'piety that would display his zeal, and merit the favour of 'Heaven. The act on which he fixed was as wild and uncommon as any that superstition ever suggested to a weak ' and disordered fancy. He resolved to celebrate his own 'obsequies before his death. He ordered his tomb to be 'erected in the chapel of the monastery. His domestics 'marched thither in funeral procession, with black tapers in 'their hands. He himself followed in his shroud. He was 'laid in his coffin, with much solemnity. The service for the 'dead was chanted, and Charles joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears 'with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been 'celebrating a real funeral. The ceremony closed with sprink'ling holy water on the coffin in the usual form, and all the 'assistants retiring, the doors of the chapel were shut. Then 'Charles rose out of the coffin, and withdrew to his apartment, 'full of those awful sentiments which such a singular solemnity was calculated to inspire. But either the fatiguing length of 'the ceremony, or the impressions which the image of death 'left on his mind, affected him so much, that next day he 'was seized with a fever. His feeble frame could not long 'resist its violence, and he expired on the twenty-first of 'September, after a life of fifty-eight years, six months, and 'twenty-five days.'

Siguença's account of the affair, which I have adopted, is that Charles, conceiving it to be for the benefit of his soul, and having obtained the consent of his confessor, caused a funeral service to be performed for himself, such as he had lately been performing for his father and mother. At this service he assisted, not as a corpse, but as one of the spectators; holding in his hand, like the others, a waxen taper, which, at a certain point of the ceremonial, he delivered to the officiating priest, in token of his desire to commit his soul to the keeping of his Maker. There is not a word to justify the tale that he followed the procession in his shroud, or that he simulated death in his coffin, or that he was left beshut up alone in the church, when the service was over. In this story respecting an infirm old man, the devout son

hind,

of a church where services for the dead are of daily occurrence, I can see nothing incredible, or very surprising. It is surely as reasonable for a man on the brink of the grave to perform funeral rites for himself, as to perform such rites for persons who had been buried many years before. Superstition and dyspepsia have driven men into far greater extravagances. Nor is there any reason to doubt Siguença's veracity in a matter in which the credit of his order, or the interest of the church, is in no way concerned. He might perhaps be suspected of overstating the regard entertained by the emperor for the friars of Yuste, were his evidence not confirmed by the letters of the friar-hating household. But I see no reason for questioning the accuracy of his account of the imperial obsequies. That account was written while he was prior of the Escorial, and as such almost in the personal service of Philip the Second, a prince who was peculiarly jealous of what was written about his father.1 And it was published with the authority of his name, while men were still alive who could have contradicted a mis-statement.

The strongest objection urged by Gonzalez to the story, rests on the absence of all confirmation of it in the letters written from Yuste. We know, he says, that, on the 26th of August, 1558, the emperor gave audience to Don Pedro Manrique; that on the 27th he spent the greater part of the day in writing to the princess-regent; and that on the 28th he held a long conference with Garcilasso de la Vega on the affairs of Flanders. Can we therefore believe what is alleged by Siguença, that the afternoon of the 27th and the morning of the 28th were given by Charles to the performance of his funeral-rites; and if rites so remarkable were performed, is it credible that no allusion to them should be made in letters written at Yuste on the days when they took place?

Part of the objection falls to the ground, when reference is made to the folio of Siguença. He says that the obsequies

'See chap. xi. p. 293.

2 Siguença: Hist. de la Orden de S. Geron., tom. iii. p. 201.

were celebrated, not on the 27th and 28th, but on the 30th, of August; and it so happens, that on that day and the next, no letters were written at Yuste, or at least, that none bearing either of those dates fell into the hands of Gonzalez. The emperor's attack of illness, on the 30th, was ascribed by the physician to his having sat too long in the sun in his western alcove; and his being able to sit there tallies with Siguença's statement, that he felt better after his funeral. From the absence of allusion in the letters to a service so remarkable, I infer, not that it never took place, but that the secretary and chamberlain did not think it worthy of remark. Charles was notoriously devout, and very fond of devotional exercises beyond the daily routine of religious observance. His punctuality in performing his spiritual duties may be noted in the Yuste letters, where frequent mention is made of his receiving the Eucharist at the hermitage of Belem, a fact stated in proof, we may be sure, not of the warmth of his piety, but of the robustness of his health. Of the services performed in the church for the souls of his deceased parents and wife, which both Siguença and Sandoval have recorded, and which I see no reason to doubt, no notice whatever occurs in the letters, except a casual remark which fell from the pen of secretary Gaztelu, on the 28th of April, 1558, that 'Juan Gaytan had come to put in order the wax and other things needful for the honours of the empress, which his majesty was in the habit of celebrating on each May-day.' The truth seems to be that the most hearty enmity prevailed between the Jeromites and the imperial household; and that the chamberlain and his people abstained from all communications with the monks not absolutely necessary, and left the religious recreations, as well as the spiritual interests of their master, entirely in the hands of the confessor and the prior. Keeping no record of the functions performed within the walls of the convent, it is possible that the lay letter-writers of Yuste might have passed over in silence even such a scene as that fabled by Robertson; while in the sober pages of Siguença, there really seems nothing that a Spaniard of 1558, living next door to a convent, might not have deemed unworthy of special notice.

It is remarkable that Gonzalez, while so strenuously denying the credibility of the story, should have furnished, under his own hand, a piece of evidence of some weight in its favour. In an inventory of state-papers of Castille, drawn up by him in 1818, and existing at Simancas, and in duplicate in the Foreign Office at Madrid, M. Gachard found the following entry :

No. 119, ann. 1557. Original letters of Charles V., written from Xarandilla and Yuste to the infanta Juana, and Juan Vasquez de Molina. *** They treat of the public affairs of the time: ITEM, OF THE MOURNING STUFFS ORDERED FOR

THE PURPOSE OF PERFORMING HIS FUNERAL HONOURS DURING HIS LIFE.

M. Gachard supposes that this entry may have been transcribed by Gonzalez from the wrapper of a bundle of papers which he had found thus entitled, and the contents of which he had neglected to verify. If his subsequent researches did. not discover any such documents, it is to be regretted that he had not at least corrected the error of the inventory.

The gravest objection to the account of the affair which I have adopted, is, that it is not wholly confirmed by the prior Angulo. In Angulo's report, says M. Gachard, it is stated that Charles ordered his obsequies to be performed during his life; but it is not stated whether the order was fulfilled. Sandoval, professing to take Angulo for his guide, is altogether silent on the subject; and as he can hardly be supposed to have been ignorant of the work of Siguença, there is room for the presumption that he rejected the evidence of that churchman. But on a mere presumption, founded on the fact that a Benedictine did not choose to quote the writings of a Jeromite, I cannot agree to discard evidence otherwise respectable. I have therefore followed prior Siguença, of the Escorial, the revival of whose version of the story will, I hope, in time, counteract the inventions of later writers-inventions which I have more than once heard gravely recognised as instructive and authentic history in the pulpit discourses of popular divines.

1 Item, de los lutos que encargó para hacerse las honras en vida. Bull. de l'Acad. roy. xii. Première Partie, p. 257.

? Id., p. 259.

It may be a source of disappointment to my readers, as it is to myself, that I have not been able to lay before them any of the original letters of the emperor and his servants, and their royal and official correspondents. In obtaining access, however, to the manuscript of Gonzalez, I was subjected to conditions which rendered this impossible. The French government, I was informed, had entertained the design of publishing the entire work-a design which the revolution of 1848 of course laid upon the shelf, but which, I trust, will ere long be carried into effect. Meanwhile, I believe that neither the memoir nor the letters contain any interesting fact, or trait of character, which will not be found in the following pages, with some illustrations of the emperor and his history, gathered from other sources, which I hope may not be found altogether without value.

The portrait of the emperor, on my title-page, is taken from the fine print, engraved by Eneas Vico from his own drawing,―a head surrounded by a florid framework of architectural and emblematical ornament. This seems to have been the portrait which Charles, according to Lodovico Dolce, examined so curiously and approved so highly, and for which he rewarded Vico with two hundred crowns.1 The drawing was probably made several years before the plate was engraved, but I have been unable to find any satisfactory contemporary portrait of the emperor in his latter days. Perhaps none exists, as Charles, at the age of thirty-five, considered himself, as he told the painter Holanda, already too old for limning purposes. The eagle and ornaments around the present head, are selected from woodcuts in Spanish books of 15452 and 1552.3

KEIR; 31st May, 1852.

'Dialogo della Pittura de M. Lod. Dolce, sm. 8vo. Vinegia: 1557. fol. 18. 2 El. Ant. Nebrissensis; Rerum a Fernando et Elizabetha, gest., &c., fol. Granada: 1545.

J. C. Calvete: Viage del principe D. Phelippe, fol. Anvers: 1552. The neatly executed arms on the title-page bear the mark generally attributed to Juan D'Arphe y Villafañe, the famous goldsmith, engraver, and artistic-author of Valladolid.