It is the hard fate
of the self-taught that their learning must cost them twice as much
labor as it would if they were taught by others; the very books they
study are grudging friends if not insidious foes. Long afterward when I
came to Italy, and began to make the past part of my present, I began to
untangle a little the web that the French and the Aragonese wove in the
conquest and reconquest of the wretched Sicilies; but how was I to
imagine in the Connecticut Western Reserve the scene of Gonsalvo's
victories in Calabria? Even loath Ferdinand the Catholic said they
brought greater glory to his crown than his own conquest of Granada; I
dare say I took some unintelligent pride in his being Viceroy of Naples,
and I may have been indignant at his recall and then his retirement from
court by the jealous king. But my present knowledge of these facts, and
of his helping put down the Moorish insurrection in 1500, as well as his
exploits as commander of a Spanish armada against the Turks is a recent
debt I owe to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ and not to my boyish
researches. Of like actuality is my debt to Mr. Calvert's _Southern
Spain,_ where he quotes the accounting which the Great Captain gave on
the greedy king's demand for a statement of his expenses in the
Sicilies.
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