In all these wars and rumours of war the men of the hardy North remained
practically unconquered. The last to submit to the Roman, the first to
throw off the yoke of the Moor, the Basques and Asturians appear to be
the representatives of the old inhabitants of Spain, who never settled
down under the sway of the invader or acquiesced in foreign rule. Cicero
mentions a Spanish tongue which was unintelligible to the Romans; was
this Basque, which is equally so now to the rest of Spain, and which, if
you believe the modern Castilian, the devil himself has never been able
to master?

The history of Spain is one to make the heart ache. Some evil influence,
some malign destiny, seems ever to have brought disaster where her
people looked for progress or happiness. Her golden age was just in the
short epoch when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon reigned and
ruled over the united kingdoms: both were patriotic, both clever, and
absolutely at one in their policy. It is almost impossible to us who can
look back on the long records, almost always sad and disastrous, not to
doubt whether in giving a new world "to Castile and Aragon," Cristobal
Colon did not impose a burden on the country of his adoption which she
was unable to bear, and which became, in the hands of the successors of
her _muy Españoles y muy Católicos_ kings, a curse instead of a
blessing. Certain it is that Spain was not sufficiently advanced in
political economy to understand or cope with the enormous changes which
this opening up of a new world brought about. The sudden increase of
wealth without labour, of reward for mere adventure, slew in its infancy
any impulse there might have been to carry on the splendid manufactures
and enlightened agriculture of the Moors; trade became a disgrace, and
the fallacious idea that bringing gold and silver into a country could
make it rich and prosperous ate like a canker into the industrial heart