populations carried into slavery, where they miserably died.  And the ravages of Christian warfare, duke against duke, baron against baron, king against king, were hardly less cruel and desolating.  Balls from opposing batteries regard not the helpless ones in their range.  Charging squadrons must trample down with iron hoof all who are in their way.  The wail of misery rose from every portion of Europe.  The world has surely made some progress since that day.

There was but very little that was loveable in the character of Charles, and he seems to have had but very few friends.  So intense and earnest was he in the prosecution of the plans of grandeur which engrossed his soul, that he was seldom known to smile.  He had many of the attributes of greatness, indomitable energy and perseverance, untiring industry, comprehensive grasp of thought and capability of superintending the minutest details.  He had, also, a certain fanatic conscientiousness about him, like that which actuated Saul of Tarsus, when, holding the garments of those who stoned the martyr, he “verily thought that he was doing God service.”

Many anecdotes are told illustrative of certain estimable traits in his character.  When a boy, like other boys, he was not fond of study, and being very self-willed, he would not yield to the entreaties of his tutors.  He consequently had but an imperfect education, which may in part account for his excessive illiberality, and for many of his stupendous follies.  The mind, enlarged by liberal culture, is ever tolerant.  He afterwards regretted exceedingly this neglect of his early studies.  At Genoa, on some public occasion, he was addressed in a Latin oration, not one word of which he understood.

“I now feel,” he said, “the justice of my preceptor Adrian’s remonstrances, who frequently used to predict that I should be punished for the thoughtlessness of my youth.”

He was fond of the society of learned men, and treated them with great respect.  Some of the nobles complained that the emperor treated the celebrated historian, Guicciardini, with much more respect than he did them.  He replied—­

“I can, by a word, create a hundred nobles; but God alone can create a Guicciardini.”

He greatly admired the genius of Titian, and considered him one of the most resplendent ornaments of his empire.  He knew full well that Titian would be remembered long after thousands of the proudest grandees of his empire had sunk into oblivion.  He loved to go into the studio of the illustrious painter, and watch the creations of beauty as they rose beneath his pencil.  One day Titian accidentally dropped his brush.  The emperor picked it up, and, presenting it to the artist, said gracefully—­

“Titian is worthy of being served by an emperor.”

Charles V. never, apparently, inspired the glow of affection, or an emotion of enthusiasm in any bosom.  He accomplished some reforms in the German empire, and the only interest his name now excites is the interest necessarily involved in the sublime drama of his long and eventful reign.