Philip II. came to the throne of Spain in 1556, less than twenty years before the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day in France, and in the same century with the Reformation led on by Luther. His history and his character are familiar to the world. Cold, cruel, bigoted, intolerant, morose, gloomy, superstitious, the grandson of a woman who was known by the name of Crazy Jane, and who earned the title, the son of the great Emperor of Germany, Charles V., who was also Charles I. of Spain, this Philip II., thus descended and thus endowed, was less a king than a monk, and in the cloister or the cell was more at home than on the throne. He was the husband of Bloody Mary of England, and, like her, verily thought to please God by persecuting the saints and mortifying himself. Perhaps his queer grandmother had put the idea of a palace and a monastery and a tomb into his head. Perhaps his father, in the gloomy hours when he meditated retirement and abdication of his sovereignty, inspired the son with this strange purpose. Or, more likely, the conception with him was original, and as no monarch, before him or since, had such a heart under the guide of such a head, it is only just to give him all the credit of devising and achieving one of the most stupendous follies and gigantic monuments that was ever executed by the hands of men. The Spaniards reckon the ESCORIAL as the eighth wonder of the world! About twenty-five miles north of Madrid, in the midst of the dreariest wilderness of barren, rocky, all but uninhabitable hills, a region where no beauty of scenery cheers the eye, no silver river winds along through fertile vales, no verdant slopes are covered with grazing herds, and no forests with their cool shades invite the tired traveller or the weary citizen to seek repose,—here, in the last of all places for such an edifice, is placed the ESCORIAL, the largest and grandest edifice in Spain, and the most remarkable building now standing on the earth. What Egypt had when Karnak and Thebes were in their prime, what Babylon and Nineveh knew in the days of their now buried glory, we have but faint knowledge. This house covers a square of five hundred thousand feet! It is about 750 feet long, and 600 feet wide. It is a royal palace. It is a monastery. It is the sepulchre of the royal family of Spain. It is a church; and in that church, the chapel of this strange house, there is more wealth lavished on the pulpits and altars than on any other that I have seen, in this or any other country. Yet all this is in a wilderness, far away from cities and the abodes of men who might be supposed to admire and enjoy such grandeur,—a temple in a desert, a palace and a sepulchre.