Europe could show no two men more virtuous in their private lives than King George III. of England and King Charles IV. of Spain. If personal purity was a test of political merit, these two rulers were the best of kings. Had George III. been born a Spanish prince, he might perhaps have grown into another Charles IV.; and Don Carlos was a kind of Spanish George. Every morning throughout the whole year King Charles rose at precisely five o’clock and heard Mass.[89] Occasionally he read a few minutes in some book of devotion, then breakfasted and went to his workrooms, where the most skilful gunsmiths in his kingdom were always busy on his hunting weapons. His armory was a part of his court; the gunsmiths, joiners, turners, and cabinet-makers went with him from Madrid to Aranjuez, and from Aranjuez to La Granja. Among them he was at his ease; taking off his coat, and rolling his shirt-sleeves up to the shoulder, he worked at a dozen different trades within the hour, in manner and speech as simple and easy as the workmen themselves. He was skilful with his tools, and withal a dilettante in his way, capable of enjoying not only the workmanship of a gunlock, but the beauties of his glorious picture-gallery,--the “Feconditá” of Titian, and the “Hilanderas” of Velasquez. From his workshops he went to his stables, chatted familiarly with the grooms, and sometimes roughly found fault with them. After this daily duty was done, he received the Queen and the rest of his family, who came to kiss his hand,--a ceremony which took some ten minutes; after which, precisely at noon, he sat down to dinner. He dined alone, eat enormously, and drank only water. “Find if you can,” said the Spaniards, “another king who never got out of his bed later than five o’clock; never drank wine, coffee, or liqueur; and in his whole life never so much as looked at any woman but his wife!” After dinner, every day at one o’clock, except when court etiquette interfered, King Charles set out, no matter what might be the weather, and drove post with guards and six coaches of companions to the ground where he was to shoot. Three hundred men drove the game toward him; seven hundred men and five hundred horses were daily occupied in this task of amusing him. The expenses were enormous; but the King was one of the best shots in Europe, and his subjects had reason to be grateful that his ambition took so harmless a path as the destruction of vast swarms of game.