And in connection with spiritualism associated with royalty, we may incidentally mention the many stories told of the White Lady of the House of Hapsburg and other weird visitants. Napoleon, as is well known, was haunted by the spirit known as “the little red man,” invariably seen a short time before, it is said, some great disaster befell the Emperor; and among the curious stories of the kind current in this country we are told how George II., when walking on the balcony at Windsor Castle with some of his courtiers, suddenly drew their attention to a singular spectacle in the clouds, where an armed Highlander was clearly seen fighting with a British Grenadier. Several times the Grenadier appeared as if getting the worst of the encounter, but at last it was vanquished, and the picture faded from the sky. “Thank God,” exclaimed the King, “my kingdom is saved.” Not many days afterwards despatches were received from the Duke of Cumberland, announcing that the Highlanders had been completely routed at Culloden. And like Henry III., Louis XV. endeavoured to associate profligacy with devotional practices; for he would read sermons to his mistresses, and go down on his knees and pray with his victims in the _Parc aux Cerfs_. He was fond of talking about maladies, death-bed scenes, and graves, and worms, and epitaphs; he professed to have the gift of reading death in a courtier’s face, and several of them he terrified with a notice of this kind.[9] The short and tragic life of Don Carlos, son of Philip II., must in a measure be attributed to the vein of insanity in his nature. He behaved in so reckless and violent a manner, that some excuse has been made for the acts of severity which cut short his eccentric career. But his wild follies were such as to bring contempt and discredit on the throne, for he gave blows to one of his attendant gentlemen, called another by opprobrious names, drew his dagger upon another, caused children to be beaten, and, according to the historian Cabrera, he wanted to burn a house down because some water had fallen from one of the windows. His violence, too, extended itself even to animals; he maimed the horses in his own stables, and he so ill-treated one which his father held in particular affection, that the unfortunate animal died in a few days. And yet his cruelties and eccentricities were not unaccompanied with kindness, for he paid the charges of the education of children thrown on the world without resources, although at the time he was himself much embarrassed with debt.