secretly obtained from his predecessor two years before. They could not insist on the validity of this irregular diploma, and the close of the generalship of Lainez saw them once more in a position of grave insecurity and unpopularity. A somewhat similar struggle was taking place in Belgium. The university and civic authorities at Louvain resisted them, and their college remained so poor that we find its rector complaining to Rome of the burden of supporting Father Ribadeneira, who, as we have previously seen, had been sent to further Jesuit interests at the court of Philip in Belgium. Even when Margaret of Austria, whom they easily secured, bade the States of Brabant admit the Jesuits, they refused, and they yielded only to the direct intervention of Philip in 1564. On the other hand, the able and devoted Jesuit Canisius was laying the foundation of his Society very firmly in the Catholic provinces of Germany. Canisius is the greatest figure in the second decade of the Society's life, and seems to have been a more deeply religious and conscientious man than Lainez. He maintained to the end the more austere standard of life, travelling afoot from city to city, from Rhineland to Poland and Austria, and inaugurating everywhere the effective system of education which Ranke has declared superior to that of the Reformers. The University of Dillingen was entrusted to the Jesuits, the frontiers of the Society were extended to Poland in 1554, and the laity were identified with its interests in the Catholic cities by being drafted into the numerous sodalities or confraternities which the Jesuits controlled. The historian can dwell with more sympathy on their generally enlightened struggle with Protestantism and with Catholic corruption in Germany, where heresy provided them with a bracing atmosphere and a healthy incentive to work. Even here, however, we find them at times stooping to tactics which we cannot admire, and the next chapter will introduce them to us in some singular adventures. Their conduct in Bavaria, especially, does not invite close scrutiny. Albert V. was heavily burdened with debt, and it is something more than a coincidence that, the moment he admitted the Jesuits, the Vatican made him a large grant out of ecclesiastical funds; it is even clearer that the Jesuits were chiefly responsible for the persecution of Protestants which followed their settlement in Bavaria.