personally to so much detailed business, and then, weary as he was, to write far into the night about his anxiety at the ailments of his chil dren, teething and the like; about their little gardens, their studies, their playthings, and his yearning to get back home to them. From all sides of his vast dominions came trouble to him. Rival pretenders were disputing inch by inch his claim to Portugal, and it was a duel to the death now between him and his late subjects, the stubborn Dutchmen. Alençon was being backed up in Flanders by his mother, Catharine de Medici and Elizabeth of England. Spanish colonies were being sacked and Spanish commerce swept from the seas by Drake and the Protestant privateers, and from all quarters came the cry for money, money, and more money, from Philip's plundered and empty treasury. And yet, in face of all, this gloomy, unhappy man is ever ready to jest with his children, sometimes even at his own expense; as when (4th June, 1582) his daughters seem to have twitted him with having told them twice about a certain "tribune" looking into the chapel from which his sister, the empress, heard mass, and on reading over his letter he finds he has described the said tribune for the third time. "There," he says, "now I have gone and told you all about it again, so you may see how my head whirls with all the things I have to cram into it, but still I am well, which is a great deal;" or again, when in answer to the great news that the baby-girl Maria, aged two, had cut an eye-tooth, he says it is very early for that, but doubtless it is to make up for two of his own which are ready to fall out; "and I doubt not they will be lacking when I get home, but if nothing worse happen to me I can put up with it."

The first letter of the series preserved at Turin is dated 3rd April, 1581, at Thomar, where the first Portuguese Cortes was to be held, and the oath of allegiance taken to Philip. He tells his children how the people are already flocking into the town, and says, "You

will have learnt how they want to make me dress up in brocade, very much against my will, but they say it is the custom here." And then, a few weeks later, comes a full account of the sumptuous ceremonial, which, he says, he wishes his children could have seen as his nephew (the Cardinal Archduke Albert) did from a window. "I have conferred the Golden Fleece on the Duke of Braganza," he says, "and we both went to mass together with our collars (of the order) on, but mine looked very bad over my mourning, and he was much smarter than I; although it is said that the day of the ceremony was the first time he had worn shoes, though every one wears them here now but I." In the midst of his business he finds time to enclose for his daughters a new seal, the first that had been cut with the arms of Portugal, henceforward his, and is curious to see how it will come out in wax. It is interesting, by the way, to note that sealing-wax is regarded somewhat in the light of an experimental curiosity, and only comes apparently in the form of a present from the "Indies." On one occasion the king sends a small piece of white sealing-wax to his girls, as quite a rarity, and tells them to try how it looks with a seal, although he thinks the effect will be cold.

In another letter the king, who had then been absent for nearly eighteen months, asks whether the children have grown much, how little Diego is getting on with his letters, and whether baby Maria's teeth are coming. He gives directions to his eldest daughter to send him the exact measurements in ribbon of all the children, and to promise Diego a pretty Indian desk if he will learn to read nicely. He agrees that Diego will look pretty in his short coats, discusses how the gardens at Aranjuez want rain, the progress of little Philip, the exact age of them all, and the dozen other little home topics such as interest a fond father absent from his family.

But the most extraordinary feature in these letters is Philip's references

to his retainers. Porreño and other contemporary historians have much to say of Philip's patience and forbearance with his servants; how, on one occasion, on retiring to rest very weary, he found his bed unmade and his room in confusion; whereupon, without uttering a word of reproach, he patiently waited whilst the neglectful servants did their forgotten duty; and how, on another occasion, he had sat up half through the night writing a despatch, over which, when it was finished, a sleepy attendant poured the ink instead of the sand, without a hasty word from the king. But English readers, at all events, have conjured up such a harsh, repellent Philip, that it is hard to realize that those who surrounded him were not in the least afraid of him; although Cabrera said of him that "his dagger and his smile went close together." He appears to have been accompanied on his Portuguese journey by an old woman called Madalena, probably one of those illlooking dwarfs who were generally attached to Spanish royalty; and this woman was the standing joke between the king and his daughters. There is hardly a letter in which she is not mentioned. She is presented to us as a cross, quarrelsome old woman, much overfond of wine, of whose anger the king was, or pretended to be, very much afraid. In the letter I am now quoting (1st May, 1581), he says that Madalena misses most the strawberries of Aranjuez, "but my greatest wish is to hear the song of the nightingales, although a few sometimes are heard from my window here."

In

another letter, written in the following spring (April, 1582), he again refers to this. "I was delighted," he says, "with your letters from Aranjuez. What I have missed more than anything else is the song of the nightingales, which I do not hear now, as I am here (i.e., in Lisbon) far away from the country. I don't know whether I shall hear any of them on the road, for I am going across the river to-morrow to sleep at Barreiro," etc., etc. The reason for this journey to Almerin was to meet

his sister, the Empress Maria, whom he had not seen for twenty-six years, and for whom, all through these letters, he expresses the most devoted attachment. In the same letter of April, 1582, he answers, in a playful strain, the youthful boasts of his daughters about their hunting prowess, in a way which shows how care, fully he reads the children's letters. "O!" he says, "you must be grand crossbow-women, both of you, to kill so many bucks and rabbits as you say. But you, the elder, say that your brother (hermano) had become quite famous at it. I think you must mean your sister (hermana), and must have put an o for an a. You left out another word as well, so I think you must have written your letter hurriedly."

One is struck by the constant recurrence of tertian and quartan fevers, from which the children, and, indeed, every one else, seemed to suffer. The anxiety of the father about the health of the youngsters during these continual attacks shows how deeply attached he was to them. Not a detail of their small lives escapes him. Their changes of dress, their birthdays, the arrangement of their apartments, the repair and alterations of various palaces, and, above all, the flowers, and fruits, and birds in the gardens, are never-failing subjects of chat with his daughters. All his own journeys and excursions are described in style and words to suit the tender ages of his correspondents, and he frequently stops to explain the meaning of a word that he thinks may be unfamiliar to them, such as "skiff," for instance, which he tells them is a little boat used to take him from the landing-stairs to his galley in the river. His galley, he says, is rowed by three hundred slaves, who strip to the skin with the exception of white kilt drawers. On one occasion, in July, 1581, when he and the Archduke Albert go to the mouth of the river to inspect Santa Cruz's fleet of galleons, which was to crush Don Antonio and Catharine de Medici's fleet in the Azores, he relates that be

fore they left the galley "they had the Salve sung, as they were accustomed to do every Saturday, in order that Albert might hear it. It was very well sung by some of the slaves who are minstrels, and play excellently on many instruments." The king must have been fond of music, for in his numerous and minute descriptions of the church ceremonies he attends, he usually has something to say about it, and he complains on one occasion that as there is no good organist in Lisbon, he is sending for his Spanish musician, Cabezon, to improve the musical services.

No person, perhaps, even in that splendid time, ever apparelled himself so magnificently as did Philip in his younger years, but at the time these letters were written, and for the rest of his life, he dressed in mourning. But still he occasionally mentions his own garb. When he went to meet his sister, he relates that his nephew Albert was dressed very smartly in red; "and I wore (black) satin and cap." He tells his daughters, in April, 1582, eighteen months after the death of their step-mother, that they may put some gold trimming on their mourning on the occasion of the marriage of one of the maids of honor, and in another letter he approves of their leaving off their mourning wimples. The girls appear to have rather made fun of the German ladies who accompanied the empress and made a short stay in Madrid with her, before she continued her journey to join her brother in Portugal. They must have told their father of the tremendous ruffs they wore, those in Madrid having remained narrow until years afterwards, when Philip III. married his German cousin. When the German ladies came to Portugal, Philip says: "I do not think their ruffs are so very large as you say, they must have made them smaller since seeing how they were worn in Madrid, but I have not seen much of them yet, and cannot tell you much about them. But if they have narrowed their frills, they have certainly not done so with their VOL. XII. 600

LIVING AGE.

farthingales, which are really terrible, except that of Doña Graciosa, with whom Mortara has had a great fall out. Indeed, I don't know how long it is since we were able to induce him to

go to my sister's apartments. Whilst I am writing this I hear a great outcry in the street after him, although they do not cry after him so much as they used to do."

This baiting of the buffoons by the Lisbon crowd seems to have been a regular thing, but the pampered Madalena did not relish it. When the king went to Belem by water she accompanied him in the galley, and in his letter to his daughters, he says, "Madalena went to the galley to-day after me, and I think she was a bit sea-sick. She does not venture to roam much about the city. I think it is in order that they may not cry after her as they do after the others, 'This way for the clever wench.' Don't say I do not send you plenty of news. God bless you." Madalena seems to have misbehaved herself somehow on this excursion, for in the next letter the king says, "Madalena is very cross with me, because I scolded her for something she did in the galley;" and again in October, "Madalena has been very cross with me since I wrote last, because I did not scold Luis Tristan for quarrelling with her in the presence of my nephew. I did not hear it, but I believe she began by calling him names. She is very angry with me, and says she will go away, and that he will kill her, but I expect she will have forgotten all about it to-morrow." A few weeks later, he says that Madalena is not so cross with him, but she has been ill, and has remained in a very bad humor. "She came home yesterday. She is much broken and weak, and old, and deaf, and half dot-. ing, but I believe it is all drink, and for that reason I think she is really glad that her son-in-law has gone away. I have not seen her to-day, but I don't think she is writing to you because she is so cross. She told me yesterday she was not angry with the woman who wrote to you, whose name is Mari

fernandez, but who is called Mariola, as she likes to hear her sing; and she is right, for she sings very well, only she is so fat and big that she can hardly get through the doorway." A few months later (January, 1582) Madalena is again to the fore. "Madalena said she was going to write to you to-day, but she has not come yet. I don't know what has come over her lately, as she does not come to me so often. I do not know whether the wine has anything to do with it. She would give it me finely if she knew I wrote such a thing." Madalena must have known the empress before she left Spain, for, says the king (7th May, 1582), "She is very merry with my sister, although a taffety dress she wears is all in rags. But it is my fault, for I have given her nothing, although she has not failed to remind me of it. She must wait till we get back to Lisbon. She wears a chain, and my sister is much surprised to see her so decked out, although she says she has not changed."

The king writes an interesting letter on 25th June, 1582, again saying how he yearned to be at home with his children, and mentions, apropos of the empress having been bled, a curiou custom in Germany of making presents to a person bled for the first time. He then goes on to describe the Corpus Christi feasts in Lisbon. It appears that little Diego had been frightened at the masks in Madrid, and the king tells his daughters to explain them and allay his fear. "There were no morrisdances but many dances by women, and some of the women sang very well, but as I was at the very end of the long procession, I could not see much, and Madalena writes you a full account of it. She is now here, and says that she would rather be with you herself than send messages. I tell her that however much her feet may beat time when she hears the music she gets too tired to dance. She had a faint the other day and is now very weak. They say Mortara is better, but he does not come here yet. He has asked me many times to give you messages from him,

but they are so long I could not do so. Don't let him know on any account or he will be very cross with me. Sometimes I give him messages from you, for I have to do everything to keep him in a good temper, although he is sometimes very angry with me, but not so bad as he used to be. I don't know how he will be after his illness." After the Corpus processions each parish in Lisbon had a special procession of its own, on an especially grand scale, and Philip, his sister, and nephew, saw their parochial procession of St. Gian (St. Julian) from a window in the Rua Nova. A manuscript in the Paris archives says this procession cost twelve thousand ducats, and Philip tells his daughters that it was better than he expected. "I was so sorry," he said, "that your brother could not see it, for there were some devils that looked like devils out of a picture by Jerome Bosc, of which I am sure he would not have been frightened." The authorities had given Philip a Portuguese programme of the procession, which he says was very necessary, "so that he should understand each thing as it passed." This programme he sent to his daughters, although, as he says, there is a great difference between seeing things on paper and seeing them with your eyes. The young princesses assured their father that they understood every word of it, at which he was somewhat incredulous. "You must," he says, "understand Portuguese very well if you could read all the programme, for there were some words in it that I could not make out myself. I don't think you understood it quite all. If the bull-fight to-morrow, in front of my windows, is as good as the procession,. we shall have nothing to complain of. They are putting up the hoarding now very fine, as if it were to last for a long time. Madalena has a little bit of a balcony looking on to the Place, and she is so busy dressing it out that she has no time to write. I don't believe, for my part, that she wanted to write, although I have reminded her very often about it. She

says she cannot settle down to write on the eve of a bull-fight, and she is as delighted as if it was going to be a good one instead of a very poor thing as I expect. The best of it will be the dancers who will appear in the Place. Madalena will write you all about it, if she don't forget it before next Monday, as I expect she will."

There

But Madalena fell ill soon afterwards and the king writes (1st October, 1582): "The bull-fight was as shabby an affair as I said it would be, and I have no more to say about it. Madalena came to me to-day, but very weak, and with a bad color, for she has been ill with fever and has been purged and bled. You cannot complain of her to-day, for without anything being said she has brought me the enclosed letter for you. Really she is so weak to-day that I think the least thing would carry her off. But she soon pulls up again, and will be greatly helped by a gold chain my sister sent her, and bracelets from my niece, as presents in the German fashion when she was bled." His kindly consideration for his servants is not confined to his jesters. was a man called Tofiño in attendance on the young princesses, and on Philip's journey to Lisbon with the empress, all four in one coach, as he says (i.e., himself, the empress, and her son and daughter), "for we had to take out some of the cushions to make room for us, as my sister would not allow me to sit in one of the doorways as I wished," they met this man Tofiño on foot, whom Philip says he had forgotten, "and we were all very merry with him, although I have not been able to see him since, as I am so busy with my sister and the despatch of the mails." It appears that the younger princess, Catharine, had had a fall at Aranjuez and had not mentioned it to her father. He learnt of it from some one else, and reproaches her for her silence on the subject; and then apparently thinking that the princess may blame Tofino for telling him, he says that she must not think he learnt it from Tofiño, "as I have hardly had time to speak to him." His delight at the coming of his wid

owed sister is almost boyish in its eagerness. He keeps saying how he envies his daughters because they will see her before he will, and counts the days that must pass before he meets her, on each stage of her slow journey. He anticipates her pleasure in seeing the gardens she knew as a girl, and gives the most minute directions for her comfort at each of the palaces she visits. His eldest daughter reminds him that he and the empress much resembled each other when they were young, especially in the hanging lower lip, to which he replies that he wonders whether they are still alike. "I envy you much," he says (19th February, 1582), "for by this time you will have seen my sister. Write me plenty of news about her, which I hope will be good; if she is stout or thin, if we are still alike as we used to be; but I don't think she will have aged as I have. Write me about your cousin and whether you can understand her, as I am told she speaks but little Spanish. Tell me about everything. How I envy you, too, for going to the Pardo, where you doubtless now are, for Salazar writes that it is very pleasant. I am so glad my sister will see it. I wonder whether she has forgotten it."

The girls seem to have entertained their aunt well, and the father is evidently proud of them. The elder told him she was now taller than her aunt with her pattens on, and the king replies: "According to that you must have grown; and you, the younger, also, as you say, you are bigger than your cousin, who is older than you. But you must not be vain of it, as I éxpect it is rather that she is oversmall than you over-tall. If you saw me now you would not think my sister looked older than I, but the contrary, and, indeed, I am thirteen months older." He tells them, again, to send their exact measurements in ribbons, and says that, although the elder has grown so much and is now the great age of fifteen, they must not think they are quite grown-up women yet. And then, when the measurements came, he expressed his delight; but still greater,