isles of Jersey and Guernsey, ancient possessions of this Crown,
and never conquered in the greatest wars with France."

The ascendency which Spain then had in Europe was, in one sense,
well deserved. It was an ascendency which had been gained by
unquestioned superiority in all the arts of policy and of war. In
the sixteenth century, Italy was not more decidedly the land of
the fine arts, Germany was not more decidedly the land of bold
theological speculation, than Spain was the land of statesmen and
of soldiers. The character which Virgil has ascribed to his
countrymen might have been claimed by the grave and haughty
chiefs, who surrounded the throne of Ferdinand the Catholic, and
of his immediate successors. That majestic art, "regere imperio
populos," was not better understood by the Romans in the proudest
days of their republic, than by Gonsalvo and Ximenes, Cortes and
Alva. The skill of the Spanish diplomatists was renowned
throughout Europe. In England the name of Gondomar is still
remembered. The sovereign nation was unrivalled both in regular
and irregular warfare. The impetuous chivalry of France, the
serried phalanx of Switzerland, were alike found wanting when
brought face to face with the Spanish infantry. In the wars of
the New World, where something different from ordinary strategy
was required in the general and something different from ordinary
discipline in the soldier, where it was every day necessary to
meet by some new expedient the varying tactics of a barbarous
enemy, the Spanish adventurers, sprung from the common people,
displayed a fertility of resource, and a talent for negotiation
and command, to which history scarcely affords a parallel.

The Castilian of those times was to the Italian what the Roman,