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house would stand straight on end, but for the curl in it!

The landlord opens the carriage door himself, hat in hand; and the general gets out. He is a shorter man than the colonel, by a half-inch, or more. He has a broader and still more open face, a wider back, and carries a respectable corporation before him. His clothes are thin, the colors light, and his face is red; while down out of his fub hangs a heavy gold chain, with two ponderous, ancestral seals, and a key between. The general takes off his white beaver courteously to the colonel, who instantly steps forward to shake him by the hand.

While these congratulations are being exchanged, down the carriage steps carefully comes Dinah. She is dressed mostly in white, and has a cotton 'kerchief of this color, striped with blue, tied so completely over her hair, that only enough of it remains in sight to show that it is becoming silvered o'er with the pale cast of age; while, over the 'kerchief, and directly on the back of her head, is set a bonnet of open straw and muslin, originally made for the general's pretty daughter, when she entered her teens, and so small, withal, that it serves merely to cover the good dame's cerebellum.

The baby is then handed out to Dinah; the rest follow; and when the trunks have been taken down, and the carriage pockets emptied, Cuffy, the coachman, effects his exit, with a crack of the whip, such as makes not only his own horses, but all those within an eighth of a mile, jump-each one as though it were about his own ears the lash was playing.

And when now, any time within the next half-hour, the respectable Virginia farmer or esquire, well to do at home, rides up to the hotel door on his nag, a great-coat rolled up, and tied, together with an umbrella, behind the saddle, and a pair of leathern bags, containing a scanty change of apparel, projecting beneath his thighs, the careless landlord scarcely deigns to touch the bell once. A sleepy-looking negro

holds the new-comer's bridle while he dismounts; another, lazily taking the saddle-bags on his shoulders and the roll under his arm, conducts him to his chamber; and there is no more noise made over the arrival, compared with the previous excitement, than might be

likened to the blowing of a horn reversed.

XIII.

FINALE.

For the rest-and my "forty days" in the Virginia hotels are now finished -there are a dozen or more of these springs. They all lie in the pretty Alleghanian valleys, within an easy day's, or half day's drive from each other-the White Sulphur being in the centre. The roads are generally good, with enough which are bad to accommodate those who require a little jolting. The stage-coaches are well-built; the drivers are skillful; and a dash, on the outside of the carriage, through these hills, refreshes and invigorates instead of fatiguing the traveler. In fact, the now almost obsolete pleasure of journeying by wheel, may here be enjoyed in its perfection, with social chat, preceded by no formal introductions, with acquaintances, and perhaps friends made, whom it will always be a pleasure to remember, and with such good, plain fare, at road-side inns, as the sharpened appetite will pronounce better than the very chef-d'œuvres of cooks in town.

The Springs are of all waters, having for their principal ingredients sulphur, alum, iron, magnesia, or salt. They are also tri-colored, with deposits, white, red, and blue. Some are used for drinking, and some for bathing. The invalid may have his choice; and whatever his complaint, say the doctors, it makes no difference, he is sure to be cured. The cripple is set up at the Hot Springs, and the malade imaginaire is made whole at the Warm. The dyspeptic is put on alum water, and the Southwesterner, with bile in his blood and jaundice in his eyes, is ordered to drink of the White Sulphur or the Salt. The Healing Spring is good for the gout; ladies, weary after the winter's dancing, are strengthened by bathing in the two Sweet Waters; the Blue Sulphur, taken before eating venison steaks, is said to be excellent against all devils of the same color; and, ever since the publication of the learned Dr. Burke's book, it is every man's own fault, if he don't know that the Red Sulphur is a certain cure for consumption.

The summer climate of these mountains is truly delightful. The boundless forests, on their tops, are, indeed, a

magnet for the clouds; so that rain often occurs in the day's chapter of accidents. But it is merely a passing shower-a dash of big, fast-falling drops-soon gone over the hills and far away. The water runs immedi

ately off the declivities, the drops hang only a few moments from leaf and flower, and the brilliant sun, dissipating the vapors, dries the surface of the ground, and takes away all damp

ness.

It is hot in the sunlight; but you live perpetually embowered in shade. In that, the mercury daily stands square against the point of summer heat, or occasionally a little above it, so that one revels in fine linen; and, if he makes any use of the mint which grows invitingly by every path-side, it is more as a luxury than a necessity. Sitting under the oaks, or promenading on the piazza, the summer idler finds that he can keep cool from one end of the dogdays to the other, without so much as touching a straw. This, to some persons, may be rather provoking than otherwise. But, with such pure air to breathe, fanned by the softest breezes

instead of being whipped by the winds of the sea-shore bathing place, and nightly refreshed by sleep beneath a blanket, if you will, but with windows wide open, and disturbed by no worse serenading than that of the banjo, a man is sufficiently happy without stimulus or excitements of any kind. To look out upon the green pastures and the luxuriant woods-to wind gently up the hill-tops, or stroll by the side of brooks-to watch the never-ceasing play of light and shade on the mountains and in the valleys, and to gaze at the fantastic shapes of the summer clouds, now drifting in fleeces through the sky, now towering in gorgeous peaks and ranges above the horizon, and, at evening, aglow with all the prismatic flames which burst from the apparent disruption of the setting sun: in the enjoyment of these tranquil, rural pleasures, the soul quite forgets the more highly scented cups of civic dissipation, as well as the rile in the mug of the world's ordinary toil, and lives in the midst of such innocent delights as, by the poets, are fabled to lie around its infancy.

VOL. VII.-4

THE FALCON.

OUT in the sunshine, out in the air,

My soul is a falcon strong;

I mount aloft with the speed of thought, And strike at the quarry of wrong.

The brave bright sun, so merry and old, He lends his strength to my wings, And I soar till I see the golden gate, Where the lark at morning sings.

But let my lady summon me back
And I come, as a falcon should,
Out of the sunshine, out of the air,
To yield my eyes to the hood.

MR. PRESCOTT'S PHILIP THE SECOND.

THE sixteenth century is, to the na

tions of the modern world, all, and more than all, that the age of Cæsar was to the Roman Empire.

The visible development of modern society dates from that epoch; modern politics, modern literature, modern philosophy, modern industry, all shot up in the sixteenth century to the light. The century was born to greatness; it inherited from its immediate predecessor such a legacy in the invention of printing and the discovery of the New World, as had been the portion of no previous era since the advent of Christianity.

Thus magnificently endowed, it enriched history with wonders and with heroes, with triumphs of character and with miracles of genius, which tinge all the annals of the time with hues of romance. The whole aspect of Europe, in that century, is incomparably picturesque. The grand masses and heavy shadows of feudalism are everywhere touched and kindled by flashing lights of individual power, and endeavor, and achievement.

Everywhere, the crystallization of nationalities was going on-the concentration of authority, the expansion of enterprise.

Life in the middle ages had been comparatively simple; its lines strongly marked; the wants of men few; their passions exclusive and intense. In the sixteenth century, life became suddenly richer, more varied: a thousand new desires, curiosities, aspirations, awoke in the hearts of men. The limits of the physical world opened and receded before the followers of a Columbus and a Vasco de Gama: the horizon of the moral and the intellectual world widened on the daring eyes of a Luther, an Erasmus, and a Bruno. All that makes our modern life peculiar, first begins to appear distinctly, on the face of Europe, in the sixteenth century.

Of things both great and small, this is wonderfully true. In the sixteenth century, Europe began to colonize the East and the West; commerce and civilization followed the flags of Portugal, and Spain, and France, and England into the farthest Indies, as of old it had sailed with the galleys of Greece around the coasts of the Mediterranean.

Luxuries, now become the necessaries

of modern life, then first lent a new grace and a new comfort to existence. All the arts, from agriculture to engraving, flourished with the vigor of spring.

In the sixteenth century, an English statesman first shook his wise head over the columns of a morning paper; in the sixteenth century, an English yeoman brewed the first mug of English beer from English hops; in the sixteenth century, the Anglican Church listened to its first sermons, and the English dining-table saw its first salads; then, the first coach-wheels rumbled through London streets, and the first spinningwheel sang by the peasant's door. Protestantism and philology, potatoes and tobacco, turnips and race-horses, Lyons silks and English stockings, dictionaries and tax-bills, street-lamps and telescopes, Genevan theology and the Italian opera--all these indispensable elements of modern civilization we owe to the sixteenth century. We might run on in our list till the brain of the reader should turn, but we will forbear.

In that busy, passionate, ambitious age, every year "shone in the sudden making of splendid names." And what names! In the plastic arts, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, Tintoret, Da Vinci, Correggio, Albert Durer, Holbein; Brunelleschi, Bramante, Palladio, in architecture; Palestrina, Carissimi, Allegri, in music; in the sciences, Bacon, Galileo, Copernicus,_Kepler, Tycho Brahe; in learning, Erasmus, Reuchlin, Thomas More, Scaliger, the Stephens; in philosophy, Bruno, Campanella, Peter Ramus, Patrizzi; in theology, Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Zuingle, Knox, Loyola; in adventure such a multitude, Ojeda, Cortez, Pizarro, the Cabots, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, the magnificent Raleigh; in poetry and letters, the sunset of Italy, the sunrise of England, Tasso, Ariosto, Guarini, Sidney, Spenser, Marlow, Beaumont, the Fletchers, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare; the flower, too, of the Gallic genius, Montaigne, Rabelais, Charron, Marot; splendid and mighty sovereigns, Charles V., Francis the First, Maximilian, the Popes Leo and Julius, Philip of Spain, Henry of England, the heroic Elizabeth, the bad beautiful Mary of Scotland; in war, the great generals of Italy and Spain, Trivulzio,

Gonsalvo, Pescara, Spinola, Parma, Egmont, Prince Maurice, the valiant English admirals, the Lion of Sweden, the Austrians Wallenstein and Tilly, the Ottoman lords of the Levant!

But amid the bewildering and fascinating splendors of this marvelous century we are able to discern one vast interest predominant over all the others, and the student of history sees the "very pulse of the machine" in the passion of free thought which then agitated mankind.

The battle of inquiry with authority is the great battle of the sixteenth century; and the great champion of authority in that fearful conflict was the dark, saturnine, mysterious sovereign of Spain and the Indies-the heir of Charles V.

Just three hundred years ago, on the 25th of October, 1555, in the great hall of the royal palace at Brussels, Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, having resolved to surrender all earthly pomps and dignities, and to seek, in the quiet of the cloister, the salvation of his soul, abdicated the sovereignty of Flanders and Burgundy in favor of his son and heir, Philip, Prince of the Asturias. On the 16th of January, 1556, the crowns of Castile and Aragon, with their dependencies, passed in like manner from the father to the son.

Already wedded to the Queen Mary of England, Philip then found himself, in the flower of his years, master of the most powerful monarchy upon earth. To set forth the manner in which he wielded the tremendous power lodged in his hands, to paint his character and his career, is a task worthy the best powers of the greatest of historians. A work which should completely describe the reign of Philip the Second, in all its great relations to the political, social, and spiritual history of mankind, would be itself the monument of an age. Such a work the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella has not attempted to construct. Master of an easy and flowing style, and enabled, by fortunate leisure, and careful cultivation, to collect his materials in abundance, and to weigh them with discretion, Mr. Prescott aims rather at pictorial than at philosophical eminence. He excels especially in the narration of stirring events, and he has the eye of a chronicler for those striking and brilliant features which individualize a scene or a personage.

Within a few years, the secret archives to which Philip had committed his most private correspondence with his ministers and his satellites (it is the best indication, perhaps, of the sincerity of this champion of bigotry, that he does not seem to have destroyed the records even of his most atrocious transactions) have been made accessible to the scholar. Of these, Mr. Prescott has availed himself, and of other resources so numerous and so new as to justify his belief, that his new work will "present the reader with such authentic statements of facts as may afford him a better point of view than he has hitherto possessed, for surveying the history of Philip the Second."

Two volumes of Mr. Prescott's book are now before us.

The historian commences his task with a sketch, lightly but firmly drawn, of the condition of the empire which owned the sway of Charles the Fifth, and of the influences which moved that monarch to exchange the crowns of such a dominion as Europe had not seen since the days of Charlemagne, for the simple cowl of a monk and the solitudes of Yuste. Mr. Prescott does more than justice, we think, to the character of Charles, at the expense of a much greater man, the Emperor Dioclesian; and we must confess our surprise at finding no reference, in this part of the sketch, to the careful and thorough researches of Mr. Stirling-an omission which is the more remarkable, that Mr. Prescott is by no means sparing in his use of complimentary notes.

The scene of Charles's abdication at Brussels is vividly and effectively painted, and awakens the reader's interest in the fortunes of the young Philip, so strangely and singularly invested with the grandeurs of royalty.

This interest is sustained by a brief account of Philip's earlier years, in which we catch indications of his coming character. The Prince of the Asturias was slight and small in figure, but well built and symmetrical. His yellowish hair, his keen blue eyes, cencentrating their glances beneath brows so closely knit as to be remarkable, his heavy, haughty Austrian under lip, and large protruding under jaw, bore witness to his descent from the wily princes of Burgundy and the despotic house of Hapsburg. In manners and demeanor he was, however, a complete Castilian-reserved,

thoughtful, even saturnine, somewhat given to gallantry, but more to seclusion and reflection; careful in his attention to appearances, always rich and elegant, but never gaudy or affected in costume. Left early an orphan, by his mother's death, and deprived, by his father's frequent and prolonged absences from Spain, of any really parental watchfulness, Philip was, nevertheless, carefully trained by preceptors whom Charles selected with discrimination, and whose efforts he seconded, himself, by letters, in which he sought to form his son to kingcraft.

The occasion of Philip's first marriage with the Infanta of Portugal furnishes Mr. Prescott with an opportunity for describing the splendors and singularities of the Spanish costume and manners in the sixteenth century.

The birth of his first son, the toofamous Don Carlos, soon deprived Philip of his young bride, and left him a widower at the age of eighteen.

In 1548, he was summoned by his father to the government of Flanders; and, making an almost royal progress through Aragon, embarked at Barcelona, under the convoy of a Genoese fleet, commanded by that hero of a hundred battles, Andrew Doria. All the magnificence of magnificent Italy was lavished upon the reception of the heir of Charles. Mr. Prescott paints, with glowing colors, the journey of the Prince, pursued by embassies and deputations, past the field of Pavia-so glorious to the Spanish arms-on to Milan the proudest jewel in the Italian crown of the emperor. Thence, by the Tyrol, through Munich, we follow the grand parade to Flanders. We have graceful jousts in Lombardy and splendid tournaments in the Netherlands, and we meet, for the first time, among the roses and diamonds of these festivities, with the personages who are to play the greatest and most tragic parts in the sombre drama, yet to come, of Philip's reign, Egmont, Van Hoorne, Savoy, Alva. Through all this pageant of violet-colored velvet and cloth of gold, and crimson canopies fluttering above tiers of lovely ladies, the small, silent, austere Philip moves like the shape of fate, presaging the scaffold, the rack, the black draperies of the Inquisition.

Philip, as Mr. Prescott observes, discovered, in this visit to Flanders and Germany, how truly he was a

Spaniard, and how little sympathy he had or could have with his northern subjects. They, themselves, made the same discovery; and, though Philip drank more than was good for him, and put himself to the pains of touching his hat, in order to acquire a Flemish popularity, he left a very disagreeable reputation behind him, when he went back to Spain; and Charles found it impossible to persuade the imperial electors that Philip ought to be king of the Romans.

The years which immediately followed Philip's visit to Flanders, were years of humiliation for Charles, who was foiled by the French, and beaten by the German Protestants; but these misfortunes did not much affect Spain. The intense Spanish nationality was too much delighted with the possession of a true Spanish heir-apparent, to be disturbed by the reverses of the empire.

Charles, losing all hope of perpetuating his own imperial dignity in the person of his son, was anxious to achieve for that son some extraordinary accession of power, which might compensate for the loss of the holy Roman crown. He accordingly planned, and, with great tact and ability, carried through the project of a marriage between Philip and his cousin Mary, now sovereign of England. The son of Henry II. of France had just won the queen of Scotland, and Charles could not allow such a move on the political chess-board to pass unnoticed."

The first year of his new wedlock had not expired, when Philip was summoned, by his father, from the arms of a bride whose lavish tenderness he had begun to find somewhat embarrassing, to receive the sceptre of his hereditary dominions.

The abdication of Charles made Philip the foremost figure in the political world. Master of Spain and the Indies, of Naples, Milan, Franche Comté, and the Low Countries, at the head of the most powerful army and the most formidable navy of the world, he ruled his vast dominions "with an authority more absolute than had been possessed by any European prince since the days of the Cæsars."

Thoroughly convinced that Providence had devolved upon him the task of maintaining the endangered unity of the church, Philip entered upon a course

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