of the people, and with absolute certainty threw them backward in the
race of civilisation.

Charles V. was the first evil genius of Spain; thinking far more of his
German and Italian possessions than of the country of his mother, poor
mad Juana, he exhausted the resources of Spain in his endless wars
outside the country, and inaugurated her actual decline at a moment
when, to the unthinking, she was at the height of her glory. The
influence of the powerful nobility of the country had been completely
broken by Isabella and Ferdinand, and the device of adopting the
Burgundian fashion of keeping at the Court an immense crowd of nobles in
so-called "waiting" on the Monarch flattered the national vanity, while
it ensured the absolute inefficacy of the class when it might have been
useful in stemming the baneful absolutism of such lunatics as Felipe II.
and the following Austrian monarchs, each becoming more and more effete
and more and more mad. The very doubtful "glory" of the reign of the
Catholic Kings in having driven out the Moors after eight centuries of
conflict and effort, proved, in fact, no advantage to the country; but
twenty thousand Christian captives were freed, and every reader of
history must, for the moment, sympathise with the people who effected
this freeing of their country from a foreign yoke.

Looking at the marvellous tracery of the church of San Juan de los Reyes
at Toledo, picked out by the actual chains broken off the miserable
Christian captives, and hanging there unrusted in the fine air and
sunshine of the country for over four hundred years, one's heart beats
in sympathy with the pride of the Spaniards in their Catholic Kings. But
Toledo, alas! is dead; the centre of light and learning is mouldering in
the very slough of ignorance, and Christianity compares badly enough
with the rule of Arab and Jew.