Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/207

 The CatJwlic Reformation 169 and Philip II and manner serve to enhance the pleasing effect. He is slight in stature, but so well built, so admirably propor- tioned, and dressed with such taste and discernment that one could hardly imagine anything more perfect. . . . Although the king resembles his father in his face and Contrast speech, in his attention to his religious duties, and in his betw ^ en habitual kindness and good faith, he nevertheless differs from him in several of those respects in which the greatness of rulers, after all, lies. The emperor was addicted to war, which he well understood ; the king knows but little of it and has no love for it. The emperor undertook great enter- prises with enthusiasm ; his son avoids them. The father was fond of planning great things and w T ould in the end realize his wishes by his skill ; his son, on the contrary, pays less attention to augmenting his own greatness than to hindering that of others. The emperor never allowed himself to be influenced by threats or fear, while the king has lost some of his dominions owing to unreasonable appre- hensions. The father was guided in all matters by his own opinion ; the son follows the opinions of others. In the king's eyes no nation is superior to the Spaniards. It Philip's is among them that he lives, it is they that he consults, and P art i all ty ° ../..,. . .for Spain. it is they that direct his policy ; in all this he is acting quite contrary to the habit of his father. He thinks little of the Italians and Flemish and still less of the Germans. Although he may employ the chief men of all the countries over which he rules, he admits none of them to his secret counsels, but utilizes their services only in military affairs, and then per- haps not so much because he really esteems them, as in the hope that he will in this way prevent his enemies from making use of them. In the letters which Philip II took great pains to write regularly to his young daughters during a trying campaign in Portugal, we discover no signs of a grim despot bent on compassing the death of thousands of his subjects, but rather of a kindly father who had an