Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/87

 countryes of Christendome, of all which there is none but hath some mixture or sprinckling, if not throughly peopling of them. And yet after all these the Moores and the Barbarians, breaking over out of Africa, did finally possesse all Spaine, or the most part thereof, and did tread, under their heathenish feete, whatever little they found yet there standing. The which, though after they were beaten out by Ferdinando of Arragon and Elizabeth his wife, yet they were not so cleansed, but that through the marriages which they had made, and mixture with the people of the land, during their long continuance there, they had left no pure drop of Spanish blood, no more than of Roman or of Scythian. So that of all nations under heaven (I suppose) the Spaniard is the most mingled, and most uncertaine; wherefore most foolishly doe the Irish thinke to enoble themselves by wresting their auncientry from the Spaniard, who is unable to derive himselfe from any in certaine.

Eudox. You speake very sharpely Iren. in dispraise of the Spaniard, whom some others boast to be the onely brave nation under the skie.

Iren. So surely he is a very brave man, neither is that any thing which I speake to his derogation; for in that I said he is a mingled people, it is no dispraise, for I thinke there is no nation now in Christendome, nor much further, but is mingled, and compounded with others: for it was a singular