Debarred as he was from freedom of speculation, the domain of science was closed against the Spaniard. Science looks to perpetual change. It turns to the past to gather warning, as well as instruction, for the future. Its province is to remove old abuses, to explode old errors, to unfold new truths. Its condition, in short, is that of progress. But in Spain, everything not only looked to the past, but rested on the past. Old abuses gathered respect from their antiquity. Reform was innovation, and innovation was a crime. Far from progress, all was stationary. The hand of the Inquisition drew the line which said, "No further!" This was the limit of human intelligence in Spain.
The effect was visible in every department of science,—not in the speculative alone, but in the physical and the practical; in the declamatory rant of its theology and ethics, in the childish and chimerical schemes of its political economists. In every walk were to be seen the symptoms of premature decrepitude, as the nation clung to the antiquated systems which the march of civilization in other countries had long since effaced. Hence those frantic experiments, so often repeated, in the financial administration of the kingdom, which made Spain the byword of the nations, and which ended in the ruin of trade, the prostration of credit, and finally the bankruptcy of the state.—But we willingly turn from this sad picture of the destinies of the country to a more cheerful scene in the history of Philip.
CHAPTER IV.
PHILIP'S THIRD MARRIAGE.
Reception of Isabella.—Marriage Festivities.—The Queen's Mode of Life.—The Court removed to Madrid.
1560.
So soon as Philip should be settled in Spain, it had been arranged that his young bride, Elizabeth of France, should cross the Pyrenees. Early in January, 1560, Elizabeth,—or Isabella, to use the corresponding name by which she was known to the Spaniards,—under the protection of the Cardinal de Bourbon and some of the French nobility, reached the borders of Navarre, where she was met by the duke of Infantado, who was to take charge of the princess, and escort her to Castile.
Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, fourth duke of Infantado, was the head of the most illustrious house in Castile. He was at this time near seventy years of age, having passed most of his life in attendance at court, where he had always occupied the position suited to his high birth and his extensive property, which, as his title intimated, lay chiefly in the north. He was a fine specimen of the old Castilian hidalgo, and displayed a magnificence in his way[{184}] of living that became his station. He was well educated, for the time; and his fondness for books did not prevent his excelling in all knightly exercises. He was said to have the best library and the best stud of any gentleman in Castile.[459]
He appeared on this occasion in great state, accompanied by his household and his kinsmen, the heads of the noblest families in Spain. The duke was attended by some fifty pages, who, in their rich dresses of satin and brocade, displayed the gay colors of the house of Mendoza. The nobles in his train, all suitably mounted, were followed by twenty-five hundred gentlemen, well equipped, like themselves. So lavish were the Castilians of that day in the caparisons of their horses, that some of these are estimated, without taking into account the jewels with which they were garnished, to have cost no less than two thousand ducats![460] The same taste is visible at this day in their descendants, especially in South America and Mexico, where the love of barbaric ornament in the housings and caparisons of their steeds is conspicuous among all classes of the people.