Excerpt from History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. 2 of 2 Their operations, all directed toward the same point, were attended with similar success, resulting in the exaltation of the royal prerogative at the expense of the aristocracy, with more or less deference to the rights Of the people, as the case might be; in France, for example, with almost total indifier ence to them, while in Spain they were regarded, under the parental administration of Isabella, which tempered the less scrupulous policy of her husband, with tenderness and re spect. In every country, however, the nation at large gained greatly by the revolution, which came on insensibly, at least without any violent shock to the fabric of society, and which, by securing internal tranquillity and the ascendency of law over brute force, gave ample scope for those intellectual pur suits, that withdraw mankind from sensual indulgence, and too exclusive devotion to the animal wants of our nature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.