fanatic. "The tranquillity of my dominions and the security of my
crown," he said, "rest on an unqualified submission in all essential
points to the authority of the Holy See." In the same deliberate and
impressive style, not in that of a wild and reckless frenzy, is his
famous saying, "Better not to reign at all than to reign over
heretics." His course in all matters of government was in conformity
with the only chart by which he had been taught to steer. He boasted
that he was no innovator,--that he did but tread in the footsteps of
his father. Nor, though he ever kept his object steadily in view, did
he press towards it with undue haste. He was content that time should
smooth away the difficulties in his path. "Time and myself against any
other two" was not the maxim of a man who looked to effect great
changes or who felt himself in danger of being driven from his course
by the gusts of passion.

To a person of this character it mattered little, as far as the
essentials of existence were concerned, whether his life were passed
upon a throne or at an attorney's desk. In the latter situation, his
fondness for using the pen would well have qualified him for the
drudgery, his admirable patience would have been sufficiently
exercised, and the mischief he was able to do would have been on a more
contracted scale. On the throne, his labors, as his admirers tell us,
were those of "a poor clerk earning his bread," while his recreations
were those of a Jeronymite monk. His intercourse with mankind was
limited to the narrowest range of which his position would allow. Even
with his ministers he preferred to communicate in writing. When he went
abroad, it was in a carriage so constructed as to screen him entirely
from view, and to shut out the world from his observation. He always
entered Madrid after nightfall, and reached his palace by streets that
were the least frequented. He had an equally strong aversion to bodily