ijo. Lo que del Patriarca Abraham en el sacrificio de Isaac
su unigenito. A todo caso humano excede la gloria que de esto le
resulta, y no hay con quien comparalla." (Dignidades de Castilla y Leon,
p. 417.) He closes this rare piece of courtly blasphemy by assuring us
that in point of fact Carlos died a natural death. The doctor wrote in
the early part of Philip the Third's reign, when the manner of the
prince's death was delicate ground for the historian.

[1527] Philip the Second is not the only Spanish monarch who has been
charged with the murder of his son. Leovogild, a Visigothic king of the
sixth century, having taken prisoner his rebel son, threw him into a
dungeon, where he was secretly put to death. The king was an Arian,
while the young prince was a Catholic, and might have saved his life if
he had been content to abjure his religion. By the Church of Rome,
therefore, he was regarded as a martyr; and it is a curious circumstance
that it was Philip the Second who procured the canonization of the
slaughtered Hermenegild from Pope Sixtus the Fifth.

For the story, taken from that voluminous compilation of Florez, "_La
Espana Sagrada_," I am indebted to Milman's History of Latin
Christianity (London, 1854, vol. I. p. 446), one of the remarkable works
of the present age, in which the author reviews, with curious erudition,
and in a profoundly philosophical spirit, the various changes that have
taken place in the Roman hierarchy: and while he fully exposes the
manifold errors and corruptions of the system, he shows throughout that
enlightened charity which is the most precious of Christian graces, as
unhappily it is the rarest.

[1528] Lettera di Nobili, Luglio 30, 1568, MS.

[1529] I have before me another will made by Don Carlos in 1564, in
Alcala de Henares, the original of which is still extant in the Archives
of Simancas. In one item of this document, he bequeathes five thousand
ducats to Don Martin de Cordova, for his gallant defence of Mazarquivir.

[1530] Lettera del Nunzio, Luglio 28, 1568, MS.--Quintana, Historia de
Madrid, fol. 369.

[1531] "Partieron con el cuerpo, aviendo el Rey con la entereza de animo
que mantuvo sienpre, conpuesto desde una ventana las diferencias de los
Consejos disposiendo la precedencia, cesando assi la competencia."
Cabrera, Filipe Segundo, lib. VIII. cap. 5.

[1532] The particulars of the ceremony are given by the Nunzio, Lettera
di 28 di Luglio, MS.--See also Quintana, H