The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-59 | Page 5

hated to converse, but he could write a letter eighteen pages long, when
his correspondent was in the next room, and when the subject was,
perhaps, one which a man of talent could have settled with six words of
his tongue. The world, in his opinion, was to move upon protocols and
apostilles. Events had no right to be born throughout his dominions,
without a preparatory course of his obstetrical pedantry. He could never
learn that the earth would not rest on its axis, while he wrote a

programme of the way it was to turn. He was slow in deciding, slower
in communicating his decisions. He was prolix with his pen, not from
affluence, but from paucity of ideas. He took refuge in a cloud of words,
sometimes to conceal his meaning, oftener to conceal the absence of
any meaning, thus mystifying not only others but himself. To one great
purpose, formed early, he adhered inflexibly. This, however, was rather
an instinct than an opinion; born with him, not created by him. The idea
seemed to express itself through him, and to master him, rather than to
form one of a stock of sentiments which a free agent might be expected
to possess. Although at certain times, even this master-feeling could
yield to the pressure of a predominant self-interest-thus showing that
even in Philip bigotry was not absolute--yet he appeared on the whole
the embodiment of Spanish chivalry and Spanish religious enthusiasm,
in its late and corrupted form. He was entirely a Spaniard. The
Burgundian and Austrian elements of his blood seemed to have
evaporated, and his veins were filled alone with the ancient ardor,
which in heroic centuries had animated the Gothic champions of Spain.
The fierce enthusiasm for the Cross, which in the long internal warfare
against the Crescent, had been the romantic and distinguishing feature
of the national character, had degenerated into bigotry. That which had
been a nation's glory now made the monarch's shame. The Christian
heretic was to be regarded with a more intense hatred than even Moor
or Jew had excited in the most Christian ages, and Philip was to be the
latest and most perfect incarnation of all this traditional enthusiasm,
this perpetual hate. Thus he was likely to be single-hearted in his life. It
was believed that his ambition would be less to extend his dominions
than to vindicate his title of the most Catholic king. There could be
little doubt entertained that he would be, at least, dutiful to his father in
this respect, and that the edicts would be enforced to the letter.
He was by birth, education, and character, a Spaniard, and that so
exclusively, that the circumstance would alone have made him unfit to
govern a country so totally different in habits and national sentiments
from his native land. He was more a foreigner in Brussels, even, than in
England. The gay, babbling, energetic, noisy life of Flanders and
Brabant was detestable to him. The loquacity of the Netherlanders was
a continual reproach upon his taciturnity. His education had imbued
him, too, with the antiquated international hatred of Spaniard and

Fleming, which had been strengthening in the metropolis, while the
more rapid current of life had rather tended to obliterate the sentiment
in the provinces.
The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and
insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain, nor
had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a
foreigner. And now his mad old grandmother, Joanna, who had for
years been chasing cats in the lonely tower where she had been so long
imprisoned, had just died; and her funeral, celebrated with great pomp
by both her sons, by Charles at Brussels and Ferdinand at Augsburg,
seemed to revive a history which had begun to fade, and to recall the
image of Castilian sovereignty which had been so long obscured in the
blaze of imperial grandeur.
His education had been but meagre. In an age when all kings and
noblemen possessed many languages, he spoke not a word of any
tongue but Spanish, --although he had a slender knowledge of French
and Italian, which he afterwards learned to read with comparative
facility. He had studied a little history and geography, and he had a
taste for sculpture, painting, and architecture. Certainly if he had not
possessed a feeling for art, he would have been a monster. To have
been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a
king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and
not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so
intensely in those favored lands and in that golden age, had indeed been
difficult.
The King's personal habits were