Note 287 — Chapter IX

See the eloquent conclusion of Stirling's Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth.

Ford, in his admirable Handbook, which may serve as a manual for the student of Spanish in his closet, quite as well as for the traveller in Spain, has devoted a few columns to a visit which he paid to this sequestered spot, where, as he says, the spirit of the mighty dead seemed to rule again in his last home. A few lines from the pages of the English tourist will bring the scene more vividly before the reader than the colder description in the text. "As the windows were thrown wide open to admit the cool thyme-scented breeze, the eye in the clear evening swept over the boundless valley; and the nightingales sang sweetly, in the neglected orange-garden, to the bright stars reflected like diamonds in the black tank below us. How often had Charles looked out, on a stilly eve, on this selfsame and unchanged scene, where he alone was now wanting!" Handbook of Spain, p. 553.