as could have been yielded to himself. Ten days later; he addressed a
letter to the estates of the Empire, stating the same fact; and on the
17th September, 1556, he set sail from Zeland for Spain. These delays
and difficulties occasioned some misconceptions. Many persons who did
not admire an abdication, which others, on the contrary, esteemed as an
act of unexampled magnanimity, stoutly denied that it was the intention
of Charles to renounce the Empire. The Venetian envoy informed his
government that Ferdinand was only to be lieutenant for Charles, under
strict limitations, and that the Emperor was to resume the government so
soon as his health would allow. The Bishop of Arras and Don Juan de
Manrique had both assured him, he said, that Charles would not, on any
account, definitely abdicate. Manrique even asserted that it was a mere
farce to believe in any such intention. The Emperor ought to remain to
protect his son, by the resources of the Empire, against France, the
Turks, and the heretics. His very shadow was terrible to the Lutherans,
and his form might be expected to rise again in stern reality from its
temporary grave. Time has shown the falsity of all these imaginings,
but views thus maintained by those in the best condition to know the
truth, prove how difficult it was for men to believe in a transaction
which was then so extraordinary, and how little consonant it was in their
eyes with true propriety. It was necessary to ascend to the times of
Diocletian, to find an example of a similar abdication of empire, on so
deliberate and extensive a scale, and the great English historian of the
Roman Empire has compared the two acts with each other. But there seems
a vast difference between the cases. Both emperors were distinguished
soldiers; both were merciless persecutors of defenceless Christians; both
exchanged unbounded empire for absolute seclusion. But Diocletian was
born in the lowest abyss of human degradation--the slave and the son of
a slave. For such a man, after having reached the highest pinnacle of
human greatness, voluntarily to descend from power, seems an act of far