Preparations were made in all quarters for a great and momentous struggle: nobody could tell where it would break forth or where it would end. And ever and anon Luther's rallying-cry was heard in answer to the furious denunciations of cardinals and popes. Interests get parcelled out in so many separate portions that it is impossible to unravel the state of affairs with any clearness. We shall only notice that, in 1531, the famous league of Smalcalde first embodied Protestantism in its national and lay constitution by the banding together of nine of the sovereign princes of Germany, and eleven free cities, in armed defence, if needed, of their religious belief. Where is the fiery Henry of England, with his pen or sword? A very changed man from what we saw him only thirteen years ago. He has no pen now, and his sword is kept for his discontented subjects at home. In 1534, King and Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, threw off the supremacy of Rome, and Henry is at last a king, for his courts hold cognizance of all causes within the realm, whether ecclesiastical or civil. Everybody knows the steps by which this embodied selfishness achieved his emancipation from a dominant Church. It little concerns us now, except as a question of historic curiosity, what his motives were. Judging from the analogy of all his other actions, we should say they were bad; but by some means or other the evil deeds of this man were generally productive of benefit to his country. He cast off the Pope that he might be freed from a disagreeable wife; but as the Pope whom he rejected was the servant of Charles, (the nephew of the repudiated queen,) he found that he had freed his kingdom at the same time from its degrading vassalage to the puppet of a rival monarch. He dissolved the monasteries in England for the purpose of grasping their wealth; but the country found he had at the same time delivered it from a swarm of idle and mischievous corporations, which in no long time would have swallowed up the land. Their revenues were immense, and the extent of their domains almost incredible. Before people had recovered from their disgust at the hateful motives of their tyrant's behaviour, the results of it became apparent in the elevation of the finest class of the English population; for the "bold peasantry, their country's pride," began to establish their independent holdings on the parcelled-out territories of the monks and nuns. Vast tracts of ground were thrown open to the competition of lay proprietors. Even the poorest was not without hope of becoming an owner of the soil; nay, the released estates were so plentiful that in Elizabeth's reign an act was passed making it illegal for a man to build a cottage "unless he laid four acres of land thereto." The cottager, therefore, became a small farmer; and small farmers were the defence of England; and the defence of England was the safety of freedom and religion throughout the world. There were some hundred thousands of those landed cottagers and smaller gentry and great proprietors established by this most respectable sacrilege of Henry the Eighth, and for the sake of these excellent consequences we forgive him his pride and cruelty and all his faults. But Henry's work was done, and in January, 1547, he died. The rivals with whom he started on the race of life were still alive; but life was getting dark and dreary with both of them. Francis was no longer the hero of "The Field of the Cloth-of-Gold," conqueror of Marignano, the gallant captive of Pavia, or the winner of all hearts. He was worn out with a life of great vicissitudes, and heard with ominous foreboding the news of Henry's death. [March 11, 1547.] A fate seemed to unite them in all those years of revelry and hate and friendship, and in a few weeks the most chivalrous and generous of the Valois followed the most tyrannical of the Tudors to the tomb. A year before this, the Monk of Wittenberg, now the renowned and married Dr. Martin Luther, had left a place vacant which no man could fill; and now of all those combatants Charles was the sole survivor. Selfish as Henry, dissolute as Francis, obstinate as Martin, his race also was drawing to a close. But the play was played out before these chief performers withdrew. All Europe had changed its aspect. The England, the France, the Empire, of five-and-twenty years before had utterly passed away. New objects were filling men's minds, new principles of policy were regulating states. Protestantism was an established fact, and the Treaty of Passau in 1552 gave liberty and equality to the professors of the new faith. Charles was sagacious though heartless as a ruler, but an unredeemed bigot as an individual man.