On the 16th of August, 1477, the an- | cient city of Ghent presented an unusually gay appearance. Its streets were thronged with grave burghers and bold weavers in their holiday apparel; the quaint old houses were hung with variegated drapery, and festooned with the fairest flowers; while the windows were filled with the smiling faces of richly-attired dames and damsels, whose curiosity was this day strained to its highest pitch by the knowledge that all the stir was occasioned by the preparations for a wedding. And that was to be no common wedding, to which they were now expecting the advent of the bridegroom elect. The beautiful Mary of Burgundy, the wealthiest heiress in Christendom, had with a will of her ownwhich she doubtless derived from her willful father, Charles the Bold-chosen the handsome MAXIMILIAN of Austria as her future husband: and now this bridegroom of nineteen summers was about to enter Ghent, dressed bravely by means of 100,000 guilders which Mary's stepmother, Margaret of York, had sent him as provisional pocket-money. At length he comes proudly along, a goodly target for those many curious eyes. Clad in silver-gilt armor, and riding on a noble brown horse, he wears no helmet, but a peerless garland of pearls and precious stones, which sets off to the best advantage his golden locks. His long retinue consists of electors, princes, bishops, and six hundred nobles. Thus is he escorted over many a bridge, and through many a narrow winding street, to his quarters, where he receives a message of welcome from the Princess, whom, after O F AUSTRIA.* supper, (so important an item to a vigorous young German,) he goes to visit at her palace. As he rides along the streets by torchlight, his fair bride comes to meet him, and, both falling on their knees in the road, they embrace each other; Mary exclaiming, with tears of delight, "Welcome to me, thou scion of the noble German stock, whom I have so long wished to see, and whom I now am so rejoiced to meet!" On the third day after this entry, the handsomest youth of the time was united to the beautiful Burgundian heiress; and thus was secured to the House of Hapsburg the splendid dower of the Netherlands, with their brisk trade and flourishing manufactures, which served first to make Austria really considerable as a European power. Amidst all the rejoicings accompanying such an event, we may be permitted to imagine some substantial old citizen shaking his grey head, and uttering fearful forebodings as to what the Low Countries might suffer under a new sovereign, of another race, and other habits and sympathies, to whom the busy Flemings were now turned over like a peaceful flock of sheep. However, all went well while their own Mary lived: for her sake, doubtless, the sturdy Netherlanders suffered quietly many affronts and much oppression. But when she was cut off in the bloom of her youth and beauty-having been fatally injured by a fall from her horse while hawking-the flame of discontent broke forth fiercely. Maximilian, indeed, by dint of executions, managed to put down the rebellion in Ghent, and then removed to Bruges. But the fifty-two guilds of that city, under their several banners, marched his mercenaries in the marupon ket-place, disarmed them, and gave Maximilian himself an opportunity for reflection and repentance by confining him in the castle for four months. At length his father, the Emperor Frederick III., sent an army to his rescue; and Maximilian showed how much his retirement had en- | related, that when one of his devoted servlightened him as to the true principles of government, by putting to death forty of the boldest burgesses of the city. The Tyrol having come into the possession of the lucky Maximilian by the death of his crazy cousin, Sigismund, it was ever after his favorite abode. He loved to dress in its picturesque fashion-a short green coat, surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat of the same color. Its hills and valleys are full of memorials of his hunting adventures. Some of these were not of the most pleasant: one Easter Monday, in particular, found him perched on the brink of the Martinswand, a steep rock in the valley of the Upper Inn, unable to descend from the giddy height, and far from his attendants. On this perilous post he remained two long days and nights, and was at length found and saved from starving-not by an angel, as he was inclined to suppose, but by a chamois hunter, Oswald Zips, who shouted to him, and was thereafter ennobled by the style of Hollauer von Hohenfels, "Hallooer of High-Rock." Maximilian was bold even to foolhardiness. Besides performing the feat of forcing open the jaws and pulling out the tongue of a caged lion which must either have lost its spirits by durance vile, or been struck with helpless wonder at the impudence of the man-he once mounted to the highest ledge of the tower of Ulm cathedral, and stepping out upon the iron bar by which the beacon lantern was suspended, he balanced himself on one foot, while he poised the other in the air. Such luxurious quiverings in mid ether are not to be indulged in by men of vulgar birth, unless, indeed, their lives should happen to be insured for considerably more than their intrinsic worth. ants had embezzled a large sum of money, the Emperor asked him what the thief would deserve who should steal so many thousand florins-naming the exact deficit. The frail gentleman answering, earnestly, that such a fellow ought to be hanged at the very least, the Emperor quietly replied: "By no means, friend; we want your services some time longer." Having survived his second wife, Maximilian, who had ever been very respectful to the priesthood, expressed his intention of honoring that body by assuming the triple crown at the first vacancy. Writing to his daughter Margaret, (Sept. 18th, 1512,) he tells her that he had resolved upon living thenceforth in perfect celibacy; and that he intended to send the Bishop of Gurk the next day to Pope Julius II., (who had the ague, and could not live much longer,) to induce that Pontiff to make him his coadjutor, so that he might be sure of succeeding him on the Papal throne. IIe would then be ordained a priest, and in due course canonized as a saint: his dear daughter would therefore after his death be obliged to "worship" him, whereat he should feel very much "glorified." But though the jovial Emperor pledged his best jewels with the great banker Fugger of Augsburg-the Rothschild of the day-to procure the cash necessary for "refreshing the parched throats of the Cardinals," the ingenious project did not meet with any good success, and Max was obliged to content himself with his temporal sovereignty. For an Austrian Kaiser, Maximilian was amiable, and easy of access. Among his choicest friends he numbered the great painter and engraver, Albert Dürer, the learned John Reuchlin, (or Capnio,) the warlike George von Frundsberg, and Bishop Hans von Balberg, the restorer of German art and learning. But the Em Maximilian was the best archer, the most accomplished horseman, the most skillful gunner, and the worst financier of his day. His rough troops, when growl-peror was neither a great statesman nor a ing for their arrears of pay, were so in the habit of being put off with pleasant promises and the broadest of jests, that he got the nickname of Poco Denari, "Little Cash." He was once, indeed, so pressed for money as to be forced to pledge the largest jewel of the time with our King Henry VII., who acted as pawnbroker on the occasion, lending his imperial cousin 50,000 crowns on that security. As an instance of Maximilian's extreme easiness and good-nature in financial matters, it is clever strategist. Of restless activity, his energies were wasted on petty matters of detail. He did not possess a mind of power sufficient to grasp a truly grand scheme, and then to carry it out steadily and pertinaciously. Yet in his reign it is that we pass from the illuminated leaves of Middle Age romance to the paler pages of modern history. The feuds and other little matters which knights and barons had long been in the habit of settling by club-law were now brought under the cognizance of the Imperial Court of Chancery, much to the discomfiture of many an iron-handed warrior. To Maximilian is also owing the division of Germany into those circles which are apt to puzzle the modern examiner of old maps of the Empire. Maximilian must by no means be omitted from the list of royal authors: for he contributed, for the instruction of mankind, no fewer than twenty-two treatises, which may still be found, if nowhere else, in the Hof-Bibliothek at Vienna; where also may be perused the odd queries which he put to Abbot Trittheim, and among which is found the following very sensible one: "Why should witches have power over the evil spirits, whilst an honest man can not get anything from an angel ?" That he had a sufficiently-high estimate of his own prowess and sagacity, may be gathered from the fact, that one of his books, under the title of The Wise King, records the wisdom of himself and his father; and another, Theuerdank, is devoted to the narration of Max's own wondrous feats and hair-breadth escapes. Maximilian lived to see the dawn of the Reformation, one of his last acts of government being the opening of the famous Diet of Augsburg, at which Luther appeared before Cajetan. The Emperor seems to have thought this episode a very good joke a nice quarrel among the parsons, which would a little trouble the "Holy Father" at Rome-and to have had no perception of the work which this simple monk was to make for his successors down even to the present day. He left Augsburg with regret; for he had spent many festive days there, and he felt that he should never see it again. On arriving at Innspruck, the towns-people would have none of his horses or carriages, as there was an old score due to them from the imperial attendants: so the animals had to pass a winter's night in the open street; and the poor old Emperor was thrown into a fever by intense anger at the ill-behavior of his lieges. Yet he must needs embark on the Inn, in the sharp January weather, on his way to Vienna: but he only reached Wels, where he died, January 12th, 1519, aged sixty himself the greatest potentate and craf tiest statesman in the world, there was growing up in the Nethelands a fair, slender, blue-eyed youth, who was eagerly fighting again the battles of the Maccabees, or poring patiently over the pages of Thucydides. Brought up in chilling splendor, the son of a melancholy-mad mother who poisoned her husband in a fit of jealousy, CHARLES V., with no gentle domestic intercouse to foster the better qualities of the heart, was trained by circumstances to form as complete a contrast as possible to his jovial grandfather, whom he was to succeed on the imperial throne. Whatever liveliness he might inherit from his gay, good-looking father, Philip the Handsome, was counter-balanced by the intense Spanish moodiness imparted to him by his wretched mother, Joan the Insane. All youthful tendency to restlessness was broken by his stern governor, De Chièvres who would wake the boy up at any untimely hour to open dispatches, and scrawl his brief opinion on their margin. When scarcely sixteen, Charles became King of Catholic Spain—an inheritance well suited to his temperament. Amongst his first acts on visiting the land of the Inquisition, was the dismissal of the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Ximenes, from its regency, with the consoling message that his merits were so great that Heaven alone could adequately reward them; and that. he therefore permitted him to end his days in quiet on his archiepiscopal see. The aged Cardinal is said to have been killed by this cruelly kind communication; at all events, he died but a few hours after receiving it. Immediately on hearing news of the death of his Germanic grandfather, Charles set about getting himself chosen as his successor in the headship of the Holy Roman Empire. Accordingly the Fuggers of Antwerp, a branch of the great Augsburg bankers, were retained as his agents-combining the duties of a Rothschild and a Coppock-in the necessary work of buying the noble electors, taking care, of course, to promise a higher premium than the rival candidate, the French King, Francis I. The firm are said to have aided Charles greatly by an expe fact; but Dr. Vehse asserts it on the authority of * Robertson appears to have no suspicion of this letters which Hormayr gives in his historic collec tions. dient not unknown in modern politics- crown, and, with his cardinalic comrades, drank healths and made speeches to the great horror and annoyance of the incarcerated ecclesiastics. However, peace was at length concluded with France, and afterward with the humbled Pontiff, who, in February, 1530, crowned Charles, at Bologna, King of Lombardy and Emperor of the Romans. It was a fine time for the rabble, who scrambled energetically for the gold and silver coins, and the costly banqueting vessels, which were thrown to them from the palace windows. In tracing the course of Charles's long reign, one can not but regret, again and again, the injurious manner in which the cause of Reformation was bought and sold by the little Princes of the empire, who mostly cared for it only as a means of increasing their own possession and power. To Luther we owe so much that is good, that it would be an unpleasing task to scrutinize with severity his political opinions which varied considerably at different stages of his life. Suffice it to say, that if he had had any fit coadjutor to take up the kindred cause of civil freedom with a wisdom and courage equal to his own in breaking the fetters from religion, Germany need never have cowered beneath the sway of the cold and crafty Charles, and Austria and her dependencies might now have been the most fruitful lands of Protestant Europe. We can not accompany Charles through the eventful history of his long reign. His wars with France, with the Turks, and with the Protestant princes, and lastly, his encounter with one who was his match in duplicity-the Elector Maurice of Saxony-can not here be detailed. The Pope having sided with the chivalrous Francis I., the Emperor, whose public devotion to the Church was as great as ever at home, took his revenge on the Pontiff by letting loose on Italy old Frundsberg with his lansquenets, who, having joined the Constable of Bourbon and his Spaniards, marched against the temporalities of the "Holy Father." Frundsberg was prevented by an attack of paralysis from going farther than Ferrara; but Bourbon, taking the entire command, led on the troops to the walls of Rome itself, and was shot down while mounting a scaling ladder. His soldiers, however, rushed in, and sacked the city for ten days. Whilst Pope Clement and his satellites were kept close prisoners in the Castle of St. Angelo, the jovial lansquenets donned the hats and scarlet robes of the Cardinals, and Charles was not handsome in his perparaded the city on donkeys. One of son; his long, pale face being disfigured them often made his appearance before by the ugly lower lip peculiar to the the Castle, dressed up like an orthodox House of Hapsburg. His complexion in Pope, wearing the very essential triple the prime of life is said to have been as At the age of twenty-six, Charles was married at Seville to the graceful Isabel of Portugal; at whose death, thirteen years after, he displayed intense anguish. He had lived very happily with his fair bride; her genial influence in domestic life had modified his habits, and charmed away his moodiness; and his grief at losing her was incontrollable. For several days he sat beside her body in silent despair, neglectful of all public affairs; and if any had the temerity to break in upon his sorrowful solitude, he flew at them with a drawn dagger. At last he suffered the Jesuit Duke of Borhia to prevail with him, and allowed the beloved form to be entombed. He afterwards relapsed into his former habits of profligacy, which were indulged with characteristic coolness and secrecy. white as milk. We can, therefore, hard-ed his clothes with his own handsly wonder that the Protestants, at the Charles knew not how to handle large fatal battle of Mühlberg, looked upon sums of money, and was almost always in him as a ghost, or rather a mummy, as he financial straits. rode along the lines, his enfeebled limbs encased in glittering armor, his hair turned gray with the tortures of the gout, and his features pale as those of a corpse. His ordinary demeanor was proud and chilling, as might have been expected from his education; yet he knew how to bend down to those whom he liked, and to defend his low-born but faithful servants from the insults of the haughty copiers of himself. His brave captain, Antonio de Leyva, the shoemaker's son, received peculiar marks of favor, earned by his many services. Most of our readers will be familiar with the anecdote of the Emperor picking up Titian's brush, when the great painter had dropped it, and telling his astonished courtiers, "I have always people enough to bow before me, but I have not always a Titian." When a proud Castilian lady and a fair Neapolitan were quarreling for precedence at the door of the palace chapel in Brussels, Charles dexterously settled their dispute by the suggestion, "Let the most foolish go first." He used to say of the gout, "Patience and a little screaming is a good remedy against it." In money matters Charles was very careful, letting his pages go about in somewhat tattered garments, and spending far less on his own habiliments than the plainest noble did. Unfortunately, too, for his attendants, he had such a good memory, that, if one of his shirts or handkerchiefs were missing, he was sure to make inquiry after it. Indeed, an old Saxon clerk, who saw him at a review at Naumburg, in 1547, records that he wore a new black velvet cap on the occasion, and a Spanish cloak; and that, when it began to rain, Charles doffed his new cap, and covered it up under his cloak, letting the drops fall on his gray hair. Old Schirmer, who had always been accustomed to take care of his own pate, was of course astonished, and moralizes on the incident with much pathos: "Poor Emperor! who had done such great deeds in the world, who had made war in Africa, and was the possessor of so many tons of gold, and yet let the rain fall on his uncovered head!" Yet, with all his thrift about his garments-in which he showed himself a true descendant of Rodolph of Haspburg, who mend In his later years, Charles slept but little, yet rose late in the morning. He then first attended a private mass for the soul of the Empress, gave audience to his ministers, heard a second mass for the benefit of his own soul, and went thence direct to dinner, according to the old proverbial rule, Della messa alla mensa, "From mass to meat." Sastrow, who had seen the Emperor at several Diets, tells us, in his "Pomeranian Chronicle," that, however many princely relatives and friends Charles might find waiting for him on his return from church, he coolly shook hands with them, left them in the entry, and walked in alone to a good dinner, with an enviable freedom from compunction. The old chronicler goes on to state, that his Majesty had no one to carve for him; but, having nodded for any little delicacy that pleased him-such trifles as "a sucking pig," or "a calf's head "-stuck in his knife just where he fancied a piece, and scooped it out, or tore it with his fingers, drawing his plate under his chin, and so eating, in "a very unaffected, but neat and cleanly manner," which was "very pleasant to look at." He finished his elegant repast--during which his ears were regaled with choice music, and with the free-and-easy talk of the jesters who stood behind his chair-by quaffing the modicum of a pint and a half of wine from a crystal tankard, which he drained to the last drop. Petitioners knew well that now were the mollia tempora fandi, when his lordship had picked his sacred teeth with a quill, washed himself, and taken up a position in the corner near the window, in his most accessible mood. After private audiences, which lasted two or three hours, he rested himself in an easychair for an hour, had another interview with his ministers, read or wrote his letters, and, after partaking (slightly, of course, for his dinner had tempted him with a variety of twenty-four dishes, some of them very substantial) of sweetmeats and preserved fruits, he and his Court retired to bed at the modest hour of nine. In spite of his wonderful successes, of his ingenuity in political intrigue, and of some rare traits of character, Charles V. can not be pronounced a truly great man. His active and penetrating mind was de |