. Their free and social tempers were
chilled by his austere demeanor. They contrasted it with the affable
deportment of his father, who could so well conform to the customs of
the different nations under his sceptre, and who seemed perfectly to
comprehend their characters,--the astute policy of the Italian, the
home-bred simplicity of the German, and the Castilian propriety and
point of honor.[37] With the latter only of these had Philip anything in
common. He was in everything a Spaniard. He talked of nothing, seemed to
think of nothing, but Spain.[38] The Netherlands were to him a foreign
land, with which he had little sympathy. His counsellors and companions
were wholly Spanish. The people of Flanders felt, that, under his sway,
little favor was to be shown to them; and they looked forward to the
time when all the offices of trust in their own country would be given
to Castilians, in the same manner as those of Castile, in the early days
of Charles the Fifth, had been given to Flemings.[39]

Yet the emperor seemed so little aware of his son's unpopularity, that
he was at this very time making arrangements for securing to him the
imperial crown. He had summoned a meeting of the electors and great
lords of the empire, to be held at Augsburg, in August, 1550. There he
proposed to secure Philip's election as king of the Romans, so soon as
he had obtained his brother Ferdinand's surrender of that dignity. But
Charles did not show, in all this, his usual knowledge of human nature.
The lust of power on his son's account--ineffectual for happiness as he
had found the possession of it in his own case--seems to have entirely
blinded him.

He repaired with Philip to Augsburg, where they were met by Ferdinand
and the members of the German diet. But it was in vain that Charles
solicited his brother to waive his claim to the imperial succession in
favor of his nephew. Neither solicitations nor arguments, backed by the
entreaties, even the tears, it is said, of their common sister, the
Regent Mary, could move Ferdinand to forego the splendid inheritance.
Charles was not more successful when he changed his ground, and urged
his brother to acquiesce in Philip's election as his successor in the
dignity of king of the Romans; or, at least, in his being associated in
that dignity--a thing unprecedented--with his cousin Maximilian,
Ferdinand's son, who, it was understood, was destined by the electors to
succeed his father.

This young