the plains and in the mountains near the river Irtish, in the same latitude, but farther to the west, there are many ancient burying-places, in which they find knives, daggers, and points of arrows made of copper. In other burying-places, near Krasnojarsk, they have found ornaments of copper and of gold; some of them adorned with embossed figures of various animals, elks, raindeers, stags, etc., all of exquisite workmanship. There is a curious circumstance which evidences the prodigious antiquity of those mines we have mentioned. The props which support the earth in those mines are now petrified, and this petrifaction contains sometimes copper and gold. So much time, therefore, has elapsed since those props were erected, that nature has gone through the tedious process of forming those metals; and the same course of time has entirely annihilated every vestige of the stones with which the same men who dug those mines must have built their houses: for in a period of society when men are arrived at the art of forming curious works in gold and copper, we must suppose they dwelt in towns, and could rear regular edifices; but of such towns and edifices not a trace remains.

Such is the ingenious hypothesis of M. Bailly, and thus far his theory has no small share of plausibility: but when he goes on afterward to find the history of this great nation in the Atalantis of the ancients, described by Plato, and supposes the first population of the earth to have been at the north pole, he is plainly launching into the region of imagination. It is altogether a very amusing specimen of philosophic ingenuity, but is more valuable as specifying many curious facts relative to the manners and attainments of the ancient nations, and as furnishing strong evidence of the common origin of mankind, than as affording any plausible grounds for fixing the locality of this primeval people.

CHAPTER XXVI.

REIGN OF PHILIP II. OF SPAIN-REVOLUTION OF THE NETH ERLANDS, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF HOL LAND:-William of Nassau declared Stadtholder of the United Provinces--Philip acquires the Sovereignty of Portugal -Schemes against England-Defeat of the Armada-Death and Character of Philip II.

FROM our rapid review of the state of the Asiatic kingdoms, we now return to consider the situation of Europe toward the middle of the sixteenth century.

In the time of Philip II. of Spain, the successor of Charles V., the balance of power in Europe was maintained by four great monarchies. Spain sustained its part by the talents of its monarch and his vast resources in point of wealth, derived from the treasures of the new world; France, by its internal strength and situation; Germany, by the power and abilities of many of its princes, who, though jealous of each other, were united for the defence of their country; and England, by the great political genius and wisdom of Queen Elizabeth and her ministers. Of these, perhaps, Philip of Spain acted the principal character, though not the most amianie or respectable. He was, in his temper, selfish, gloomy, overbearing, and tyrannical. Yet he possessed great political activity, indefatigable assiduity in the management of public affairs, and a consummate ability in securing his own kingdom from danger by fomenting divisions among all his neighbours. He was at this time sovereign of Spain, of the Milanese, of the two Sicilies, and of all the Netherlands; and his father, Charles V., had left him an army of the best disciplined troops in Europe. He had, likewise, in the beginning of his reign, the whc. force of England under his command, from his marriage with Queen Mary.

Pope Paul IV., jealous of this exorbitant power, took advantage of the hereditary passion of the French

monarchs to establish themselves in Italy, and formed an alliance with Henry II. of France to deprive the Spaniards of some important branches of their huge empire. A war was therefore declared between France and Spain, of which the object and the prize was the sovereignty of Milan and the Sicilys. The Spaniards began their attack on the French on the quarter of Flanders. Philip, with the assistance of eight thousand English, engaged the French at St. Quintin, in Picardy, and gained a most complete and glorious victory. The French lost almost the whole of their general officers and the flower of their nobility. This victory was followed by the taking of the town of St. Quintin; but Philip, who had greater abilities in negotiating than in fighting, gave his enemy time to recover strength while he was meditating to secure these important advantages by a peace. The duke of Guise, whom Henry II. had appointed generalissimo of all the forces of his kingdom, recovered for a while the spirits of the French, by the taking of Calais and the total expulsion of the English, who had now pos- . sessed it above two hundred years. But in the meantime the troops of Philip gained another battle in the neighbourhood of Gravelines, in which Count Egmont, the Spanish general, completely defeated the French under the Marshal de Ternis. This appeared to Philip a favourable juncture for making peace with the greatest advantage: the treaty of Chateau Cambrésis was accordingly concluded between Spain and France, in the year 1559, extremely advantageous for Spain, as the French, mortified by their losses, gave up no less than eighty-nine fortified towns in the Low Countries and in Italy. Philip likewise, assuming all the authority of a conqueror, caused the territory of Bouillon to be restored to the bishop of Liege; Montferat to the duke of Mantua; Corsica to the Genoese; and Savoy, Piedmont, and Bresse to the duke of Savoy. Henry II. was likewise, at the same time, obliged to conclude a peace with Elizabeth of England, of which one con

dition was, the redelivery of Calais, which Henry agreed to restore within eight years, or to pay five hundred thousand crowns; but Calais was never restored, nor was the money ever paid. Philip cemented this peace by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry II. This princess, it is said, had been promised in marriage to his son Don Carlos, a circumstance on which some writers have founded a most romantic story of distress, and which is said to have been the cause of that deplorable catastrophe which, as we shall afterward see, befell both the unfortunate prince and the queen, his mother-in-law.

Philip returned in triumph to Spain, where his active mind, now at ease from foreign disturbances, began to be disquieted on the score of religion, and he laid down a fixed resolution to extirpate every species of heresy from his dominions. The inquisition was invested with all the plenitude of the powers of persecution. It is wonderful how much the spirit of this tyrant coincided with that of his consort Mary of England; only Mary burnt the protestants at once, and Philip prepared them for that ceremony by racks and tortures. The king of Spain, hearing that there were some heretics in a valley of Piedmont, bordering on the Milanese, sent orders to the governor of Milan to despatch a few troops that way, and concluded his order in two remarkable words, " ahorcad todos "-hang them all. Being informed that the same opinions were entertained by some of the inhabitants of Calabria, he ordered one half to be hanged and the other burnt; the consequences of these cruelties were what he did not foresee, the loss of a third part of his dominions.

The Netherlands were an assemblage of seignories or lordships, subject to Philip II. under various titles. Each province had its particular laws and usages, and was under the command of a governor, who had the title of Stadtholder; and no law was enacted, or taxes imposed without the sanction of the whole

States in the district. In the year 1559, Philip con ferred the government of Holland, Zealand, Friesland, and Utrecht, on William of Nassau, prince of Orange, who was also a count of the German empire.

The new opinions of Calvin and of Luther, which had made great progress in the Netherlands, gave Philip much disquiet. He determined to create new bishops, to establish the Inquisition with its amplest powers, and, in order to enforce the most implicit submission to his authority, he resolved to abrogate all the ancient laws of the provinces, and give them a political system of his own devising. The report of these innovations created a dreadful alarm, and a meeting was held of the chief lords of the Netherlands, who deputed two of their number to lay their humble remonstrances before the king at Madrid. The effect which this produced was, that the duke of Alva was immediately sent into Flanders to suppress what was termed an unnatural rebellion; but there had been no rebellion if this measure had not occasioned one.

William I., prince of Orange, was a man of a haughty, reserved, and resolute turn of mind. He had seen several of the nobility, his friends, the counts Egmont and Horn, with eighteen other gentlemen, beheaded on account of their religion by sentence of the Inquisition at Brussels; and the prince himself was sentenced to undergo the same fate, as a Calvinist and heretic. In the prospect of this impending destruction, he conceived the magnanimous resolution of delivering his country from the yoke of its merciless tyrant, and confident that the great body of the people were kept in their allegiance to the Spanish government only from the principle of fear, which would be dissipated on the first dawning of success, he immediately began to collect an army. In a short time, having reduced some of the most important garrisons in Holland and in Zealand, he was solemnly proclaimed Stadtholder of the United Prov