82 WANDERINGS IN 



FIRST dismantled state. What still remains of it bears 



testimony of its former strength, and may brave 



the attack of time for centuries. You cannot 

 view its ruins, without calling to mind the exploits 

 of those fierce and hardy hunters, long the terror 

 of the western world. While you admire their 

 undaunted courage, you lament that it was often 

 stained with cruelty ; while you extol their scru- 

 pulous justice to each other, you will find a want 

 of it towards the rest of mankind. Often pos- 

 sessed of enormous wealth, often in extreme 

 poverty, often triumphant on the ocean, and often 

 forced to fly to the forests ; their life was an ever- 

 changing scene of advance and retreat, of glory 

 and disorder, of luxury and famine. Spain treated 

 them as outlaws and pirates, while other European 

 powers publicly disowned them. They, on the 

 other hand, maintained, that injustice on the part 

 of Spain first forced them to take up arms in self- 

 defence ; and that, whilst they kept inviolable the 

 laws which they had framed for their own com- 

 mon benefit and protection, they had a right to 

 consider as foes, those who treated them as out- 

 laws. Under this impression they drew the sword, 

 and rushed on as though in lawful war, and 

 divided the spoils of victory in the scale of justice. 

 Leaves st. After leaving St. Thomas's, a severe tertian 



Thomas's, 



and is at- ague, every now and then, kept putting the tra- 



tacked by a ,, . . A x 



tertian ague veller in mind, that his shattered frame, " starting 



and returns jr.- i " 



to England, and shivering in the inconstant blast, meagre and 



