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engagements and incessant marches and countermarches of no decisive effect. It was a far-sighted scheme of Mazarin's to marry Lewis XIV. to a Spanish Infanta, for the purpose of eventually uniting, or at least intimately associating, the two monarchies; and he caused proposals to be made to Don Luis de Haro, in behalf of the King of France, for the hand of Maria Teresa, daughter of Philip IV., and for the conclusion of a league of amity between the nations. And this matter was deemed of sufficient consequence to induce Don Luis and the Cardinal to reject the intervention of negociators, and to conclude the treaty by means of personal conference. They selected the Isle of Pheasants, being a kind of neutral spot in the channel of the river which separated the kingdoms, to be the place of interview; and the celebrated convention they negociated there, became known as the treaty of the Pyrenees.

All the proceedings on this occasion, from the ceremonial of the conferences to the treaty in which they ended, afford a curious illustration of the faithless temper of the times, and of the fraudulent spirit of their diplomacy. More than a month was consumed in arranging the etiquette of each conference, so that the two statesmen should meet on a footing of perfect equality, and without any hazard of violence or treachery on either side. They conferred, not in the populous capital of some neutral state, or in a city belonging to either of the parties,

where the conveniences and luxuries of life might be accessible, but here in the wildest regions of a mountain frontier. On this emergency, says Voltaire, they exerted all their powers of statesmanship. The policy of the Cardinal consisted in finesse; that of Don Luis in slowness. The latter was parsimonious of words; the former uttered only equivocal ones. The art of the Italian was to devise the means of surprising; that of the Spaniard to avoid being surprised. Mazarin received Maria Teresa to be the Queen of France, under the most complete and unqualified renunciation of any right she might afterwards have in the dominions of her father, which renunciation was solemnly ratified by Louis himself; and yet the prime inducement to the marriage was the hope of thus acquiring, for the royal family of France, the succession of Philip IV. in Spain, Italy, Flanders, and America!-Conduct, which, in the transactions of individuals in private life, would have constituted the most criminal and most dishonorable fraud, was deemed by princes and cardinals and kings the height of political wisdom; and thus it was that the Spanish monarchy came into the possession of the House of Bourbon.*

* Koch, Traités de Paix, tom. i. p. 287; Lord Mahon's War of the Succession.

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GRANADA,

A RETROSPECT OF THE FORTUNES OF SPAIN..

Bella Granata vale, multis decorata trophæis ;
O decus Hesperiis, bella Granata vale!
Bella Granata vale, doctorum luce coruscans,
Moribus, et castris, bella Granata vale!
Bella Granata vale, sacri culmina montis,
Et nivei colles, bella Granata vale!

INSCRIPT. BY DON PEDRO DE ANTIQUERA.

Pues eres Granada ilustre,

Granada, de personages,

Granada, de serafines,

Granada, de antiguedades.

ROMANCE DE GONGORA

WILL you fly with me from the dull toil of vulgar life? Will you wander for a moment amid the plains of Granada? Around us are those snowy and purple mountains, which a calif wept to quit. They surround a land still prodigal of fruits, in spite of a Gothic government. You are gazing on the rows of blooming aloes, that are the only enclosures, with their flowery forms high in the warm air; you linger among these groves of Indian fig; you stare with strange delight at the first sight of the sugar cane. Come away, come away, for on yon green and sunny hill rises the ruby gate of that precious pile, whose name is a spell, and whose vision is romance.

Let us enter the Alhambra!

What a scene! Is it beautiful? Oh! conceive it in the time of the Boabdils; conceive it with all its costly decorations, all the gilding, all the imperial purple, all the violet relief, all the scarlet borders, all the glittering inscriptions and precious trophies, burnished, bright, and fresh. Conceive it full of still greater ornaments, the living groups with their splendid and vivid and picturesque costume, and above all their rich and shining arms, some standing in conversing groups, some smoking in sedate silence, some telling their beads, some squatting round a storier. Then the bustle and the rush, and the coming horsemen, all in motion, and all glancing in the most brilliant sun,

Enough of this! I am alone, Yet there was one being, with whom I could have loved to roam in these imaginative halls, and find no solitude in the sole presence of her most sweet society.

D'ISRAELI'S CONTARINI FLEMING,

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