threatened both France and England with subjugation, had of late
been of hardly so much account as the Duchy of Savoy or the
Electorate of Brandenburg. But it by no means followed that the
fate of that empire was matter of indifference to the rest of the
world. The paralytic helplessness and drowsiness of the body once
so formidable could not be imputed to any deficiency of the
natural elements of power. The dominions of the Catholic King
were in extent and in population superior to those of Lewis and
of William united. Spain alone, without a single dependency,
ought to have been a kingdom of the first rank; and Spain was but
the nucleus of the Spanish monarchy. The outlying provinces of
that monarchy in Europe would have sufficed to make three highly
respectable states of the second order. One such state might have
been formed in the Netherlands. It would have been a wide expanse
of cornfield, orchard and meadow, intersected by navigable rivers
and canals. At short intervals, in that thickly peopled and
carefully tilled region, rose stately old towns, encircled by
strong fortifications, embellished by fine cathedrals and senate-
houses, and renowned either as seats of learning or as seats of
mechanical industry. A second flourishing principality might have
been created between the Alps and the Po, out of that well
watered garden of olives and mulberry trees which spreads many
miles on every side of the great white temple of Milan. Yet
neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese could, in physical
advantages, vie with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land
which nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a land
which would have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had
not, during many ages, lavished all their noxious influences on
the bay of Campania, the plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of
Galesus.