About the year 1582 the king was seized with a distemper of an epidemic character, and was so prostrated that he prepared himself for death, and wrote his will. But his disorder, although dangerous, was not fatal, though the queen, who was also attacked, died in this same year. She was interred among other royal persons in the Escorial. The death of Philip II. occurred in 1598. He was indisposed at Madrid, and desired to be at once removed to his beloved Escorial. So severe was his illness that it was necessary to bear him thither slowly in a litter. Six days were spent in conveying the stricken monarch over the eight leagues from Madrid to the palace among the Guadarrama Mountains. For fifty days the king lay in suffering. It was his wish to see every part of the building before he died, and he was borne slowly through the palace, the church, the convent, and the college. Philip was patient and resigned in the contemplation of the last hour of his life. He evinced his zeal in piety to the end, and ordered the release of certain prisoners as a final act of mercy. When death approached, the king asked that the prince and Isabella might attend at his bedside, and to them he exhorted holiness, and spoke of the vanity of ambition and the insecurity of power. On September 13 Philip II. partook of the last sacrament, and passed away. So died the Founder of the Escorial, and the initiator of the great work which the Spanish people claimed as one of the chief wonders of the world. He had lived to see the realisation of his desire. Year by year he had watched the development of his plans, the building of the monastery, the uplifting of the church, and the establishment of a court and a college in this remote Castilian highland. The hours of his retirement had been devoted to the gratification of his taste in the arts, to contemplation, and to penance. Like Solomon, he had surrounded himself with objects of priceless worth, and he passed his days in an atmosphere of beauty. Æsthetic, and at the same time ascetic, Philip seemed possessed of a dual nature in which rival forces constantly contended. If his mind was marked by gloom, it was relieved by his passion for art and by his love of the simple pleasures of a country life. Nor was the king apparently devoid of a capacity for enjoying occasionally the conventional gaieties of life, for among his numerous retinue, he maintained a fool, or royal jester, one Miguel D’Antona, a grotesque dwarf, with an ugly, humorous countenance. The Escorial was a royal hobby. But for us it is something more, for it illustrates in divers ways the thought, fancy, and idiosyncrasy of an enigmatic personality. And more than this, the building instructs us in the temper of a memorable age, profound in faith, zealous in patriotism, and conspicuous in martial valour. An inspection of the Escorial is as the reading of a long and remarkable chapter in the history of Spain.