on of the earth. The death
of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was
unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title
which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and
Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent
magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village
that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at
his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the
richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps
consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose,
Charles was crowned with the _iron_ crown, which tradition ascribed to
the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train;
the gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was
held a captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the
sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the
_golden_ crown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty,
the Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, whose fancy revived the
visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the ignominious
flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could observe,
that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative sale of
privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election of his
son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that
his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of
his expenses.

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the
same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes
the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign
and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted
their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their
chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed
their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of M