model of Gil-Blas, has been handed down to us by history as one
of the sternest of those iron proconsuls who were employed by the
House of Austria to crush the lingering public spirit of Italy.
Lope sailed in the Armada; Cervantes was wounded at Lepanto.

It is curious to consider with how much awe our ancestors in
those times regarded a Spaniard. He was, in their apprehension, a
kind of daemon, horribly malevolent, but withal most sagacious
and powerful. "They be verye wyse and politicke," says an honest
Englishman, in a memorial addressed to Mary, "and can, thorowe
ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures for a tyme,
and applye their conditions to the maners of those men with whom
they meddell gladlye by friendshippe; whose mischievous maners a
man shall never knowe untyll he come under ther subjection: but
then shall he parfectlye parceyve and fele them: which thynge I
praye God England never do: for in dissimulations untyll they
have ther purposes, and afterwards in oppression and tyrarnnye,
when they can obtayne them, they do exceed all other nations upon
the earthe." This is just such language as Arminius would have
used about the Romans, or as an Indian statesman of our times
might use about the English. It is the language of a man burning
with hatred, but cowed by those whom he hates; and painfully
sensible of their superiority, not only in power, but in
intelligence.

But how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the
morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst weaken
the nations! If we overleap a hundred years, and look at Spain
towards the close of the seventeenth century, what a change do we
find! The contrast is as great as that which the Rome of