OF THE CELEBRATED TRIAL OF DON CARLOS, PRINCE OF THE ASTURIAS. All Europe has believed that Philip II. caused the Inquisition to proceed against Don Carlos his only son; that the inquisitors condemned the prince to death, and that they only differed on the manner in which the sentence was to be executed. Some writers have gone so far as to record the conversations which took place, on this occasion, between Philip and the inquisitor-general, Don Carlos and other persons, with as much confidence as if they had been present at them, and have even quoted part of the sentence as if they had read it. As it has been my principal aim to ascertain the truth, I have examined the archives of the Council of the Inquisition and others, and I, in consequence, affirm, that Don Carlos was never tried or condemned by the Inquisition; an opinion only was given against the prince by the councillors of state, whose president was the Cardinal Espinosa, who at that time was the king's favourite. The circumstance of the cardinal being inquisitor-general may have been the cause of the mistake; the deaths of the Count de Egmont and other noblemen, and the intention of establishing the Inquisition in the Low Countries, may have tended to confirm the general opinion. Don Carlos lost his life in consequence of a verbal sentence approved by his father, and the holy office was not concerned in it. As I wrote only the history of the Inquisition, this fact renders it unnecessary to say more on the subject; but as almost all the historians of Europe have said that the inquisitors condemned Don Carlos, the beat way of disproving it is to relate the facts as they occurred.