The consequence is that all hope of improvement | or even of toleration for the progress of public opinion under such rulers, is at an end-that they are viewed with feelings of unmingled detestation by their subjects—and that, with the sole exception of Piedmont, which is prosperous and contented, because it is free, even the invasion of a foreign enemy would be regarded as an era of joyful liberation. Such, too is their ignorance and impolicy, that at the very time when they have most to apprehend from the uncertain design of France, these governments have done everything that could degrade themselves in the eyes of England, and to render us indifferent, if not hostile, to their wretched existence. The Papal Court has ventured on an act of audacious impertinence to Great Britain; the Tuscan government allows British subjects to be cut down with impunity, and punishes men and women for reading the Book of Common Prayer; the Neapolitans relax none of their severity towards prisoners whose sufferings have excited the compassion of all Europe; and Marshal Radetzky carries into effect more capital executions for political charges than he ventured upon after the great rising of 1848. We know not whether these States may ever stand in need of the countenance of England, but assuredly they have a long score of past of fences to wipe off before they will obtain it; we view the fate of their victims with sincere commiseration, and we doubt not that those who have had the weakness and cruelty to govern by such means as these will one day pay the penalty of the rights they have outraged and the authority they have abused. The other publication, though containing much that is in the history, especially repeating a very scandalous story of Governor Fitzroy and one of his sons, takes a flight beyond the history, and proposes a plan for the separation of the colonies of Australia from the mother country. There are few things more dangerous in statesmanship than following examples; and Dr. Lang, in his introduction, gives us several instances of modern British statesmanship having egregiously failed, or, as he says, been obliged to acknowledge that it had been the prey of fallacies and delusions from having followed several old examples. Because the United States were successful in throwing off the dominion of the mother country, it by no means follows that the separation of Australia from Great Britain, as proposed by Dr. Langparticularly now that gold has been discovered, that Chinese and other strangers are attracted in great numbers to the colony, and that the popula tion is somewhat loose and unsettled-would be advantageous for the Australians. We are not disposed to inquire at large into the right of colonies to independence, and certainly not to deny it. we only say that every case of colonial independence must be ruled by its own circumstances; and we are inclined to believe, notwithstanding the books of Dr. Lang, that the time is not yet arrived for effecting the separation he proposes. We have no personal interest in any colony, but theoretically-reasoning from principles-we are favorable to each colony providing for its own government and exclusively regulating its own affairs; but that is not incompatible with acknowledging the supremacy of the British Crown, and remaining united with it in one great system. We may admit that the Colonial Office interferes too much with the colonies, and very often interferes injudiciously; but there is a far better remedy for undue and injudicious interference, in a proper appeal to the legislature and the nation than by a separation. But Dr. Lang is of opinion that on colonial questions the people of England are proWE need not dwell on the third edition of Dr. foundly ignorant; that they have no books treatLang's historical work, further than to say it ing of the subject; and knowing nothing of it, to brings the history of the colony down to July 1st, appeal to the legislature and the nation is hope1852, and includes some account of the gold dis- less. Dr. Lang's knowledge must, however, be coveries, and an estimate of the probable results. very limited, if he be not aware that on most other The latter is extremely imperfect, being confined subjects of government the people and the legis almost to stating that it will hasten the peopling lature are not particularly well informed that the of Australia, and assure the ascendancy of Protes- whole of our government, like that of the colotant principles. The modern history is very much nists, is dictated by circumstances rather than the the history of what Dr. Lang has done, including result of any system; and yet the part taken by some fierce attacks on the Governor of the colony, the people, in influencing the legislature and the Sir C. Fitzroy, and others, which require to be government, keeps the administration of affairs substantiated by the most unexceptionable evi- very much in the right track. The colonists, dence, and even then may be thought to trespass therefore, might appeal to the legislature and to much beyond the bounds of fair historical discus- the public, through the press, with advantage, sion; and including the republication at length of before proceeding to such an ultra step as separaDr. Lang's own libel on Mr. Icely, for which he tion. If the legislature has not already granted has been already sentenced to four months' im- all the Australians ask, it has in many cases atprisonment and to pay a heavy fine. How far the tended to their wishes. The colonists-or, at reverend gentleman is justified in republishing least, Dr. Lang-are too impatient; and as Rome here a libel of which he has been found guilty was not built, neither can colonists be freed or get elsewhere, is a curious point of law, should Mr. rid of all the evils of colonial government, in a day. Icely be induced to bring it to a decision by We do not examine the details of Dr. Lang's plan, another prosecution. Dr. Lang is too much min- because we believe it to be his plan only, and not gled up with recent transactions at Sydney, and the plan of the colonists; though we are aware shows his temper a great deal too much, to make that the Australians, particularly the people of his history of the latter period of the existence of Sydney, make great complaints of their present the colony trustworthy; and we dismiss it by say-governor and government. Dr. Lang's books are ing that we do not regard the third, though an too acrimonious to be either convincing or agreeenlarged, as an improved edition of the work. able.-Economist. An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Paternoster row. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 460.-12 MARCH, 1853. From the Quarterly Review. "the respectable names of Sandoval, Vera, and The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V. By De Thou, but seems chiefly to have relied upon W. STIRLING, M. P. 8vo. 1852. Leti, one of the most lively and least trustworthy of the historians of his time." This Italian-like SEVEN years have passed since the Spanish M. Thiers, Lamartine, and Co., of our day—was a Handbook made us acquainted with Mr. Ford's glozing, gossiping, historical-romancer. His four visit to the convent of Yuste, where Charles V. Duos, published at Amsterdam, A. D. 1700, were breathed his last. Previously no Englishman of much read at the time, but are now forgotten and any note-Lord John Russell, we believe, excepted rare. Dr. Robertson was followed by Dr. Watson, -had penetrated into that remote retreat, which his ape. The dull Aberdeen professor just recertainly no one had described. Now that Spain echoed the elegant principal's blunders in his is replaced in the Anglo-Saxon travelling map, a Philip II.—a production at once clumsy and flimchange has come over the spirit of the scene-sy, that will shortly receive a due quietus in the this secluded spot, so beautiful in itself and so great work on which Mr. Prescott has long been rich in associations, forms a popular point to our occupied. pilgrims, and the solitude of the cell ceases when When these misstatements were first pointed out the long vacation begins. In welcoming again to in the Handbook, reference was made to a certain our pages one of these more recent tourists-the MS., purchased by M. Mignet, who, it was accomplished annalist of the Artists of Spain-we prophesied, would some day "publish it as his rejoice to see such good use made of the precious own." M. Gachard, a learned Belgian, next boons of leisure and fortune, and trust that the new member for Perthshire will not forswear type in disgust of bales of blue books, but continue from time to time to entertain and instruct us with tomes like this. made known that this MS., was deposited in the archives of the foreign office at Paris. Mr. Stirling, not as yet contemplating the performance before us, but anxious to solve a collateral question, went there in the summer of 1850, and endeavored in vain to conciliate the good offices of some literati commonly supposed to take a special concern in historical inquiries. No help from them!-but on a subsequent visit in winter, his application for permission found favor with President Bonaparte himself-and being further backed by Lord Normanby and M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who interested themselves in "getting the order obeyed by the unwilling officials, our author at last grasped in his hands the dragon-guarded MS. It is not unlikely that, in the choice of his present subject, Mr. Stirling was influenced by the feeling that it would be peculiarly becoming in a Spanish student born north of the Tweed, to make the amende honorable to history, by refuting some gross errors to which two of his countrymen had given currency nearly a century ago. We cheerfully admit the merits of the Robertson school, the first to cut down the folio Rapin phalanx into reasonable proportions. They deserve lasting gratitude as the pioneers who made history and found it a real prize. Its writer, Canon accessible; and if they sacrificed too much to style, Thomas Gonzalez, was intrusted by Ferdinand it was the French fashion of the day, when au- VII. with the custody and reconstruction of the thors, relying more on rhetoric than research, national archives at Simancas, after the expulsion trusted to mask the shallowness of the stream, by of the French invaders, whose plunderings and the sparkle that danced on a clear surface; and dislocations M. Gachard has truly described. graceful writing-the secret of pleasant reading-Don Thomas fully availed himself of his unlimited does indeed cover a multitude of sins. History access to treasures which had been so long sealed thus made easy, and speaking the language of bon alike to natives and foreigners by the suspicious ton, was sufficient for our forefathers, who, pro- government of Madrid. Hence the MS. now in vided general outlines were drawn with a free question-entitled "Memoir of Charles at Yuste.” band, neither cared for correctness in particulars, Gonzalez himself supplied little more than the nor were displeased with touching incidents, in- thread on which the pearls were strung-leaving vented by ingenious gentlemen, either contemners it, as far as possible, for the actors to tell their of real facts or too indolent to hunt for them, and own tale in their own words-in short, he depended who, like contemporary geographers, "placed ele- substantially on the correspondence that passed phants instead of towns" in the open downs of between the Courts at Valladolid and Brussels guess-work description. No Niebuhr had then and the retired Emperor and his household. arisen to separate truth from fable, to fix precision More authentic evidence cannot consequently exof detail, and furnish a model to modern investiga- ist; the dead, after three centuries of cold obtion and accuracy. "Oh! read me not history," struction, are summoned to the bar of historyexclaimed Sir Robert Walpole, " for that I know to for sooner or later everything shall be known. be false"-and no writer of it ever was satisfied Unfortunately the full bowl was dashed from Mr. with more imperfect sources of information than Stirling's lips by his not being allowed to “tranDr. Robertson, who, according to Walpole's son, scribe any of the original documents, the French "took everything on trust; and when he com- government [M. Mignet?] having entertained the piled his Charles V.-[the bulky biography of a design of publishing the entire work;"—a project great Emperor of Germany and King of Castile] which the Ledru-Rollin revolution of 1848 had rewas in utter ignorance of German and Spanish tarded, and which this English forestalling may historians." He cited, indeed, says Mr. Stirling, possibly not advance. Meantime, until the MS. CCCCLX. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXVI. 31 Memoir be printed in extenso-which we hope ultimately will be the case we must, and may well, content ourselves with its having supplied the groundwork and chief materials of Mr. Stirling's volume-which, moreover, collects and arranges for us illustrations from a multitude of other sources, all critically examined, and many of them, no doubt, familiar of old to the owner of the rich Spanish library at Keir. Charles, in bidding farewell to so much greatness, did not take the solemn step without due deliberation. He, too, like the recluse of Spalatro, had long meditated on such a conclusion, as one devoutly to be wished for; and now, when he felt his physical forces gradually giving way, worn as a scabbard by the steel of an over-active intellect now when Philip, trained in his school, was in full vigor of mind and body, he felt the moment had at length come for shifting from his bending shoulders a load would sink a navy," and preparing himself for heaven by the concentrated contemplation of that valley and shadow through which he must ere long pass. The first printed account of Charles at Yuste, and hitherto the best, is to be found in Joseph de Siguenza's comprehensive history of St. Jerome and his order. The learned author of this monastic classic, born in 1545, and the friend of many who had known the emperor intimately, was ap- Such a yearning was as much in accordance with pointed the first prior of the Escurial by Philip II., Spanish character in general as with his own parwho held him to be the greatest wonder of that ticular idiosyncrasies. A similar tendency marked monastery, itself the eighth wonder of the world; the earliest Gothic sovereigns of Christianized and there to this day his thoughtful portrait, Spain. Elurico, king of the Suevi, died a monk painted by Coello, hangs in the identical cell in in 583-and his immediate successor, Andeca, which he lived so long and wrote so much and so imitated the example; Wamba assumed the cowl well. "Of the existence of Siguenza," says Mr. at Pampliega, where he expired in 682; Bermudo Stirling, "Dr. Robertson does not appear to have I. went to his grave in 791 a friar; Alphonso IV., been aware;"-but very possibly, had the book surnamed the Monk, followed in 930-as did itself (or rather a translation of it) come into his Ramiro II. in 950. St. Ferdinand, one of the best hands, the Principal would have run over it with and greatest of Spanish kings, delighted to spend no careful eye for it seems to have been one of intervals of pensive quietude among the brethren the dogmas of his creed that Charles, when once of St. Facundus. The hypochondrianism evident scheduled to a convent, was civiliter mortuus-be- in Enrique IV. passed through his sister, the pious yond sober historical jurisdiction-and at best en- Isabel, to her daughter Juana La Loca (Crazy titled to point a moral and adorn a tale. Be that Jane), the mother of two emperors and four queens. as it may, the imperial hermit might well have She lived and died in the nunnery of Tordesillas, been studied as he was even by pious Siguenza; and the malady transmitted to her son Charles for he had filled the first place in this world at a became fixed in the Spanish line of the Austrian most critical epoch, when the middle ages ended blood to its close. Philip II. lived and died virand the modern began; when old things were tually a monk, in his Escurial; his son, Philip passing away, and change and transition, political III., vegetated a weak bigot, as did his weaker and intellectual, were the order of the day. The grandson Charles II. The taint crossed the monarchical system had then superseded the feu- Pyrenees with Anne of Austria, whose son, Louis dal, and the balance of the powers of Europe, now XIV., the Grand Monarque, died every inch a one great family, was shadowed out. His was the monk, while his grandson, Philip V., first abdiage of Leo X., when printing and the restoration cated, then ended a melancholy recluse in the of the classics acted on literature-Michael Angelo Guadarama. With the royal daughters of Spain and Raphael on art-gunpowder and infantry on the confessor so regularly replaced the lover, that warfare-and when, last not least, Luther with the convent, as a finale, became the rule. Nor the Bible struck at fallacies and superstitions, was this morbidly religious disposition confined to shivering the fetters forged at Rome for the human royalties; it has at all times peopled lauras, hermind. Many circumstances rendered Charles the mitages, and cloisters of Spain with her best and chief and foremost personage, the centre and cyno-bravest sons. In that semi-oriental nation, a desure, in this most remarkable period. The accident of birth had indeed thrust greatness on him. The sun never set on the dominions in the old and new world of one man, who, when he assumed Plus Ultra for his motto, striking the negative from the pillared limits which bounded the ambition of a demigod, gave to other monarchs a significative hint that his had none;-and fortune, when a King of France was his prisoner at Madrid, a Pope his captive in Rome itself, seemed to favor his gigantic aspirations. In later times abdication has so often been made the escape of weak and bad rulers, legitimate and illegitimate, that we must place ourselves in the sixteenth century and think and feel as men then did, if we desire fully to understand the thunderclap effect produced when this monopolist of fame and power, this Cæsar and Charlemagne of his day, altogether voluntarily, and like Diocletian of old, his prototype and parallel in infinite particulars, descended from so many thrones-exchanging care-lined ermine for the cowl, and burying himself forever, far from courts and camps, in the solitude of a mountain cloister. sire to withdraw from the world-weariness to the shadow of some great rock, grows as youth wears away with love and war in its train; then the peculiar Desengaño, the disenchantment, the finding out the stale, flat, and unprofitable vanity of vanities, urges the winding up a site of action by repose, and an atonement for sensuality by mortification. When the earlier stimulants are no longer efficient, abodes and offices of penance furnish a succedaneum to the uneducated and resourceless :-nor, in truth, can anything be more impressive than the hermit-sites of the Vierzos and Montserrats of the Peninsula-their unspeak able solace of solitude, so congenial to disappointed spirits, who, condemning and lamenting the earthly pleasures that they have outlived, depart from the crowd, their affections set above to mourn o'er sin, And find, for outward Eden lost, a paradise within. Charles, even in the prime of life, had settled with his beloved empress that they would both retire from the world and from each other so soon as their children were grown up. He had long overtook him. So far back as 1549, Marillac, the envoy of France, ever Spain's worst enemy, had gladdened his master with a signalement of the sick Cæsar:-"L'oeil abattu, la bouche pale, le visage plus mort que vif, le col exténué, la parole faible, l'haleine courte, le dos fort courbé, et les jambes si faibles qu'à grande peine il pouvait aller avec un bâton de sa chambre jusqu'à sa garderobe." The hand that once wielded the lance and jereed so well, was then scarcely able to break the seal of a letter; and now depressing disasters conspired to reduce his moral energy to a level with his physical prostration. Fickle fortune, which had smiled on him formerly, was, as he said, turn ing to younger men. The repulse at Metz, and ignominious flight to Inspruck, were terrible signs of it, and the death of his mother, in April, 1555, having at length made him really king proprietary of Spain, he carried out his intentions of a general abdication at his Flemish capital, Brussels, on Friday, October 25th of that same year. His last address was full of dignity, and pathos ;-weeping himself, he drew sympathetic tears from the whole of the assembly; the scene is touchingly reported by our minister, Sir John Mason, who was present.* prepared himself for monastic habits. During mined by the autos de fé of the Spanish Inquisition. Lents he withdrew, when at Toledo, to the con- The ambition of Charles, when he now prepared to vent La Sisla, and when at Valladolid to a monas- shift the burdens of actual sovereignty from his tery, near Abrujo, at which he built quarters for own shoulder, was transferred, not extinguished; in his reception; nay, fifteen years before he abdi- exact proportion as he panted to denude himself of cated, he confided his intention to his true friend empire, he was anxious to aggrandize his son. His Francesco de Borja-himself, by and by, a mem- health had long been bad and broken. Feeble in orable example of pomp-renouncing reflexion. The constitution, and a martyr to gout, which his imemperor selected the Order of St. Jerome, hospita-prudences at table augmented, a premature old age ble rather than ascetic; and appears to have soon listened with special attention to the praises of their establishment at Yuste. He caused the site to be examined some twelve years before he finally determined-nor could any locality have been better chosen. If Spain herself, unvisiting and unvisited, was the recluse of Europe, her remote Estremadura -extrema ora-became naturally the very Thebais for native anchorites. Here, indeed, the Romans of old had placed their capital Merida, a "little Rome," and the district under the Moors was a garden and granary; but administrative neglect and the emigration of the multitudes who followed their countrymen, Cortez and Pizarro, to the diggings" of the new world, ere long grievously impoverished and depopulated the province, where —absit omen !—to this day uncultivated and uninhabited leagues of fertile land remain overgrown with aromatic bush, the heritage of the wild bee. The Hieronomite convent, so extolled to the emperor, stands-or rather stood-about seven leagues from "pleasant" Placencia, a town most picturesquely placed in a bosom of beauty and plenty, girdled by snow-capped sierras, moated by troutstreams, and clothed with forests of chestnut, mulberries, and orange. The fraternity had nestled on a park-like hill-slope which sheltered devotion from the wind, and still, basking in the sunny south, sweeps over the boundless horizon of the Vera-where spring indeed is perpetual. So much for the "St. Justus seated in a vale of no great extent," of Dr. Robertson, who, blundering from the threshold to the catastrophe, mistakes a Canterbury saint for a Castilian stream let, the Yuste, which descending behind the monastery had given it its name. 46 Ill health detained the ex-monarch nearly a year longer in Flanders, which he finally quitted, September 13, 1556. His exit was imperial. He was accompanied by his two sisters, the dowager Queens of Hungary and France, who indeed wished to be permanent sharers of his retirement, and was attended by a suite of one hundred and fifty persons, and a fleet of fifty-six sail. He reached Laredo on the 28th. Robertson prostrates him on the ground at landing-eager to salute the common mother of mankind, to whom he now returned naked as he was born. Neither is there the slightest foundation for this episode, nor for the doctor's diatribes on the neglect he met in Spain. He was indeed put to a little inconvenience, from having appeared sooner than was expected, and before adequate preparations were complete, in about the poorest part of a country "always in want of everything at the critical moment:"-matters, however, speedily mended on the arrival of his chamberlain, an experienced campaigner, and cunning in the commissariat. The cavalcade set forth over some of the wildest mountain-passes in Spain In 1554, Charles, then in Flanders, finally sent his son Philip to the holy spot, to inspect its capabilities, in reference to a plan, sketched by his own hand, of some additional buildings necessary for his accommodation. Events were hurrying to the conclusion. Mary of England, on her accession, lost no time in personally informing Charles-to whom she had been affianced thirty years before that she was nothing loth to become his second empress. Charles, in handing over the gracious offer to Philip, who was then engaged to marry his cousin of Portugal, added that, were the Tudor Queen mistress of far ampler dominions, they should not tempt him from a purpose of quite another kind. So much for Dr. Watson's assertion, that Charles was quite resolved to espouse the mature maiden in case Philip had declined taking her off his hands. The extirpation of heresy in England being alike uppermost in the minds of the emperor and his heir, no objections were raised by the latter to this parental proposal. He as readily consented to marry the English princess destined for his father, as he afterwards did to marry the French princess destined for his son Don Carlos. The Portuguese cousin was thrown over; and when the bigot Philip was duly linked to the bloody Mary, Smithfield contributed See the paper in Mr. Burgon's industrious biography no inapt torch to hymeneals simultaneously illu- of Sir Thomas Gresham (ii. 74). through poverty-stricken districts, where stones are given for bread, where the rich are sent empty away, and then, as now, miserably unprovided even with such accommodation for man or beast as Spaniards and their locomotive, the mule, alone could or can endure." Oh! dura tellus Iberia!'' Charles, sick and gouty, travelled by short stages of ten to fifteen miles a-day, sometimes in a chair carried by men, at other times in a litten The identical palanquin in which his Catholic majesty was "cribbed, cabined, and confined," during this Cæsarean operation, is still preserved in the Armeria at Madrid; something between a black trunk and a coffin, it is infinitely less comfortable and alighted at the castle of the Count of Oropesa, than the elegant articles furnished by Mr. Banting. the great feudal lord of the district. Here he re His progress, the vehicle notwithstanding, was mained the whole winter-fretting and fuming at right regal. Provinces and cities emptied them- the delays in the completion of the new wing at selves to do homage, and he entered Burgos, the Yuste, which had been begun three years before, time-honored capital of Castile, amid pealing bells and which Mr. Cubitt would have put out of hand and a general illumination; here he remained two in three months. The weather was severe; but days, holding a perpetual levee, highly delighted, while the winds and rain beat out of doors, and the and with every wish anticipated. So much for imperial suite waded in waterproof boots, the great Dr. Robertson's moving "tale of the deep affliction man himself, wrapped in robes wadded with eider of Charles at his son's ingratitude," and the forced down, sat by a blazing fire, and discussed heavy residence at Burgos for some weeks" before affairs of state for the public benefit, and heavier Philip paid the first moiety of the small pension dinners and suppers for his private injury. The which was all he had reserved of so many kingdoms outlandish attendants almost mutinied from discon-with the tragical addition that the said delay tent; the chosen Paradise of the master was regardprevented him rewarding or dismissing his suite, ed as a sort of hell upon earth by the servants; they which, in fact, he neither did nor wished to do here. yearned for home, and dragging at each step a At Cabezon he was met by his grandson, the ill-weightier chain, sighed as they remembered their omened Don Carlos, of whom he formed a bad but sweet Belgian Argos. Yet, if Spaniards have written correct first impression, and forthwith recommend-their annals true, these said Belgians and Hollanded to the regent Juanaan unsparing use of the ers looked plump and fair, and fed as voraciously rod;" the boy already, at eleven years of age, as if they had been Jews upon the unctuous hams evinced unmistakable symptoms "of a sullen, pas- and griskins of Montanches. Estremadura is insionate temper. He lived in a state of perpetual deed a porcine pays de Cocagne, an Elysium of the rebellion against his aunt, and displayed from the pig, a land overflowing with savory snakes for his nursery the weakly mischievous spirit which marked his short career at his father's court." Mr. Stirling properly treats all the love for his father's wife, and his consequent murder, as the contemptible fictions of malevolent ignorance, though adopted and revived of late by the Alfieris, Schillers, and other illustrious dramatists. summer improvement, and with sweet acorns for his autumnal perfectionment; whence results a flesh fitter for demigods than Dutchmen, and a fat, tinted like melted topazes-a morsel for cardinals and wise men of the west. Tel maître tels valets-and Charles set his faithful followers a magnificent example: his worst disease was an inordinate appetite, and his most besetting sin the indulgence thereof-edacitas damnosa. Nor did he voluntarily repudiate the old Belgic respect for god Bacchus. So long back as 1532, his spiritual adviser "had bidden him beware of fish"-but added that he must be more moderate in his cups; or else both mind and body would go down hill-cuesta abajo." The habits of the Heliogabalic hermit are thus racily described by our genial author : Charles entered Valladolid, where the court was residing, without parade, but by the usual gate. "It would be a shame," said he, "not to let his people see him"-a cause and monument of his country's greatness. He was received by all, high and low, most deferentially, and held frequent cabinet councils. On resuming his journey, he thanked God that he was getting beyond the reach of ceremony, and that henceforward no more visits were to be made, no more receptions to be undergone." He now approached the wild and rugged Sierra de Bejar, one of the backbones of the Peninsula; yet rather than face the episcopal and municipal civilities of Placencia, to which Dr. Robertson takes him, he braved a shorter cut, over an alpine pass which might have scared a chamois or contrabandista-a route which recalled the miseries of his flight to Inspruck, and is almost described by Lactantius, in his account of the journey of Diocletian to Nicomedia :-"Cum jam felicitas ab eo recessisset, impatiens et æger animi, profectus hyeme, sæviente frigore, atque imbribus verberatus, mordum levem et perpetuum traxit, vexatusque per omne iter lactica plurimum vehebatur." (De Morte Persec., XVII.) The supply of his table was a main subject of the Mr. Stirling paints like a true artist the toppling correspondence between the mayordomo and the Seccrags, the torrents, and precipices amidst which na-retary of State. The weekly courier from Valladolid ture sits enthroned in all her sublimity, with her to Lisbon was ordered to change his route that he wildest and loveliest forms broad-cast about her, might bring, every Thursday, a provision of eels and where least seen, as if in scorn for the insect man other rich fish (pescado grueso) for Friday's fast. and his admiration. When at length the cavalcade There was a constant demand for anchovies, tunny, crept, like a wounded snake, to the culminating and other potted fish, and sometimes a complaint that crest, and the promised land, the happy Rasselas the trouts of the country were too small; the olives, valley, lay unrolled as a map beneath him- This on the other hand, were too large-and the emperor is indeed the Vera," exclaimed Charles, "to reach wished, instead, for olives of Perejon. One day, the which surely some suffering might be borne." Then secretary of state is asked for some partridges from Gama, a place from whence the emperor remembers turning back on the mountain gorges of the Puerto that the Count of Orsono once sent him into Flanders Nuevo, which frowned behind, and thinking, as it some of the best partridges in the world. Another were, of the gates of the world closed on him for- day, sausages were wanted" of the kind which the ever: "Now," added he, "I shall never go through Queen Juana, now in glory, used to pride herself on pass again." He reached Xarandilla before sunset, I making, in the Flemish fashion at Tordesillas," and |