8. Among her moral qualities, the most conspicuous, perhaps, was her magnanimity.[403] She betrayed nothing little or selfish, in thought or action. Her schemes were vast, and executed in the same noble spirit in which they were conceived. She never employed doubtful agents, or sinister measures, but the most direct and open policy. She scorned to avail herself of advantages offered by the perfidy[404] of others.
9. Where she had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support: and she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge she had made to those who ventured in her cause, however unpopular. She sustained Ximenes[405] in all his obnoxious[406] but salutary reforms. She seconded Columbus in the prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny[407] of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gonsalvo de Cordova;[408] and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt, by both, as the last of their good fortune.
10. Artifice[409] and duplicity[410] were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harboring any petty distrust, or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and even, sometimes, advances, to those who had personally injured her.
11. But the principle which gave a peculiar coloring to every feature of Isabella’s mind, was piety. It shone forth from the very depths of her soul with a heavenly radiance, which illuminated her whole character. Fortunately, her earliest years had been passed in the rugged school of adversity, under the eye of a mother who implanted in her serious mind such strong principles of religion, as nothing in after life had power to shake.
12. At an early age, in the flower of youth and beauty, she was introduced to her brother’s court; but its blandishments,[411] so dazzling to a young imagination, had no power over hers; for she was surrounded by a moral atmosphere of purity, “driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.” Such was the decorum of her manners, that, though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and calumnious[412] court.
[392] En-coˊ-mi-um, a high commendation; praise.
[393] Symˊ-me-try, a due proportion of the parts of a body to each other.
[394] Af-fa-bilˊ-i-ty, easiness of approach; readiness to converse.
[395] Nunˊ-ne-ry, a religious house for females who have forsaken the world.
[396] Gal-iˊ-cia, an old province of Spain.