and the head of the Catholic Church.
Solyman had come into the league at the invitation of the Christian
princes. But it was not found so easy to lay the spirit of mischief as
it had been to raise it.

The weight of the war, however, fell, as was just, most heavily on the
author of it. Paul, from his palace of the Vatican, could trace the
march of the enemy by the smoking ruins of the Campagna. He saw his
towns sacked, his troops scattered, his very capital menaced, his
subjects driven by ruinous taxes to the verge of rebellion. Even peace,
when it did come, secured to him none of the objects for which he had
contended, while he had the humiliating consciousness that he owed this
peace, not to his own arms, but to the forbearance--or the superstition
of his enemies. One lesson he might have learned,--that the thunders of
the Vatican could no longer strike terror into the hearts of princes, as
in the days of the Crusades.

In this war Paul had called in the French to aid him in driving out the
Spaniards. The French, he said, might easily be dislodged hereafter;
"but the Spaniards were like dog-grass, which is sure to strike root
wherever it is cast."--This was the last great effort that was made to
overturn the Spanish power in Naples; and the sceptre of that kingdom
continued to be transmitted in the dynasty of Castile, with as little
opposition as that of any other portion of its broad empire.

Being thus relieved of his military labors, Paul set about those great
reforms, the expectation of which had been the chief inducement to his
election. But first he gave a singular proof of self-command, in the
reforms which he introduced into his own family. Previously to his
election, no one, as we have seen, had declaimed more loudly than Paul
against nepotism,--the besetting sin of his predecessors, who, most of
them old men and without children, naturally sought a substitute for
these in their nephews and those nearest of kin. Paul's partiality for
his nephews was made the more conspicuous by the profligacy of their
characters. Yet the real bond which held the parties together was hatred
of the Spaniards. When peace came, and this bond of union was dissolved,
Paul readily opened his ears to the accusations against his kinsmen.
Convinced at length of their unworthiness, and of the flagrant manner in
which they had abused his confidence, he deprived the Caraffas of all
their offices, and banished them to the farthest part