The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain, nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a foreigner.  And now his mad old grandmother, Joanna, who had for years been chasing cats in the lonely tower where she had been so long imprisoned, had just died; and her funeral, celebrated with great pomp by both her sons, by Charles at Brussels and Ferdinand at Augsburg, seemed to revive a history which had begun to fade, and to recall the image of Castilian sovereignty which had been so long obscured in the blaze of imperial grandeur.

His education had been but meagre.  In an age when all kings and noblemen possessed many languages, he spoke not a word of any tongue but Spanish,—­although he had a slender knowledge of French and Italian, which he afterwards learned to read with comparative facility.  He had studied a little history and geography, and he had a taste for sculpture, painting, and architecture.  Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling for art, he would have been a monster.  To have been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and in that golden age, had indeed been difficult.

The King’s personal habits were regular.  His delicate health made it necessary for him to attend to his diet, although he was apt to exceed in sweetmeats and pastry.  He slept much, and took little exercise habitually, but he had recently been urged by the physicians to try the effect of the chase as a corrective to his sedentary habits.  He was most strict in religious observances, as regular at mass, sermons, and vespers as a monk; much more, it was thought by many good Catholics, than was becoming to his rank and age.  Besides several friars who preached regularly for his instruction, he had daily discussions with others on abstruse theological points.  He consulted his confessor most minutely as to all the actions of life, inquiring anxiously whether this proceeding or that were likely to burthen his conscience.  He was grossly licentious.  It was his chief amusement to issue forth at night disguised, that he might indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence in the common haunts of vice.  This was his solace at Brussels in the midst of the gravest affairs of state.  He was not illiberal, but, on the contrary, it was thought that he would have been even generous, had he not been straitened for money at the outset of his career.  During a cold winter, he distributed alms to the poor of Brussels with an open hand.  He was fond of jests in private, and would laugh immoderately, when with a few intimate associates, at buffooneries, which he checked in public by the icy gravity of his deportment.  He dressed usually in the Spanish fashion, with close doublet, trunk hose, and short cloak, although at times he indulged in the more airy fashions of France and Burgundy, wearing buttons on his coats and feathers in his hat.  He was not thought at that time to be cruel by nature, but was usually spoken of, in the conventional language appropriated to monarchs, as a prince “clement, benign, and debonnaire.”  Time was to show the justice of his claims to such honorable epithets.