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496
496
496 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. PART 111 this " golden age " of the national history, whose outward show of glorj will seem to his penetrating eye only the hectic brilliancy of decay. He will turn to an earlier period, when the nation, emerg- ing from the sloth and license of a barbarous age, seemed to renew its ancient energies, and to pre- pare like a giant to run its course ; and glancing over the long interval since elapsed, during the first half of which the nation wasted itself on schemes of mad ambition, and in the latter has sunk into a state of paralytic torpor, he will fix his eye on the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, as the most glorious epoch in the annals of his country.
