rned to their homes, and the archbishop took
the road to Toledo, most of the household of the emperor were also ready
to depart. Only three Flemings remained behind for a few days to bring
up the rear with the heavy baggage. Within about a fortnight after the
death of Charles, the Jeromites of Yuste were again alone among the
yellow October woods, and the convent relapsed into its ancient
obscurity, never more to be remembered, except as the cell of the
imperial recluse.

So ended the career of Charles V., the greatest monarch of the memorable
sixteenth century. The vast extent of his dominions in Europe, the
wealth poured into his coffers by the New World, the energy and sagacity
of his mind, and the important crisis of the world's history in which he
acted, have combined to make him more famous than any of the successors
of Charlemagne. The admiration which was raised by the great events of
his reign was sustained to the last by the unwonted manner of its close.
In our days, abdication has been so frequently the refuge of weak men
fallen on evil times, or the last shift of baffled bad men, that it is
difficult for us to conceive the sensation which must have been produced
by the retirement of Charles. Now that the "divinity which doth hedge a
king" has decayed into a bowing wall and a tottering fence, it is almost
impossible to look upon the solemn ceremony which was enacted at
Brussels, with the feeling and eyes of the sixteenth century. The act of
the emperor was not, indeed, a thing altogether unheard of, but it was
known only in books, and belonged, as the Spaniard used to say, to the
days of king Wamba. The knights of the Fleece who wept on the platform
around their Caesar, knew little more about Diocletian than was known by
the farmers and clothiers who elbowed each other in the crowd below. It
was only some studious monk who was aware that a Theodosius and an Isaac
had submitted their heads to the razor to save their necks from the
bowstring; that a Lothaire had led a hermit's life in the Ardennes; that
a Carloman had milked the ewes of the Benedictines at Monte Cassino. The
retirement of Charles, therefore, was fitted to strike the imagination
of men by the novelty of the occasion, by the solemnity of its
circumstances, by the splendor of the resigned crown, and by the
world-wide fame with which it had been worn.

There can be no doubt that the emperor gave the true reasons of his act,
when, panting for breat