Page:National Life and Character.djvu/105

 most of the highly civilised and wealthy parts of Europe; the tribute of gold and exotic products that it received from its colonies appeared fabulous to its contemporaries. Spanish state-craft was more highly esteemed in courts than even Italian subtlety; Spanish armies were the best in the world; and Bacon, who held that "no nation which doth not directly profess arms, may look to have greatness fall into their laps," declared that of Christian Europe, only the Spaniards had an effective military organisation. Neither was the greatness of Spain only material. It was the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola who restored the old faith, making it again a militant power, even among thoughtful men; and no country of that day, except England, can show such names in literature as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Mendoza.

What Spain was for the western world, Turkey with even greater pageantry of power was for the eastern. "While its Sultan reigned in the palace of the Cæsars by the shores of the Bosphorus, his viceroys gave law in the halls of the Caliphs at Bagdad in the east, or collected tribute beneath the shadow of Atlas in the west. From Aden in the south, his banners emblazoned with the cross scimitars were unfurled to the Indian sea; and at Buda in the north his pashas quaffed their sherbet in the libraries and the galleries of the poet-king, Matthias. The Shah of Persia, the chief of the Holy Roman Empire, and the proud republics of Genoa and Venice were reckoned among the vassals whose tribute swelled his