in this physical condition of the Emperor A sufficient explanation, if explanation were required, of his descent from the throne.  Moreover, it is well known that the resolution to abdicate before his death had been long a settled scheme with him.  It had been formally agreed between himself and the Empress that they should separate at the approach of old age, and pass the remainder of their lives in a convent and a monastery.  He had, when comparatively a young man, been struck by the reply made to him by an aged officer, whose reasons he had asked for, earnestly soliciting permission to retire from the imperial service.  It was, said the veteran, that he might put a little space of religious contemplation between the active portion of his life and the grave.

A similar determination, deferred from time to time, Charles had now carried into execution.  While he still lingered in Brussels, after his abdication, a comet appeared, to warn him to the fulfilment of his purpose.  From first to last, comets and other heavenly bodies were much connected with his evolutions and arrangements.  There was no mistaking the motives with which this luminary had presented itself.  The Emperor knew very well, says a contemporary German chronicler, that it portended pestilence and war, together with the approaching death of mighty princes.  “My fates call out,” he cried, and forthwith applied himself to hasten the preparations for his departure.

The romantic picture of his philosophical retirement at Juste, painted originally by Sandoval and Siguenza, reproduced by the fascinating pencil of Strada, and imitated in frequent succession by authors of every age and country, is unfortunately but a sketch of fancy.  The investigations of modern writers have entirely thrown down the scaffolding on which the airy fabric, so delightful to poets and moralists, reposed.  The departing Emperor stands no longer in a transparency robed in shining garments.  His transfiguration is at an end.  Every action, almost every moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his solitude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous manner, by able and brilliant writers.  The Emperor, shorn of the philosophical robe in which he had been conventionally arrayed for three centuries, shivers now in the cold air of reality.

So far from his having immersed himself in profound and pious contemplation, below the current of the world’s events, his thoughts, on the contrary, never were for a moment diverted from the political surface of the times.  He read nothing but despatches; he wrote or dictated interminable ones in reply, as dull and prolix as any which ever came from his pen.  He manifested a succession of emotions at the course of contemporary affairs, as intense and as varied, as if the world still rested in his palm.  He was, in truth, essentially a man of action.  He had neither the taste nor talents which make a man great in retirement.  Not a lofty thought, not