chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would
still be a soldier; he would still be a knight errant; but the
soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite
the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman
clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false
prophets held the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit
led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel of the Holy
Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest West,
and astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France
by his penances and vigils. The same lively imagination which
had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles,
and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude
with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to commune
with him. He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of
flesh. Even those mysteries of religion which are the hardest
trial of faith were in his case palpable to sight. It is
difficult to relate without a pitying smile that, in the
sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place, and
that, as he stood praying on the steps of the Church of St.
Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and
wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, in the
great Catholic reaction, bore the same part which Luther bore in
the great Protestant movement.

Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic
Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a
patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now
two princely temples, rich with painting and many-coloured
marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where his
form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones,