with England amidst the shifting sands of religious revolt which were to overwhelm and transform Europe; whilst, later, the desperate attempt of Philip to form a new group of powers which should enable Spain to dispense with unorthodox England, is personified in the sweet and noble figure of his third wife, Isabel of Valois, upon whose life-story, poignant enough in its bare reality, romancers have embroidered so many strange adornments. The Austrian princesses, who in turn became consorts of the Catholic Kings, all represent the unhappy persistence of the rulers of Spain in clinging to the splendid but unrealisable dream bequeathed by their great ancestor the Emperor to his suffering realm; that of perpetuating Spanish hegemony over Europe by means of compulsory uniformity of creed, dictated from Rome and enforced from Madrid. And in the intervals of discouragement and disillusionment at the impotence of Habsburg Emperors to secure such uniformity even within the bounds of the empire itself, and the patent impossibility for Spain alone to cope with the giant task, we see the turning of kings and ministers in temporary despair towards the secular enemy of the house of Austria, and Spain in search of French brides who might bring Catholic support to the Catholic champion. When, at last, exhausted Spain could deceive herself no longer, and was fain to acknowledge that she had been beaten in her attempt to hold the rising tide and deny to men the God-given right of unfettered thought, the matrimonial alliances of her Kings, whilst ceasing to be instruments for the realisation of the vision of her prime, still obeyed the traditionary policies which drew Spain alternately to the side of France or Austria. But the end of such efforts now was not to serve Spanish objects, wise or otherwise, but to snatch advantage for the rival birds of prey who were hovering over the body of a great nation in the throes of dissolution, ravening for a share of her substance when the hour of death should strike. Sordid and pathetic as the story of these intrigues may be in their political aspect, the personal share in them of the Queens Consort themselves, their methods, their triumphs and their failures, are often fraught with intense interest to the student of manners. The life of the unscrupulous Mariana of Austria, who in the interests of her house held Spain so long in the name of her imbecile son, and in her turn was outwitted by Don Juan and the French interest, presents us with a picture of the times so intimate, thanks to the plentiful material left behind by a self-conscious age, as to introduce us into the innermost secrets of the intrigues to an extent that contemporaries would have thought impossible. And again the sad, but very human, story of the young half-English Princess, bright and light-hearted, torn from brilliant Paris to serve French interests, as the wife of Mariana’s half-witted