From Trent Philip pursued his way, with all expedition, to Genoa, where he embarked, under the flag of the veteran Doria, who had brought him from Spain. He landed at Barcelona, on the twelfth day of July, 1551, and proceeded at once to Valladolid, where he resumed the government of the kingdom. He was fortified by a letter from his father, dated at Augsburg, which contained ample instructions as to the policy he was to pursue, and freely discussed both the foreign and domestic relations of the country. The letter, which is very long, shows that the capacious mind of Charles, however little time he could personally give to the affairs of the monarchy, fully comprehended its internal condition and the extent of its resources.[47]
The following years were years of humiliation to Charles; years marked by the flight from Innsbruck, and the disastrous siege of Metz,--when, beaten by the Protestants, foiled by the French, the reverses of the emperor pressed heavily on his proud heart, and did more, probably, than all the homilies of his ghostly teachers, to disgust him with the world and its vanities.
Yet these reverses made little impression on Spain. The sounds of war died away before they reached the foot of the Pyrenees. Spain, it is true, sent forth her sons, from time to time, to serve under the banners of Charles; and it was in that school that was perfected the admirable system of discipline and tactics which, begun by the Great Captain, made the Spanish infantry the most redoubtable in Europe. But the great body of the people felt little interest in the success of these distant enterprises, where success brought them no good. Not that the mind of Spain was inactive, or oppressed with the lethargy which stole over it in a later age. There was, on the contrary, great intellectual activity. She was excluded, by an arbitrary government, from pushing her speculations in the regions of theological or political science. But this, to a considerable extent, was the case with most of the neighboring nations; and she indemnified herself for this exclusion by a more diligent cultivation of elegant literature. The constellation of genius had already begun to show itself above the horizon, which was to shed a glory over the meridian and the close of Philip's reign. The courtly poets in the reign of his father had confessed the influence of Italian models, derived through the recent territorial acquisitions in Italy. But the national taste was again asserting its supremacy; and the fashionable tone of composition was becoming more and more accommodated to the old Castilian standard.