THE TEN COURTS OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.*

THE catalogues of the Crystal Palace are pre-eminently in need of an introduction. It is all very well to be told in an appropriate guidebook, that in the Egyptian Court the central colonnade, with its starry ceiling, is taken from the temple of Karnac-the lesser one from Philæ; that the Roman Court is full of choice works; that the Alhambra Court is a reproduction of the castellated palace of the Moorish kings of Granada; with a great deal of detailed information. Still much more was wanted, part of which can only be supplied by preliminary education, part by such a work as that now before us.

It is now understood that to appreciate the art of a nation, we must know the climate that surrounded the sculptor or the painter, the sky that he looked upon, the mountains or plains that formed his horizon; you must recal his religion, his tutelary deities, the government under which he lived, the social institutions that either invigorated or enervated his mind; you must feel his wants, and remember his pleasures. All this requires some previous acquaintance with the circumstances and position under which arose the giant structures of Egypt, and the richly ornamented Ninevite chambers-those under which the latter existed, being, it is to be remarked, quite different from those under which arose the more graceful structures of Persepolis, and which are so incongruously jumbled together in the so-called Assyrian Court of the Crystal Palacewe require to know that, after all, Pompeii was only the Worthing of Rome, not its Brighton; and to understand the nature of the closet-like rooms of its country-boxes demands some little intimacy with the manners and customs of the Romans of old.

Then, again, there is another kind of information requisite. In going into the Byzantine Court some little previous information as to the technical characteristics of the Romanesque in general is absolutely necessary—some idea of Saxon, Norman, Lombard, and Byzantine edifices is essential to enter into the peculiarities of these revivals through Christianity of Roman art, purified and carried forward from the point at which it had petrified. So also in the Renaissance and Italian Courts, where the decorative art of the fifteenth century became the apotheosis of upholstery, a perfectly different kind of elementary information is equally absolutely essential.

Both these kinds of information the Crystal Palace visitor will find in this account of the Ten Chief Courts of the Sydenham Palace, which thus constitutes an indispensable introduction to the Company's catalogues. The stringent necessities, both of time and space, have required that many of these Courts should be formed of condensed compilations from various temples and of different periods, and, except in the attempt to wed Assyrian and Persian architecture together, we think, with advantage to the student; but these incongruities can only be fully understood and appreciated by the study of elementary works, or the perusal of introductory notes, such as are presented to the reader in this clever and most useful little book.

* The Ten Chief Courts of the Sydenham Palace. G. Routledge and Co.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE LAST DAYS OF CHARLES THE FIFTH.

HISTORY presents us with several remarkable instances of great men retiring from public life into privacy and seclusion. None, however, can compare to Charles V., who in 1556 exchanged the crowns of kingdoms for the seclusion of a monastery. The only historical parallel to such a renunciation of power is the involuntary abdication of Napoleon the Great; but, in the latter, the renown, ability, and power, are the only points of similitude, the chief point, that of voluntary abdication of the pleasures and pomp of greatness, is wanting.

Hence the peculiar interest attaching itself to the history of the last days of Charles V. His contemporaries, as the old Pope Paul IV., dismissed the subject from their minds by adopting as a received fact that the emperor had lost his senses; historians, as Robertson and Sandoval, were equally wide of the mark when they pictured the statesman and warrior as a humble ascetic, clothed in serge, immured in the solitude of a cloister, and given up to nothing but pious exercises.

The light thrown in modern times upon the last days of Charles V. has had one common source. This is a large MSS. volume, written by Tomas Gonzalez, designated "Retiro, estancia y muerte del Emperador Carlos Quinto en el Monasterio de Yuste." This MSS. was left by Tomas to his brother, Manuel Gonzalez, keeper of the archives of Simancas, and he sold it for 1607. to the French government. This MSS. was the basis of Mr. Stirling's charming work, "The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V.," and of M. Amédée Pichot's interesting "Chronique de la vie intérieure et politique de Charles Quint."*

M. Mignet has been enabled to add to this invaluable source of information others not less important and interesting, derived from the archives of Simancas, and collected and published by M. Gachard, under the title of "Retraite et Mort de Charles Quint au Monastère de Yuste." The last work constitutes an essential complement to all that has hitherto been published upon the subject. What adds still more to the value of M. Gachard's work is, that he has also been able to avail himself of a memoir on the conventual life of Charles V., discovered only four years ago among the archives of the feudal court of Brabant, written by a monk living in the convent at the time; and the narrative of the monk is more circumstantial and satisfactory than even that of the Prior Fray Martin de Angulo himself, and who has been almost the sole authority with Sandoval in his " Vida del Emperador Carlos Quinto en Yuste."

It appears from these new materials thus obtained and compared with one another, and certain inedited despatches of which M. Mignet has

* We regret to have received M. Amédée Pichot's work so late this month as not to have been able to incorporate some of the curious facts which that distinguished writer has eliminated, regarding the habits and manners of the illustrious recluse, into the present article. The subject is, however, far too interesting to be passed over cursorily, and we shall gladly avail ourselves of M. Pichot's researches on a future occasion. 2 c

Aug.-VOL. CI. NO. CCCCIV.

*

also been able to avail himself in his newly-published work, that Charles V. entertained the idea of withdrawing from the pomps and vanities of the world from a much earlier period in life than has hitherto been supposed.

An inedited letter of the Portuguese ambassador, Lorenzo Pirez, to King Johu III., dated 16th January, 1557, and for reference to which M. Mignet expresses his obligations to Viscount Santarem, attests that Charles V. first entertained this idea upon the occasion of his narrowly escaping shipwreck on his return from the expedition to Tunis in 1535. In 1539 the death of his beloved wife, the Empress Isabella, revived the feeling in still greater intensity. The contemplation of the quick destruction that awaited upon human beauty and power alike, and the narrow home to which both were ultimately consigned, made the resolve to withdraw from the world so fixed, that he actually shut himself up for a time in a convent of Hieronymite monks at Sysla.

At the time when Charles V. first entertained these ideas of religious seclusion he was scarcely forty years of age, and at the height of his power. The responsibilities of his position, and the necessity of providing for a safe succession to the throne, alone delayed the execution of this desire, which, as years rolled on, became increased by the infirmities which overtook him, and which were a natural consequence of his incessant activity, his mode of life, and of holding in his hands a power too great and too much dispersed to be within the compass of the genius and the administrative capacities of one man.

Of middle height, but well set, Charles V. had been remarkable in his early days for his prowess in the chase, the tournament, and in all athletic exercises. He had even entered the arena to combat with bulls. The remarkable activity and vigour of his intellect were betokened in his spacious forehead, and interpreted in his penetrating look. A defect in the lower part of the face was, however, as injurious to his health as much as it detracted from his looks. The lower jaw advanced beyond the upper one so much, that when he closed his mouth his teeth did not meet. The teeth themselves were also few in number, and very irregularly disposed, so that he stammered a little, and digested badly. His appetite was as capacious as his intellect. The Englishman, Roger Asham, has recorded the surprise he experienced at witnessing the emperor's voracity. Boiled beef, roast mutton, baked leveret, stewed capon, nothing came wrong. Five times, says the venerable chronicler, he dipped his head into his glass, and each time he did not drink less than a quarter of a gallon (a quart) of Rhenish wine.

Van Male, the emperor's ayuda de cámara, complained bitterly that even when ill he could not dispense with his usual dishes and drinks. His wine was always iced, and his beer, which he imbibed the first thing in the morning, was left all night in the open air to cool. He was particularly partial to fish, and to the horror of his attendants he cat his oysters raw as well as boiled and roasted!

The emperor was also given to certain pleasures, in which, according to the expression of a contemporaneous ambassador, il ne portait pas une volonté assez moderée; il se les procurait partout on il se trouvait,

Charles-Quint son Abdication, son Séjour et sa Mort au Monastère de Yuste. Par M. Mignet, Membre de l'Académie Française.

avec des dames de grande et aussi de petite condition. Excesses in the cabinet and the field, at table and in the boudoir, soon brought this great mind and powerful frame low. In 1518 he had an epileptic fit when playing at tennis; and in 1519 he was struck down when attending mass at Saragossa. Gout assailed him by the time he was thirty years of age. Its attacks, more and more frequent and more and more prolonged, bore more particularly in his hands and knees. He could not always affix his signature when wanted, and often when he was in the field he could not mount his horse, but had to follow the army in a litter. Thus assailed by infirmities, tormented in addition by asthma, subject to a flux of a most exhausting character, irritated by cutaneous irruptions on his right hand and in his feet, his beard and hair prematurely grey, he felt his strength and capabilities abandoning him at the very time that the aspect of affairs was most threatening.

Add to all this, Charles V. had a decided inclination for religious exercises. To use the words of his biographer, "The perusal of the Old and New Testaments possessed great attractions for him; the poetry of the Psalms struck his imagination and stirred his soul. The magnificence of the Catholic ceremonies, the affecting grandeur of the expiatory sacrifice in the mass, the music mingled with prayer, the beauty of the arts relieving the austerity of the dogma, the mediatory power of the Church giving succour by absolution, and reassuring the weakness of the man and the anxiety of the Christian by repentance, all combined to retain him with fervour in the olden form of worship."

His policy also, it would appear, helped in no small degree to confirm him in the olden faith. Successor to those Catholic monarchs who had recovered the Spanish peninsula from the Moors; possessor of a great part of that Italy in the centre of which was placed the seat of apostolic tradition and Christian government; chief elect of that holy Roman empire whose crown, from Charlemagne to his own day, had been placed on the forehead of the emperor by the Pope's hands; he was bound to preserve and to defend the ancient creed of his ancestors and of these different realms, and the hereditary worship with which were associated the fidelity of his subjects, the principle of existence of many of his states, and the solid grandeur of his domination.

This sense of duty, this feeling of political necessity, may have served in no small degree to uphold the fervour of Charles V.'s religious convictions. He attended several masses in the day. He communicated at the great festivals. Upwards of an hour every morning was devoted to religious meditation. He had even composed prayers himself. His last political and warlike efforts were directed against Protestant ascendancy in Germany; they were those also which were attended with the least success of any undertakings which marked his once brilliant career.

Charles V. having decided upon cloistral seclusion, the Hieronymite monks obtained his preference. They constituted an order which was almost exclusively Spanish, having been founded by a few hermits of the Peninsula, who in 1373 obtained the authority of Pope Gregory XI. to unite in religious congregations under the name of St. Jerome and the rules of St. Augustin.

Their first monastery had arisen at San Bartholome de Lupiana, near Guadalajara, on one of the airy heights of Old Castile. From thence they had

rapidly spread over the plain of Toledo, into the pine forests of Guisando, among the myrtles of Barcelona and Valencia, under the vine-clad bowers of Segovia, and into the chesnut forests of Estramadura. Placed at no great distance from the towns, in agreeable and secluded situations, they had covered the Peninsula with their establishments-from Granada to Lisbon, from Seville to Saragossa. They had devoted themselves in the first instance to contem. plation and prayer. They lived upon charity, and from the middle of night to the end of the day they sang to the praises of God with a rare assiduity and a singular pomp. Soon enriched by the gifts of the people and the favours of princes, the Hieronymites, whose entire order was governed by an elective general, and each convent ruled by a triennial prior, added science to prayer and the cultivation of letters to the practice of psalmody, and from poor monks they became the opulent possessors of extensive lands, of numerous flocks, and of rich vineyards. No other monks in Spain celebrated Catholic worship with a more imposing dignity, could rival the sweetness of the music of their choirs, distributed such abundant charities at the gates of their convents, or offered in their establishments a more generous hospitality to travellers.

At Notre Dame de Guadalupe, one of the three most venerated and most frequented sanctuaries in Spain, their convent was in extent like a town, and was, by its fortifications, rendered as strong as a citadel. Here the Hieronymites kept their treasure in a tower; here their spacious cellars were always full; their beautiful gardens were clothed with orange and lemon trees; while on the neighbouring mountains they pastured flocks of sheep, cows, goats, and pigs. In Estramadura alone they possessed fifty thousand feet of plantations of olives and cedars; and in their spacious refectories the table for visitors and pilgrims was laid six or seven times a day with bounteous profusion.

It was near a monastery of this description, given to prayer and to study, that Charles V. resolved to withdraw. He had always held monastic life in peculiar veneration. This veneration was a kind of heirloom, which he had from his grandfather, and which he transmitted to his son. Ferdinand the Catholic had built two monasteries of the same order after the victory of Toro, in 1475, and the conquest of Granada, in 1492; and he had retired to one of these cloisters upon the death of the queen, Isabella of Castile, and when he felt himself at the point of death, he repaired to Madrigalejo, to a house belonging to the Hieronymites, whom he had constituted guardians of the royal tombs. Philip II. was destined to found for the same order the vast Escurial, in commemoration of the battle of Saint Quentin, and there he also in his turn both lived and died. Charles V., who had been on several occasions the host of the Hieronymites, in their convents of Santa Engracia, of Sysla, and of Mejorada, resolved to end his days in their cloister of Yuste.

Yuste, to which the emperor's adoption was to give so much celebrity, had been founded at the commencement of the fifteenth century, near a rivulet from which it took its name, in a mountain chain of Estramadura, cut up by valleys, clothed with trees, and watered by numerous rivulets that flowed down from the snowy summits of the mountains. From this picturesque site-having to the east and to the south the plains of Talavera and of Aranjuelo-the eye followed the course of the Tietar and the Tagus, dived into the fine cultivations and smiling villages that lay nestled amid the woods of the magnificent basin of Vera de Plasencia, and rested finally in the distance on the azure outline of the Gaudalupe mountains.

Such was the monastery which Charles V. selected for his place of retirement. The pleasing salubrity of the spot and its peaceful solitude were alike adapted for an infirm body and a weary mind. But while he nominally withdrew among the Hieronymites of Yuste, whose extensive knowledge and pious regularity he duly appreciated, he by no means