22 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Wilkie, writing half a century ago, described the Peninsula as “ an 
unexplored territory — the very Timbuctoo of art.” “ Madrid,” says 
he, writing to Sir Robert Peel, “ is quite a mine of old pictures of 
which in England we know nothing.” Stirling’s mind was admirably 
adapted to fit him to he the explorer of this mine. Accordingly, the 
first fruits of his travels and studies in Spain were given to the world 
in 1848 in his “Annals of Spanish Painters.” Sir Edmund Head 
had preceded him by a year in the publication of his “ Handbook 
to the History of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting,” and 
Stirling’s book came, as it were, to clothe the dry bones of Head’s 
work with living flesh. It scattered over the dull details of bio- 
graphy anecdotes bearing on the manners and customs of the dif- 
ferent epochs which his history brought under his eye. It gives in 
some sort a glimpse at the history of the Spanish people. The book 
was received with enthusiasm, and placed the author at once in the 
front rank of art critics. It was a great success, but it must be 
confessed that it was a success in a narrow field; and had the author 
rested on his laurels he would have ere now dwindled into a com- 
paratively small figure among his contemporaries. Fortunately for 
us, his intercourse with Spain and Spanish story, and his accurate 
history-loving mind, brought him into contact with a hero congenial 
to his tastes, with whose career, as a Scotchman and an admirer of 
the brilliant pages of Robertson, he must have been familiar from 
his youth — Spain’s greatest or second greatest name, Charles V. 
But Mr Stirling was no hero-worshipper ; and when he follows 
Charles into the cloister, it is with no intention of painting him 
with the halo of a saint, but with the stern yet noble features of a 
man who, having adopted as his motto “ Plus ultra,” thus striking 
the negative from the limits of his ambition, paused in mid career 
that he might look out from the quiet eminence of his tower at 
Yuste, and witness, undisturbed by its noise, the working of the vast 
machine himself had set in motion. 
“ The Cloister Life of Charles V.,” Mr Stirling’s greatest work, 
originated in this way. A MS., entitled “ Memoir of Charles at 
Yuste,” had been deposited in the archives of the Foreign Office at 
Paris. Mr Stirling, anxious to solve some question in Spanish 
history, went there in the summer of 1850, and endeavoured in 
vain to get a sight of it. Nothing daunted, he returned fii the 
