Charles had fixed the place of his retreat at the monastery of St. Justus, in Estremadura in Spain. It was situated in a lovely valley watered by a running brook, and surrounded by hills clothed with lofty trees. Towards the end of August, 1556, he set out for Zuitberg, in Zealand, where a large fleet of Spanish, English, and Flemish vessels were assembled. On the 17th of September he set sail and reached Laredo, in Biscay, on the eleventh day. It is stated by a contemporary historian* that, although the voyage was most prosperous, there arose such a heavy storm on the very night after he landed, that the ship he had sailed in foundered. As soon as he set foot on the Spanish shore he fell prostrate, and kissing the earth, exclaimed, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked I now return to thee, thou common mother of mankind."

From Laredo he proceeded to Burgos, borne in a litter, and suffering exquisite pain; he then pursued his course to Valladolid, where he took a final leave of his two sisters. Having now severed his last earthly ties, he considered himself thenceforth dead to the world. From Valladolid he continued on his way to Plazenzia, and thence to his humble retreat at St. Justus.

From an expression in one of the reports sent home by the English ambassadors, it was evidently considered that the Emperor's intellects were unsettled; indeed, there is little doubt that towards the latter part of his life he was not altogether of sound mind. The great bodily suffering he had endured, the bitter disappointments he had experienced, and the absolute cessation of activity rendered necessary by his infirmities, would, doubtless, tend to such a result. When a man after many years of activity and excitement is suddenly and wholly withdrawn from it, serious consequences ensue: the stimulus has become necessary, and its sudden withdrawal is hurtful. The attention under such circumstances becomes strongly and continually directed inwards; the mind preys upon itself; it dwells on its own movements and its own feelings until the importance of each is exaggerated, and the result is self-reproach, gloom, and despondency. The mind ceases to respond to its usual emotions, and the reason becomes impaired. Worldly business and salutary occupations are despised or regarded with indifference,—the whole attention is yielded up to the feelings, the process of self-examination becomes the business of life,-the mental views become distorted, and clouds of gloom settle heavily on the spirit.

Some months before his resignation, Charles had sent an architect to add accommodation for him to the monastery of St. Justus; but it only consisted of six small rooms, four in the form of friars' cells, with naked walls, the other two were hung with old black cloth. There was but one chair, and that "so decayed, that it would not have yielded half-a-crown if it were to be sold." His habit was very poor and always black. In this humble retreat did Charles bury his grandeur, his ambition, with all those vast projects which for half a century had kept Europe in a ferment. His time was almost entirely occupied in devotion; the only exercise he took was in some gardens he had caused to be made, terminated by a small hermitage. He only kept a small gelding and an old mule, and was frequently unable to ride on account of a swimming in his head. When con

* Sandoval.

fined to his apartment, he employed his hours of leisure in making curious works of mechanism. Charles had always taken great delight in mechanics, and in order that he might indulge this taste in his retreat, he engaged Turriano, one of the most ingenious artists of the age, to accompany him thither. With him he laboured in forming models of the most useful machines, as well as in making experiments with regard to their respective powers, and it was not seldom that the ideas of the monarch assisted or perfected the inventions of the artist. He relieved his mind at intervals with slighter and more fantastic works of mechanism, in fashioning puppets which, by the structure of internal springs, mimicked the gestures and actions of men, to the astonishment of the ignorant monks, who beholding movements which they could not comprehend, sometimes distrusted their own senses, and sometimes suspected Charles and Turriano of being in compact with invisible powers. He was particularly curious with regard to the construction of clocks and watches; and having found, after repeated trials, that he could not bring any two of them to go alike, he is said to have exclaimed, "Behold, not even two watches, the work of my own hands, can I bring to agree with each other according to a law; and yet, fool that I was, I thought that I should be able to govern like the works of a watch so many nations, all living under a different sky, in different climes, and speaking different languages!"

During the first year of his retreat his health and spirits were decidedly benefited; tranquillity seemed returning to his mind, and his bodily ailments troubled him less: but this calm was fallacious, and only a prelude to a darker storm. About six months before his death the gout returned with increased severity: from this attack his mind never rallied, nor was his constitution in a condition to withstand the shock. Henceforward we have a gloomy picture of superstition and mental terror. Viewing his spiritual condition with horror, he endeavoured to appease the anger of the Almighty by inflicting upon himself the most rigid abstinence, the heaviest penances, and severest flagellations. After his death the scourge of cords he used was found, stiff and dyed with blood. He debarred himself all his former innocent amusements; his whole time was passed between religious exercises and acts of penance. But even

the severest of these fell short of the requirements of his fevered imagination; he determined to expiate his sins by such an act as had never before been attempted,—an act the product of a wild and distempered mind. It was nothing less than to celebrate his own obsequies before his death!

Charles ordered his tomb to be erected in the chapel of the monastery, and every preparation to be made for a funeral. The grave was dug, the coffin made, and Charles was clothed in the habiliments of the grave. In slow and solemn procession did the monks and his domestics wend their way through the cloisters into the chapel, a dim light being cast on the scene from the black tapers which each carried; after them followed Charles in his shroud. The service for the dead was chanted, and Charles joined with agonising earnestness in the prayers which were offered up for the repose of his soul, mingling his tears with those shed by his attendants, as if they were celebrating a real funeral,-the event which was soon to follow cast its shadow upon them! At length he was

solemnly laid in his coffin, and the offices for the dead being concluded, the ceremony was closed by the coffin being sprinkled with holy-water in the usual form. Then all the attendants retiring, the doors of the chapel were shut and Charles left to his own meditations.

What a moral is to be drawn from this scene! What a lesson for the ambitious, the vain, the worldly-minded! Oh! ye who imagine that unalloyed happiness is to be found in the palaces of kingswho believe that the occupants of thrones bask in the sunshine of perpetual spring-think upon this! The most eloquent discourse. of the orator, the utmost effort of the painter's skill, must fall far short of the stern reality of the scene before us. There, wrapped in the garments of the dead, in the damp and foul atmosphere of the grave, resting upon the dust which has once been animated with life, surrounded by the mouldering remains of frail mortality, lies Charles! but a short time since owning the titles of King of Castile, Leon, Grenada, Arragon, Navarre, the two Sicilies, Jerusalem, &c.; Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, &c.; Count of Flanders, Burgundy, and Hainault, Prince of Swabia, Count of Friesland, &c. &c. &c.

There he lies, not a cold inanimate corpse, but a living, breathing, conscious mortal. What thoughts, what reflections must have passed through his mind during that sad hour; how absolutely he must have felt the nothingness of life, the emptiness of grandeur, the vanity of ambition, the fallacy of human expectations; doubtless the words of the Preacher presented themselves to his mind,— "Then I looked on all the works my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

After some time spent in meditation, Charles rose out of the coffin, and withdrew to his apartment, full of those awful sentiments which such a singular solemnity was calculated to inspire.

The fatigue attendant upon this ceremony, the chill of the tomb, and the impression made on his mind by the image of death, combined to bring on an ague, and in a short time the rehearsal was succeeded by the real performance. On the day after the scene we have described, Charles was seized with an intermittent fever; the particulars are thus given by Sandoval :-" The gout had left him for several days, and changed into an ague of another nature than what he used to have before, for the cold fit lasted twice as long as the hot; whereupon he was twice blooded, which, instead of lessening, increased it to such a degree that one fit overtook another, and thus he grew weaker; and though he took care of his bodily health, following the physician's prescriptions, yet he was much more solicitous for the concerns of his soul, confessing often, and making his last will and testament. Being near his end, he received the blessed sacrament, and desired the extreme unction might be given him, which was done at night: and the prior thinking the ceremony, as it was used to the friars, was too tedious to him, he being in some agony, all the penitential psalms, litany, and prayers being to be read, he bid Lewis Quexada, who was at the bed's head, ask him whether he would have the ceremony at length or shortened, and he answered, they should oil him like a friar,' which was done accordingly, the Emperor answering to all the psalms, verse for verse,

as the friars did, and then he seemed to be somewhat better. The next day he received the blessed sacrament again, with great devotion, saying, Thou remainest in me, may I remain in Thee.' That night, after he had received the second time, he grew worse, and about two of the clock the next morning, when all were very still, he said, 'It is now time, give me that candle and crucifix,' and though he was so spent that four men could with difficulty stir him in his bed, he turned upon his side as readily as if he had ailed nothing; then, taking the crucifix in one hand and the candle in the other, he continued awhile looking on the crucifix, without speaking a word, and then, in a voice so loud that it could be heard in the other rooms, he said, 'Oh! Jesus-,' and so gave up the ghost to his Redeemer on the 21st of September 1558." *

Charles had left directions that his body should not be embalmed, it was therefore attired in the shroud in which he had so recently appeared, and laid in a coffin of lead, which was again enclosed in one of chestnut, covered with black velvet; the funeral procession again wended its way to the chapel, and the remains of the once great Emperor were laid beneath the high altar. They were doomed to be speedily disturbed, however, for two days after, the Corregidor of Placentia came to demand the body, and although he was prevailed on, after much entreaty, to leave it where it was, he insisted on the coffin's being opened, in order that he might see the face. The features had undergone but little alteration, and the spectators gazed upon them for the last time, with mingled awe and

sorrow.

Thus died, in the fifty-ninth year of his age and forty-third of his reign, the Emperor Charles the Fifth. In his youth, and before he was bowed down by illness, he was a noble and manly figure, full of majesty and dignity. His countenance was extremely pale, his eyes blue, his hair auburn. His aspect was grave, and a smile but rarely appeared upon his face.

We have thus placed before our readers a brief sketch of some of the prominent features in the career of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, a career not only interesting, but in the highest degree suggestive and instructive. We have viewed him surrounded by all the pomp of royalty and attributes of power; we have accompanied him through sad reverses; we have followed him to his retreat; we have traced the prostration of his mind and body, have witnessed the extinction of the spark of life, and seen his remains consigned to the silent tomb.

"En terra jam nunc quantula sufficit !

Exempta sit curis, viator,

Terra sit illa levis, precare!"

* There is a singular resemblance in the circumstances of the illness of Charles V. to that which was fatal to Oliver Cromwell, who died September 3, 1658. The particulars of the death of Cromwell are narrated in an article in the "Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medicine " for May 1848.

THE EMIGRANT PARTY;

OR,

OUR LAST TRECK IN SOUTHERN AFRICA.

BY MRS. WARD,

AUTHORESS OF FIVE YEARS IN KAFIRLAND,” etc.

It is a fortunate circumstance for the poor of England that the subject of emigration has become fashionable: not all the reasoning powers of true philanthropists, not all the forcible and humane arguments of Lord Ashley and others, have had any weight with the public in general; but the cry of the hungry and the wretched has at last jarred harshly on the ear of those who like not to be so disturbed, and fine ladies and gentlemen, in self-defence, are driven to ask, "What shall we do with the poor ?"

These pages, however, are unsuited to discussions; but as they will probably be read by those who, by their position or their inclinations are interested in the subject of emigration and colonization, I beg to offer a slight sketch of an emigrant party which I had the pleasure to see on the banks of an African river.

An African river! the plains of Africa! The locality to which I intend to refer is in South-eastern Africa, and not on that terrible western coast spoken of as "the grave of the white man." And yet how ignorant and prejudiced are even the better classes of our countrymen respecting what they call the Cape colony, of which they have as little idea as the unhappy poor, whom it should be the privilege of the rich to help.*

The first step to be taken in persuading the poor to leave poverty and toil in this overburdened land for comparative ease and undoubted plenty in South-eastern Africa, is to endeavour to disabuse their minds of prejudice against a soil now open to them as a place of refuge and repose and before I introduce my readers to my emigrant party, I may be permitted to say a few words of our progress through that part of the country where we met them, on our journey from Graham's Town to Algoa Bay, in the month of January, 1848, when, the war being over, the long-harassed troops were released from their unsatisfactory and toilsome duties, and we, with others who had endured more suffering and privation than will probably fall to the lot of any future settlers, found ourselves fairly on the march," and "homeward bound."

66

In the work lately published and entitled "Five Years in Kafirland," so much has been detailed relative to such marches, that to dwell on all the circumstances connected with our track would be to wear the subject threadbare; but some incidents, as yet not touched upon, will afford matter of interest to those who may hereafter find themselves among the scenes through which we passed. It is, I think,

Some years ago, on a regiment being ordered to the Cape of Good Hope, a certain member of the aristocracy, who held a commission in it, said to a brother officer, "I say, old fellow, we are going to the Cape, where is it ?"