asional "dip" into that fountain, though
at long intervals, but is denied the power of constantly bathing in it.

[Footnote A: The belief in the existence of the Fountain of
Youth belongs to many countries and to all times. Not to mention
other instances, Herodotus, in his third book, (23,) tells of a
fountain of the kind which was possessed by "the long-lived
Ethiopians," and which caused the bather's flesh to become sleek
and glossy, and sent forth an odor like that of violets. Peter
Martyr, to whom we owe so many lively pictures of the effect on
the European mind of the discovery of America and its
consequences, wrote to Leo X. of the marvellous fountain which
was sought by Ponce de Leon, and in terms that leave no doubt
that he was well inclined to place considerable faith in the
truth of the common story. The clever Pope probably believed as
much of it as he did of the New Testament. Peter Martyr does
not, we think, mention the Ethiopian fountain, of which, as he
was a good scholar, and that was the age of the revival of
classic learning, he must have read.]

Spain, unlike most other countries, rises and falls, and apparently is
never so near to degradation as when she is most strong, and never so
near to power as when she is at the weakest point to which a nation can
sink and still remain a nation. All states have had both good and evil
fortune, but no other great European kingdom has known the extreme and
extraordinary changes that have been experienced by Spain. France has
met with heavy reverses, but she has been a great and powerful country
ever since the days of Philip Augustus, whose body was turned up the
other day, after a repose of more than six centuries. Even the victories
of the English Plantagenets could but temporarily check her growth; and
notwithstanding the successes of Eugene and Marlborough, Louis XIV. left
France a greater country than he found it. England's lowest point was
reached during the reigns of her first four Stuart monarchs, but her
weakness was exhibited only on the side of foreign politics: it being
absurd to suppose that the country which could produce Hampden and
Cromwell, Strafford and Falkland, and the men who formed the Cavalier
and Roundhead armies, was then in a state of decay. At the worst, she
was but depressed, and the removal of such dead weights from her as
Charles I. and James II. was all that was necessar