Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/550

530 said, at the revolt of his grandson Octavio; but his age (he was 82), and the anxieties and labour of the fifteen years of his reign, would rather cause surprise at the strength which had endured so long. Men who have spent their lives in political battles, who have had some years' experience of the dispositions of their fellow-creatures, do not die of small disappointments, and the intellectual sinew of Paul would not have been broken by the disobedience of a boy. Yet, if by such a cause his last hours were embittered, he was punished in his solitary weakness of affection for his kindred. If consistency and dauntless bearing command respect wherever they are found, Paul III., as a ruler of men, may claim a place among the politically great. On the death of Clement VII. the Papacy was dying, the human life was gone from it. But the phantom had risen from the grave, and was again towering up over Europe in menacing grandeur. Scotland had been saved; France, which was trembling on the edge of revolt, had returned to partial allegiance; the Smalcaldic League was broken; and, in dying, Paul might feel that the Reformation had spent its force, that the worst was over. But who was to