the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and
the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a
spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and
in that golden age, had indeed been difficult.

The King's personal habits were regular. His delicate health made it
necessary for him to attend to his diet, although he was apt to exceed
in sweetmeats and pastry. He slept much, and took little exercise
habitually, but he had recently been urged by the physicians to try the
effect of the chase as a corrective to his sedentary habits. He was most
strict in religious observances, as regular at mass, sermons, and vespers
as a monk; much more, it was thought by many good Catholics, than was
becoming to his rank and age. Besides several friars who preached
regularly for his instruction, he had daily discussions with others on
abstruse theological points. He consulted his confessor most minutely as
to all the actions of life, inquiring anxiously whether this proceeding
or that were likely to burthen his conscience. He was grossly
licentious. It was his chief amusement to issue forth at night
disguised, that he might indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence
in the common haunts of vice. This was his solace at Brussels in the
midst of the gravest affairs of state. He was not illiberal, but, on the
contrary, it was thought that he would have been even generous, had he
not been straitened for money at the outset of his career. During a cold
winter, he distributed alms to the poor of Brussels with an open hand.
He was fond of jests in private, and would laugh immoderately, when with
a few intimate associates, at buffooneries, which he checked in public by
the icy gravity of his deportment. He dressed usually in the Spanish
fashion, with close doublet, trunk hose, and short cloak, although at
times he indulged in the more airy fashions of France and Burgundy,
wearing buttons on his coats and feathers in his hat. He was not thought