had been concentrated in the crown, and
the crowns of Castile and Aragon were permanently united on the
accession of Charles--afterwards Charles V.--to both the thrones.

Under these great rulers we have beheld Spain emerging from chaos into a
new existence; unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to
her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her
resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial
enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of the feudal age
in the requirements of an intellectual and moral culture. We have seen
her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a
very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory both
in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the
discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters.

* * * * *

VOLTAIRE

History of Charles XII

Voltaire's "History of Charles XII." was his earliest notable
essay in history, written during his sojourn in England in
1726-9, when he was acquiring the materials for his "Letters
on the English," eleven years after the death of the Swedish
monarch. The prince who "left a name at which the world grew
pale, to point a moral and adorn a tale," was killed by a
cannon-ball when thirty-six years old, after a career
extraordinarily brilliant, extraordinarily disastrous, and in
result extraordinarily ineffective. A tremendous contrast to
the career, equally unique, of his great antagonist, Peter the
Great of Russia, whose history Voltaire wrote thirty years
later (see _ante_). Naturally the two works in a marked degree
illustrate each other. In both cases Voltaire claims to have
had first-hand information from the principal actors in the
drama.

_I.--The Meteor Blazes_

The house of Vasa was established on the throne of Sweden in the first
half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, Christina,
daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated in favour of her
cousin, who ascended the throne as Charles X. He and his vigorous son,
Charles XI., established a powerful absolute monarchy. To the latter was
born, on June 27, 1682, the infant who became Charles XII.--perhaps the
most extraordinary man who ever lived, who in his own person united all
the great qualities of his ancesto