Toward the end of his career, Charles redoubled his severities against the Protestants, and even introduced a modified species of inquisition into the Netherlands, but with little effect toward the suppression of the reformed doctrines.  The misunderstandings between his only son Philip and Mary of England, whom he had induced him to marry, and the unamiable disposition of this young prince, tormented him almost as much as he was humiliated by the victories of Henry II. of France, the successor of Francis I., and the successful dissimulation of Maurice, elector of Saxony, by whom he was completely outwitted, deceived, and defeated.  Impelled by these motives, and others, perhaps, which are and must ever remain unknown, Charles at length decided on abdicating the whole of his immense possessions.  He chose the city of Brussels as the scene of the solemnity, and the day fixed for it was the 25th of October, 1555.  It took place accordingly, in the presence of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Savoy, the dowager queens of France and Hungary, the duchess of Lorraine, and an immense assemblage of nobility from various countries.  Charles resigned the empire to his brother Ferdinand, already king of the Romans; and all the rest of his dominions to his son.  Soon after the ceremony, Charles embarked from Zealand on his voyage to Spain.  He retired to the monastery of St. Justus, near the town of Placentia, in Estremadura.  He entered this retreat in February, 1556, and died there on the 21st of September, 1558, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.  The last six months of his existence, contrasted with the daring vigor of his former life, formed a melancholy picture of timidity and superstition.

The whole of the provinces of the Netherlands being now for the first time united under one sovereign, such a junction marks the limits of a second epoch in their history.  It would be a presumptuous and vain attempt to trace, in a compass so confined as ours, the various changes in manners and customs which arose in these countries during a period of one thousand years.  The extended and profound remarks of many celebrated writers on the state of Europe from the decline of the Roman power to the epoch at which we are now arrived must be referred to, to judge of the gradual progress of civilization through the gloom of the dark ages, till the dawn of enlightenment which led to the grand system of European politics commenced during the reign of Charles V. The amazing increase of commerce was, above all other considerations, the cause of the growth of liberty in the Netherlands.  The Reformation opened the minds of men to that intellectual freedom without which political enfranchisement is a worthless privilege.  The invention of printing opened a thousand channels to the flow of erudition and talent, and sent them out from the reservoirs of individual possession to fertilize the whole domain of human nature.  War, which seems to be an instinct of man, and which particular instances of heroism often