From the dramatic, or rather from the epic, point of view, the sixteenth century is pre-eminent. The essentially transitional character of modern history since the breaking up of the papal and feudal systems is at no period more distinctly marked. In traversing the sixteenth century we realize that we have fairly got out of one state of things and into another. At the outset, events like the challenge of Barletta may make us doubt whether we have yet quite left behind the Middle Ages. The belief in the central position of the earth is still universal, and the belief in its rotundity not yet, until the voyage of Magellan, generally accepted. We find England--owing partly to the introduction of gunpowder and the consequent disuse of archery, partly to the results of the recent integration of France under Louis XI.--fallen back from the high relative position which it had occupied under the rule of the Plantagenets; and its policy still directed in accordance with reminiscences of Agincourt, and garnet, and Burgundian alliances. We find France just beginning her ill-fated career of intervention in the affairs of Italy; and Spain, with her Moors finally vanquished and a new world beyond the ocean just added to her domain, rapidly developing into the greatest empire which had been seen since the days of the first Caesars. But at the close of the century we find feudal life in castles changed into modern life in towns; chivalric defiances exchanged for over-subtle diplomacy; Maurices instead of Bayards; a Henry IV. instead of a Gaston de Foix. We find the old theory of man's central position in the universe--the foundation of the doctrine of final causes and of the whole theological method of interpreting nature--finally overthrown by Copernicus. Instead of the circumnavigability of the earth, the discovery of a Northwest passage--as instanced by the heroic voyage of Barendz, so nobly described by Mr. Motley--is now the chief geographical problem. East India Companies, in place of petty guilds of weavers and bakers, bear witness to the vast commercial progress. We find England, fresh from her stupendous victory over the whole power of Spain, again in the front rank of nations; France, under the most astute of modern sovereigns, taking her place for a time as the political leader of the civilized world; Spain, with her evil schemes baffled in every quarter, sinking into that terrible death-like lethargy, from which she has hardly yet awakened, and which must needs call forth our pity, though it is but the deserved retribution for her past behaviour. While the little realm of the Netherlands, filched and cozened from the unfortunate Jacqueline by the "good" Duke of Burgundy, carried over to Austria as the marriage-portion of Lady Mary, sent down to Spain as the personal inheritance of the "prudent" Philip, and by him intolerably tormented with an Inquisition, a Blood-Council, and a Duke of Alva, has after a