imputation is sufficiently justified
by what we know of Philip; but it is uncalled for. We do not care to
hear about what the despot might have done. We know what he did do, and
the record is sufficiently damning. There is no harm in our giving the
Devil his due, or as Llorente wittily says, "Il ne faut pas calomnier
meme l'Inquisition."

Philip inherited all his father's bad qualities, without any of his good
ones; and so it is much easier to judge him than his father. Charles,
indeed, is one of those characters whom one hardly knows whether to love
or hate, to admire or despise. He had much bad blood in him. Charles the
Bold and Ferdinand of Aragon were not grandparents to be proud of. Yet
with all this he inherited from his grandmother Isabella much that one
can like, and his face, as preserved by Titian, in spite of its frowning
brow and thick Burgundian lip, is rather prepossessing, while the face
of Philip is simply odious. In intellect he must probably be called
great, though his policy often betrayed the pettiness of selfishness.
If, in comparison with the mediaeval emperor whose fame he envied, he
may justly be called Charles the Little, he may still, when compared to
a more modern emulator of Charlemagne,--the first of the Bonapartes,--be
considered great and enlightened. If he could lie and cheat more
consummately than any contemporary monarch, not excepting his rival,
Francis, he could still be grandly magnanimous, while the generosity of
Francis flowed only from the shallow surface of a maudlin good-nature.
He spoke many languages and had the tastes of a scholar, while his son
had only the inclinations of an unfeeling pedagogue. He had an inkling
of urbanity, and could in a measure become all things to all men, while
Philip could never show himself except as a gloomy, impracticable bigot.
It is for some such reasons as these, I suppose, that Mr. Buckle--no
friend to despots--speaks well of Charles, and that Mr. Froude is moved
to tell the following anecdote: While standing by the grave of Luther,
and musing over the strange career of the giant monk whose teachings had
gone so far to wreck his most cherished schemes and render his life a
failure, some fanatical bystander advised the Emperor to have the body
taken up and burned in the market-place. "There was nothing," says Mr.
Froude, "unusual in the proposal; it was the common practice of the
Catholic Church with the remains of heretics, who were held unwort