nthusiasm and
eloquence of this arch-pleader lifted this sovereign, for a moment at
least, above herself toward the high level where Columbus himself
stood; and that she staked her jewels on the casting of this die must
always glorify Queen Isabella, and shine some glory on the nation whose
sovereign she was. For such reason we are predisposed in Charles V's
favor. He is as a messenger from one we love, whom we love because of
whence he comes. His mother, Joanna, died, crazed and of a broken
heart, from the indifference, perfidy, and neglect of her husband,
Philip, Archduke of Austria. Her story reads like a novelist's plot,
and reasonably too; for every fiction of woman's fidelity in love and
boundlessness and blindness of affection is borrowed from living
woman's conduct. Woman originates heroic episodes, her love surviving
the wildest winter of cruelty and neglect, as if a flower prevailed
against an Arctic climate, despite the month-long night and severity of
frosts, and still opened petals and dispensed odors as blossoming in
daytime and sunlight of a far, fair country.

The story of Joanna and Mary Tudor read surprisingly alike. In reading
these old chronicles, one would think woman's lot was melancholy as a
dreary day of uninterrupted rain. Doubtless her lot is ameliorated in
these better days, when she is not chattel but sovereign, and gives her
hand where her heart has gone before. But Queen Mary, dying alone,
longing for her Philip, who cared for her as much as a falcon for
singing-birds, turning her dying eyes southward where her Philip was,
moaning, "On my heart, when I am dead, you will find Philip's name
written!"--Mary Tudor was an echo of the pain and cry of Joanna,
Philip's grandmother, a princess lacking in beauty of person and in
sprightliness and culture of mind. Indeed, her intellect was weak to
the verge of insanity; her love for her husband, the Archduke of
Austria, doting, and its exhibition extravagant; and her jealousy, for
whose exercise there was ample opportunity, insane and passionate. One
thing she was, and that--a lover. Her husband was a sun; and the less
he shined on her, the more did she pine for his light. Than this, the
history of kingly conjugal relations has few sadder chapters. Archduke
Philip was young, engaging, affable, fond of society, preferring the
Netherlands to Spain, and anything to his wife's companionship. Joanna
and Philip were prospective heirs to the cr