The singular good fortune which accumulated coronets and crowns on the brows of Charles V., until he found himself sovereign by inheritance of a large portion of Europe, here demands our notice. The Emperor Maximilian had, by Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a son Philip, who predeceased him in 1506, after marrying Joanna, daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile. Joanna being disqualified by mental imbecility, the united crowns of Spain devolved, on the death of Ferdinand in 1516, to her son Charles, who already held the Netherlands through his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy. As representative of the house of Aragon, he was also sovereign of Naples and Sicily; but the former crown required the papal investiture, which Leo was loath to bestow, partly with a vague hope of reserving it for one of his own race, partly from aversion to the establishment of a new line of foreign rulers in the Italian peninsula. On the death of Maximilian in January 1519, without having formerly received the imperial crown, his grandson, Charles, stepped into Austria, as his natural heritage, and sought still further aggrandisement by offering himself candidate for the throne of Germany. Little as the balance of power was then comprehended in European policy, this young monarch's rapid acquisitions called forth many jealousies. Francis had a double motive for standing forward as a competitor for the empire;--the dignity was flattering to his gallant character and ambitious views, and he grudged it to a younger rival, whose overgrown territory already hemmed him in on every side. Leo, at heart disliking them equally, as ultramontane sovereigns formidable to Italy, on the ruins of whose freedom were based the successes of either, sought to play them off against each other, so as to weaken and embarrass both. But in spite of these intrigues, Charles was elected emperor on the 28th of June, 1519, when but nineteen years of age.