Mysticism finds two distinguished exponents, of whom the earlier is the Apostle of Andalucía, the Venerable JUAN DE ÁVILA (1502-69), a priest, who, educated at the University of Alcalá, is famous for his sanctity, his evangelic missions in Granada, Córdoba, and Seville. The merest accident prevented his sailing for the New World in the suite of the Bishop of Tlaxcala, and his inopportune fervour led to his imprisonment by the Inquisition. Most of his religious treatises, beautiful as they are, are too technical for our purpose here; but his _Cartas Espirituales_ are redolent of religious unction combined with the wisest practical spirit, the most sagacious counsel, and the rarest loving-kindness. Long practice in exhorting crowds of unlettered sinners had purged Juan de Ávila's style of the Asiatic exuberance in favour with Guevara and other contemporaries; and, though he considered letters a vanity, his own practice shows him to be a master in the accommodation of the lowliest, most familiar language to the loftiest subject. In the opposite camp is JUAN DE VALDÉS (d. 1541), attached in some capacity to the court of Carlos Quinto, and suspect of heterodox tendencies in the eyes of all good Spaniards. Francisco de Encinas reports that Valdés found it convenient to leave Spain on account of his opinions; but, as his twin-brother, Alfonso, continued in the service of Carlos Quinto, and as Juan himself lived unmolested at Rome and Naples from 1531 to his death, this story cannot be accepted. None the less is it certain that Valdés, possibly through his friendship with Erasmus, was drawn into the current of the Reformation. His earliest work, written, perhaps, in collaboration with his brother, is the anonymous _Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón_ (1528), an ingenious fable in Lucian's manner, abounding in political and religious malice, charged with ridicule of abuses in Church and State. Apart from its polemical value, it is indisputably the finest prose performance of the reign. Boscán's version of the _Cortegiano_ most nearly vies with it; but Valdés excels Boscán in the artful construction of his periods, in the picturesqueness and moderation of his epithets, in the variety of his cadence, and in the refined selection of his means. It is possible that Cervantes, at his best, may match Valdés; but Cervantes is one of the most unequal writers in the world, while Valdés is one of the most scrupulous and vigilant. Hence, sectarian prejudice apart, Valdés must be accounted, if not absolutely the first, at least among the very first masters of Castilian prose.