y, and held
at that moment a fleet ready to sail against Naples, in co-operation with
the Pope and France. Thus the Infidel, the Protestant, and the Holy
Church were all combined together to crush him. Towards all the great
powers of the earth, he stood not in the attitude of a conqueror, but of
a disappointed, baffled, defeated potentate. Moreover, he had been foiled
long before in his earnest attempts to secure the imperial throne for
Philip. Ferdinand and Maximilian had both stoutly resisted his arguments
and his blandishments. The father had represented the slender patrimony
of their branch of the family, compared with the enormous heritage of
Philip; who, being after all, but a man, and endowed with finite powers,
might sink under so great a pressure of empire as his father wished to
provide for him. Maximilian, also, assured his uncle that he had as good
an appetite for the crown as Philip, and could digest the dignity quite
as easily. The son, too, for whom the Emperor was thus solicitous, had
already, before the abdication, repaid his affection with ingratitude. He
had turned out all his father's old officials in Milan, and had refused
to visit him at Brussels, till assured as to the amount of ceremonial
respect which the new-made king was to receive at the hands of his
father.

Had the Emperor continued to live and reign, he would have found himself
likewise engaged in mortal combat with that great religious movement in
the Netherlands, which he would not have been able many years longer to
suppress, and which he left as a legacy of blood and fire to his
successor. Born in the same year with his century, Charles was a
decrepit, exhausted man at fifty-five, while that glorious age, in which
humanity was to burst forever the cerements in which it had so long been
buried, was but awakening to a consciousness of its strength.

Disappointed in his schemes, broken in his fortunes, with income
anticipated, estates mortgaged, all his affairs in confusion; failing in
mental powers, and with a constitution hopelessly shattered; it was time
for him to retire. He showed his keenness in recognizing the fact that
neither his power nor his glory would be increased, should he lag
superfluous on the stage where mortification instead of applause was
likely to be his portion. His frame was indeed but a wreck. Forty years
of unexampled gluttony had done their work. He was a victim to gout,
asthma, dyspepsia, gravel. He was crippl