He was by birth, education, and character, a Spaniard, and that so
exclusively, that the circumstance would alone have made him unfit to
govern a country so totally different in habits and national sentiments
from his native land. He was more a foreigner in Brussels, even, than
in England. The gay, babbling, energetic, noisy life of Flanders and
Brabant was detestable to him. The loquacity of the Netherlanders was a
continual reproach upon his taciturnity. His education had imbued him,
too, with the antiquated international hatred of Spaniard and Fleming,
which had been strengthening in the metropolis, while the more rapid
current of life had rather tended to obliterate the sentiment in the
provinces.

The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and
insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain,
nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a
foreigner. And now his mad old grandmother, Joanna, who had for years
been chasing cats in the lonely tower where she had been so long
imprisoned, had just died; and her funeral, celebrated with great pomp by
both her sons, by Charles at Brussels and Ferdinand at Augsburg, seemed
to revive a history which had begun to fade, and to recall the image of
Castilian sovereignty which had been so long obscured in the blaze of
imperial grandeur.

His education had been but meagre. In an age when all kings and noblemen
possessed many languages, he spoke not a word of any tongue but Spanish,
--although he had a slender knowledge of French and Italian, which he
afterwards learned to read with comparative facility. He had studied a
little history and geography, and he had a taste for sculpture, painting,
and architecture. Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling for art,
he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier part of