Cuba was thus in her foundation the fortunate recipient of the rugged and masterful spirit of Estremadura, and of the elements of government and of social grace and intellectual power which Seville could so well and so abundantly supply; and these two contrasting yet by no means incompatible elements became characteristic of the Cuban people; complementarily contributing to the development of a national character quite distinct from that of the Mother Country or that of any other of her offshoots. For the Cuban people and their social organism, separated far from Spain, though subject to her rule, retained largely unimpaired their pristine vigor, and avoided sharing in the degeneracy and decline which befell the Peninsula soon after the malign Hapsburg influence became dominant in its affairs of state; a decline which in the Seventeenth Century became one of the most distressing and pathetic tragedies in the drama of the world. It was an interesting and a significant circumstance, too, that while Spain was resplendent and exultant in the Golden Age of the Sixteenth Century, Cuba remained intellectually dormant and inactive, and that when at the end of the Eighteenth Century Spain reached her nadir of degradation, Cuba began to rise to intellectual puissance. While Spain was great, it was to be said of Cuba _stat nominis umbra_; but when Spain declined, Cuba arose to take her place, insistent that the race and its letters, at least, should not universally fall into decay. * * * * * It is one of the anomalies of Cuban history that while the island was denied the enjoyment of even those incipient and inchoate intimations of potential nationality which were granted to other Spanish provinces, such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, it was nevertheless, perhaps more than any other, involved from early times in the international complications and conflicts of Spain. At least equally with the mainland coasts Cuba's shores were ravaged by pirates and freebooters, and were attacked or menaced by the commissioned fleets of hostile powers. Her insular character and her geographical position doubtless accounted for this in great degree, as did also the purblind policy of Spain in failing to give her the care and protection which were lavished upon other no more worthy possessions.