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possibly be more delighted. I beg your Majesty to let me know whether I am to come to meet you, and how far? I send to you Don Pedro Pimentel, a gentleman of my bedchamber, and my ambassador, to whom I beseech your Majesty to give orders of what is to be done in this, that he may write to me about it. I kiss the hands of your Majesty. Your Majesty's very humble son, the Prince."

Quixada started from Villagarcia on the morning of the 2nd October, and arrived at Laredo on the 5th. His presence was a source of great satisfaction to the Emperor, who began his journey on the 6th, the Alcalde Durango having succeeded in collecting together all that was necessary for the route. Quixada announced to the Secretary of State, Vasquez, that the Emperor expected to reach Medina de Pomar in four days, and to arrive at Valladolid in about

seventeen.

Charles the Fifth would not allow any solemn reception to be prepared for him, either on the road, or at Valladolid. He formally expressed his wish that Secretary Vasquez should not leave his business to come to meet him, and that the princess, his daughter, should await his arrival in her palace at Valladolid; but he gave permission to his grandson, Don Carlos, whom he was anxious to embrace, to come and meet him at Cabezon.

The Emperor journeyed slowly through the Asturias, travelling only a few leagues daily. Although his suite was not very numerous, he was obliged to divide it into detachments, while in this sterile and rugged province, on account of the badness of the road and the difficulty of obtaining lodgings. His litter, by the side of which rode his chamberlain Quixada, opened the march, which was continued, at a day's interval, by the litters of his two sisters, and terminated by his gentlemen and mounted servants. The baggage was carried on mules. As his only guard, the Emperor had the Alcalde Durango, who preceded him with his five alguazils, armed with their staves of office, so that they seemed much less to escort a sovereign than to accompany a prisoner. He was carried over the steep mountain passes in a hand-chair. He halted on the first day at Ampuero; on the second, at La Nestosa, where he met Don Enrique de Guzman and Don Pedro Pimentel, who had been sent to him by the Princess Donna Juana and the Prince Don Carlos; on the third day at Aguera; and on the fourth at Medina de Pomar, where he stopped to rest. He ate a great deal of fruit, especially melons and water-melons, of which he had long been deprived. At Medina de Pomar, he found the abundant supply of provisions which his daughter had sent him, and he became rather unwell through eating too much fish, chiefly fresh tunny.

Delighted, for the moment, to be freed from all cares of business, Charles the Fifth would not allow any reference to be made to public affairs, and he entertained a temporary resolution to keep himself entirely aloof from them in future, and to enter the monastery of Yuste on All Saints' day, with a very small number of attendants. "The Emperor," wrote Gaztelu to Vasquez, "says that he means to dismiss his servants and to remain alone with Wil

liam Malines (Van Male) and two or three barberos (chamberlains of the second class), whom he will take with him to attend to his gout if it should attack him again, to dress a wound which he has in the little finger of his right hand, and which is constantly running, as well as his hæmorrhoids, and to serve him in many other things. He says that he will pay to the prior of the monastery money enough to enable him to supply him with provisions; and that he will retain one or two cooks to prepare his food according to his taste. He will not take a physician, for he says that the monks always have good ones to attend upon them. He proposes to keep Salamanquez as his confessor, in order to remove all cause of division and jealousy among the monks. He adds that he will retain some others also, but that he wishes to be rid of all further embarrassment, and that, when he has arrived within two leagues of the monastery, he will dismiss all who accompany him, that they may return to their own homes. It appears to those who are acquainted with his character, that he will not carry this plan into effect; he even is beginning to say that Yuste, as he is informed, is a damp and rainy place in winter, and will therefore be bad for his gout and asthma. To conclude, until we arrive there and see what he will decide, we can entertain no certain views of the matter, because he is very secret with regard to his wishes.”

When the news of his arrival became known, the principal towns sent their regidors to meet him; and the most important men among the clergy, in the State, and of the councils, wrote to him. When he drew near Burgos, although he did not wish for any public reception, the Constable of Castile came to kiss his hands at two leagues from the city, which he entered on the evening of the 13th September, amid the ringing of bells and a general illumination of the streets. On the following day, the ayuntamiento, or town-council, presented him an address in the cathedral.

While in that city, he was visited by the Duke of Albuquerque, Viceroy of Navarre, who was accompanied by a gentleman of that country, named Escurra, who for several years had been charged with an important and mysterious negotiation, regarding which he had come to confer with the Emperor on his passage through Burgos. Spanish Navarre, situated on the southern side of the Pyrenees, had been wrested, in 1512, from the house of Albret by Ferdinand the Catholic, who had incorporated it into the monarchy of which it was the natural continuation. Since that time, the dispossessed princes had not been able-notwithstanding the persevering support of the Kings of France, who were related to them by the closest ties of kindred and policy-to obtain either its restitution or even a territorial equivalent for its loss; and they had ended by resting their hopes entirely upon the Kings of Spain. Henry of Albret, during the last war, had sent to Charles the Fifth, to offer to break off his alliance with France, and to take up arms in his favour, if he would grant him a suitable compensation for the loss of Navarre. After his death, in May, 1555, the negotiation had been continued by his son-in-law and successor, Antony of Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. Both Henry and

Antony made use of Escurra to convey their demands and offers from Nérac to Pampeluna to the Duke of Albuquerque, who afterwards transmitted them in cypher to Charles the Fifth or Philip the Second. In recompense for Navarre, the Duke of Vendôme demanded the Duchy of Milan, which should be erected into the Kingdom of Lombardy; and engaged, on his side, to become the perpetual confederate of the Emperor and of the King his son; to furnish during the war five thousand infantry, five hundred light cavalry, two hundred pioneers, three thousand yoke of oxen, and twenty pieces of artillery of various calibre; and to give, as pledges of his fidelity, his eldest son (afterwards Henry the Fourth of France), the fortress of Navarreins, and the other strongholds within his territory. He even insinuated that he would open to the Spaniards the gates of Bayonne and Bordeaux, which he had under his command as Governor of Guienne. As the Truce of Vaucelles had been concluded before the Emperor had given his answer to the propositions of Anthony of Bourbon, Escurra came to obtain it at Burgos.

Charles the Fifth felt some scruples about the very useful, but. very wrongfully obtained, possession of Navarre. In a secret clause in his will, which was dated in 1550, and which he had left with Philip the Second on his departure from Brussels, he stated that his grandfather had undoubtedly conquered that kingdom justly, and that he had certainly retained it honestly, but he added, "Nevertheless, for the greater security of our conscience, we recommend and enjoin the most serene Prince Don Philip, our son, to examine and verify, as speedily and sincerely as possible, whether in reason and justice he is bound to restore that kingdom, or to furnish compensation for it, to any person whatsoever. And that which he shall find and declare to be just, let him execute in such a manner that my soul and conscience shall be fully discharged." After having taken such a precaution, which quieted him as a Christian, and proved no hindrance to his policy, and which was to be handed down from reign to reign as a kind of expiatory formula, Charles the Fifth had listened to the overtures of the King of Navarre, without either satisfying his demands or discouraging his hopes. At Burgos, he contented himself with telling Escurra that he would write on the subject to the King his son, whose arrival in Spain might shortly be expected; and that, in the meanwhile, he must pursue his negotiation, which would then be brought to a satisfactory termination. Such a postponement could not fail to be taken very ill by Antony of Bourbon.

A JOURNEY FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY TO
ST. PETER'S.

THE Cathedral of Pisa is a mass of richly ornate masonry of a fine fawn colour; and the baptistry, in the same style, stands at the further end of the oblong piazza in the line of the tower and cathedral, looking like a holiday mausoleum decorated to the very top of the dome.

But baptism and burial are the two ends of life, and it is fit that edifices devoted to these kindred ends should have a family likeness. Only it is not so certain which ought to be the gayest in its style of architecture. It has been asserted by St. Augustine that the blessed wear mourning robes in Paradise when the soul of a descendant, according to the flesh, is born into this world, and that they specially rejoice when a soul of their family dies in peace.

A death to us is a new birth to them. They receive a new companion when a good old Christian dies, as we do when a babe is born. We throw water on the one and earth upon the other, and the prince of the powers of the air has fire for the residue.

Let us leave the four elements in possession of the grand piazza at Pisa, for the Florence train will not wait for such reflections as these.

It ran through a patchy, minutely cultivated country, not like small snug farms but large slovenly gardens. The evening was fine, and the sunset made splendid purples and pinks among the cloud-wreathed peaks of the Appenines in a manner to convince one that it was really Italy.

In fact to-day may be said to be my first day in Italy, for Genoa is neither precisely Italy nor France, but a sort of halfway-house compromise.

Italy the land of art, nature, history,-let us be enthusiastic! But perhaps I had better wait till Rome for my great fireworks about the empress of nations and her crumbling tomb. I am at present about to arrive in Florence, the city of the renaissance, which I confess interests me much more, with its grand Michael Angelesque and quaint Cellenic efforts in a new-born art and literature-whose progeny is still extant, though not perhaps thriving greatly than do all the cumbersome defunct and hackneyed remains of times entirely departed and classic, over whom the tide of the Dark Ages has rolled.

It was dark as any age when, followed by our luggage on a carretta, or little hand-cart, we entered Florence by the Porta a Prato. The effects had been all plombé at Leghorn, and as there was nothing to occupy the inquisitorial attention of the small octroi douanière of the gate, they made the most of some cloaks and plaids and great coats strewn over the carretta's contents.

In the pocket of one of these they discovered an exceedingly heavy little brown paper parcel, and the obnoxious revolver was produced. A crowd of official lanterns were gathered round it, and a hubbub of vociferation echoed beneath the portal.

I tried to do something temporary by reading a Spanish permission to carry arms into the nearest approach to Italian I could paraphrase extempore, trusting as the languages are somewhat similar, that my illiterate audience might be satisfied.

But though they seemed to reach a vague conception of what I was reading, I fully believe they were of opinion that the permission was in the English language, and that I was addressing them in the same, for they said I must have a permission from the Tuscan as well as my own government.

I wrote my name and hotel on an official slip of paper, and gave up my pistol for lost, conceiving that it would certainly take more trouble than the object was worth to recover it. However, after a few days I received a mysterious summons through a hangeron of the hotel, to appear before the tribunal of the Politzia.

"Now," thought I," we are in for a practical collision with the dark and subtle tyranny of a Machiavellian constitution. I shall be convicted of having smuggled arms through Leghorn, and imprisoned as a dangerous envoy of revolution. What could be more clear? for was not a revolver a revolutionary weapon?

He conducted me to a low, darkly-frowning arch, in the wall of what seemed a prison, every massive Etruscan granite block of whose seared and hoary face seemed furrowed with the hard lines of remorseless oppression. Up a dark and narrow stone-stair, and through a heavy clanking door, and I stood before the awful presence of my accuser and judge.

It was a sombre-vaulted stone-chamber where the light of day only entered by a narrow slit high up in an out-of-the-way corner, and was just sufficient to make the brazen crescent that hung over the judgment-seat burn the more ghastly, showing that it was broad day outside.

The still and breathless flame cast a deep and steady shadow on the stern brow of the Tuscan Prefect. His eyes were in shade, but danger and cruelty seemed to flicker through the dark, like the eyes of a serpent in the black mouth of a cave.

"Your name is

"It is."

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"You are the owner of this terrible weapon, which was taken from you at such a gate on such a night?" (producing the pistol and laying it on his desk with a clank). "It was found among your effects, was it not ?"

"It was."

"Will you do me the favour to sign this document?" Here he unfolded a huge sheet of manuscript about the size of Galignani's Messenger, containing, I suppose, a full and accurate report of the capture of the weapon, with subsequent proceedings and formalities.

VOL. XXXIV.

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