m the misery of his unhappy lot. One writer tells us that it was
hastened by a strong purgative dose, administered by his father's orders,
and that he was really assassinated. However that be, Philip had little
reason to be sorry at the death of his lunatic son. To one of his austere
temperament it was probably an easy solution of a difficult problem.

Less than three months passed after the death of Carlos when Isabella
followed him to the grave. She was then but twenty-three years old,--about
the same age as himself. The story was soon set afloat that Philip had
murdered both his son and his wife, moved thereto by jealousy; and from
this has arisen the romantic story of secret love between the two, with
the novels and dramas based thereon. In all probability the story is
without foundation. Philip is said to have been warmly loved by his wife,
and the poison which carried her away seems to have been the heavy doses
of medicine with which the doctors of that day sought to cure a passing
illness.

SPAIN'S GREATEST VICTORY AT SEA.

On the 16th of September, 1571, there sailed from the harbor of Messina
one of the greatest fleets the Mediterranean had ever borne upon its
waves. It consisted of more than three hundred vessels, most of them
small, but some of great bulk for that day, carrying forty pieces of
artillery. On board these ships were eighty thousand men. Of these, less
than thirty thousand were soldiers, for in those days, when war-galleys
were moved by oars rather than sails, great numbers of oarsmen were
needed. At the head of this powerful armament was Don John of Austria,
brother of Philip II., and the ablest naval commander that Spain
possessed.

At sunrise on the 7th of October the Christian fleet came in sight, at the
entrance to the Bay of Lepanto, on the west of Greece, of the great
Turkish armament, consisting of nearly two hundred and fifty royal
galleys, with a number of smaller vessels in the rear. On these ships are
said to have been not less than one hundred and twenty thousand men. A
great battle for the supremacy of Christian or Mohammedan was about to be
fought between two of the largest fleets ever seen in the Mediterranean.

For more than a century the Turks had been masters of Constantinople and
the Eastern Empire, and had extended their dominion far to the west. The
Mediterranean had become a Turkish lake, which the fleets of the Ottoman
emperors swept at will. Cyprus had falle