attempt the bridling of that power, in which they succeeded about as well as did Doria in bridling the horses of St. Mark.  The partition of Poland showed what Europe had most to fear, and French statesmen were preparing for the Northern blast, while those of England, according to one of their own number, who was a Secretary of State, spoke of it as something indeed inconsistent with national equity and public honor, and therefore engaging their master’s disapprobation, but as not so immediately interesting as to deserve his interposition.  Time, however, would have brought England right, from regard to her own safety, and she would have united herself with France, Spain, and Naples to resist Russian encroachments; and Austria, it may be assumed, would have gone with the West and the South against the North, for her statesmen had the sagacity to see that the partition of Poland was adverse to their country’s interests, and the part they had in that most iniquitous of modern transactions was taken rather from fear than from ambition.  They could not prevent a robbery, and so they aided in it, and shared in the spoil.  But the revolutionary storm came, and broke up the old European system.  Passional politics took the place of diplomacy, and party-spirit usurped that of patriotism.  It was the age of the Reformation repeated, and men could hail the defeats of their own country with joy, because their country and their party were on opposite sides in the grand struggle which opinions were making for supremacy.

In that storm Spain broke down, but not until she had exhibited considerable power in war, first with France, and then as the ally of France.  Her navy was honorably distinguished, though unfortunate, at St. Vincent and Trafalgar, and elsewhere, showing that Spanish valor was not extinct.  Napoleon I., unequal to bearing well the good-fortune that had been made complete at Tilsit, and maddened by the success of England in her piratical attack on Denmark, resolved to add Spain to his empire, virtually, if not in terms.  He was not content with having her as one of his most useful and submissive dependencies, whose resources were at his command as thoroughly as were those of Belgium and Lombardy, but must needs insist upon having her throne at his disposal.  Human folly never perpetrated a grosser blunder than this, and he established that “Spanish ulcer” which undermined the strength of the most magnificent empire that the world had seen for ten centuries; for, if his empire was in some respects inferior to that of Philip II., in others it was superior to the Castilian dominion.  Out of his action in the Peninsula grew the Peninsular War, which was to the Spain of our age what the Succession War had been to the Spain of a century earlier.  That country was prepared by it for another revival, which came at last, but which also came slowly.  Had Ferdinand VII. been a wise and truthful man, or had there been Spanish statesmen capable of governing