sovereign with a strength of reasoning and a fervid eloquence that produced a powerful impression on his audience. The independence he displayed recommended him for the delicate task of presenting the remonstrances of Charles the Fifth to the papal court against the removal of the council to Bologna. This he did with a degree of frankness to which the pontifical ear was but little accustomed, and which, if it failed to bend the proud spirit of Paul the Third, had its effect on his successor. Mendoza, from whatever cause, does not seem to have stood so high in the favour of Philip the Second as in that of his father. Perhaps he had too lofty a nature to stoop to that implicit deference which Philip exacted from the highest as well as the humblest who approached him. At length, in 1568, Mendoza's own misconduct brought him, with good reason, into disgrace with his master. He engaged in a brawl with another courtier in the palace; and the scandalous scene, of which the reader will find an account in the preceding volume, took place when the prince of Asturias, Don Carlos, was breathing his last. The offending parties were punished first by imprisonment, and then by banishment from Madrid. Mendoza, who was sixty-five years of age at this time, withdrew to Granada, his native place. But he had passed too much of his life in the atmosphere of a court to be content with a provincial residence. He accordingly made repeated efforts to soften his sovereign's displeasure, and to obtain some mitigation of his sentence. These efforts, as may be believed, were unavailing; and the illustrious exile took at length the wiser course of submitting to his fate and seeking consolation in the companionship of his books,--steady friends, whose worth he now fully proved in the hour of adversity. He devoted himself to the study of Arabic, to which he was naturally led by his residence in a capital filled with the monuments of Arabic art. He also amused his leisure by writing verses, and his labours combined with those of Boscan and Garcilasso de la Vega to naturalize in Castile those more refined forms of Italian versification that made an important epoch in the national literature.