The king’s only relaxations now were the few hours he could spare in the bosom of his family, to which he was devotedly attached, especially to his elder daughter, Isabel. But even in his home life his care for detail was as minute as it was in public affairs. The most unimportant trifle in the dress, management, studies, or play of his children came within his purview. The minutiae of the management of his flower-gardens, the little maladies of his servants, the good-or ill-temper of his dwarfs and jesters did not escape his vigilance. The private and financial affairs of his nobles came as much within his province, almost, as his personal concerns, the furnishing and decoration of his rooms had to be done under his personal supervision, and the vast task of building the stupendous pile of the Escorial on an arid mountain-side, and adorning it with triumphs of art from the master hands of all Christendom, was performed down to the smallest particular under his unwearied guidance. With all his prodigious industry and devotion to duty, it is no wonder that this want of proportion in the importance of things clogged the wheels of the great machine of which he was mainspring, and that the nimble wit of Elizabeth of England and Catharine de Medici foresaw, in ample time to frustrate them, the deep-laid ponderous plans against them which he discussed _ad infinitum_ before adopting. His favourite place for work was at the Escorial, where, said the prior, four times as many despatches were written as in Madrid. As soon as a portion of the edifice could be temporarily roofed in, the monks were installed, and thenceforward Philip passed his happiest moments in the keen, pure air of the Guadarramas, superintending the erection of the mighty monument which forms a fitting emblem of his genius--stupendous in its ambition, gloomy, rigid, and overweighted in its consummation. Here he loved to wander with his wife and children, overlooking the army of workmen who for twenty years were busy at their tasks, to watch the deft hands of the painters and sculptors--Sanchez Coello, the Carducci, Juan de Juanes, the Mudo, Giacomo Trezzo, and a host of others--whom he delighted to honour. As a patron of art in all its forms Philip was a very Mæcenas. He followed his great father in his friendship for Titian, but he went far beyond the emperor in his protection of other artists. Illuminators, miniaturists, and portrait painters were liberally paid and splendidly entertained. The masterpieces of religious art, the cunning workmanship of the Florentine goldsmiths and lapidaries, the marvels of penmanship of the medieval monks, the sculptures of the ancients, were all prized and understood by Philip, as they were by few men of his time. This sad, self-concentrated man, bowed down by his overwhelming mission, tied to the stake of his duty, indeed loved all things beautiful: flowers, and song-birds, sacred music, pictures, and