t origin,--in the time of Ferdinand and
Isabella,--was the legitimate consequence of the long wars with the
Moslems, which made the Spaniard intolerant of religious infidelity.
Atrocious as it seems in a more humane and enlightened age, it was
regarded by the ancient Spaniard as a sacrifice grateful to Heaven, at
which he was to rekindle the dormant embers of his own religious
sensibilities.

The cessation of the long Moorish wars by the fall of Granada, made the
most important change in the condition of the Spaniards. They, however,
found a vent for their chivalrous fanaticism, in a crusade against the
heathen of the New World. Those who returned from their wanderings
brought back to Spain little of foreign usages and manners; for the
Spaniard was the only civilized man whom they found in the wilds of
America.

Thus passed the domestic life of the Spaniard, in the same unvaried
circle of habits, opinions, and prejudices, to the exclusion, and
probably contempt of everything foreign. Not that these habits did not
differ in the different provinces, where their distinctive peculiarities
were handed down, with traditional precision, from father to son. But,
beneath these, there was one common basis of the national character.
Never was there a people, probably, with the exception of the Jews,
distinguished by so intense a nationality. It was among such a people,
and under such influences, that Philip was born and educated. His
temperament and his constitution of mind peculiarly fitted him for the
reception of these influences; and the Spaniards, as he grew in years,
beheld, with pride and satisfaction, in their future sovereign, the most
perfect type of the national character.

CHAPTER III.

ENGLISH ALLIANCE.

Condition of England.--Character of Mary.--Philip's Proposals of
Marriage.--Marriage Articles.--Insurrection in England.

1553, 1554.

In the summer of 1553, three years after Philip's return to Spain,
occurred an event which was to exercise a considerable influence on his
fortunes. This was the death of Edward the Sixth of England,--after a
brief but important reign. He was succeeded by his sister Mary, that
unfortunate princess, whose _sobriquet_ of "Bloody" gives her a
melancholy distinction among the sovereigns of the house of Tudor.

The reign of her father, Henry the Eighth, had opened the way to the
great revolution in religion, the effects of which were destined to be
permanent. Yet Henry hi