Queen of France, she had been sent away and handed back to her father, to make way for Anne of Brittany.  She was ruler of the Low Countries, active, able, full of passion, and in continual correspondence with her father, the emperor, over whom she exercised a great deal of influence. [This correspondence was published in 1839, by the Societe de l’Histoire de France (2 vols. 8vo.), from the originals, which exist in the archives of Lille.] The Swiss, on their side, continuing to smart under the contemptuous language which Louis had imprudently applied to them, became more and more pronounced against him, rudely dismissed Louis de la Tremoille, who attempted to negotiate with them, re-established Maximilian Sforza in the duchy of Milan, and haughtily styled themselves “vanquishers of kings and defenders of the holy Roman Church.”  And the Roman Church made a good defender of herself.  Julius II. had convoked at Rome, at St. John Lateran, a council, which met on the 3d of May, 1512, and in presence of which the council of Pisa and Milan, after an attempt at removing to Lyons, vanished away like a phantom.  Everywhere things were turning out according to the wishes and for the profit of the pope; and France and her king were reduced to defending themselves on their own soil against a coalition of all their great neighbors.

“Man proposes and God disposes.”  Not a step can be made in history without meeting with some corroboration of that modest, pious, grand truth.  On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, had perished in the hour of his victory, Pope Julius II. died at Rome at the very moment when he seemed invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy.  He died without bluster and without disquietude, disavowing nought of his past life, and relinquishing none of his designs as to the future.  He had been impassioned and skilful in the employment of moral force, whereby alone he could become master of material forces; a rare order of genius, and one which never lacks grandeur, even when the man who possesses it abuses it.  His constant thought was how he might free Italy from the barbarians; and he liked to hear himself called by the name of liberator, which was commonly given him.  One day the outspoken Cardinal Grimani said to him that, nevertheless, the kingdom of Naples, one of the greatest and richest portions of Italy, was still under the foreign yoke; whereupon Julius II., brandishing the staff on which he was leaning, said, wrathfully, “Assuredly, if Heaven had not otherwise ordained, the Neapolitans too would have shaken off the yoke which lies heavy on them.”  Guicciardini has summed up, with equal justice and sound judgment, the principal traits of his character:  “He was a prince,” says the historian, “of incalculable courage and firmness; full of boundless imaginings which would have brought him headlong to ruin if the respect borne to the Church, the dissensions of princes and the conditions of the