that they would submit to any arbitration but that of the
sword; and it could not be hoped that, if they appealed to the sword,
other potentates who had no pretension to any part of the disputed
inheritance would long remain neutral. For there was in Western Europe
no government which did not feel that its own prosperity, dignity and
security might depend on the event of the contest.

It is true that the empire, which had, in the preceding century,
threatened both France and England with subjugation, had of late been
of hardly so much account as the Duchy of Savoy or the Electorate of
Brandenburg. But it by no means followed that the fate of that empire
was matter of indifference to the rest of the world. The paralytic
helplessness and drowsiness of the body once so formidable could not
be imputed to any deficiency of the natural elements of power. The
dominions of the Catholic King were in extent and in population superior
to those of Lewis and of William united. Spain alone, without a single
dependency, ought to have been a kingdom of the first rank; and Spain
was but the nucleus of the Spanish monarchy. The outlying provinces
of that monarchy in Europe would have sufficed to make three highly
respectable states of the second order. One such state might have
been formed in the Netherlands. It would have been a wide expanse of
cornfield, orchard and meadow, intersected by navigable rivers and
canals. At short intervals, in that thickly peopled and carefully tilled
region, rose stately old towns, encircled by strong fortifications,
embellished by fine cathedrals and senate-houses, and renowned either
as seats of learning or as seats of mechanical industry. A second
flourishing principality might have been created between the Alps and
the Po, out of that well watered garden of olives and mulberry trees
which spreads many miles on every side of the great white temple of
Milan. Yet neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese could, in physical
advantages, vie with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land which
nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a land which would
have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had not, during many
ages, lavished all their noxious influences on the bay of Campania, the
plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of Galesus.

In America the Spanish territories spread from the Equator northward
and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate
zone. Thence came go