that the Reformation was not preached to the Celtic Irish. They could not read Latin, and no reformer wrote or preached in Irish. But if Spain had been Protestant, she would have escaped the Inquisition--the brutalizing instrument which more than any other means of misgovernment, more than despotism, or insecurity, or lawlessness, or oppression, has degraded the Spanish mind. She would have escaped the religious wars which wasted her strength for more than sixty years. She would not have been governed by Jesuits and bigots. She would not have been deprived, by the expulsion of the Moors, of the most industrious part of her population. Naples and Sicily, like Spain, would have adopted the faith of their master; and it is probable that Romanism, after lingering for a short time in a portion of France, of Italy, and of Poland, would have gradually died out, and have been remembered, with magic, astrology, and alchemy, as one of the strange delusions of the dark unreasoning ages. We can not but be eager to know more of the men on whose conduct such vast consequences depended. To know how far that conduct was the result of the dispositions implanted in them by nature, and how far of the circumstances in which they were placed. How far it is to be imputed to their advisers, and how far to the solitary working of their own faculties and passions. We have ample materials to form an estimate of Luther. The business of his life was to write and to talk, and his friends preserved his letters and his conversation with the care, we may say the veneration, which all that came from such a man deserved. In his correspondence and his tisch-reden, we have a fuller and a more detailed revelation of his innermost man than we possess of any other person, with the single exception of Dr. Johnson. We see his strong conscientiousness, his religious fervor, his impulsive sense of duty, his unwearied diligence, his heroic courage never rushing into rashness; his vivid imagi nation, checked, though not sufficiently controlled, by his strong reason; and as the result of these passions and faculties, an aggressive force, a power of destruction, which no spiritual reformer, except perhaps Mahomet, ever directed against deeply-rooted abuses. We see also a fearful amount of credulity, superstition, intolerence, and violence, to be imputed partly to the ignorance and rough energy of the 16th century, and partly to his severe and confined education, at first in privation, in want, and in beggary and afterwards among the ascetic observances and dull degrading duties of a monastery. We see, too, what perhaps was also the result of this education, his deep melancholy, his early and constantly increasing disgust at life, his regrets at not having died in infancy, his despair of improvement; indeed, his expectation that human affairs would go on from bad to worse till the last day, a day which he hoped and believed to be at hand, should close the reign of evil. Before the publication, the title of which is prefixed to this article, Charles V. was known to English readers chiefly in the judicious but somewhat pompous pages of Robertson. Robertson remarks that the circumstances transmitted to us with respect to his private deportment and character, are fewer and less interesting than might have been expected from the great number of the authors who have undertaken to write an account of his life. And the little that he himself has related of them is so full of error, that we need not regret that he has not given us more. Within the last twenty years, however, a flood of light has been shed on the details of the great figure, of which, till then, we had seen only the outlines. The "Correspondenz des Kaisers Carl V.," by Dr. Carl, published in 1845-46, the "Colecion de Documentos ineditos para la Historia de España," and the Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti," both works still in course of publication, and the 'Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle," have revealed so much that was unknown, and rectified so much that was mistaken, in his history as an emperor and a king, that it might almost be rewritten; and it now appears that his life, from the time of his abdication, on which little had been published, and that little turns out to have been often erroneous, had been recorded with as much minuteness, and far more fidelity, than even that of Napoleon. The new sources of information are, A Narrative of the Re-idence of Charles V. in the Monastery of Yuste, written by one of the monks, and A Correspondence between Charles and his Family, and between his Confidential Attendants and the Spanish Court, embracing rather more than two years, beginning with his arrival in Spain after his abdication, and terminating some months after his death. These records, however, have, as yet, been imperfectly communicated to the public. The Narrative is now among the Archives of the Court of Appeal of Brussels. M. Bakhuisen Van der Brinc has published an abridgment of it, and M. Gachard promises to print the whole text in a second volume, still unpublished, of his "Retraite et Mort de Charles Quint." But neither of these writers saw the origi nal documents: they quoted the Narrative from Backhuisen, and the Correspondence from Gonzalez. M. Gachard, however, the Archiviste General of Belgium, found the guardians of the treasures of Simancas more complaisant than they had been to any previous traveller. He appears to have had an unlimited permission to have papers copied. He used it to obtain copies of the 237 letters which are contained in the first volume of his work. Of these letters, 201 were written by Quijada, the Emperor's chamberlain, or mayordomo. Luis Mender Quijada, Lord of Villagarcia, had been thirty-four years in the service of the Emperor at the time of his abdication. "Unconsciously portrayed," says Mr. Stirling, "in his own graphic letters, the best of the Yuste correspondence, he stands forth, the type of the cavalier and old rusty Christian,” of Castillespare and sinewy of frame, and somewhat formal and severe in the cut of his beard and the fashion of his manners; in character reserved and punctilious, but true as steel to the cause espoused or the duty undertaken; keen and clear in his insight into men and things around him, yet dethat ever had been or was to be; proud of himvoutedly believing his master the greatest prince self, his family, and his services, and inclined, in a grave, decorous way, to exaggerate their imKeller-portance; a true son of the Church, with an instinctive distrust of its ministers; a hater of Jews, Turks, heretics, friars, and Flemings; somewhat testy, somewhat obstinate, full of strong sense and strong prejudice; a warm-hearted, energetic, and honest man." The Correspondence was buried in the Royal Archives of Simancas, which, as might have been expected from the puerile Government of Spain, were carefully kept excluded from foreign, and indeed from native eyes. In 1809, however, the castle of Simancas was occupied by General Kellerman and his dragoons, acting in the name, and professing to be under the command of King Joseph. They treated its contents as they usually treated every thing that was Spanish. The documents which related to the history of France they sent to Paris, the rest they used as fuel; and when no more was wanted for that purpose, they cut open whole bundles for the sake of the string with which they were tied up. When the Duke of Wellington's surprise of Oporto and advance from Portugal occasioned their retreat, they set fire to the Castle and destroyed a large portion of it, with all that it contained. Ferdinand VII. employed Don Tomas Gonzalez to rearrange and classify the remnant that had not perished during General man's occupation. While thus employed, he discovered the correspondence relating to Charles V.'s residence at Yuste. The use to which he turned it was to make it the base of a work on the last two years of Charles's life, consisting of the letters which he thought deserving of publication, connected by a brief explanatory notice. At the time of his death, in 1825, the work was transcribed for the press, but unprinted. Don Manuel Gonzalez, his brother, succeeded him in his office at Simancas, and inherited his papers. He was displaced and ruined by the revolution of 1836; and, after some ineffectual efforts to get a higher price, sold the manuscript to the French Government in 1844. A mention of it in the book of Spain" attracted Mr. Stirling's attention. With some difficulty, he ascertained its fate, and with still more difficulty, with the united assistance of the President of the Republic, Lord Normanby, and M. Drouyn de L'huys, gained access to it. It is the foundation of what M. Mignet has well described as "le charmant volume de M. Stirling," and of that portion of the work of M. Pichot which is subsequent to Charles V.'s abdication. Fifty-seven of the letters were written by Martin Gaztelu, the Emperor's secretary. "He," says Mr. Stirling, "comes next to the mayordomo in order of precedence, and in the importance of his functions. His place was one of great trust. The whole correspondence of the Emperor passed through his hands. Even the most private and confidential communications addressed to the Princess-regent by her father, were generally written, at his dictation, by Gaztelu; for the imperial fingers were seldom sufficiently free from Hand-gout to be able to do more than add a brief postscript, in which Doña Juana was assured of the affection of her buen padre Carlos. The secretary had probably spent his life in the service of the Emperor; but I have been unable to learn more of his history than his letters have preserved. His epistolary style was clear, simple, and businesslike, but inferior to that of Quixada in humor, and in careless graphic touch, and more sparing in glimpses of the rural life of Estremadura three hundred years ago." "Cristiano viejo rancioso," Don Quixote, p. 1, cap. xxvii., so translated by Shelton. Twenty-six letters from Dr. Cornelius | the character of Charles V., with which it is Mathys, the Flemish physician who had the concluded. troublesome task of repairing the infirmities! and controlling the appetite of his gouty edacious master, complete the gossiping correspondence which relates the domestic life of Charles V. I may be accused, perhaps, of having dwelt too much on the two last years of Charles V. But nothing that relates to a great man is unimportant. We are anxious to know what were his thoughts when he had ceased to act, and what was his life when he had ceased to reign. And these details explain the remarkable termination of his political existence. Complicated infirmities, unrestrained appetites, long-endured Nearly all the rest of the letters are polit ical, and consist principally of a correspondence between Charles V. and his daughter, Doña Juana, acting as Vice Queen of Spain; Juan Va-quez de Molina, her Secretary of State; Charles's sister, Mary, Queen Dow-fatigue of mind, and increasing devotional ager of Hungary; and Philip II. What the contents of M. Gachard's second volume will be, we have not been informed, except it will contain in full the narrative of the Monk of Yuste. M. Pichot's work is, what he calls it, a chronicle. It is a collection of anecdotes, letters, conversations, and remarks relating to the domestic life of Charles V. both before and after his abdication, and to the persons who came most into contact with him. Its defect is that which most easily besets biographers-partiality to its hero. Some of the faults imputed to Charles V. M. Pichot extenuates; others he takes the bolder course of denying. When the evidence is doubtful, he explains it away; where it is positive, he discredits it. He disbelieves, for instance, much of the language ascribed to Charles V. by the Prior of Yuste, although the Prior's narrative was written at the request of the Infanta Juana, by a man of high station, who professes to relate only what he witnessed, and although it is in perfect har mony with all the rest of the information respecting Charles that has reached us. M. Pichot's book, however, though written and arranged far less carefully than either of the others, is lively and amusing, and deserves an honorable place among the numer ous biographies of which Charles V. has been the subject. M. Mignet enjoyed the great advantages of writing the last, and of having the use of the original documents, the proof-sheets of M. Gachard's work having been communicated to him. His work is not so full as that of M. Pichot, nor so varied as that of Mr. Stirling, but it contains in a small space all that is historically important in the two last years of Charles V., arranged with the skill, and told with the elegance which place M. Mignet in the very first rank of modern historians. As a specimen of the work, we translate VOL. XXXIV.-NO. III. fervor, carried him from the throne to the convent, and hurried him from the convent to the tomb. "Charles V. was in every sense the greatest sovereign of the 16th century. Uniting the blood of the four houses of Aragon, Castile, Austria, and Burgundy, he inherited not only their vast territories, but their dissimilar peculiarities. The statesmanship, sometimes degenerating into cunning, of his grandfather, Ferdinand the Catholic, the magnanimity of his grandmother, Isabella of Castile, mixed with the melancholy of his mother, Johanna, the chivalrous audacity of his great-grandfather, Charles the Bold, to whom he bore a personal resemblance, and the diligent ambition, love of the fine and of the mechanical arts of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian,-all these qualities were transmitted to him, together with their dominions and their schemes. He not merely supported but added to the greatness which had been accumulated on his head by the providence of many royal ancestors and the chances of many royal successions. The man stood erect under the load of the sovereign. For many years his talents, so high and so varied, enabled him to play, not without success, his many parts, and to carry on his many undertakings. But the task became too great for a single intellect. As "As King of Aragon he had to keep Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples, left to him by his predecessors, and to acquire Milan, lest his powerful rival, once ruler of Northern Italy, might become master of the South. King of Castile, he had to conquer and colonise America. As Sovereign of the Low Countries, he had to protect the possessions of the House of Burgundy against the House of France. As Emperor of Germany, his political duty was to repel the Turks, then in the fulness of their strength and of their ambition; and his religious duty was to check the progress, or at least to prevent the 25 triumph of Protestantism. All these tasks | He was established in Italy, and successful in he undertook. Aided by great captains and France and in Africa, and he marched on the great statesmen, well chosen and skilfully Protestants of Germany. During two cam-. employed, he managed with ability and per-paigns he was victorious over the Protestant severance a policy which was never simple, troops. He could subdue armies, but not and wars which recommenced as soon as consciences. His religious and military trithey appeared to be terminated. He was to umph over nations that were resolved to be be seen in every country, facing every adver- neither converted nor enslaved, roused every sary, leading his own armies and conducting Protestant from the Elbe to the Danube. his own negotiations. He evaded no obliga- Old hatreds were revived, questions, supposed tion imposed on him by his station or by his to have been long settled, were reopened. belief. But, perpetually turned aside from Charles turned to bay against calamity, but one object by the necessity of pursuing he had come to the end of his strength-of another, he often began too late, and was bis good fortune-of his life. Exhausted by forced to end too soon. illness, overtaken in his last effort by this "Some of his enterprises he accomplished. irremediable reverse, unfit for enterprise, alIn Italy, opposed by Francis I. and Henry most for resistance, incapable of extending, II., at the price of thirty-four years of ex- almost of controlling, the vast empire which ertion and five great wars, in which a king of on his death was to be divided, having esFrance and a pope were among his prisoners, tablished his son in England, and made an he subjected one part of the country to his honorable truce with France, and determined own government, and the remainder to his not to treat with the victorious heresy of own influence. He not only preserved but Germany, he effected, what he had long extended his dominions in the Low Coun-meditated, an abdication, which was demandtries, adding to them Guelders, Utrecht, Zutphen, and Cambray, which he relieved from their vassalage to France. The Turk was in Hungary, and the corsairs of Africa habitually ravaged the coasts of Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean. He repulsed the formidable Solyman from before Vienna in 1532, tore Goletta and Tunis from the fierce Barbarossa in 1535, and would have conquered Algeria in 1541 if he had not been conquered himself by the elements. He would have made Christendom secure from attack by land or on sea, and have been himself the protector of the Mediterranean, instead of leaving it to his heroic son, the victor at Lepanto, if he had not been perpetually called away to meet a different danger in a different quarter. "His attempt to force Germany back to her ancient faith, failed only because it was made too late. He had neglected Protestantism while it was weak; when he attacked it, it was too strong, I will not say to be destroyed, but even to be restrained. For thirty years the tree had been growing, its roots had penetrated deep into the soil of Germany, its branches covered her fields. Who could then uproot it? The sovereign of Catholic Spain and of Catholic Italy, the chief of the Holy Roman empire, opposed to Protestantism by his position and by his belief, he thought in 1546 that the time was come when his temporary toleration might be discontinued, and heresy might be put down by the force of arms or by the authority of a council. ed by the diseases of the man, the lassitude of the sovereign, and the feelings of the Christian. "Abdication operated no change in him. The devotee was still a statesman. He had renounced power, but not the habits of command. Though he had become personally disinterested, he was ambitious for his son. From his monastery in 1557 he assailed Paul IV., as in 1527 from his throne he had rebuked Clement VII. He counselled Philip II. to follow up his advantage against Henry II. as vigorously as he himself had pushed his success against Francis L. He planned the means of defending Christendom against the Turks, whom he had repelled from Germany and vanquished in Africa. He continued to defend Catholicism against Protestanism with all his old sincerity and more than his old ardor, for his time of action was passed. He had now only to believe; and though a man's conduct may bend to circumstances, his convictions ought to be inflexible. He continued to be the head and the umpire of his family, the object of their love, their respect, and their obedience. Obstinate as a Spaniard in belief, sagacious and firm in policy, equal to every different emergency, what he had been on the throne he remained in the convent; his death was pious and humble, but his life lofty and magnanimous." (P. 450.) We are not sure whether we ought to quote from a book so well known as that of Mr. Stirling; but we believe that our readers will not be sorry to be recalled to his brilliant, amusing pages, and to compare them with the balanced periods, the comprehensive condensations, and the well-considered antitheses of his accomplished successor. Mr Stirling's character of Charles is thus introduced by the story of his death: "Towards eight o'clock in the evening, Charles asked if the consecrated tapers were ready. He was evidently sinking rapidly. The physicians acknowledged that the case was past their skill, and that all hope was over. Cornelio retired. Mathys remained at the bedside, occasionally feeling the patient's pulse, and whispering to the group of anxious spectators, His majesty has but two hours to live-but one hour-but half an hour.' Charles meanwhile lay in a stupor, seemingly unconscious, but now and then murmuring a prayer and turning his eyes to heaven. At length he raised himself and called for William.' The physician looked towards the door, and said to the archbishop, who was standing in its shadow, *Domine, jam moritur! The primate came forward with the chaplain Villalva, to whom he made a sign to speak. It was now nearly two o'clock in the morning of the twenty-first of September. Addressing the dying man, the favorite preacher told him how blessed a privilege he enjoyed in being about to die on the feast of St. Matthew, who for Christ's sake had forsaken wealth, as his majesty had forsaken imperial power. For some time the preacher held forth in this pious and edifying strain. At last the emperor interposed, saying, 'The time is come: bring me the candle and the crucifix.' These were cherished relics, which he had long kept in reserve for the supreme hour. The one was a taper from Our Lady's shrine at Montserrate, the other, a crucifix of beautiful workmanship, which had been taken from the dead hand of his wife at Toledo, and which afterwards comforted the last moments of his son at the Escorial. He received them eagerly from the archbishop, and taking one in each hand, for some moments he silently contemplated the figure of the Saviour, and then clasped it to his boson. Those who stood nearest to the bed now heard him say quickly, as if replying to a call, 'Ya, voy, Señor,'-Now, Lord, I go.' As his strength failed, his fingers relaxed their hold of the crucifix, which the primate therefore took, and held up before him. A few moments of death-wrestle between soul and body followed; after which, with his eyes fixed on the cross, and with a voice loud enough to be heard outside the room, he cried, 'Ay, Jesus' and expired. "So ended the career of Charles V., the greatest monarch of the memorable sixteenth century. The vast extent of his dominions in Europe, the wealth of his transatlantic empire, the sagacity of his mind, and the energy of his character, combined to render him the most famous of the successors of Charlemagne. Christendom,' wrote a Venetian envoy, in 1551, in one of those cu ་ * Marino de' Cavalli: Bulletin de l'Acad. Roy. de Bruxelles, tom. xii. p. 57. | rious secret reports addressed by the keenest of observers to the most jealous of governments, has seen no prince since Charlemagne so wise, so valorous, or so great as this emperor Charles.' seldom wanting to any monument of the age. Preeminently the man of his time, his name is He stood between the days of chivalry, which were going out, and the days of printing, which were coming in: respecting the traditions of the one, and fulfilling many of the requirements of the other. Men of the sword found him a bold cavalier; and those whose weapons were their tongues or their pens, soon learned to respect him as an astute and consummate politician. Like his ancestors, Don Jayme, or Don Sancho, with lance in rest, and shouting Santiago for Spain! he led his knights against the Moorish host, ainong the olives of Goletta; and even in his last campaign in Saxony, the cream-colored genet of the emperor was ever in the van of battle, like the famous piebald charger of Turenne in later fields of the Palatinate. In the council chamber he was ready to measure minds with all comers; with the northern envoy who claimed liberty of conscience for the Protestant princes; with the magnifico who excused the perfidies of Venice; or with the still subtler priest, who stood forth with red stockings, to gloze in defence of the still greater iniquities of the Holy See. In the prosecution of his plans, and the maintenance of his influence, Charles shrank from no labor of mind, or fatigue of body. Where other sovereigns would have sent an ambassador, and opened a negotiation, he paid a visit, and concluded a treaty. From Groningen to Otranto, from Vienna to Ca. diz, no unjust steward of the house of Austria could be sure that his misdeeds would escape detection on the spot from the keen cold eye of the indefatigable Emperor. The name of Charles is connected, not only with the wars and politics, but with the peaceful arts of his time; it is linked with the graver of the Vico, the chisel of Leoni, the pencil of Titian, and the Lyre of Ariosto; and as a lover and patron of art, his fame stood as high at Venice and Nuremberg as at Antwerp and Toledo. There can be no doubt that the Emperor gave the true reasons of his retirement when, panting for breath, and unable to stand alone, he told the states of Flanders that he resigned the government because it was a burden which his shattered frame could no longer bear. He was fulfilling the plan which he had cherished for nearly twenty years. Indeed, he seems to have determined to abdicate almost at the time when he determined to reign. So powerful a mind as that of Charles, has seldom been so tardy in giving evidence of power. Until he appeared in Italy, in 1529, the thirtieth year of his age, his strong will had been as wax in the hands of other men. Up-to that time the most laborious, reserved, and inflexible of princes, was the most docile subject of his ministers. His mind ripened slowly, and his body decayed prematurely. By nature and hereditary habit, a keen sportsman, in his youth he was unwearied in tracking the bear and the wolf over the hills of Toledo and Granada; and he was |