of them all, his youngest child, the Infanta Margarita, who died when she had scarcely completed her seventh year, March 11, 1617. Few of the English visitors of the gallery of the Louvre can have failed to stand and gaze at the fairy portrait of the little fair-haired girl, painted, as Velazquez alone could paint, in the beauty of simple truth. She is described as having been the sweetest engaging little creature that could be conceived; her baptismal name taken from the royal saint of charitable memory, St. Margaret of Scotland; her early quickness of apprehension such as to move the common fear lest she should be too short-lived.* It was the bereaved father who spoke of the sad event, writing to his daughter the Queen of France :

"I have delayed writing to you, that I might not give you ill news of your sister Margaret, hoping I might be able to give you better. But God has not been pleased to grant this, but to take her to Himself, and to leave us in such sorrow and loneliness as you can imagine, yet at the same time much comforted to see how happy she has been in going so soon to heaven. There you will now have this sister, in addition to all who are gone before, to pray to God for you, and this thought must needs comfort you in the sorrow which this news will impart to you; for, since God has not been pleased to leave her here, when we besought it of Him with so many prayers, we must believe that what has come upon us is what * Davila, 135.

is most fitting for us all. The day before her departure she bade that the choristers of the chapel, Martinez and Florian, should come to sing to her, and that they should sing the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis, which seemed to us all to be warnings that she was going to heaven, where she is now much more bright and happy* than she was with us. I have not desired your brothers to put on more mourning than what they wear in the holy week, for it is not right to wear it for one whom we know to be in heaven. Your good father, The King."

To his kinswoman, Margaret de la Cruz, daughter of Maximilian II. of Austria, who was living as a nun in the Franciscan convent at Madrid, he said on the same occasion: "I have given many thanks to God for having fulfilled in me His divine will: and considering this, and in how short a time she has come to what we so earnestly desire, and what is best for us, I am much. comforted, and well content to have such a pledge in heaven." It would not be easy to find a more simple heartfelt expression of the sorrow of a Christian parent.

(97.) When he felt that his own end was approaching, he sent for his children to give them his last blessing, and said to the Prince, "I have called for you, that you may see in what all this world's greatness ends." He repeated his blessing, and added, "God

* Orig. "Mucho mas linda." It is an expressive familiar word in Spanish, nearly answering to the Scottish "bonny." + Davila, 135, 196.

make you a good man!" For some time he appeared oppressed with the thought of the account he should have to give of his government, how much there was to amend, which he had failed to amend; but he felt reassured, when on examining his conscience he could not accuse himself of having acted from motives of favour, or to promote any private ends: "God is my witness," he said, "that in all that I commanded I intended to do right, and that the best course should be taken." He continued in acts of devotion with different religious persons till the hour of his death, when his last words were, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Gongora's funeral ode on the death of Philip III. is one of the most pleasing of his serious poems. It is a tribute, which seems to speak the sincere feeling of the poet.

There are sufficient proofs that, whenever this gentle-spirited king gave his attention to affairs of government, his influence was beneficial. He sometimes wrote with his own hand letters of instruction and admonition to ministers newly appointed to high offices, or governors going out to important provinces: for, as Contarini bears witness of him, he was capable of public business, and could discourse pertinently upon state questions; and, where he felt it as a point of conscience, those who sought aid from his authority found it. His care for the poor Indians in America *Davila, 255-260.

is attested in one or more of his letters to Francis de Borja, Prince of Esquilache, who for a time was his Viceroy in Peru: "It is the principal end of my government," he said, "in these regions, to look to the good of the Indians, and to provide for their increased comfort, that they may thus be better disposed to receive the Christian faith." He took pains to secure that the Missionary teachers should be men of perseverance and exemplary lives.* And certainly it must be confessed that some remarkable fruit attended the Jesuit and other missions in South America.

(98.) Without any affectation of learning, such as distinguished his contemporary James I., he could converse with some facility in French, Italian, and German;† and shewed his literary taste by retaining in memory and repeating good and pointed sentences, which had been spoken in his presence. The readers of Ben Jonson will remember his fine stanzas describing Truth : "Truth is the life and light of love, The sun that ever shineth, The spirit of that special grace, That faith and love defineth.

It is the warrant of the word,
That yields a scent so sweet,
As gives a power to faith to tread
All falsehood under feet.

It is the sword that doth divide
The marrow from the bone,
And in effect of heavenly love
Doth shew the Holy One."

* Davila, 249.

+ Contarini, 564.

There is something equally pleasing in an eloquent passage, which Philip the Pious used to repeat from a sermon by Juan Marquez: "What shall we say of truth, but that it is a kind of health, which never sickens or decays, a life that never dies, a feast which ever satisfies, a sun which never sets, a door for ever open, a way wherein all travellers find rest.' His favourite divine was Lewis of Granada, an able and devout writer, and a good master of the pure Castillian.

He could enjoy Don Quixote, and he enjoyed the representation of good Comedies; but his piety was shocked by the recurrence of the oaths, with which the dialogue too often abounds, and he had the actors instructed to omit this mode of shotting their discourse, when they came to perform in his presence.+

There was a royal magnanimity in his answer to Lope de Vega, who had presented to him a printed Memorial, petitioning that he would not allow ignorant painters to take his portrait, and so impair his authority by sending false copies of his august features to foreign lands. "Let them earn their bread," he said; "for, however they may paint my likeness, they do not paint my character."+

His compassion extended itself to a Christian concern for the poor convicts in the galleys. He sent orders to the commanders of his fleets, that every ship should be provided with a priest to console the sick + Id. Ibid. + Id. 176.

* Davila, 174.