give a total of somewhat less than 160,000. And this agrees with the estimate of Madoz.* The present population is supposed to be 250,000. It declined with the fortunes of Spain after the period we are speaking of; but has been steadily advancing since the impulse which has been lately given to the progress of the country. There were now in Spain about 14,000 Franciscan Friars, and 6281 Dominicans. + These were the most numerous orders; but the others were so well recruited, that they would amount to full as many again. Teresa's own family contained 1730 friars, and 925 nuns. The Capuchins were also numerous. The Jesuits of course were busily extending themselves. They had one hundred and twelve houses, and more than three thousand professed members of their company. Since the late suppression of the convents, the government has left the poor sisterhoods a few of their homes in the capital and elsewhere, and there were a few years ago about 500 nuns or other professed religious women in Madrid; of whom forty-five belonged to the family of Teresa. But there is an increasing number of Sisters of Charity at Madrid and in other places; and it may be hoped that the charitable labours of these good persons may prove a beneficial substitute for what is now vanishing away.

(76.) Whatever may be thought of the policy or

* Dicc. Geogr. x. 589.

+ Grandezas de Madr. 236, 242. Grandezas de Madr. 269, 289.

discernment of the benefactors who founded so many of these religious houses, it is impossible not to admire their large-hearted munificence. Where the convents were to be supported more or less by voluntary almsgifts, they did not droop for want of such support. And again, whatever may be our opinion of the state of morals, which seemed to demand another kind of public provision, the support afforded to penitentiaries, and hospitals for foundlings and deserted children, was equally admirable. In the different Houses of Mercy in Madrid, in 1618, there were 970 reclaimed females; and in 1620, in the Hospitals for forsaken. children, there were more than 1300 little ones. There was also a School, in which they were afterwards boarded, and taught some useful trade or handicraft; and this contained, about the same time, 480 children. This school was sustained by a pension from the king. There was a fixed rent for one of these charities of 10,000 ducats; but its expenditure annually was not less than 18,000. "The alms of good people," says Davila, "never failed to make up the deficiency."

Other hospitals there were for respectable aged poor, or for sick and suffering ones, in which there was no want of attendance and care as regarded the needs of either soul or body. There was a holy man, Juan de Dios, whose labours in this behalf had procured him a name as a saint in the neighbourhood of Granada. A disciple of his, Anton Martin, came to

Madrid, and succeeded in founding there a noble hospital, with a provision for thirty friars to minister to the patients. He died in 1553, and was honoured with a public funeral. In 1596 his remains were translated to the house which he had founded with singular honour in a procession attended by persons of all ranks. Philip III. and Queen Margaret visited and enriched this house of charity; which is still sustained in the Calle de Atocha, and is said to furnish beds for five hundred sick persons.

(77.) Perhaps the most remarkable labourer at this period, in the cause of the poor and miserable, was a Carmelite Lay-brother, a disciple of the disciples of Teresa, Francis Ruzzola, or, as he was called among the brotherhood, Francis of the Child Jesus. He was of very humble birth; and his manners, even to the end of his days, were distinguished by that genial mixture of shrewdness and simplicity, still to be found among the Spanish peasantry, of which honest Sancho is so delicious a type. There are many wonderful stories told of him, about which the reader must exercise the same discretion as Don Quixote did in listening to a barefooted friar.* But it is possible, and no ungrateful story to a mind willing to believe the wonders of Divine Providence, that an understanding, naturally so dull as to be deemed almost idiotic, should have been opened and enlightened by a course of humble

*"No lo creyera, si me lo dixeran Frayles Descalzos, dixò Don Quixote." Part ii. c. 40.

service, ministering to the sick in a hospital. His unwearied diligence, supported in long watchings by a hardy frame, and his rude but unaffected kindness, gained him by degrees the most unlimited confidence ; and when he proposed to effect a charitable work, his hearty zeal recommended it in ways that were irresistible. Before he died he had founded several well-managed hospitals, and three houses for reclaimed penitents, at Alcala, Valencia, and Madrid. One of his favourite charities was of a kind not wholly unknown in more northern countries, to feed the poor at Christmas; but his mode of doing it was somewhat peculiar. Such, however, was his influence all round Alcala, that for many years he had no occasion to solicit alms for what he was about to do; but, as the day approached, fat pigs, carcases of beef and mutton, presents of coals, and gifts in money, came pouring in; and the number of poor people whom he fed, or sent home with supplies for a plentiful banquet, often amounted to twelve hundred.*

(78.) There was an affectation something akin to that of the Puritans, who rejoiced in calling themselves by the names of Lamentation, Tribulation, and Long Patience, in the Carmelite fashion of changing their surnames, and sometimes their christian names also, and desiring to be styled Francis the Unworthy, John of Misery, Sister Isabel of the Off-scourings,+ or

* Vida de Hermano Francisco, por Jos. de Jesus Maria. Ucles, 1624, p. 16, 17. + Isabel del Muladar.

Maria of the Seven Dolours. But the new religious name was more commonly indicative of the devotion of the nun or friar to some christian mystery, or some particular saint, as, Gabriel of the Conception, Peter of the Epiphany, Andrew of St. John Baptist, and Jerome of the Holy Sacrament. Still more prevalent, however, were appellatives derived from the name of our Lord or the Virgin Mother; but Brother Francis was not a solitary instance of a capricious kind of worship of the Child Jesus, as a child, one whom these votaries scarcely contemplated as grown to manhood and fulfilling his entire ministry among men. It is remarkable how St. Ambrose by anticipation condemns this childish rather than child-like religion : "Non pusillus ad te Christus introeat; sed intret in Dei forma, intret cum Patre, intret qualis est et cœlum et omnia supergressus; emittat tibi Spiritum Sanctum."*

Such as he was, however, Brother Francis was a character of some importance in the religious history of the time. The historians of Philip III. have not omitted to notice him ; but he found a special biographer in a brother Carmelite, Joseph de Jesus Maria, whose secular name was Francis Quiroga, a nephew of Gaspar Quiroga, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo. There were other poor friars, who were

* S. Ambros. de Fide, iv. c. 2.

+ Cabrera, 234. Davila, Grandezas, 268, 269. Phil. III. 174. Nic. Antonio, Bibl. iii. 806.