The piety of its ancient inhabitants is attested by the number and grave beauty of the churches, with their lamp-lit shrines of the saints and their dusky aisles filled with tombs of the old knights who fought under the banner of the cross. In St. Teresa’s time it was honored with the presence of several saints who have been canonized: St. Thomas of Villanueva, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John of the Cross, and that holy Spanish grandee, St. Francis Borgia, besides many other individuals noted for their sanctity. But St. Teresa is the best type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetly austere as the place, as broad and enlightened as the vast horizon that bounds it, and fervid as its glowing sun. “You mustn’t say anything against St. Teresa at Avila,” said the inevitable Englishmen we met an hour after our arrival. “We are by no means disposed to, here or anywhere else,” was our reply. On the contrary, we regarded her, with Mrs. Jameson, as “the most extraordinary woman of her age and country”; nay, “who would have been a remarkable woman in _any_ age or country.” We had seen her statue among the fathers of the church in the first Christian temple in the world, with the inscription: _Sancta Teresa, Mater spiritualis_. We had read her works, written in the pure Castilian for which Avila is noted, breathing the imagination of a poet and the austerity of a saint, till we were ready to exclaim with Crashawe: “Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!” and we had come to Avila expressly to offer her the tribute of our admiration. Here she reigns, to quote Miss Martineau’s words, “as true a queen on this mountain throne as any empress who ever wore a crown!”