CHARACTER OF THE QUEEN.

As for Queen Isabella, there can be no doubt about her motives. Even in
the lamentably unjust things in which she was but too often concerned, she
had what, to her mind, was compelling reason to act as she did. Perhaps
there is hardly any great personage whose name and authority are found in
connection with so much that is strikingly evil, all of it done, or rather
assented to, upon the highest and purest motives. Whether we refer to the
expulsion of the Jews, the treatment of the Moorish converts, or the
establishment of the Inquisition, all her proceedings in these matters
were entirely sincere and noble-minded. Methinks I can still see her
beautiful majestic face (with broad brow, and clear, honest, loving eye),
as it looks down upon the beholder from one of the chapels in the
cathedral at Granada: a countenance too expressive and individual to be
what painters give as that of an angel, and yet the next thing to it. Now,
I could almost fancy, she looks down reproachfully, and yet with conscious
sadness. What she would say in her defence, could we interrogate her, is,
that she obeyed the voice of heaven, taking the wise and good men of her
day as its interpreters. Oh! that she had but persisted in listening to
it, as it spoke in her own kindly heart, when with womanly pity she was
wont to intercede in favour of the poor cooped-up inmates of some closely
beleaguered town or fortress! But at least the poor Indian can utter
nothing but blessing's on her. He might have needed no other "protector"
had she lived; nor would slavery have found in his fate one of the darkest
and most fatal chapters in its history.



LANDING IN THE NEW WORLD.