Note 1427 — Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

Archdeacon Coxe, in a somewhat professional tone, says of Aranda, ‘In France he had acquired the graces of polished society, and imbibed that freedom of sentiment which then began to be fashionable, and has since been carried to such a dangerous excess.’ Coxe's Bourbon Kings of Spain, vol. iv. p. 402. His great enemy, the Prince of the Peace, wishing to be severe, unintentionally praises him; and observes, that he was ‘connected with the most distinguished literary Frenchmen of the middle of the last century,’ and that he was ‘divested of religious prejudices, though swayed by philosophical enthusiasm.’ Godoy's Memoirs, London, 1836, vol. i. p. 319. The hostility of some men is extremely valuable. The Prince further adds, that Aranda ‘could only lay claim to the inferior merit of a sectarian attachment,’ forgetting that, in a country like Spain, every enlightened person must belong to a miserably small sect.