ceive what you are."

Surely this hand-book of cant had been Philip's 'vade mecum' through his
life's pilgrimage.

It is at least a consolation to reflect that a career controlled by such
principles came to an ignominious close. Had the mental capacity of this
sovereign been equal to his criminal intent, even greater woe might have
befallen the world. But his intellect was less than mediocre. His passion
for the bureau, his slavery to routine, his puerile ambition personally
to superintend details which could have been a thousand times better
administered by subordinates, proclaimed every day the narrowness of his
mind. His diligence in reading, writing, and commenting upon despatches
may excite admiration only where there has been no opportunity of judging
of his labours by personal inspection. Those familiar with the dreary
displays of his penmanship must admit that such work could have been at
least as well done by a copying clerk of average capacity. His ministers
were men of respectable ability, but he imagined himself, as he advanced
in life, far superior to any counsellor that he could possibly select,
and was accustomed to consider himself the first statesman in the world.

His reign was a thorough and disgraceful failure. Its opening scene was
the treaty of Catean Cambresis, by which a triumph over France had been
achieved for him by the able generals and statesmen of his father, so
humiliating and complete as to make every French soldier or politician
gnash his teeth. Its conclusion was the treaty of Vervins with the same
power, by which the tables were completely turned, and which was as
utterly disgraceful to Spain as that of Cateau Cambresis had been to
France. He had spent his life in fighting with the spirit of the
age--that invincible power of which he had not the faintest
conception--while the utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends
often bordered, not on the ludicrous, but the insane.

He attempted to reduce the free Netherlands to slavery and to papacy.
Before his death they had expanded into an independent republic, with a
policy founded upon religious toleration and the rights of man. He had
endeavoured all his life to exclude the Bearnese from his heritage and to
place himself or his daughter on the vacant throne; before his death
Henry IV. was the most powerful and popular sovereign that had ever
reigned in France. He had sought to invade and to conquer England, and to
dethrone and as