commodious or not, this is my judgment. If a
Prince desire rather to keep than augment
his dominions, no place fitter for his abode
than an iland, as being by itself and Nature
sufficiently defensible. But if a King be
minded to adde continually unto his empire,
an iland is no fit seat for him ; because,
partly by the uncertainty of winds and seas,
partly by the longsomenesse of the wayes, he
is not so well able to supply and keep such
forces as he hath on the continent. An
example hereof is England, which hath even to
admiration repelled the most puissant monarch
of Europe [Philip II. of Spain] ; but for the
causes above-named cannot show any of her
winnings on the firme land : though shee
hath attempted and atchieved as many glorious
exploits as any country in the world." See
what genius and energy can effect, even in
spite of what seems a very plausible theory.
Our insular position remains unchanged ; yet
we have acquired and maintained a foreign
empire greater than Alexander's. On the
other hand, Spain, then ' the most puissant"
of monarchies, has been stripped of nearly all
its foreign possessions.

Coming at length to speak of Europe, we
find Peter very contemptuous of those over-
ingenious people who " have taken delight in
resembling every particular country to things
more obvious to the sight and understanding ;"
as " Europe to a dragon, the head
thereof (forsooth) being Spaine; the wings,
Italy and Denmarke: France to a lozenge, or
rhomboides: Belgia to a lyon: Britaine to
an axe: Ireland to an egge: Peloponnesus to
a plantane-leaf: Spaine to an oxe-hide spred
on the ground: Italy (which indeed holdeth
best proportion) to a man's legge: with
divers the like phantasmes of a capricious
braine; these countries no more resembling
them than pictures made when painting was
in her infancie, under which they were faine
to write, This is a lyon, and This is a whale,
for feare the spectators might have taken one
for a cocke, and the other for a cat." From
the conclusion of this sentence, we judge
Peter to have been no pre-Raphaelite. Our
friend, indeed, seems to have got into rather
an ironical mood. Behold how he sneers at
the etymology of the word " Europe," according
to Becanus, " Who, thinking it unmeet that
Europe, being first inhabited by the Gomerites
or Cymbrians, should have a Greeke name,
maketh it Europe quasi Verhopp, by the
transposition of the two first letters; Ver,
forsooth, signifying (though I know not in
what language) excellent, and Hopp, a multitude
of people, because Europe containeth
(oh, the wit of man!) a multitude of excellent
people."

We now enter Spain; and here, among
many other things, Peter tells us of the
extreme pride of the people, and quotes an
anecdote to the effect that an old cobbler,
addressing from his death-bed his eldest son,
exhorted him " to endeavour to retain the
majesty worthy so great a family." He also
repeats two other stories of the same nature,
one of a beggar-woman, who, receiving an
offer from some French merchants to take
the eldest of her boys into service, and being
offended at the notion, "that any of her
lineage should endure a prenticeship," replied
that, for aught she or they knew, her son
might live to be King of Spain." The other
story has reference to a Spanish cavalier, who
was flogged through the principal streets of
Paris for some offence, and who, in answer to
the advice of a friend, that he should make
greater haste, in order that he might the
sooner conclude his painful perambulations,
exclaimed, half angrily, " that he would not
lose the least step of his gait for all the
whipping in Paris." Heylyn, however, with
commendable honesty, will not make himself
and his readers merry with the follies of the
Spanish character, without also enumerating
its virtues ; one of which he asserts to be
" an unmoved patience in suffering adversities,
accompanied with a settled resolution to
overcome them : a noble virtue, of which in their
[West] Indian discoveries they showed excellent
proofes, and received for it a glorious
and a golden reward." It is to be feared
that the Spaniards have degenerated since
those days. Adversities enough, Heaven
knows, they have had to encounter ; but as
yet they have not overcome them.

Of the Inquisition— that dreadful police of
Roman Catholicism, first established in Spain
as an instrument against the Moors, but
which even orthodox and despotic Naples
refused to accept— Peter relates an anecdote
in connection with it that is worth transcribing,
as a sign of the horror with which it
was regarded even in its native land. One of
the Inquisitors " desiring to eate of the
peares which grew in a poore man's orchard
not far off, sent for him to come unto him,
which put the poore swaine into such a
fright, that he fell sick, and kept his bed.
Being afterwards informed that his peares
were the cause of his lordship's message,
he plucked up the tree by the roots, carrying
it with all the fruite on it unto him; and
when he was demanded the reason of that
unhusbandly action, he protested that he
would never keep that thing in his house
which should give any of their lordships
a further occasion to send for him." We
could almost fancy the peasant in question to
be poor Sancho Panza: the fright, the action,
and the reason given, are all in the manner
of that first of squires.

Every Englishman has heard of the Bay
of Biscay oh; but we believe few have
travelled in the country itself, either
personally or by means of books. Yet it is a
land of much interest. Preserving its
independence for an unusual length of time, both
against the Romans and the Goths, and never
receiving any large influx of foreigners, it
presents to this day a fragment of early