illness and met his end. The sad story of his death affords another instance of the vanity of fame and greatness. Foiled, suspected at the Spanish Court of disloyalty, unsupported by his brother, wasted in body, and, as one may fairly infer, broken-hearted, the hero of Lepanto yielded up his breath at the age of thirty-one, having in that short life attained to the very pinnacle of fame, and again been reduced to bid willingly "farewell, a long farewell, to all his greatness."
In the days of autumn there had gathered about him a gloom which was in truth the shadow of death. His letters written in September reveal the state of his mind. There is one to a nobleman at Genoa, another to his old comrade Doria, who was also then at Genoa, and a third to King Philip – all very pathetic. Indeed, we have it on the authority of his confessor, that he by this time looked upon his death as very near, and that he was devoting himself more and more to religion. In the last days of September he received the holy sacrament, and a few days after extreme unction. He charged the confessor to make known to his brother his last wishes, which had reference chiefly to the resting-place of his body, and to provision for his suite. Towards the last he was visited by alternate fits of pain and of delirium, and, while distracted in mind, issued orders to his captains as if he were in the field, found fault with what seemed to be going wrong, or lifted up his voice in shouts of victory. His mind was clear at the very end. After his sight failed, Mass was celebrated in his chamber, and he died peacefully grasping the crucifix, and with the names of Mary and Jesus just uttered.
The remains of the dead warrior were at first interred at Namur – the obsequies being solemnised with much military and civil pomp. He had, however, before his death, petitioned King Philip to have his bones deposited by those of his imperial father in the Escurial, which was eventually done. But the transfer of the body from Namur to its Spanish resting-place was effected in a manner consistent with Philip's parsimonious and occult methods – one which made chances, which would be considered extravagant even in a romance, fall to the hero after he was dead. The corpse was cut in pieces at the joints, and placed in three leather bags – each of which was carried across France at the saddle-bow of a rider as part of the baggage of his late household, the members of which returned home under the steward. Arrived near the Escurial, the parts were fitted together again, and consigned to the tomb with all the honour usually paid to the remains of a royal personage. He was one of the last paladins. A spell of elf-land seemed to be on him from his cradle to his second grave. He flourished for a while, and his crest mounted to the clouds. But the chills of adversity came early to his blossom; the wind blew over him, and he was gone. The close of his story, like the falling of the curtain on some thrilling, unsubstantial pageant, makes the heart ache with a sense of bereavement.
When we have considered all the characters so graphically presented in this history, we must certainly find that Don John of Austria, whatever may have been his faults, was worthy of much admiration. The age in which he lived appears to have been, as far as the Spanish dominions and connections were concerned, one of cruelty, selfish-
