25th of October, 1555. It took place accordingly, in the presence
of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Savoy, the dowager queens
of France and Hungary, the duchess of Lorraine, and an immense
assemblage of nobility from various countries. Charles resigned
the empire to his brother Ferdinand, already king of the Romans;
and all the rest of his dominions to his son. Soon after the
ceremony, Charles embarked from Zealand on his voyage to Spain.
He retired to the monastery of St. Justus, near the town of
Placentia, in Estremadura. He entered this retreat in February,
1556, and died there on the 21st of September, 1558, in the
fifty-ninth year of his age. The last six months of his existence,
contrasted with the daring vigor of his former life, formed a
melancholy picture of timidity and superstition.

The whole of the provinces of the Netherlands being now for the
first time united under one sovereign, such a junction marks
the limits of a second epoch in their history. It would be a
presumptuous and vain attempt to trace, in a compass so confined
as ours, the various changes in manners and customs which arose
in these countries during a period of one thousand years. The
extended and profound remarks of many celebrated writers on the
state of Europe from the decline of the Roman power to the epoch
at which we are now arrived must be referred to, to judge of
the gradual progress of civilization through the gloom of the
dark ages, till the dawn of enlightenment which led to the grand
system of European politics commenced during the reign of Charles
V. The amazing increase of commerce was, above all other
considerations, the cause of the growth of liberty in the
Netherlands. The Reformation opened the minds of men to that
intellectual freedom without which political enfranchisement is