e and natural, is one most
affected by the early writers,--by the old Castilian chroniclers more
particularly, who form the principal authorities in the present work.
Their wearisome pages, mindful of no order but that of time, are spread
over as miscellaneous a range of incidents, and having as little
relation to one another, as the columns of a newspaper.

To avoid this inconvenience, historians of a later period have preferred
to conduct their story on more philosophical principles, having regard
rather to the nature of the events described, than to the precise time
of their occurrence. And thus the reader, possessed of one action, its
causes and its consequences, before passing on to another, is enabled to
treasure up in his memory distinct impressions of the whole.

In conformity to this plan, I have detained the reader in the
Netherlands until he had seen the close of Margaret's administration,
and the policy which marked the commencement of her successor's. During
this period, Spain was at peace with her European neighbors, most of
whom were too much occupied with their domestic dissensions to have
leisure for foreign war. France, in particular, was convulsed by
religious feuds, in which Philip, as the champion of the Faith, took not
only the deepest interest, but an active part. To this I shall return
hereafter.

But while at peace with her Christian brethren, Spain was engaged in
perpetual hostilities with the Moslems, both of Africa and Asia. The
relations of Europe with the East were altogether different in the
sixteenth century from what they are in our day. The Turkish power lay
like a dark cloud on the Eastern horizon, to which every eye was turned
with apprehension; and the same people for whose protection European
nations are now willing to make common cause, were viewed by them, in
the sixteenth century, in the light of a common enemy.

It was fortunate for Islamism that, as the standard of the Prophet was
falling from the feeble grasp of the Arabs, it was caught up by a nation
like the Turks, whose fiery zeal urged them to bear it still onward in
the march of victory. The Turks were to the Arabs what the Romans were
to the Greeks. Bold, warlike, and ambitious, they had little of that
love of art which had been the dominant passion of their predecessors,
and still less of that refinement which, with the Arabs, had degenerated
into effeminacy and sloth. Their form of government was admirably suited
t