FOOTNOTES:

[I] Grace Aguilar's family fled to England to escape Spanish and Portuguese persecutions, and some of them found homes and fortunes in the West Indies. Her mother's name was Diaz Fernandes.

[J] Her family were of the tribe of Judah. Of the original twelve tribes two only are at present are known: the tribe of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob and Rachel. The other tribes revolted from Rehoboam, a.m. 2964, when there were two separate kingdoms, a.m. 3205, when the ten tribes were made captives by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. The ten tribes have never since been heard of; but the Israelites believe they are in existence, and will be gathered "from all the nations whither the Lord our God hath scattered them." The Spanish and Portuguese Jews are of the tribe of Judah. The German Jews are of the tribe of Benjamin.

From Frazer's Magazine.

THE CLOISTER-LIFE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.—Part. II.

To be lodged in the monastic palace of Yuste was a distinction which queen Mary of Hungary shared with one, and only one, of the visitors of her brother. The personage whom the imperial eremite delighted thus to honor was Francisco Borja, who a few years before had exchanged his dukedom of Gandia for the robe of the order of Jesus. In his brilliant youth, this remarkable man had been the star and pride of the nobility of Spain. Heir of a great and wealthy house, which was a branch of the royal line of Aragon, and which had given two pontiffs to Rome, he was distinguished no less by the favor of the emperor than by the splendor of his birth, the graces of his person, and the endowments of his mind. Born to be a soldier and a courtier, he was also an accomplished scholar, and no inconsiderable statesman. He broke horses and trained hawks as well as the most expert master of the menage and the mews; he composed masses, which long kept their place in the cathedral-choirs of Spain; he was well versed in polite learning, and deeply read in the mathematics; he served in Africa and Italy with distinction; and as viceroy of Catalonia he displayed abilities for business and administration which in a few years would have enabled him to rival the fame of Mendoza and De Lannoy. The pleasures and the honors of the world, however, seemed, even from the first, to have but slender attraction for the man so rarely fitted to obtain them. In the midst of life and its triumphs, his thoughts perpetually turned upon death and its mysteries. Ever punctilious in the performance of his religious duties, he early began to take delight in spiritual contemplation, and to discipline his mind by self-imposed penance. Even in his favorite sport of falconry, he sought occasion for self-punishment by resolutely fixing his eyes on the ground at the moment when he knew that his best hawk was about to stoop upon the heron. These tendencies were fixed by an incident which followed the death of the empress Isabella. As her master of the horse, it was Borja's duty to attend the body from Toledo to the chapel-royal of the cathedral of Granada, and to make oath of its identity ere it was laid in the grave. But when the coffin was opened, and the cerements drawn aside, the progress of decay was found to have been so rapid, that the mild and lovely face of Isabella could no longer be recognized by the most trusted and most faithful of her servants. His conscience would not allow him to swear, that the mass of corruption thus disclosed was the remains of his royal mistress, but only that having watched day and night beside it, he felt convinced that it was the same form which he had seen wrapped in its shroud at Toledo. From that moment, in the twenty-ninth year of his prosperous life, he resolved to spend what remained to him of time in earnest preparation for eternity. A few years later, the death of his beautiful and excellent wife strengthened his purpose, and snapped the dearest tie which bound him to the world. Having completed the Jesuits' college at Gandia, their first establishment of that kind in Europe, and having married his son and his two daughters, he put his affairs in order and retired into the young and still struggling society of Ignatius Loyola. In the year 1548, the thirty-eighth of his age, he ceased to be duke of Gandia, and became father Francis of the Company of Jesus.

Borja did not appear at Yuste as a chance or uninvited guest. Charles seems to have regarded him with an affection as strong as his cold nature was capable of entertaining. It was with no ordinary interest that he watched the career of the man whom alone he had chosen to make the confidant of his intended abdication, and who had unexpectedly forestalled him in the execution of the scheme. They were now in circumstances in some respects similar, in others widely different. Both had voluntarily descended from the eminence of their hereditary fortunes. Broken in health and spirits, the emperor had come to Yuste to rest and to die. The duke, on the other hand, in the full vigor of his age, had entered the humblest of the religious orders, to work out his salvation in a course of self-denial and toil, ending only in the grave. His career in the Company began with severe theological study, from which he passed to the pulpit and the professor's chair. As provincial of Aragon and Andalusia, he had been for some time laboring as a preacher, and teacher in various cities of Spain; he had founded colleges at Plasencia and Seville; and he was now delivering lectures at Alcala, in the college which Jesuit energy soon raised to be the stately pile which still forms one of the most prominent ruins of that Palmyra of universities.

It seems to have been in the early spring of the year 1557, that the emperor determined to send for his old companion and counsellor. The message was conveyed to Alcala by a servant of the count of Oropesa. Borja at first excused himself, pleading ill-health and the duties of his calling; and it was not until he had received a second summons, from the mouth of the duke of Medina-Celi, that he consented to go to Yuste. On the way he was met by a messenger, bearing a letter from the regent Juana, which advised him that her father's object in seeking an interview was to persuade him to pass from the Company into the order of St. Jerome. He arrived at the monastery early in December, attended by two brothers of the order, father Marcos, and father Bartolomé Bustamente, the latter known to fame as a scholar, and as architect of the noble hospital of St. John Baptist at Toledo. The emperor not only paid his guest the unusual compliment of lodging him in his own quarters, but even busied himself in making preparations for his reception. To make his chamber as comfortable as conventual austerity would permit, Luis Quixada had hung it with some tapestry which remained in the meagre imperial wardrobe. But this his master, judging that it would rather offend than please the visitor, caused him to take down, supplying its place with some black cloth, of which he despoiled the walls of his own cell.

The royal recluse received the noble missionary with a cordiality which was more foreign to his nature than to his habits, but which on this occasion was probably sincere. Both had withdrawn themselves from the pomps and vanities of life; but, custom being stronger than reason or faith, their greeting was as ceremonious as if it had been exchanged beneath the canopy of state at Augsburg or Valladolid. Not only did the Jesuit, lapsing into the grandee, kneel to kiss the hand of Charles, but he even insisted on remaining upon his knees during the interview. Charles, who addressed him as duke, of course frequently entreated him to rise and be seated, but in vain. "I humbly beg your majesty," said he, "to suffer me to continue kneeling; for I feel," he added, in a spirit of extravagant loyalty, "as if, in the presence of your majesty, I were in the presence of God himself."