English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay. Father Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book (printed at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now the province of Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia. As an Englishman and a Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination in the eighteenth century), and as one who doubtless knew many of the Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been most important, especially as he was a man of great information, much education, an intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of Jesus at a comparatively advanced age. It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion of the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found.[8] Literatures, like other things, have their times of fashion. At one time a knowledge of Spanish was as requisite as some tincture of French is at present, and almost as universal. Men from Germany, England, and Holland who met in a foreign country communicated in that language. In the early portion of the century Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving rendered Spanish literature fashionable to some degree. Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell drew some attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe is so little studied in England. Still leaving apart the purely literary treasures of the language, it is in Spanish, and almost alone in Spanish, that the early history of America is to be found. After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825, some interest was excited in the Spanish-American countries, stimulated by the writings of Humboldt; but when it became apparent that on the whole those countries could never be occupied by Northern Europeans, interest in them died out except for purposes connected with the Stock Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches to them which attaches to no other countries in the world. It was there that one of the greatest dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure in which the human race has engaged, took place. What Africa has been for the last twenty years, Spanish America was three hundred years ago, the difference being that, whereas modern adventure in Africa goes on under full observation, and deals in the main with absolutely uncivilized peoples, the conquest of South America was invested with all the charm of novelty, and brought the conquerors into contact with at least two peoples almost as advanced in most of the arts of civilization as they were themselves.