ter and
purpose, that country might have taken, and have continued to hold, the
first place in Europe. He, however, with all his talents, was
intellectually deficient in some important respects, and so all his
schemes came to nought, and he fell. He tried to effect too much, and
though fully sensible of the necessity of peace to Spain, he plunged
into war. He did, in fact, what the rulers of Spain are doing to-day: he
sought to restore the old Castilian influence by engaging the country in
wars that would have been foolish, even if they had not been unjust,
when he should have continued to direct all his attention to its
internal affairs. Had he been at the head of any other than a Spanish
ministry, Alberoni would probably have borne himself rationally; but
there is something in the politics of Spain that affects even the wisest
of heads, often turning them, as it were, and rendering their owners the
strangest of caricatures. It is sometimes said that the most Irish of
the people of Ireland are those who have come latest into the green
island, there being something in its air and soil that soon converts the
stranger into a true Hibernian in all moral respects; but the remark is
more applicable to Spain than to Ireland, as in the former country
foreign statesmen have more than once made Spanish policy ridiculous by
taking that one step which separates that quality from the sublime. What
in the person of a Castilian is at the worst but Quixotic becomes in the
foreigner, or man of foreign descent, the merest burlesque upon
statesmanship.

Alberoni's fall did not imply the fall of Spain. The renewal of vigor
that she had gained under his direction was sufficiently great to carry
her well through more than seventy years, during which she stood on an
equal footing with France, the Empire, and Great Britain, and for most
of the time was the superior of Russia and Prussia, whose European
greatness did not begin until the second half of the eighteenth century
had become somewhat advanced. It is difficult for the men of to-day to
understand that Spain was really a great power under the Bourbon kings,
down to the first years of the French Revolution. We have seen her,
until very recently, a country of little more European account than
Portugal; and that she should, but eighty years since, have treated with
England as equal with equal, after having assisted at the work of
England's humiliation, it is hard to comprehend. But such wa