We all know that when carried away by feeling women are more cruel than men; so Isabella under the frenzy of her fanaticism was, if possible, more cruel than Ferdinand, whose passions were ballasted by his ambitions. Her feelings were with her faith; and her faith was with such foul iniquity, such inhuman wrong as should cause her euphemistic apologists to blush for resorting to the same species of subterfuge that makes heroes of Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin. Again, murder and robbery for Christ's sake suits the devil quite as well as when done for one's own sake. And here on earth, to plead in a court of justice good intentions in mitigation of evil acts nothing extenuates in the eyes of any righteous judge. Therefore there is little to choose between those of whom it may be said—Here is a man who perfidiously robs, tortures, and murders his fellow-beings by the hundred thousand in order to glorify himself, and extend and establish his dominions; and, Here is a woman who perfidiously robs, tortures, and murders her fellow-beings by the hundred thousand in order to glorify herself, her priest, her religion, and extend and establish the dominions of her deity. At the farthest, and in the minds of the eloquent biographers themselves, the relative refinement and nobility of the two characters must turn wholly upon one's conception of the relative refinement and nobility of earthly selfishness and heavenly selfishness. What can we say then, if we make any pretensions to fairness in portraying historical personages, in excuse for Isabella that cannot as rightfully be said in excuse for Ferdinand? For even he, whom sensational biographers array in such sooty blackness in order that the satin robes of Isabella may shine with whiter lustre, has been called in Spain the wise and prudent, and in Italy the pious. Of course there were differences in their dispositions and their ambitions, but not such wide ones as we have been told. He was a man, with a man's nature, cold, coarse, stern, and artful; she a woman, with a woman's nature, warm, refined, gentle, and artful. He was foxlike, she feline. Opposing craft with craft, she jealously guarded what she deemed the interests of her subjects, and earnestly sought by encouraging literature and art, and reforming the laws, to refine and elevate her realm. He did precisely the same. In all the iniquities of his lovely consort Ferdinand lent a helping hand; man could do nothing worse; and all the world agree that Ferdinand was bad. And yet, in what was he worse than she? Both were tools of the times, incisive and remorseless. To the ecclesiastical tyranny of which they were victims they added civil tyranny which they imposed upon their subjects. Ferdinand was the greatest of Spain's sovereigns, far greater than Charles, whose fortune it was to reap where his grandfather had planted. It was Ferdinand who consolidated all the several sovereignties of the Peninsula, save Portugal, into one