h, and unable to stand alone, he told the states
of Flanders that he resigned the government because it was a burden
which his shattered frame could no longer bear. It was to no sudden
impulse, however, that he yielded; but he calmly fulfilled a resolve
which he had cherished for many years. Indeed, he seems to have
determined to abdicate, almost at the time when he determined to reign.
For so powerful a mind has rarely been so tardy in giving evidence of
power. Until he appeared in Italy in 1530, the thirtieth year of his
age, his strong will had been as wax in the hands of other men. Up to
that time the most laborious, reserved, and inflexible of princes was
the most docile subject of his ministers. But if his mind was slow to
ripen, his body was no less premature in its decay. By nature and
hereditary habit a keen sportsman, and in youth unwearied in tracking
the wolf and the bear over the hills of Toledo and Granada, he was
reduced, ere he had turned fifty, to content himself with shooting crows
and daws amongst the trees of his gardens. Familiarized by feeble health
with images of death, he had determined twenty years before his
abdication to interpose some interval of rest between the council and
the grave. He had agreed with his empress, who died in 1538, that as
soon as the state affairs and the age of their children should permit,
they should retire into religious seclusion: he into a cloister of
friars, and she into a nunnery. In 1542, he spoke of his design to the
duke of Gandia; and in 1546 it was whispered at court, and was mentioned
by the sharp-eared envoy of Venice, in a dispatch to the Doge. Since
then, decaying health and declining fortune had maintained him in that
general vexation of spirit which he shared with king Solomon. His later
schemes of conquest and policy had resulted in disaster and disgrace.
The Pope, the great Turk, the Protestant princes, and the king of
France, were once more arrayed against the potentate who in the bright
morning of his career had imposed laws upon them all. The flight from
Innsbruck had avenged the cause which seemed lost at Muhlberg; Guise and
the gallant townsmen of Metz had enabled the French wits to turn the
emperor's proud motto, _Plus ultra_, into _Non ultra metas_. Whilst the
Protestant faith was spreading even in the dominions of the house of
Hapsburg, the doctors of the church assembled in that council which had
cost so much treasure and intrigue, continued to