He was the fifth son of the marquis of Mondejar, and was born in the year 1503, at Granada, where his father filled the office held by his ancestors, of captain-general of the province. At an early age he was sent to Salamanca, and passed with credit through the course of studies taught in its venerable university. While there he wrote--for, though printed anonymously, there seems no good reason to distrust the authorship--his famous "Lazarillo de Tormes," the origin of that class of _picaresco_ novels, as they are styled, which constitutes an important branch of Castilian literature, and the best specimen of which, strange to say, was furnished by the hand of a foreigner,--the "Gil Blas" of Le Sage. Mendoza had been destined to the Church, for which the extensive patronage of his family offered obvious advantages. But the taste of the young man, as might be inferred from his novel, took another direction, and he persuaded his father to allow him to enter the army, and take service under the banner of Charles the Fifth. Mendoza's love of letters did not desert him in the camp; and he availed himself of such intervals as occurred between the campaigns to continue his studies, especially in the ancient languages, in the principal universities of Italy. It was impossible that a person of such remarkable endowments as Mendoza, the more conspicuous from his social position, should escape the penetrating eye of Charles the Fifth, who, independently of his scholarship, recognized in the young noble a decided talent for political affairs. In 1538 the emperor appointed him ambassador to Venice, a capital for which the literary enterprises of the Aldi were every day winning a higher reputation in the republic of letters. Here Mendoza had the best opportunity of accomplishing a work which he had much at heart,--the formation of a library. It was a work of no small difficulty in that day, when books and manuscripts were to be gathered from obscure, often remote sources, and at the large cost paid for objects of _virtù_. A good office which he had the means of rendering the sultan, by the redemption from captivity of a Turkish prisoner of rank, was requited by a magnificent present of Greek manuscripts, worth more than gold in the eyes of Mendoza. It was from his collection that the first edition of Josephus was given to the world. While freely indulging his taste for literary occupations in his intervals of leisure, he performed the duties of his mission with an ability that fully vindicated his appointment as minister to the wily republic. On the opening of the Council of Trent, he was one of the delegates sent to represent the emperor in that body. He joined freely in the discussions of the conclave, and enforced the views of his