of Bacon and Jonson, of Sidney and Lope de Vega. It was a
wondrous company that passed along the world's highway while Cuba was
struggling in obscurity to lay the foundations of a future state.

Nor did Spain herself lag behind her neighbor nations. The sixteenth
century saw her swift rise to the greatest estate she has ever known,
and her development of many of the greatest names in her history. She
began the century a newly-formed kingdom uncertain of herself and
timorously essaying an ambitious career; and she reached its close one
of the most extensive and most powerful empires in the world. We
commonly think of her chiefly as a conquering power. But in fact that
century of her marvellous conquests of empire was also her golden age in
intellect. We may imagine that the swiftness of her rise to primacy
among the nations, and the dazzling splendor of her conquests,
stimulated and inspired the minds of her people to comparable
achievements in the intellectual world. The sixteenth century was indeed
to Spain what the Augustan Age was to Rome, and what the Elizabethan and
Victorian ages were to England, and for some of the same reasons.

It was then that three great universities were founded: Salamanca,
Alcala for science, Valladolid for law; and a noteworthy school of
navigation at Seville. There flourished the philosopher Luis Vives, the
tutor of Mary Stuart. In jurisprudence there were Victoria and Vazquez,
from whom Grotius received his inspiration; and Solorzano, with his
monumental work of the Government of the Indies. The drama was adorned
by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Gabriel Tellez, and Juan del Enzina. The
greatest name of all in literature was that of Miguel Cervantes y
Saavedra. There were the poets Garcilaso de Vega, and Luis de Argote y
Gongora. There were the painters Ribera, and Domenico Theotocopuli, who
inspired Velazquez.

Above all, there was one of the most remarkable groups of historians of
any land or age. Paez de Castro was more than any other man the founder
of history as a philosophical study as distinguished from mere polite
letters; the forerunner of Voltaire and Hume. There were Florian de
Ocampo, Jeronimo Zurita, Ambrosio de Morales, and the famous Jesuit
Mariana. Then there was a remarkable company of historians inspired by
the American conquests of Spain, who gave their attention to writing of
the lands thus added to her empire: Oviedo, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Lopez
de Velasco, Las Casas