Something, too, ought to be said of his individual exertions in the details of state administration. In his earlier life, tho active and assiduous, he found leisure for elegant accomplishments, for splendid amusements, for relaxations careless, extravagant, sometimes questionable. As his life drew onward, his lighter tastes disappeared, and the whole energy of his intellect was prest into the business of the commonwealth. Those who have examined the printed state papers may form some impression of his industry from the documents which are his own composition, and the letters which he wrote and received; but only persons who have seen the original manuscripts, who have observed the traces of his pen in side-notes and corrections, and the handwritings of his secretaries in diplomatic commissions, in drafts of Acts of Parliament, in expositions and formularies, in articles of faith, in proclamations, in the countless multitude of documents of all sorts, secular or ecclesiastical, which contain the real history of this extraordinary reign--only they can realize the extent of labor to which he sacrificed himself, and which brought his life to a premature close. His personal faults were great, and he shared, besides them, in the errors of his age; but far deeper blemishes would be but as scars upon the features of a sovereign who in trying times sustained nobly the honor of the English name, and carried the commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its history. III CAESAR'S MISSION[36] There is a legend that at the death of Charles V the accusing angel appeared in heaven with a catalog of deeds which no advocate could palliate--countries laid desolate, cities sacked and burned, lists of hundreds of thousands of widows and children brought to misery by the political ambition of a single man. The evil spirit demanded the offender's soul, and it seemed as if mercy itself could not refuse him the award. But at the last moment the Supreme Judge interfered. The emperor, He said, had been sent into the world at a peculiar time, for a peculiar purpose, and was not to be tried by the ordinary rules. Titian has painted the scene: Charles kneeling before the throne, with the consciousness, as became him, of human infirmities written upon his countenance, yet neither afraid nor abject, relying in absolute faith that the Judge of all mankind would do right. [Footnote 36: From the concluding chapter of "Caesar--A Sketch."]