which had begun to fade, and to recall the image of
Castilian sovereignty which had been so long obscured in the blaze of
imperial grandeur.

His education had been but meagre. In an age when all kings and noblemen
possessed many languages, he spoke not a word of any tongue but
Spanish,--although he had a slender knowledge of French and Italian,
which he afterwards learned to read with comparative facility. He had
studied a little history and geography, and he had a taste for sculpture,
painting, and architecture. Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling
for art, he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier
part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain,
Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired
with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored
lands and in that golden age, had indeed been difficult.

The King's personal habits were regular. His delicate health made it
necessary for him to attend to his diet, although he was apt to exceed in
sweetmeats and pastry. He slept much, and took little exercise
habitually, but he had recently been urged by the physicians to try the
effect of the chase as a corrective to his sedentary habits. He was most
strict in religious observances, as regular at mass, sermons, and vespers
as a monk; much more, it was thought by many good Catholics, than was
becoming to his rank and age. Besides several friars who preached
regularly for his instruction, he had daily discussions with others on
abstruse theological points. He consulted his confessor most minutely as
to all the actions of life, inquiring anxiously whether this proceeding
or that were likely to burthen his conscience. He was grossly licentious.
It was his chief amusement to issue forth at night disguised, that he
might indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence in the common
haunts of vice. This was his solace at Brussels in the midst of the
gravest affairs of state. He was not illiberal, but, on the contrary, it
was thought that he would have been even generous, had he not been
straitened for money at the outset of his career. During a cold winter,
he distributed alms to the poor of Brussels with an open hand. He was
fond of jests in private, and would laugh immoderately, when with a few
intimate associates, at buffooneries, which he checked in public by the
icy gravity of his deportment. He dressed usually in the Spanish fashio