documents which are his
own composition, and the letters which he wrote and received; but
only persons who have seen the original manuscripts, who have observed
the traces of his pen in side-notes and corrections, and the
handwritings of his secretaries in diplomatic commissions, in drafts
of Acts of Parliament, in expositions and formularies, in articles of
faith, in proclamations, in the countless multitude of documents of
all sorts, secular or ecclesiastical, which contain the real history
of this extraordinary reign--only they can realize the extent of labor
to which he sacrificed himself, and which brought his life to a
premature close. His personal faults were great, and he shared,
besides them, in the errors of his age; but far deeper blemishes would
be but as scars upon the features of a sovereign who in trying times
sustained nobly the honor of the English name, and carried the
commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its history.

III

CAESAR'S MISSION[36]

There is a legend that at the death of Charles V the accusing angel
appeared in heaven with a catalog of deeds which no advocate could
palliate--countries laid desolate, cities sacked and burned, lists of
hundreds of thousands of widows and children brought to misery by the
political ambition of a single man. The evil spirit demanded the
offender's soul, and it seemed as if mercy itself could not refuse him
the award. But at the last moment the Supreme Judge interfered. The
emperor, He said, had been sent into the world at a peculiar time, for
a peculiar purpose, and was not to be tried by the ordinary rules.
Titian has painted the scene: Charles kneeling before the throne, with
the consciousness, as became him, of human infirmities written upon
his countenance, yet neither afraid nor abject, relying in absolute
faith that the Judge of all mankind would do right.

[Footnote 36: From the concluding chapter of "Caesar--A Sketch."]

Of Caesar too it may be said that he came into the world at a special
time and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the
Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles
on which human society had been constructed were dead also. There
remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of
justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of
government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and
labor and eat the fruit of thei