empire of Philip the Second was undoubtedly one of the most
powerful and splendid that ever existed in the world. In Europe,
he ruled Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands on both sides of the
Rhine, Franche Comte, Roussillon, the Milanese, and the Two
Sicilies. Tuscany, Parma, and the other small states of Italy,
were as completely dependent on him as the Nizam and the Rajah of
Berar now are on the East India Company. In Asia, the King of
Spain was master of the Philippines and of all those rich
settlements which the Portuguese had made on the coast of Malabar
and Coromandel, in the Peninsula of Malacca, and in the Spice-
islands of the Eastern Archipelago. In America his dominions
extended on each side of the equator into the temperate zone.
There is reason to believe that his annual revenue amounted, in
the season of his greatest power, to a sum near ten times as
large as that which England yielded to Elizabeth. He had a
standing army of fifty thousand excellent troops, at a time when
England had not a single battalion in constant pay. His ordinary
naval force consisted of a hundred and forty galleys. He held,
what no other prince in modern times has held, the dominion both
of the land and of the sea. During the greater part of his reign,
he was supreme on both elements. His soldiers marched up to the
capital of France; his ships menaced the shores of England.

It is no exaggeration to say that, during several years, his
power over Europe was greater than even that of Napoleon. The
influence of the French conqueror never extended beyond low-water
mark. The narrowest strait was to his power what it was of old
believed that a running stream was to the sorceries of a witch.
While his army entered every metropolis from Moscow to Lisbon,
the English fleets blockaded every port from Dantzic to Trieste.