hey were held by Charles, who seemed to look on Spain as a royal
domain, valuable chiefly for the means it afforded him for playing his
part on the great theatre of Europe. The haughty Castilian of the
sixteenth century, conscious of his superior pretensions, could ill
brook this abasement. He sighed for a prince born and bred in Spain, who
would be content to pass his life in Spain, and would have no ambition
unconnected with her prosperity and glory. The Spaniards were even more
tenacious on this head than the Germans. Their remote situation made
them more exclusive, mere strictly national, and less tolerant of
foreign influence. They required a Spaniard to rule over them. Such was
Philip; and they anticipated the hour when Spain should be divorced from
the empire, and, under the sway of a patriotic prince, rise to her just
preeminence among the nations.

Yet Charles, far from yielding, continued to press the point with such
pertinacity, that it seemed likely to lead to an open rupture between
the different branches of his family. For a time Ferdinand kept his
apartment, and had no intercourse with Charles or his sister.[44] Yet in
the end the genius or the obstinacy of Charles so far prevailed over
his brother, that he acquiesced in a private compact, by which, while he
was to retain possession of the imperial crown, it was agreed that
Philip should succeed him as king of the Romans, and that Maximilian
should succeed Philip.[45] Ferdinand hazarded little by concessions
which could never be sanctioned by the electoral college. The reverses
which befell the emperor's arms in the course of the following year
destroyed whatever influence he might have possessed in that body; and
he seems never to have revived his schemes for aggrandizing his son by
securing to him the succession to the empire.

Philip had now accomplished the great object of his visit. He had
presented himself to the people of the Netherlands, and had received
their homage as heir to the realm. His tour had been, in some respects,
a profitable one. It was scarcely possible that a young man, whose days
had hitherto been passed within the narrow limits of his own country,
for ever under the same local influences, should not have his ideas
greatly enlarged by going abroad and mingling with different nations. It
was especially important to Philip to make himself familiar, as none but
a resident can be, with the character and institutions of those nations
o