in magnificent habiliments, placed upon its feet, and
supported by a martial staff, and that thus prepared for a royal
interview, the mortal remains of Don John were presented to his Most
Catholic Majesty. Philip is said to have manifested emotion at sight of
the hideous spectre--for hideous and spectral, despite of jewels,
balsams, and brocades, must have been that unburied corpse, aping life in
attitude and vestment, but standing there only to assert its privilege of
descending into the tomb. The claim was granted, and Don John of Austria
at last found repose by the side of his imperial father.

A sufficient estimate of his character has been apparent in the course of
the narrative. Dying before he had quite completed his thirty-third year,
he excites pity and admiration almost as much as censure. His military
career was a blaze of glory. Commanding in the Moorish wars at
twenty-three, and in the Turkish campaigns at twenty-six, he had achieved
a matchless renown before he had emerged from early youth; but his sun
was destined to go down at noon. He found neither splendor nor power in
the Netherlands, where he was deserted by his king and crushed by the
superior genius of the Prince of Orange. Although he vindicated his
martial skill at Gemblours, the victory was fruitless. It was but the
solitary sprig of the tiger from his jungle, and after that striking
conflict his life was ended in darkness and obscurity. Possessing
military genius of a high order, with extraordinary personal bravery, he
was the last of the paladins and the crusaders. His accomplishments were
also considerable, and he spoke Italian, German, French, and Spanish with
fluency. His beauty was remarkable; his personal fascinations
acknowledged by either sex; but as a commander of men, excepting upon the
battle-field, he possessed little genius. His ambition was the ambition
of a knight-errant, an adventurer, a Norman pirate; it was a personal and
tawdry ambition. Vague and contradictory dreams of crowns, of royal
marriages, of extemporized dynasties, floated ever before him; but he was
himself always the hero of his own romance. He sought a throne in Africa
or in Britain; he dreamed of espousing Mary of Scotland at the expense of
Elizabeth, and was even thought to aspire secretly to the hand of the
great English Queen herself. Thus, crusader and bigot as he was, he was
willing to be reconciled with heresy, if heresy could furnish him with a
throne.