Dunlop and Coxe, we have descended into the regions of Spanish and historical degeneracy. The causes have operated; we see only their effects. Thus, from the beginning to the end, the domestic and moral history of Spain is, to the English reader, a sealed book. We know not why she was once the leading power of Christendom; we may guess, but we can hardly be said to know, how she has fallen into her present and long-continued degradation. The only English author who has exposed much of her internal affairs, is Dr. Dunham, the writer of the cabinet history, before mentioned as a clever work. We should rather have said, a work indicating considerable cleverness in its author, but not turned to the best account. There never was a book more unsuitable for the place it occupies in a popular encyclopædia. It has a vast deal of undigested learning, conveyed in the driest style possible; and, with a great parade of arrangement, is nevertheless a shapeless, disproportioned, and unreadable abstract of events and facts, relating to Spain and Portugal, (there is no other unity than this,) detailed with strange minuteness for so general a history; not without occasional acuteness of reflection, but without the least regard to relative importance, or any attempt at generalization. The laws of some old Wisigothic barbarian, who flourished Anno Domini 450, are of the same consequence to this learned Theban, as the modern constitutions of Aragon and Castile; and the petty ravages of a Moorish marauder take equal rank in his pages with those great military movements which startled all Europe. There is a vast deal in the book undoubtedly; but very few readers will ever be at the pains to get it out; since it involves the labor of picking over, putting together, arranging, concocting, and digesting a grand historico-chronological hotchpotch, respecting the military, civil, legal, commercial, literary, political, and ecclesiastical state of the whole Peninsula, during the last thirty or forty centuries.

We trust we have said enough to satisfy hungry appetites that there is at least some show of novelty in this Spanish dish. There is also a high gusto. We have opened a new vein, and it proves a rich one. The state of Europe at this period, we all know, was greatly remarkable. It was the most memorable point of the revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the revolution of concentrativeness, if the disciples of Gall and Spurzheim will allow us to borrow

The world had

their barbarism for a new and civilized use. been for ages a petty baronial world; it suddenly became a right royal one; and is now going on the regular way to be a popular world. The age of Ferdinand and Isabella, like that of Washington and Louis the Sixteenth, was the beginning of a great end; or at least contained, in the general upturning of the old elements of society, the first marked developement of that new political state which had long been imperceptibly accruing, and of that which was to follow. It was one of those epochs, when the world is perceptibly undergoing a great change; when the universe of nations seems to be in a state of excited action, and the human mind moves forward, not merely with accelerated steps, but by great and visible leaps. The day of the crusaders was gone by, and the myriads who proudly trod the way to Palestine were long since buried and forgotten; but the spirit of chivalry, which they had engendered, still breathed in full vigor; while the learning and the luxuries of the East had created new wants in Europe, and given a fresh impetus at once to letters and to commerce. The properties of the needle, though some time known, had just begun to be successfully applied to maritime adventure. The soul of the crusader was now launched upon the ocean; and every day was unfolding new avenues to wealth and knowledge. Gunpowder and fire-arms were beginning to modify the art of war. Printing had just come into use, and was diffusing intellectual life, to an extent, and with a rapidity, till then unknown. A succession of remarkable sovereigns, we have no such kings and queens now-a-days, probably because there is not the least demand for the article, headed the leading states of Europe. We cannot do better here than to quote a sentence or two from the book we propose to review, not as a specimen particularly, though it is "sat bene," but because it happens to be pat to our purpose.

"In whatever degree public opinion and the progress of events might favor the transition of power from the aristocracy to the monarch, it is obvious that much would depend on his personal character; since the advantages of his station alone made him by no means a match for the combined forces of his great nobility. The remarkable adaptation of the characters of the principal sovereigns of Europe to this exigency, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, would seem to have something providential in it. Henry the Seventh of England, Louis the Eleventh of VOL. XLVI. - No. 98.

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France, Ferdinand of Naples, John the Second of Aragon, and his son Ferdinand, and John the Second of Portugal, however differing in other respects, were all distinguished by a sagacity, which enabled them to devise the most subtile and comprehensive schemes of policy, and which was prolific in expedients for the cir cumvention of enemies too potent to be encountered by open force. "Their operations, all directed towards the same point, were attended with similar success, resulting in the exaltation of the royal prerogative at the expense of the aristocracy, with more or less deference to the rights of the people." - Vol. 11. pp. 255, 256.

But looking at the historic, we had almost said dramatic, interest of the age in which this great game was begun to be successfully played, by the union of crowned heads and the commons against an insubordinate and oppressive aristocracy, and was pushed on so successfully, that the crowned heads soon began to jostle each other, the successors of this list of sovereigns, contemporaries also of Ferdinand the Catholic, must be added to the account. Henry the Eighth, bluff "Defender of the Faith," succeeds Henry the Seventh in England; the wily Louis the Eleventh of France, is followed by the hairbrained Charles the Eighth, who had just talent enough to set all Europe in a flame, and he again by Louis the Twelfth, the father of his people," and by that mirror of chivalry, Francis the First. John the Second of Portugal finds a more distinguished successor in Emanuel the discoverer. During the same period Alexander the Sixth, of infamous memory, Julius the Second, and Leo the Tenth, both great and both ambitious, occupy the papal chair; while Mahomet the Second, the conquerer of Constantinople, Bajazet the Second, the invader of Italy, Selim the First, the victor of Egypt, and Solyman "the Magnificent," build up and extend the Ottoman Empire in Europe and Africa. Greatest among the great, sat Ferdinand and Isabella on the Spanish throne, preparing a place for their more celebrated, but not greater, grandson, Charles the Fifth.

Such an array of contemporary sovereigns the world never saw before nor since. No wonder that the foundations of the old feudal system were broken up with fearful rapidity. All was energy and action. Each power found itself moving, with a new and concentrated force, among powers no less energetic and formidable than itself. The inhabitants of neighbouring countries were no longer shut up in their own shells,

distracted by family feuds, and ignorant, or careless, of all movements from without; but Europe then first became truly an assemblage of nations, and her soil an arena, where, severally and collectively, they struggled for supremacy. Each was jealously watching the movements of all. Diplomacy grew into a system. Wars were conducted on a new and gigantic scale. Alliances and combinations multiplied. International intercourse, whether for peace or for war, was extensively and permanently established. Masses of men, moved into remote countries, communicated mutual intelligence, while they were engaged in the work of mutual destruction. The spirit of inquiry, discovery, and improvement was in all directions restless and active. Amid the contests for papal supremacy and civil independence, the seeds of the Reformation were being sown in one quarter, while the chains of the Inquisition were forging in another. Manufactures and commerce, science, and even letters, were forced to flourish in the midst of this universal commotion; and commerce pushed its way, through new and more direct channels, to the remotest portions of the globe. Great enterprises were constantly on foot; and even a new world was revealed, as if to accommodate the expansion of the age.

Robertson mistakes in selecting the age of Charles the Fifth "as the period at which the political state of Europe began to assume a new form," and as the natural introduction to the history of modern affairs. It was an interesting and a brilliant age, memorable for the colossal power directed by a single arm, and exhibiting strikingly the progress of the great centralizing revolution, and some of its consequences. But the true point of view from which to contemplate that revolution, the new system of states, and the commencement of European politics, is one step higher. All historians agree, Robertson among the rest, that the ball was opened by Mary, sole heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. The premium of her fair and wealthy hand, with all the broad domains it covered, was the first object of contest and negotiation which interested nearly all the princes of Europe. It ended by a treaty of marriage with Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, the father of Philip the Handsome, who intermarried with Joanna the Crazy, heiress of the Spanish crown, through which union, all these united sceptres were eventually transmitted to Charles the Fifth. The next prominent event was

the invasion of Italy by Charles the Eighth, of France, resulting in the league of Venice, by the Italian states, the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Spain, which drew after it a long train of Italian wars. Then came the partition of Naples between France and Spain, and the wars which sprung from that, soon followed by the celebrated league of Cambray, between the Emperor and the Pope, France, Spain, and most of the Italian states, for the repetition of that interesting ceremony upon Venice; and not long after was the first Holy Alliance, when the Pope and the Emperor, Ferdinand of Spain, and Henry the Eighth of England, combined to keep France out of Italy. All these were events of deep and general interest, the first which agitated Europe in all its empires, giving birth to the invention of that curious piece of machinery called a balance of power, the preservation of which has caused so much trouble and learned discussion among the politicians of the last three centuries. And all these events, be it noted, occurred while Ferdinand occupied the Spanish

throne.

But if the age of Ferdinand and Isabella was the most interesting period of the revolution, Spain was unquestionably the most interesting country of the age. What a singular collection of romantic materials composed her population! The ancient Iberian had been overrun in different eras by the Carthaginian, the Roman, the Goth, and the Arabian,"they all of them reigned in their turns," supplanting without wholly outrooting each other, and the dynasties which had passed away left deep and distinct traces visible on the soil, and among the inhabitants. All these races of mankind, so utterly unlike, lived, not wholly amalgamated, but mixed, and mostly distinguishable, in that age, among the people of Spain; while Roman, Gothic, and Oriental structures, with all their rich associations, were, as with greater dilapidation they yet are, seen scattered over her beautiful and diversified country. The Moor and the Christian had, for more than seven centuries, maintained the din of battle throughout her borders. Feats of arms were their daily duty; and the fabulous knight-errant of romance scarcely exceeded in adventure the actual living Castilian hidalgo, or Moorish alcayde. The true spirit of chivalry lingered there long after it had fled the rest of Europe, and in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella was scarcely degenerate. With it came the lay