foundation for a passionate regret was but slight. It would hardly be
a more absurd fantasy, had the poets chosen to represent Philip's father,
the Emperor Charles, repining in his dotage for the loss of "bloody
Mary," whom he had so handsomely ceded to his son. Philip took a bad old
woman to relieve his father; he took a fair young princess at his son's
expense; but similar changes in state marriages were such matters of
course, that no emotions were likely to be created in consequence. There
is no proof whatever, nor any reason to surmise; that any love passages
ever existed between Don Carlos and his step-mother.

As to the process and the death of the Prince, the mystery has not yet
been removed, and the field is still open to conjecture. It seems a
thankless task to grope in the dark after the truth at a variety of
sources; when the truth really exists in tangible shape if profane hands
could be laid upon it. The secret is buried in the bosom of the Vatican.
Philip wrote two letters on the subject to Pius V. The contents of the
first (21st January, 1568) are known. He informed the pontiff that he
had been obliged to imprison his son, and promised that he would, in the
conduct of the affair, omit nothing which could be expected of a father
and of a just and prudent king. The second letter, in which he narrated,
or is supposed to have narrated, the whole course of the tragic
proceedings, down to the death and burial of the Prince, has never yet
been made public. There are hopes that this secret missive, after three
centuries of darkness, may soon see the light.--[I am assured by Mr.
Gachard that a copy of this important letter is confidently expected by
the Commission Royale d'Histoire.]

As Philip generally told the truth to the Pope, it is probable that the
secret, when once revealed, will contain the veritable solution of the
mystery. Till that moment arrives, it seems idle to attempt fathoming