almost without troops. The emperor saved himself by a speedy flight without regarding the darkness or the rain. He was suffering from the gout, and was carried in a litter, taking his way over the Alps by roads almost impassable. He was compelled soon after to sign the treaty of Passau, May, 1552, by which all his work of suppressing the Protestants of Germany was completely undone.

Meanwhile the French had taken Metz, and the emperor determined to regain it. The French were as determined to keep it, and the Duke of Guise, their greatest general, was in command. The Duke of Alva commanded the besiegers, and the emperor himself was present. But their utmost efforts availed nothing; the winter set in with terrible severity; it rained or snowed every day, and on December 26, 1552, the siege was raised. Tears ran down the cheeks of Charles as he gave the order to retreat. The French sallied out to harass the rear, but were melted into tenderness and pity by the view which met their eyes. The imperial camp was filled with the sick and wounded, with the dead and the dying.

In 1555, Charles being weary of affairs of state, determined to surrender all to his son Philip. At a grand assembly at Brussels he introduced his son and successor. Leaning on the shoulder of the young Prince of Orange, afterwards so famous, he took an affectionate leave of his subjects. He had visited, he said, Germany nine times, Spain six times, France four times, Italy seven times, England twice, Africa as often, and had made eleven voyages by sea. He was now weary and broken, and de

sired rest.

He then retired to the monastery of St. Just in the south of Spain, and buried there in solitude and silence his grandeur, his ambition, together with all those vast

projects which during almost half a century had alarmed and agitated Europe.

He amused himself with clock-making, and he took great pleasure in reading the works of St. Augustine and St. Bernard. He resolved to celebrate his own obsequies before his death. He ordered his tomb to be erected in the chapel of the monastery. His domestics marched thither in funeral procession with black tapers in their hands. He himself followed in his shroud. He was laid in the coffin with much solemnity. The service for the dead was chanted, and Charles joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears with those which his attendants shed as if they had been celebrating a real funeral. The ceremony closed with sprinkling holy water on the coffin in the usual form, and all the assistants retiring the doors of the chapel were shut. Then Charles rose out of the coffin and withdrew

to his apartment. But the fatigue or the excitement affected him so much that next day he was seized with a fever, and died in a few days, in September, 1558.Robertson.

VISITATION OF THE MONASTERIES.

Originally, and for many hundred years after their foundation, the regular clergy were the finest body of men of which mankind in their chequered history can boast. They lived to illustrate in systematic simplicity the universal law of sacrifice. In their three chief vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience they surrendered everything which makes life delightful. Their business on earth was to labour and to pray; to labour for other

men's bodies, to pray for other men's souls. Wealth flowed in upon them; the world, in its instinctive loyalty to greatness, laid its lands and possessions at their feet; and for a time was seen the notable spectacle of property administered as a trust from which the owners reaped no benefit except increase of toil.

The soul of monasticism, however, had died out of it for many generations before the Reformation. At the close of the fourteenth century Wycliffe had cried that the rotting tree cumbered the ground and should be cut down. It had not been cut down; it had been allowed to stand for a hundred and fifty more years, and now it was indeed plain that it could remain no longer. The boughs were bare, the stem was withered, the veins were choked with corruption; the ancient life tree of monasticism would blossom and bear fruit no more.

The abbeys, as the state regarded them, existed for the benefit of the poor. The occupants for the time being were themselves under vows of poverty; they might appropriate to their personal use no portion of the revenues of their estates; they were to labour with their own hands, and administer their property for the public advantage. The surplus proceeds of the lands, when their own modest requirements had been supplied, were to be devoted to the maintenance of learning, to the exercise of a liberal hospitality, and to the relief of the aged, the impotent, and the helpless.

The popular clamour of the day declared that these duties were systematically neglected; that two-thirds, at least, of the religious bodies abused their opportunities unfairly for their own advantage. The monks, it was believed, lived in idleness, keeping vast retinues of servants to do the work which they ought to have done themselves. At Tewkesbury, where there was an abbot

and thirty-two monks, payment was made to a hundred and forty-four servants in livery who were wholly engaged in the service of the abbey.

In the summer of 1535, Cromwell, now "vicegerent of the king in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm," issued a commission for a general visitation of the religious houses, the universities, and other spiritual corporations. The persons appointed to conduct the inquiry were Doctors Legh, Leyton, and Ap Rice, ecclesiastical lawyers in holy orders, with various subordi

nates.

The report they made is no longer extant. Bonner was directed by Queen Mary to destroy all discoverable copies of it, and his work was fatally wellexecuted. We are able, however, to replace its contents, to some extent, out of the despatches of the commissioners.

They began their work with the University of Oxford. There was comfortable living in the colleges; so comfortable that many of the country clergy preferred Oxford and Cambridge to the monotony of their parishes. "Divers and many persons beneficed with cure of souls, and being not apt to study by reason of their age or otherwise, did daily and commonly resort to the said universities, where, under pretence of study, they continued and abode, living dissolutely." .

Like a sudden storm of rain the commissioners dropped down into the quiet precincts of Oxford. Heedless of sleepy dignities and established indolences they re-established long dormant lectures in the colleges. In a few little days (for so long only they remained) they poured new life into education. They founded fresh professorships of Polite Latin, of Philosophy, of Divinity, of Canon Law, of the Natural Sciences;-above all, of the dreaded Greek; confiscating funds to support them. The idle

residents were noted down, soon to be sent home by Parliament to their benefices.

On leaving Oxford the visitors spread over England, north, south, east, and west. We trace Legh in rapid progress through Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Northumberland; Leyton through Middlesex, Kent, Sussex, Hants, Somersetshire, and Devon. Legh appeared at monastery after monastery with prompt, decisive questions; and if the truth was concealed, with expedients for discovering it, in which practice soon made them skilful. At a monastery in Wiltshire it was found that the prior had a family of illegitimate children whom he brought up and provided for in a very comfortable manner. "The prior is an holy man, and hath but six children; and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the monastery. His sons be tall men waiting upon him."

A little later the commissioners were at Fountains Abbey; and tourists who, in their day-dreams amongst those fair ruins are inclined to complain of the sacrilege which wasted the houses of prayer, may study with advantage the following account of that house in the year which preceded its dissolution. The outward beautiful ruin was but the symbol and consequence of a moral ruin not so beautiful. The abbot of Fountains, we read in a joint letter of Legh and Leyton, had greatly dilapidated his house, and wasted the woods, notoriously keeping six women. He is, they say, defamed by the whole people, one day denying these articles with many more, the next day confessing the same, thus manifestly incurring perjury. Six days before the visitors' access to his monastery he committed theft and sacrilege, confessing the same. At midnight he caused his chaplain to seize the sexton's keys, and took out a jewel, a cross of gold