jugated by Rome, with the exception of Greece, thus exhibited a pliability of genius such as might have been expected in an old and polished state: much as to day, while reputed a stranger to Europe, she has excelled us in branches where least we would have expected to find competitors beyond the circle of our ideas and instruction. She entered with facility the intellectual existence of her victor, rivalled him in all the fields of literary and philosophic excellence, and contributed to the common glory, greatness and refinement, more than her share of poets, rhetoricians, historians, philosophers and princes. The first stranger admitted to the honours of Rome was a Spaniard; and it is in his family mansion preserved by the ashes of Vesuvius, that the opportunity has been best afforded to us, of estimating the dignity of a Roman patrician..

The periods of the Visigoths and of the Moors, although those which confer upon Spain its historic value and romantic character, do not in respect to our subject afford such salient features as the earlier and more recent periods, save indeed that both found the conquest easy, and the retention difficult; nowhere else were the barbarian occupiers of the Roman provinces expelled-nowhere else have the Saracens been driven back. Under these catastrophes, Spain as usual seemed to recover force and life from those very changes that in ordinary cases cause the fall of empires, and in the midst of those external circumstances which denote the decline of a people.

No sooner had the crowns of the kingdoms of the Peninsula been united and the Moors expelled, than Spain was, as it were, ravished from herself by the union of her crown with the imperial diadem. From that time "this noble country has been the appanage of some foreign family without having been conquered by one of them." This is the period in her

*

Quinctilian, Columella, Pomponius Mela, Florus, Lucian, Seneca, Hadrian, Trajan Theodosius the Great &c.

history which represents the centralized power gathered in from the plains, as opposed to the decentralizing and retentive faculties of her mountains.

Neither under the Austrians nor under their Bourbon suc cessors, did the encroachments of the central government reach to that point that the villager got sight of his enemy; therefore Europe mistook the power of Spain to do injury to others, and her might to defend herself. The indifference of the people was construed "power of the crown." When the most ambitious of mortals-the most daring and cunning of his age, King of Spain and Roman Emperor, held as hopeless captive, the King of France-well might Europe tremble for her liberties, and apprehend that the dream of univer sal empire was about to become a reality. It was dispelled by no diplomatic combinations or warlike efforts. For its accomplishment it wanted only in the breasts of Spaniards the lusts or the slavery that constitute the character of a conquering people or form the implements of an ambitious king. The victorious armies of Charles were defeated by the Cortes, which refused supplies for a war which it judged neither necessary nor just.

The successor of Charles, however, found resources independent of the Cortes: though no longer master of Austria, Portugal was added to the Spanish crown with all her commerce in the religious strifes in which he engaged, he had the faculty of arousing the bigotry of his people. Here, however, the internal rights and local independence of another portion of his dominions were the safeguard of neighbouring states, and the treasure of American, as the blood of European Spain were engulphed in the Netherlands. Soon afterwards Catalonia's resistance enabled Portugal to emancipate herself. Nor was it possible even here, in reference to so near a neighbour, to arouse the evil passions of the Spanish people.

And with all these events before us, the present generation neither knows that Spain has rights, or that it has internal

freedom: neither do they know that it is these, and not the fictitious adjustment of the dimensions of states, that are the curb upon ambition, and the foundation of peace.

From groundless fears regarding the ambition of Spain. under the first two monarchs of the Austrian line, Europe passed into an equally erring judgment of her decline of the fifth and last. They treated her at the close of the seventeenth century as in the present day they treat Turkey; they called her a corpse, and they coalesced to ensure the demise by a division of the carcase. England, France, and Austria signed, in anticipation of the death of Charles II in whose. person they seemed to consider Spain to exist, the infamous act called the Partition Treaty, and the commencement of such crimes in Europe.

The folly of the design was soon shown to be equal to its iniquity. Spain, thus menaced, accepted a French prince. The treasures of England were squandered,—in vain she poured forth her blood and that of Germany, and the war ended by a Treaty to sanction the settlement which they had taken up arms to prevent. Spain, too, whose maritime powerhad previously been extinguished, regained strength in her struggle with the mistress of the seas, the benefit whereof was transferred to England's rival-France, and cooperated in wresting from England her North American possessions : it was again placed at the disposal of France during the first short war at the beginning of the French Revolution. The naval power of both was indeed broken by England, and that of Spain utterly extinguished at the battle of Trafalgar. It was for France that this sacrifice was made; it was on Spain that fell the penalty, and England rejoiced in the injury that she had done her, as being the most effective means of weakening France.

:

Now again was the judgment of Europe to be exercised; Spain was again but a corpse such was the judgment of England on the one side, and of Napoleon on the other. It was a country which he could outrage at his pleasure, whose fortresses he could occupy without a struggle, whose princes

he could kidnap like the negroes of Guinea, on whose throne he could place, as on those of the Europeans, a puppet with a crown. The result was that Napoleon went to Elba.

Between 1690 and 1807 no change had taken place, therefore, in the material condition of Spain, and no improvement in the perceptive faculties of Europe.

CHAPTER III.

Formation of Faction. Constitution of 1812.

Up to the close of the great continental war there had been a total absence of political differences; the opposition to Government had been by province, and then of a practical kind only; there had never been a Revolution. The people had met by a stubborn though isolated resistance every encroachment of the Crown, and had fortunately never been exposed to usurpations by a Parliament. Thus had been preserved less obliterated than elsewhere the footsteps of early freedom. The people were, indeed, indolent and ignorant, but there was amongst them contentment and equality, a fair distribution of the goods that they possessed, no depreciation of one class by misery, or elevation of another by pride of station or wealth; sedulous politeness linked together the classes of society, and kept open running the fountain of charity with its twofold blessings.

Madrid was not properly a metropolis. To the foreign families who had slipped into the occupation of the throne this city was as a permanent camp, to which they retired from Spain, and whence they commanded but did not govern it. A vast mass of functionaries were employed in the central government and inhabited Madrid, but Madrid contained no manufactory of laws, and the agents of the Government never took out of the hands of the locally elected magistrates the administration either of province, city, district, or village. Thus did the Government remain distinct from the people, and the people, being admitted to no share in it, preserved at least their character; they remained men of Valencia, Estremadura, of Seville or Saragosa.

This original framework was preserved by a variety of circumstances, the mighty chains of mountains to which I have referred, the absence of roads and the difficulty of communica