sixteenth century, such as extraneous circumstances had made him,
that is here depicted; that he, even like his posterity and his
ancestors, had been endowed by Nature with some of her noblest gifts.
Acuteness of intellect, wealth of imagination, heroic qualities of heart,
and hand, and brain, rarely surpassed in any race, and manifested on a
thousand battle-fields, and in the triumphs of a magnificent and most
original literature, had not been able to save a whole nation from the
disasters and the degradation which the mere words Philip II, and the
Holy Inquisition suggest to every educated mind.

Nor is it necessary for my purpose to measure exactly the space which
separated Spain from the other leading monarchies of the day. That the
standard of civilization was a vastly higher one in England, Holland, or
even France--torn as they all were with perpetual civil war--no thinker
will probably deny; but as it is rather my purpose at this moment to
exhibit the evils which may spring from a perfectly bad monarchical
system, as administered by a perfectly bad king, I prefer not to wander
at present from the country which was ruled for almost half a century by
Philip II.

Besides the concentration of a great part of the capital of the country
in a very small number of titled families, still another immense portion
of the national wealth belonged, as already intimated, to the Church.

There were eleven archbishops, at the head of whom stood the Archbishop
of Toledo, with the enormous annual revenue of three hundred thousand
dollars. Next to him came the Archbishop of Seville, with one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars yearly, while the income of the others varied from
fifty thousand to twenty thousand dollars respectively.

There were sixty-two bishops, with annual incomes ranging from fifty
thousand to six thousand dollars. The churches, also, of these various
episcopates were as richly endowed as the great hierarchs themselves. But
without fatiguing the reader with minute details, it is sufficient to say
that one-third of the whole annual income of Spain and Portugal belonged
to the ecclesiastical body. In return for this enormous proportion of the
earth's fruits, thus placed by the caprice of destiny at their disposal,
these holy men did very little work in the world. They fed their flocks
neither with bread nor with spiritual food. They taught little, preached
little, dispensed little in charity. Very few of the swarm