700) they sank from the first to the
third grade in Europe, and saw the scepter passing in the New World from
their hands to those of more normally constituted races. That the
self-abandonment to sterilizing passions and ignoble persecutions which
marked Spain out for decay in the second half of the sixteenth century,
and rendered her the curse of her dependencies, can in part be ascribed
to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict
with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the
less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself
and little short of destructive to Italy.

After the year 1530 seven Spanish devils entered Italy. These were the
devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared
against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of
Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical
economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining
monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent
soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in
their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying
tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of
national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom,
wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of
effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping,
corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles,
cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these
brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring:
idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition,
hypocritically sanctioned vice. These fourteen devils were welcomed,
entertained, and voluptuously lodged in all the fairest provinces of
Italy. The Popes opened wide for them the gates of outraged and
depopulated Rome. Dukes and marquises fell down and worshiped the golden
image of the Spanish Belial-Moloch--that hideous idol whose face was
blackened with soot from burning human flesh, and whose skirts were
dabbled with the blood of thousands slain in wars of persecution. After
a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had everywhere
spread desolation and corruption. Broad regions, like the Patrimony of
S. Peter and Calabria, were given over to marauding bandits; wide tracks
of