ings of Van Male and the dysentery; now listening to the book of Esdras, or criticising the wars of the Maccabees, and now laughing heartily at a filthy saying of the Turkish envoy; groaning in his bed, in a complication of pains and disorders; or mounting his favourite genet, matchless in shape and blood, to review his artillery in the vale of the Moselle.

In spite of his busy life, Van Male found time for his beloved books, and De Praet being also a bookcollector, the letters addressed to him are full of notices of borrowings and lendings, buyings and exchangings, of favourite authors, generally the classics. At the memorable flight from Innspruck, when the emperor in his litter was smuggled by torchlight through the passes into Carinthia, the library of Van Male fell, with the rest of the imperial booty, into the hands of the pikemen of duke Maurice. Ah,' says he, 'with how many tears and lamentations have I wailed the funeral wail of my library!' When the emperor's great army lay before Metz, sanguine of success and plunder, the afflicted scholar prepared for his revenge, and engaged some Spanish veterans, masters in the art of pillage, to assist him in securing the cream of the literary spoil. 'Non ultra metas,' however, was the new reading which the gallantry of Guise enabled the wits of Metz to offer of the famous 'Plus ultra' of Austria; and Van Male was balked of the hours of delicious rapine to which he looked forward amongst the cabinets of the curious.

But if he were willing on an occasion to make free with other men's book-shelves, he was also willing that other men should make free with the produce of his own brains. The emperor having read Paolo Giovio's account of his expedition to Tunis, was desirous that certain errors should be corrected. Van Male was therefore desired to undertake the task, and he com

menced it, so new was the art of reviewing, by reading the work four times through. He then drew up, with the assistance of hints from the emperor, a long letter to the author, in a style soft and courtly as the bishop's own, which was signed and sent by Luis de Avila, who, having served in the war, was judged more eligible as the ostensible critic.

Under the pressure of duties at the desk and in the dressing-room, the health of Van Male gave way, and he was sometimes little less a valetudinarian than the great man to whom he administered Maccabees, physic, or iced-beer. He had seized the opportunity of a short absence on sick-leave to crown a long attachment by marriage; and sometime before his master's abdication, he had applied for a place in the treasury of the Netherlands, under his friend, De Praet. The emperor, on hearing of his entrance into the wedded state, expressed the warmest approbation of the step, and interest in his welfare. You will hardly believe,' wrote the simple-minded good man, with what approval Cæsar received my communication, and how when we were alone, not once, but several times, he laid me down rules for my future guidance, exhorting me to frugality, parsimony, and other virtues of domestic life.' majesty, however, gave him nothing but good advice, unwilling, perhaps, to diminish the value of his precepts by lessening the necessity of practising them. Getting no place, therefore, Van Male was forced, with his dear. Hippolyta and her babes, to encounter the bay of Biscay, and the mountain roads of Spain.

His

The emperor, indeed, could not do without him. Peevish with gout, and wearied by the delays at Yuste, and the discontent among his people, he one day scolded him so harshly for being out of the way when he called, that Van Male tendered his resignation, which was

accepted. But, ere a week had elapsed, both parties had cooled down; and the Spanish secretary remarked that William had not only been forgiven, but was as much in favour as before. His temper must have been excellent, for he contrived to be a favourite with his master without being the detestation of his Castillian fellow-servants.

The doctor of the court was a young Fleming, named Henry Mathys, or, in the Spanish form, Mathisio. He had not held the appointment long, and there being much sickness at Xarandilla, it was thought advisable to summon to his aid Dr. Giovanni Antonio Mole, from Milan. Another Mathys, Cornelius Henry, or as he was generally called doctor Cornelio, who had long been physician to the queen of Hungary, was also sent for to Valladolid. They remained, however, only a few weeks in attendance, and Henry Mathys was again left in sole charge of the health of the emperor and his people. He appears to have discharged his functions creditably; and with the pen, at least, he was indefatigable, for every variation in the imperial symptoms, and every pill and potion with which he endeavoured to neutralize the slow poisons daily served up by the cook, he duly chronicled in Latin despatches, usually addressed to the king, and written with singular dulness and prolixity.

Giovanni, or, as he was familiarly called, Juanelo Torriano, was a native of Cremona, who had attained considerable fame as a mechanician, and in that capacity had been introduced into the emperor's service many years before, by the celebrated Alonso de Avalos, marquess del Vasto. A curious old clock, made in 1402, by Zelandin, for Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, was brought from Paris as a present to Charles at his coronation, in 1530, at Bologna. Being much out of repair, it was put into the hands of Torriano, who so skilfully

restored it, or rather made a new clock with the help of its materials, that the emperor took him with him to Spain.' He had now brought him to Estremadura to take care of his clocks and watches, and to construct these and other pieces of mechanism for the amusement of his leisure hours.

Besides the envoys and other official people whom state affairs called to Xarandilla, there were several ancient servants of the emperor who came thither to tender the homage of their loyalty. One of these deserves especial notice for the place he holds in the history, not only of Spain, but of the religious struggles of the sixteenth century-Francisco Borja, who, a few years before, had exchanged his dukedom of Gandia for the robe of the order of Jesus. In his brilliant youth this remarkable man had been the star and pride of the nobility of Spain. He was the heir of a great and wealthy house-a branch of the royal line of Aragon,— which had already given two pontiffs to Rome, and to history several personages remarkable for the brightness. of their virtues and the blackness of their crimes. universe,' cried a poet, some ages later, in a frenzy of panegyric, is full of Borja; there are Borjas famous by sea, Borjas great by land, Borjas enthroned in heaven;" and he might have added, with equal truth, that in the lower regions also, the house of Borja was fairly represented. Francisco was distinguished no less by the favour of the emperor than by the splendour of his

The

' Falconnet: Memoires de l'Academie, 4to. Paris, 1753, vol. xx. pp. 440. He quotes as his authority, Bernard. Saccus, De Italicarum rerum varietate. Leb. vii. c. 17, 4to. Papiæ, 1565; and he calls Torriano, Joannes Janellus.

Epitome de la Eloquencia Española, par D. Francisco Josef Artiga, 12mo. Huesca: 1692. See dedication to the duke of Gandia, by Fr. Man. Artiga, the author's son.

birth, the graces of his person, and the endowments of his mind. Born to be a courtier and a soldier, he was also an accomplished scholar and no inconsiderable statesman. He broke horses and trained hawks as well as the most expert master of the manage and the mews; he composed masses which long kept their place in the choirs of Spain; he was well versed in polite learning, and deeply read in the mathematics; he wrote Latin and Castillian, as his works still testify, with ease and grace; he served in Africa and Italy with distinction; and as viceroy of Catalonia, he displayed abilities for administration which in a few years might have placed him high amongst the Mendozas and De Lannoys. The pleasures and honours of the world, however, seemed from the first to have but slender attraction for the man so rarely fitted to obtain them. In the midst of life and its triumphs, his thoughts perpetually turned upon death and its mysteries. Ever punctilious in the performance of his religious duties, he early began to delight in spiritual contemplation and to discipline his mind by self-imposed penance. Even in his favourite sport of falconry he found occasion for self-punishment, by resolutely fixing his eyes on the ground at the moment when he knew that his best hawk was about to stoop upon the heron. These tendencies were confirmed by an accident which followed the death of the empress Isabella. As her master of the horse, it was Borja's duty to attend the body from Toledo to the chapel-royal of Granada, and to make oath to its identity ere it was laid in the grave. But when the coffin was opened and the cerements drawn aside, the progress of decay was found to have been so rapid that the mild and lovely face of Isabella could no longer be recognised by the most trusted and the most faithful of her servants. His