countries, though miserably deteriorated by the long defect of an aristocracy whom they could respect, were still sound at the heart; they felt the whole sorrow of their own degradation; and that they would have fought, was soon proved in the case of the Portuguese, when we lent them officers and training; as it was proved also thirty years afterwards in the case of the Spaniards, when Don Carlos, in a time of general peace, obtained good officers from every part of Europe. Each country was forced into redeeming itself by the overflowing upon it of a foreign gentry. And yet, even at the moment of profoundest degradation, such was the maniacal vanity still prevailing amongst the Spaniards, that at one time the Supreme Junta forwarded the following proposal to the British Government:--Men they had; their own independence of foreign aid, in that sense, they had always asserted; money it was, and not armies, which they needed; and they now proposed an arrangement, by which the Spanish armies, as so notoriously the heroes of Europe, should be rendered universally disposable for the task of facing the French in the field, whilst the British (as confessedly unequal to duties so stern) should be entrusted with the garrison duty of the fortresses. "_Illâ se jactet in aulâ Anglia_;" and, since the help of the English navy (which really _was_ good) would be available as to the maritime fortresses, doubtless England might have a chance for justifying the limited confidence reposed in her, when sheltered from the fiercer storms of war by the indomitable lions of Ocana. It is superfluous to say, that the gratitude of Spain, at the close of the war, was every thing that ought to have been expected from this moonstruck vanity at its opening.