[291] Among the ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers of the State.

In truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been a hard task even for Ximenes.

No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a more important post, and none was more unfit for an important post, than the Marquess of Gastanaga.

He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in the Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would be decided.

He had discharged his trust as every public trust was then discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was boastfully said that the sun never set.