Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

And the little less, and what worlds away! How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, And life be a proof of this!

A moment after, and hands unseen

Were hanging the night around us fast; But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and life; we were mixed, at last, In spite of the mortal screen.

The forests had done it; there they stood

We caught for a second the powers at play :
They had mingled us so, for once and for good,
Their work was done-we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.

How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself-to wit,
By its fruit-the thing it does!

Be Hate that fruit or Love that fruit,

It forwards the General Deed of Man, And each of the Many helps to recruit The life of the race by a general plan, Each living his own, to boot.

One more extract for mere beauty's sake, as the name betokens :

There are many poems in these two volumes which we cannot here speak of at length, but to which we would especially refer the attention of those whom the extracts above given may induce to thoughtfully peruse the work, and form their own judgment of its merits.

A more remarkable poem has seldom been written one more original in conception, or subtle in execution-than the " Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician."

Bishop Blougram's Apology" is not behind this poem in its daring originality. It overflows with vigour, humour, and what, if the phrase be not over-paradoxical, we would call a good-natured cynicism. The subject, however, is not the less thoughtfully conceived, and it is grasped and compressed with a master's hand. "Andrea del Sarto" and "Fra Lippo Lippi" are the practical results of a profound and liberal acquaintance with art; but it is as accurate and subtle representation of phases common enough to every human life that these poems are valuable. The former of these poems is a metaphysical treatment of that sore in the artist's life which Alfred de Musset has otherwise treated in his inimitable drama. Whilst speaking of men, however, we not but advert to certain other poems in the book which must be altogether excluded from our description of its general principles of art. We mean such poems as "Master Hughes of

can

Saxe-Gotha," which is a rhythmical description of Fugues; "A Toccata of Galuppi's ;" and others of the same kind, which are, as avowed by the titles, as far removed as can be from all “human" interest, or the emotions of real life. Such poems as these must be considered as fanciful criticisms on art, addressed by a gifted and erudite man to that small circle of persons to whom such subjects will have an interest common to himself. To what is called the general reader" they will be little more than a magical hocus-pocus and wizarding of words. It might be wished that, for the sake of this humble individual, "the general reader," their author had appended to these poems on art some sort of explanatory note, however brief;

for they abound in beauty only capable of reve lation to one who is well acquainted with the subject of which they treat. Mr. Browning has, however, it would seem, thought it more fitting to warn the thoughtless off the premises at once; and quicks and broken glass, sprynges and scarecrows, are discernible all round these domains.

Whatever be the faults or merits of this work, they will be best determined by a future age. To us, so dazzling appear the beauty and power with which it is replete, that we have little eyesight left to look for faults. Meanwhile, the publication of such a book is an era in English poetry; and by its reception we may fairly judge of the maturity of the poetical public in England.

BEFORE We address ourselves to this last new work, by which, assuredly, Mr. Prescott has increased his former renown, we are tempted to pass rapidly in review the principal circumstances which rendered Philip II. one of the most important personages of his age. We shall then see him in his "pride of place." A few more words will suffice to describe his altered position at the close of his life. Philip II., in 1555, at the age of twentyeight, was made sovereign of the Netherlands, which his father, Charles V., had resigned to him. In 1556 he became King of Spain by the abdication of his father. His possessions in Europe comprised, besides Spain, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the dukedom of Milan, and other provinces in Italy. These, in 1581, he increased by the addition of the kingdom of Portugal. By this conquest he added the Portuguese colonial dependencies to his own empire of the New World. His revenue, at his accession to the throne of Spain, greatly exceeded that of any other sovereign of his time; his navy was more numerous; and his armies were unsurpassed by any troops, and commanded by the ablest generals. Lastly, he accomplished that which was nearer his heart than anything else the destruction of the rising reformation in the Peninsula. . He was in the meridian of his splendour. He exhausted his resources by attempts to establish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, and lost for ever seven important provinces; his invincible Armada perished; and one of the last acts of his life was to abdicate his title to the Netherlands in favour of his daughter Isabella, and the Archduke Albert, her husband. Thus he died, self

weakened and humiliated; and Europe ceased to fear the universal domination of Spain.

And now, with pleasure, we proceed to draw the attention of our readers to the work itself. It appears in a modest guise. Two volumes in one, divided into four books, closely printed, with foot-notes referring to the multitudinous authorities, and quoting these in the original languages, bring the history down to the death of Isabella, Philip's third queen. Every one who is conversant with the results obtained by former labourers in this field will be gratified by seeing what has been effected in this history. The Preface discloses the mines of new and most valuable information which have been explored, for the first time, by Mr. Prescott and the friends who have pushed their researches to the utmost available limits. It seems, indeed, that the life of Philip II. could not have been adequately written at an earlier period. It would be tedious to enumerate the sources which have furnished the materials to which Mr. Prescott has had access. Not only have all public and, apparently, all private collections in Europe been laid under contribution, but even the Azores have yielded their quota of information. We were strikingly reminded, whilst admiring the abundance of new matter which Mr. Prescott has acquired, that we are living in an age abounding in new and wonderful discoveries.

Nineveh has been ransacked for its twiceburied treasures, and so searchingly, that we are now acquainted with their Teraphim-those images which were stolen from Laban the Syrian. The character of our Queen Mary has been rescued from much obloquy by Miss Strick

laud. Mary Queen of Scots is hardly recognisable now that she has been cleared from the foul stains of murder. Lastly, M. Delepierre comes forward to acquit us English of the guilt of burning Joan of Arc. He heaps documents upon documents to prove that she was never burned, but that she married happily, and was the fruitful mother of children. Surely we live in a wonderful age!

In noticing a new work of such importance as the one now before us, it is obviously impossible, within the limits assigned to us, to do more than to give our readers an opportunity of forming their judgment; and we will, therefore, set before them such portions as seem to us the best adapted for this purpose, merely observing that it is not an easy matter to select portions from a work in which characters, incidents, and events are blended together in one continued narrative. Our readers are, we trust, too well acquainted with Mr. Prescott's style to need any mention to be made of it here.

We quote part of the introductory remarks of the first chapter, in which is recorded, amongst other matters, the abdication of Charles V. :

In a former work I have endeavoured to portray the period when the different provinces of Spain were consolidated into one empire under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella; when, by their wise and beneficent policy, the nation emerged from the obscurity in which it had so long remained behind the Pyrenees, and took its place as one of the great members of the European commonwealth. I now propose to examine a later period in the history of the same nation,-the reign of Philip II.; when, with resources greatly enlarged, and territory extended by a brilliant career of discovery and conquest, it had risen to the zenith of its power; but when, under the mischievous policy of the administration, it had excited the jealousy of its neighbours, and already disclosed those germs of domestic corruption which gradually led to its dismemberment and decay.

The ceremony of the abdication; the investure of Philip with the sovereignty of the rich Netherlands, which gave the Spanish monarchs a revenue equal to that furnished by the mines of America; and the retirement of Charles to the monastery of Yuste, are well described, paving the way for the personal history of the new king.

Philip II. was born at Valladolid, on twenty-first of May, 1527. His mother was the Empress Isabella, daughter of Emanuel the Great of Portugal. By his

father he was descended from the ducal houses of

Burgundy and Austria. By both his father and mother

he claimed a descent from Ferdinand and Isabella the

Catholic of Spain. As by blood he was half a Spaniard, so by temperament and character he proved to be wholly so.

His education was intrusted to an ecclesiastic, who instructed him in the ancient classics. His acquaintance with Latin was so intimate that he wrote Latin even in after-life with ease and correctness. It was, however, to Don Juan de Zuñiga that he was indebted for his instruction

"If

in those duties that belonged to his royal station. Zuñiga was of an ancient family, conversant with Courts, but a man of the highest integrity. Charles, who understood the character of Zuñiga, wrote to his son to honour and to cherish him. he deals plainly with you," he said, "it is for the love he bears you. If he were to flatter you, and be only solicitous of adminstering to your wishes, he would be like all the rest of the world, and you would have no one near to tell you the truth; and a worse thing canthe young, from their want of experience to discern not happen to a man, old or young, but most of all to truth from error." The wise emperor, who knew how rarely it is that truth is permitted to find its way to royal ears, set a just value on the man who had the courage to speak it.

Under the influence of these teachers, and, still more, of the circumstances in which he was placed,the most potent teachers of all,- Philip grew in years, and slowly unfolded the peculiar qualities of his disposition. He seemed cautious and reserved in his demeanour, and slow of speech; yet what he said had a character of thought beyond his age. At no time did he discover that buoyancy of spirit, or was he betrayed into those sallies of temper, which belong to a bold and adventurous, and often to a generous nature. His might seem to savour of melancholy. He was selfdeportment was marked by a seriousness that, to some, possessed; so that even from a boy he was rarely off his guard.

The personal appearance of Philip at the age of twenty-one, when he joined his father in Brussels, after a separation of many years, is thus described ::

He was now twenty-one years of age, and was distinguished by a comeliness of person, remarked upon by more than one who had access to his presence. Their report is confirmed by the portraits of him from the pencil of Titian, taken before the freshness of youth had faded into the sallow hue of disease, and when care and anxiety had not yet given a sombre, perhaps sullen, expression to his features.

He had a fair, and even delicate complexion. His hair and beard were of a light yellow. His eyes were blue, with the eyebrows somewhat too closely knit together. His nose was thin and aquiline. The principal blemish in his countenance was his thick Austrian lip. His lower jaw protruded even more than that of his father. To his father, indeed, he bore a great resemblance in his lincaments, though those of Philip were of a less intellectual cast. In stature he was somewhat below the middle height, with a slight, symmetrical figure and well-made limbs. He was attentive to his dress, which was rich and elegant, but without any affectation of ornament. His demeanour was grave, with that ceremonious observance which marked the old Castilian, and which may be thought the natural expression of Philip's slow and phlegmatic temperament.

The attention of our readers will naturally be attracted to that portion of Philip's history which, by his marriage with our Queen Mary, is connected with our own. To this we turn, not intending to dwell upon it at much length, since Miss Strickland has already made us familiar with most of the incidents. The following description of London and England, from the report of Giovanni Micheli, ambassador from Venice, will be found very interesting :

London he eulogizes, as one of the noblest capitals

in Europe, containing, with its suburbs, about a hundred and eighty thousand souls. The great lords, as in France and Germany, passed most of their time on their estates in the country.

The kingdom was strong enough, if united, to defy any invasion from abroad. Yet its navy was small, having dwindled, from neglect and an ill-judged economy, to not more than forty vessels of war. But the mercantile marine could furnish two thousand more, which, at a short notice, could be well equipped and got ready for sea. The army was particularly strong in artillery, and provided with all the munitions of war. The weapon chiefly in repute was the bow, to which the English people were trained, from early youth. In their cavalry they were most defective. Horses were abundant, but wanted bottom. They were, for the most part, light, weak, and grass-fed. The nation was, above all, to be envied for the lightness of the public burdens. There were no taxes on wine, beer, salt, cloth, nor, indeed, on any of the articles that in other countries furnished the greatest sources of revenue. The whole revenue did not usually exceed two hundred thousand pounds. Parliaments were rarely summoned, except to save the king trouble or to afford a cloak to his designs. No one ventured to resist the royal will; servile the members came there, and servile they remained.—An Englishman of the nineteenth century may smile at the contrast presented by some of these remarks to the condition of the nation at the present day; though, in the item of taxation, the contrast may be rather fitted to provoke a sigh.

The unpopularity of this marriage is well known; gentle and simple alike testified their disapprobation of it. Holingshed, quoted by our author, gives a striking instance of this angry feeling

Philip and Mary passed a few days in this merry way of life, at Winchester, whence they removed, with their court, to Windsor. Here a chapter of the order of the Garter was held, for the purpose of installing King Philip. The herald, on this occasion, ventured to take down the arms of England, and substitute those of Spain, in honour of the new sovereign,—an act of deference which roused the indignation of the English lords, who straightway compelled the functionary to restore the national escutcheon to its proper place.

We cannot omit what Micheli relates of Philip's observances of religion, from the moment of his landing to his departure; nor our author's remarks upon it, observing that Philip had gradually gained credit with the people.

Philip, from the hour of his landing, had been constant in all his religious observances. "He was as punctual," says Micheli, "in bis attendance at mass,

and his observance of all the forms of devotion, as any monk;—more so, as some people thought, than be came his age and station. The ecclesiastics," he adds, "with whom Philip had constant intercourse, talked loudly of his piety."

Yet there was no hypocrisy in this. However willing Philip may have been that his concern for the interests of religion might be seen of men, it is no less true that, as far as he understood these interests, his concern was perfectly sincere. The actual state of England may have even operated as an inducement with him to overcome his scruples as to the connexion with Mary.

This agrees with the Lansdowne MS. The Cottonian, as given by Sir Henry Ellis, puts the population at 150,000.

"Better not reign at all," he often remarked, "than reign over heretics." But what triumph more glorious than that of converting these heretics, and bringing them back again into the bosom of the Church? He was anxious to prepare the minds of his new subjects for an honourable reception of the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, who was armed with full authority to receive the submission of England to the Holy See. He employed his personal influence with the great nobles, and enforced it occasionally by liberal drafts on those Peruvian ingots which he had sent to the Tower. At least, it is asserted that he gave away yearly pensions, to the large amount of between fifty and sixty thousand gold crowns, to sundry of the queen's ministers. It was done on the general plea of recompensing their loyalty to their mistress.

What share had Philip in the persecution of English heretics? This question, though often mooted, and now examined in this work, will probably remain unknown; but we have on record that Philip's confessor, Alfonso de Castro, inveighed against the burnings in Smithfield. This was a bold step, unless taken with a view to screen his sovereign from the odium attached to these bloody proceedings. Our opinion is that de Castro spoke his real sentiments, extraordinary as they must have appeared to those in power. The fact is thus recorded:

The work of conversion was speedily followed by that of persecution. To what extent Philip's influence was exerted in this is not manifest. Indeed, from any

thing that appears, it would not be easy to decide whether his influence was employed to promote or prevent it. One fact is certain, that, immediately after the first martyrs suffered at Smithfield, Alfonso de Castro, a Spanish friar, preached a sermon in which he bitterly inveighed against these proceedings. He denounced them as repugnant to the true spirit of Christianity, which was that of charity and forgiveness, and which enjoined its ministers not to take vengeance on the sinner, but to enlighten him as to his errors, and bring him to repentance. This bold appeal had its effect, even in that season of excitement. For a few weeks the arm of persecution seemed to be palsied. But it was only for a few weeks. Toleracharitable doctrines of the good friar fell on hearts tion was not the virtue of the sixteenth century. The withered by fanaticism; and the spirit of intolerance soon rekindled the spirit of Smithfield into a fiercer glow than before.

The account of the war against Caraffa, Pope Paul IV., whose haughty, insolent, and vindictive character is excellently described, is well prefaced by the following survey of Philip's empire:

Soon after Philip's arrival in Brussels took place that memorable scene of the abdication of Charles V., which occupies the introductory pages of our narrative. By this event, Philip saw himself master of the most widelyextended and powerful monarchy in Europe. He was king of Spain, comprehending under that name Castile, Aragon, and Granada, which, after surviving as independent states for centuries, had been first brought under one sceptre in the reign of his father, Charles V. He was king of Naples and Sicily, and duke of Milan, which important possessions enabled him to control, to a great extent, the nicely balanced scales of Italian politics. He was lord of Franche Comté and of the Low Countries, comprehending the most

flourishing and populous provinces in Christendom, whose people had made the greatest progress in commerce, husbandry, and the various mechanic arts. As titular king of England, he eventually obtained an influence, which, as we shall see, enabled him to direct the counsels of that country to his own purposes. In Africa he possessed the Cape de Verd Islands and the Canaries, as well as Tunis, Oran, and some other important places on the Barbary coast. He owned the Philipines and the Spice Islands in Asia. In America, besides his possessions in the West Indies, he was master of the rich empires of Mexico and Peru, and claimed a right to a boundless extent of country, that offered an inexhaustible field to the cupidity and enterprise of the Spanish adventurer. Thus the dominions of Philip stretched over every quarter of the globe. The flag of Castile was seen in the remotest latitudes,-on the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the far-off Indian seas,-passing from port to port, and uniting by commercial intercourse the widely-scattered members of her vast colonial empires.

We have given this extract, because it conveys a clear notion of the enormous power to which the pope had but little to oppose save his ecclesiastical supremacy. It was a strange sight to see the most catholic king invading the territories of the supreme pontiff, and beleaguering Rome itself. Yet the pope was the aggressor, and deserved a greater chastisement. It would have been well if he had been the sole sufferer, that his own states had borne the brunt of the war which the two conflicting armies of France and Spain carried from one end of Italy to the other. There is an eloquent passage descriptive of Italy at that period.

The fate of Italy, in the sixteenth century, was

hard indeed. She had advanced far beyond the age in most of the arts which belong to a civilized community. Her cities, even her smaller towns, through. out the country, displayed the evidences of architectural taste. They were filled with stately temples and elegant mansions; the squares were ornamented with fountains of elaborate workmanship; the rivers were spanned by arches of solid masonry. The private as well as public edifices were furnished with costly works of art, of which the value was less in the material than in the execution. A generation had scarcely passed since Michael Angelo and Raphael had produced their miracles of sculpture and of painting; and now Correggio, Paul Veronese, and Titian were filling their country with those immortal productions which have been the delight and the despair of suc

ceeding ages. Letters kept pace with art. The magical

strains of Ariosto had scarcely died away when a greater bard had arisen in Tasso, to take up the tale of Christian chivalry. This extraordinary combination of elegant art and literary culture was the more remarkable, from the contrast presented by the condition of the rest of Europe, then first rising into the light of a higher civilization. But, with all this intellectual progress, Italy was sadly deficient in some qualities found among the hardier sons of the north, and

which seem indispensable to a national existence. She

could boast of her artists, her poets, her politicians, but of few real patriots-few who rested their own hopes on the independence of their country. The freedom of old Italian republics had passed away. There was scarcely The principle of union for defence against foreign aggression was as little understood as the principle of

one that had not surrendered its liberties to a master.

political liberty at home. The states were jealous of one another. The cities were jealous of one another, and were often torn by factions within themselves. Thus their individual strength was alike ineffectual, whether for self-government or self-defence. The gift of beauty which Italy possessed in so extraordinary a degree only made her a more tempting prize to the spoiler, whom she had not the strength or the courage to resist. The Turkish corsair fell upon her coasts, plundered her maritime towns, and swept off their inhabitants into slavery. The Europeans, scarcely less barbarous, crossed the Alps, and, striking into the interior, fell upon the towns and hamlets that lay sheltered among the hills and in the quiet valleys, and converted them into heaps of ruins. Ill fares it with the land which, in an age of violence, has given itself up to the study of the graceful and the beautiful, to the neglect of those hardy virtues which can alone secure a nation's independence.

Do we not trace in this Filicaia's beautiful sonnet ?

"Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte
Dono infelice di bellezza," &c.

details given of Charles in his retreat at Yuste, Passing over the war with France, and the of which latter fact Mr. Mignet has given lately a full and agreeable narration, we come to that portion of the work in which the eminent qualities of Mr. Prescott as an historian are strongly displayed. The state of the Netherlands under Philip before and during the struggles that led to the establishment of the principles of the Reformation, and the dismemberment of the Seven Provinces, now forming the kingdom of Holland, seventeen provinces, each jealous of its own rights, each maintaining its own independent existence, peopled by men of different races, not using a common language,-formed a republic, the component parts of which were but loosely bound together. Commerce had made them rich, and had raised the enterprising inhabitants far above the standard of the rest of Europe. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which the government of such a country, so far removed from Spain, imposed on its ruler, the increasing influence of the Protestant doctrines added others which mastered the genius even of Charles, in whom the hatred of heresy was tempered by a regard for the prosperity of the country. No wonder that these difficulties became insuperable under the administration of Philip, in whom the hatred of heresy was the dominant principle-whose resolute, implacable disposition inclined him to deeds of violence from which his father would have shrunk.

From their geographical position, the Netherlands were peculiarly open to the reception of these doctrines, both from their vicinity to Germany, in which the Lutheran form of Protestantism was well established, and to France, where the Huguenots, attached to the Calvinistic form, had acquired strength. Their wide-spread commerce, also, had considerable influence in