d
ruled over the united kingdoms: both were patriotic, both clever, and
absolutely at one in their policy. It is almost impossible to us who can
look back on the long records, almost always sad and disastrous, not to
doubt whether in giving a new world "to Castile and Aragon," Cristobal
Colon did not impose a burden on the country of his adoption which she
was unable to bear, and which became, in the hands of the successors of
her _muy Espanoles y muy Catolicos_ kings, a curse instead of a
blessing. Certain it is that Spain was not sufficiently advanced in
political economy to understand or cope with the enormous changes which
this opening up of a new world brought about. The sudden increase of
wealth without labour, of reward for mere adventure, slew in its infancy
any impulse there might have been to carry on the splendid manufactures
and enlightened agriculture of the Moors; trade became a disgrace, and
the fallacious idea that bringing gold and silver into a country could
make it rich and prosperous ate like a canker into the industrial heart
of the people, and with absolute certainty threw them backward in the
race of civilisation.

Charles V. was the first evil genius of Spain; thinking far more of his
German and Italian possessions than of the country of his mother, poor
mad Juana, he exhausted the resources of Spain in his endless wars
outside the country, and inaugurated her actual decline at a moment
when, to the unthinking, she was at the height of her glory. The
influence of the powerful nobility of the country had been completely
broken by Isabella and Ferdinand, and the device of adopting the
Burgundian fashion of keeping at the Court an immense crowd of nobles in
so-called "waiting" on the Monarch flattered the national vanity, while
it ensured the absolute inefficacy of the class when it might have been
useful in stemming the baneful absolutism of such lunatics as Felipe II.
and the following Austrian monarchs, each becoming more and more effete
and more and more mad. The very doubtful "glory" of the reign of the
Catholic Kings in having driven out the Moors after eight centuries of
conflict and effort, proved, in fact, no advantage to the country; but
twenty thousand Christian captives were freed, and every reader of
history must, for the moment, sympathise with the people who effected
this freeing of their country from a foreign yoke.

Looking at the marvellous tracery of the church of San Juan de los