The shock which the great religious schism of the sixteenth
century gave to Europe, was scarcely felt in Spain. In England,
Germany, Holland, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, that
shock had produced, with some temporary evil, much durable good.
The principles of the Reformation had triumphed in some of those
countries. The Catholic Church had maintained its ascendency in
others. But though the event had not been the same in all, all
had been agitated by the conflict. Even in France, in Southern
Germany, and in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, the public
mind had been stirred to its inmost depths. The hold of ancient
prejudice had been somewhat loosened. The Church of Rome, warned
by the danger which she had narrowly escaped, had, in those parts
of her dominion, assumed a milder and more liberal character. She
sometimes condescended to submit her high pretensions to the
scrutiny of reason, and availed herself more sparingly than in
former times of the aid of the secular arm. Even when persecution
was employed, it was not persecution in the worst and most
frightful shape. The severities of Lewis the Fourteenth, odious
as they were, cannot be compared with those which, at the first
dawn of the Reformation, had been inflicted on the heretics in
many parts of Europe.

The only effect which the Reformation had produced in Spain had
been to make the Inquisition more vigilant and the commonalty
more bigoted. The times of refreshing came to all neighbouring
countries. One people alone remained, like the fleece of the
Hebrew warrior, dry in the midst of that benignant and
fertilising dew. While other nations were putting away childish
things, the Spaniard still thought as a child and understood as a