In the nature of human things, every man, in every rank of life, must submit to some affliction of mind or body. Has any one ever troubled to inquire what may be the special affliction proper to the Pope? It is loneliness—utter loneliness—loneliness in a crowd. The Pope cannot have a friend; for friendship postulates equality: and who is the equal of the Pope? The cardinals who surround Him are of the faction that opposed His election, or of the faction that claims favour in return for support. He, Who sits upon the Throne of Peter, looks down from that pinnacle upon the peoples, the nations, and the tongues, in His heart knowing them to be enemies or suitors. What wonder then that, though His spirit indeed be willing, His humanity shall crave human sympathy! This consideration is offered to explain the nepotism of the Popes of the Renascence. They surrounded Themselves with men of Their own families; men bound to Them by ties of blood and kinship. Being generally of mature age themselves, They chose Their young relations; and upon these They conferred the rank which qualified them to enter the inner circle of the curia. This action appears to have been dictated by the natural desire of human man for offspring. Certainly a Pope can always create cardinals, who are to Him as spiritual sons; but to create cardinals of those who already are of one’s own family is a thing nearer, a more intimate relation. So the human heart of the Pope would become rejuvenate, would renew its strength, would gratify its natural longing for an entourage of creatures in which it might place confidence and trust. For the cardinal-nephews, loathed by all other cardinals, owing everything to the Pope, would be bound to Him and to His interest as by chains of iron. The system is proved to be liable to abuse. That is the corollary of all human systems. It is indefensible; but it is explicable; and the foregoing is an attempt only in the direction of explanation. On the twentieth of February 1456, at the beginning of the second year of His reign, the Lord Calixtus P.P. III proclaimed to a stormy consistory the creation of three cardinals, two being His Own nephews, and one the son of the heir to the crown of Portugal. Let it be remarked that He did nothing for His son, Don Francisco de Borja, now a charming and eligible young man of fifteen years. The Sacred College murmured and objected: but, in this matter the will of the Pope is law. The new creatures were:— (α) Don Luis Juan de Mila y Borja, of the age of twenty years, celebrated for vigorous physical beauty. He was son of Doña Caterina de Borja (sister of the Pope’s Holiness) by her husband Don Juan de Mila, Baron of Mazalanes. To him the Pontiff gave the scarlet hat, which He had relinquished on His election to the papacy, that of Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santi Quattro Coronati.