Medicine, Jurisprudence, and Theology, were victorious over their enemies, Theology leading captive the dragon heresy, whose seven heads were Julian, Eutychius, Calvin, Brentius, Luther, Helvidius, and Mahomet.* But now, within two months after the Duke's retirement, the Church and the literary men of Spain had to mourn for the death of this munificent prelate, the grateful pupil of Ambrosio de Morales.+ In the course of the nineteen years, during which he had been Archbishop, it was known that he had expended more than two millions of ducats in charities and works of public benevolence.

His death, and the removal of the Count of Lemos from Court at this period, were discouraging to Gongora. He seems, however, to have attempted to aid the public reception of the King on his progress to Portugal in 1619; and prepared a poem to be recited in his presence, when on his return he was entertained at the splendid Jeronymite Convent of Guadalupe. It was spoken by two persons in the allegorical characters of Religion and Justice, and contains a laudation of the old monarchs of Castille from the time of Alonso XI. and Juan I., the founders of this famous religious house, ending with a welcome to Philip and the young princes. There is nothing in the poem presenting any particular claim to attention: it is somewhat in the style of the poetical addresses presented to Queen

* Pedro de Herrera, Descripcion del Sagrario. Madr. 1617. + Davila, 204, 205.

Elizabeth on some of her royal Progresses, but more ambitiously dignified and devout.

(94.) Philip III. died in his royal palace at Madrid, March 31, 1621. "They bled him," says Davila, "three times at the beginning of his sickness; and again three times a little before his decease.” * It does not appear whether the historian meant to attribute the event in any degree to this legitimate course of Sangredo-treatment; but the final bleedings can hardly have had any other effect than to exhaust life at its failing fountain. The disorder was erysipelas, accompanied with low fever, for which wine and tonics would have been more appropriate.

The able military services of Spinola in the Palatinate, and the Duke of Feria's successes in the Valtoline, had given a degree of lustre to the arms of Spain in distant provinces at the close of the pious monarch's reign. But the time was now at hand, when the pressure of these arms on other lands, the excesses committed by troops levied from foreign mercenaries as much as native Spaniards, gave signs that the world was growing weary of the veteran army, for six-score years victorious in many a field. "When it is not the will of God," said St. Teresa, "that the patient should recover, He puts a bandage on the eyes of the physician." So it was now with the State-Physicians of Spain. The rapid growth of the Dutch Republic, and the concentration of the power and resources of Bacon, Essay xxix.

* Davila, 255.

France, proclaimed to all the world that which Olivares alone seemed unable to foresee, that the next outbreak of war would reveal the secret of the weakness of the vast disjointed empire. "We must live in hope," said the Venetian ambassador, "that heaven will yet remedy the state of the world, that it may not be all Spanish."* And Lord Bacon reports the speech of a Castillian to Philip IV. not long after his accession: "Sire, I will tell your majesty thus much for your comfort: your majesty has but two enemies, all the world abroad, and your own ministers at home."+

(95.) There had been, after the Duke of Lerma's retirement, a repetition of some futile attempts at reducing the public expenditure, but with no beneficial result. These were indeed days, when the science of political economy had made little progress in any country of Europe. Sources of revenue were obstructed, exports restrained, imports forbidden. Sumptuary laws were passed, professedly to check waste and luxury, but perhaps equally to protect privileged classes. There were statutes still valid in England against excess in diet and apparel, and prescribing who should be allowed to ride in coaches. So that it is less wonderful, if the Council of State in Spain took advice how to regulate equipages and retainers, the use of starch, the wearing of lace, and the breadth and depth of linen collars.

The delicate irony of Cer

+ Of a war with Spain, sub f. + Davila, 223.

vantes glanced lightly at the inefficiency of these Court statutes:* but indeed it was not yet recognised as a simple principle, that private vices are public benefits. It was reserved for the unlucky genius of Manuel Godoy to do this with all the forms of law in one important particular.

Those who are not prepared to consider the standard of morals as regulated by degrees of latitude, will ask why it was, that, while in England the bad examples of the most profligate sovereigns, such as Charles II. and George II., scarcely extended beyond the narrow circle of the court, in Spain the good examples of the most pure had little or no effect on the conduct of their subjects. Philip III. and Charles III. were patterns of domestic virtue, but in their days the common licentious habits of the higher classes were no more under restraint than at other times. The customary phrase applied to children born out of wedlock, hijos de ganancia, "children kept on stock," seems to have been meant to intimate, what was continually the case, that, when the legitimate heirs failed, there were others to inherit the name and property, and these, if the father was noble, were frequently admitted to offices of dignity in Church and State. What was, however, previously a matter of grace and privilege, Godoy persuaded Charles IV. to establish

*Don Quixote, part ii. c. 51. "No hagas muchas prematicas." This is one of many passages which are lost in Don Quixote by translation.

universally by two royal decrees published in 1794 and 1796. It was the avowed object of these decrees, on which their adviser looked back in his old age and exile with undisturbed self-complacency, to abolish the very terms legitimate or illegitimate, and to enact that all foundlings, or children of unknown fathers, should thenceforth be entitled to all the civil rights enjoyed by honest citizens below the rank of nobles.* "This law," says Manuel Godoy, writing some thirty years ago, "so well conceived, and so effectually cemented, has ever since remained in full vigour." If so, an Englishman may find a new reason to rejoice that he is a countryman of the peers of the Parliament of Merton, and that their memorable decision has not been forgotten in the progress of social change.

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"The people of Spain," says Contarini in his report to the senators of his country, are well settled in the Catholic Religion, and, although they are not moral, they are good christians." If it should please Divine Providence to grant a time of regeneration to Venice, or to establish it in Spain, let us hope that they will also learn, that a good christian without good morals is something worse than a contradiction in terms.

(96.) To return to the pious king. He seems to have passed his time of widowhood without reproach, and to have found domestic solace in the company of his children. But it was his lot to outlive the flower

* "Hombres buenos del estado llano." Memoirs of Manuel Godoy, c. 43.

VOL. I.

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