n.
Three hundred and fifty cities, alive with industry and pleasure, many
of them fortified by their natural position and secure without bulwarks
or walls; six thousand three hundred market towns of a larger size;
smaller villages, farms, and castles innumerable, imparted to this
territory the aspect of one unbroken flourishing landscape. The nation
had now reached the meridian of its splendor; industry and abundance had
exalted the genius of the citizen, enlightened his ideas, ennobled his
affections; every flower of the intellect had opened with the
flourishing condition of the country. A happy temperament under a
severe climate cooled the ardor of their blood, and moderated the rage
of their passions; equanimity, moderation, and enduring patience, the
gifts of a northern clime; integrity, justice, and faith, the necessary
virtues of their profession; and the delightful fruits of liberty,
truth, benevolence, and a patriotic pride were blended in their
character, with a slight admixture of human frailties. No people on
earth was more easily governed by a prudent prince, and none with more
difficulty by a charlatan or a tyrant. Nowhere was the popular voice so
infallible a test of good government as here. True statesmanship could
be tried in no nobler school, and a sickly artificial policy had none
worse to fear.

A state constituted like this could act and endure with gigantic energy
whenever pressing emergencies called forth its powers and a skilful and
provident administration elicited its resources. Charles V. bequeathed
to his successor an authority in these provinces little inferior to that
of a limited monarchy. The prerogative of the crown had gained a
visible ascendancy over the republican spirit, and that complicated
machine could now be set in motion, almost as certainly and rapidly as
the most absolutely governed nation. The numerous nobility, formerly so
powerful, cheerfully accompanied their sovereign in his wars, or, on the
civil changes of the state, courted the approving smile of royality.
The crafty policy of the crown had created a new and imaginary good, of
which it was the exclusive dispenser. New passions and new ideas of
happiness supplanted at last the rude simplicity of republican virtue.
Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy
independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their
native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more
pow