In the opinion of its inhabitants, indeed we may say of the nation, Madrid surpassed, not only every other city in the country, but in Christendom. "There is but one Madrid," says the Spanish proverb.[484] "When Madrid is the theme, the world listens in silence!"[485] In a similar key, the old Castilian writers celebrate the glories of their capital,--the nursery of wit, genius, and gallantry,--and expatiate on the temperature of a climate propitious alike to the beauty of the women and the bravery of the men.[486] Yet, with all this lofty panegyric, the foreigner is apt to see things through a very different medium from that through which they are seen by the patriotic eye of the native. The traveller to Madrid finds little to praise in a situation where the keen winds from the mountains come laden with disease, and where the subtle atmosphere, to use one of the national proverbs, that can hardly put out a candle, will extinguish the life of a man;[487] where the capital, insulated in the midst of a dreary expanse of desert, seems to be cut off from sympathy, if not from intercourse, with the provinces;[488] and where, instead of a great river that might open to it a commerce with distant quarters of the globe, it is washed only by a stream,--"the far-famed Manzanares,"--the bed of which in summer is a barren watercourse. The traveller may well doubt whether the fanciful advantage, so much vaunted, of being the centre of Spain, is sufficient to compensate the manifold evils of such a position, and even whether those are far from truth who find in this position one of the many causes of the decline of the national prosperity.[489] A full experience of the inconveniences of the site of the capital led Charles the Third to contemplate its removal to Seville. But it was too late. Madrid had been too long, in the Castilian boast, "the only court in the world,"[490]--the focus to which converged talent, fashion, and wealth from all quarters of the country. Too many patriotic associations had gathered round it to warrant its desertion; and, in spite of its local disadvantages, the capital planted by Philip the Second continued to remain, as it will probably ever remain, the capital of the Spanish monarchy. CHAPTER V. DISCONTENT IN THE NETHERLANDS. The Reformation.--Its Progress in the Netherlands.--General Discontent.--William of Orange.