. They composed satirical and other songs
against the Pope--one of these in the form of a parody on our Lord's
prayer--and sung them in the public streets, and even under the windows
of the pontifical palace.

To those deeds, which proved how little the heart of the emperor was
disposed to favour the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, we could add many
others which the patient investigation of German writers have discovered
in the archives of Italy. A tolerable knowledge, however, of the
occurrences of that reign will be sufficient to convince us that Charles
V. was not sincerely religious until age, infirmities, and misanthropy,
had brought upon him the misfortunes which attended the last years of his
life, and induced him to abdicate the crown, and retire to the solitudes
of Yuste. It is already known that, at the beginning of Luther's
rebellion against the Roman church, Charles resolved to avail himself of
the terror which the name of that celebrated reformer inspired in the
hearts of Roman Catholics, in order to intimidate the court of Rome and
humiliate its pride. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that, with
this vacillation of principles and declared antipathy to Rome, Charles
should have regarded, in his dominions, if not with manifest favour, at
least with cold indifference, the propagation of what were then called,
by Spaniards, the new doctrines.

Under his reign, notwithstanding the austere character of his minister,
the Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, the Inquisition dared not, in Spain,
commence a system of intolerance.

One proof of this assertion is to be found in the progress which, at that
time, Lutheranism made in the Peninsula. To those days belonged, in
truth, the illustrious victims who were subsequently sacrificed on the
altar of fanaticism, and whose names may be found by the reader in the
celebrated work of M'Crie, or in that of De Castro. {25}

Philip II. ascended the throne, and the whole aspect of the unhappy
nation, delivered over by Providence to the hands of that implacable
enemy of humanity, was entirely changed. Philip's inclination was to
hate and persecute; and religion, in name, afforded him the pretext for
giving vent, with impunity, to those propensities, and covering with a
sacred veil all the excesses of a bloodthirsty and revengeful heart to
which he could abandon himself. Some writers have doubted the sincerity
of his religious sentiments, considering them as mere prete