setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were
composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin,
but in Greek, Hebrew, and even Chaldee.

So lived and so died a noble man; more noble--to my mind--than many a
victorious warrior, or successful statesman, or canonised saint. To know
facts, and to heal diseases, were the two objects of his life. For them
he toiled, as few men have toiled; and he died in harness, at his
work--the best death any man can die.

VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST

I cannot begin a sketch of the life of this great man better than by
trying to describe a scene so picturesque, so tragic in the eyes of those
who are wont to mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes of those
who prefer to laugh over them, that the reader will not be likely to
forget either it or the actors in it.

It is a darkened chamber in the College of Alcala, in the year 1562,
where lies, probably in a huge four-post bed, shrouded in stifling
hangings, the heir-apparent of the greatest empire in the then world, Don
Carlos, only son of Philip II., and heir-apparent of Spain, the
Netherlands, and all the Indies. A short sickly boy of sixteen, with a
bull head, a crooked shoulder, a short leg, and a brutal temper, he will
not be missed by the world if he should die. His profligate career seems
to have brought its own punishment. To the scandal of his father, who
tolerated no one's vices save his own, as well as to the scandal of the
university authorities of Alcala, he has been scouring the streets at the
head of the most profligate students, insulting women, even ladies of
rank, and amenable only to his lovely young stepmother, Elizabeth of
Valois, Isabel de la Paz, as the Spaniards call her, the daughter of
Catherine de Medicis, and sister of the King of France. Don Carlos
should have married her, had not his worthy father found it more
advantageous for the crown of Spain, as well as more pleasant for him
Philip, to marry her himself. Whence came heart-burnings, rage,
jealousies, romances, calumnies, of which two last--in as far at least as
they concern poor Elizabeth--no wise man now believes a word.

Going on some errand on which he had no business--there are two stories,
neither of them creditable nor necessary to repeat--Don Carlos has fallen
down stairs and broken his head. He comes, by his Portuguese mother's
side, of a house deeply tainted with insanity; and such a