pair who had marched at their headDon Juan de Padilla and Doña Maria Pacheco, his wife-had failed, in 1522, in their struggle for liberty. Neither the feudal nobility nor the municipal bodies of Spain had accurately measured their pretensions by their strength; both these orders had been wanting in political intelligence and in the spirit of organization and of accommodation which can alone insure that success which is not won without difficulty by the best of causes. Neither

by aristocrats no by a nobility no Fants of an age, of social order, a respective ranks ( with impunity. over the memory fenders of ancier

liberty in Spain; natural; and if t conquered Ferdin must soon have 1 had not the wise exercise. Philip II., then, rast monarchy an unlimited monar man was more fit without diminuti ance. Able, labo sagacious, skillful sallful in dispens served him best, impetuosity, that tion and activity and various und velops, but consu mind. Addicted averse to movem

and rapid change of habits-bodily incidents of wa people, and all scenes of public were objects of at once in pomp and in repose, i tude. On all o secret; the mo most exalted I questions, could

weeks no answ city where he amongst his s back in his ca He was a sove extending his row sphere of even within tha but though h quered either t

or the greatn seemed born t tegrity, and h retention. H one great qu wanting to hi thoroughly a in Flanders,