gotry was not absolute--yet he appeared on the whole the
embodiment of Spanish chivalry and Spanish religious enthusiasm, in its
late and corrupted form. He was entirely a Spaniard. The Burgundian and
Austrian elements of his blood seemed to have evaporated, and his veins
were filled alone with the ancient ardor, which in heroic centuries had
animated the Gothic champions of Spain. The fierce enthusiasm for the
Cross, which in the long internal warfare against the Crescent, had been
the romantic and distinguishing feature of the national character, had
degenerated into bigotry. That which had been a nation's glory now made
the monarch's shame. The Christian heretic was to be regarded with a more
intense hatred than even Moor or Jew had excited in the most Christian
ages, and Philip was to be the latest and most perfect incarnation of all
this traditional enthusiasm, this perpetual hate. Thus he was likely to
be single-hearted in his life. It was believed that his ambition would be
less to extend his dominions than to vindicate his title of the most
Catholic king. There could be little doubt entertained that he would be,
at least, dutiful to his father in this respect, and that the edicts
would be enforced to the letter.

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