In the Netherlands, Protestantism was indeed a strong co-operative cause, but not the only cause of the rupture with Spain; for even in earlier times the Burgundian spirit had been prone to turbulence, and the arbitrary rule of the Spaniards had excited in other countries also general dissatisfaction, aversion, and resistance. When the Protestant half of the Netherlands had separated from Spain, and had established the sovereign and independent state of Holland, the latter ever exerted a powerful influence on England in all religious and political matters, in the same way as Belgium has ever exercised a marked influence over France. But in Holland, Protestantism did not give rise, as in Germany and England, to any events of a new and peculiar character, if we except the general toleration of religious sects, which was there carried to a further extent than in any other state. In her own interior, Spain had an arduous problem to solve--she had to overcome the old energetic resistance of a whole people,--the tolerably numerous descendants of the former lords and conquerors of the country, who still adhered to the Arabian manners and language, and even in part professed the doctrines of Mohammedanism. This struggle, which commenced under Philip II. by very severe laws against the Moriscoes, terminated under Philip the Third, with the barbarous expulsion of the whole Moorish population to the coasts of Africa. That from the intimate and manifold relations which existed between Spain and Germany under Charles V., the armies of the Emperor may have introduced into Spain the opinions of the new German gospellers to a greater extent perhaps than can be now stated with certainty, or than is now susceptible of minute and accurate proof, is by no means improbable; and this fact would serve to explain, though not entirely to justify many acts of the Spanish government. At any rate, the Spanish mind and character, in other repects so generous and upright, so little prone to selfish cunning or fickle frivolity, became in the long strife and animosities of a fierce religious war, more and more partial and exclusive, arbitrary and violent. There yet lingered, however, many chivalrous virtues peculiar to this high-minded nation--many extraordinary and lofty effusions of religious genius, such as are displayed in the wonderful writings of St. Theresa, whose holy meditations are couched in language of such inimitable beauty. Among no other people did the spirit and character of the middle age, in its most beautiful and dignified form, so long continue and survive in manners, ways of thinking, intellectual culture, and works of imagination and poetry, as among the Spaniards; and it is not the mere effect of chance, but it is a very remarkable and characteristic fact, that in Spain alone, the peculiar poetry of the middle age attained to its utmost perfection, and reached its last exquisite bloom.