From amid the controversies which then agitated the world had emerged two great truths, of which, after three hundred years’ debate, we are yet to find the reconcilement. It was true that the Christian commonwealth should be one consentient body, united under one supreme head, and bound together a community of law, of doctrine, and of worship. It was also true that each member of that body must for himself, on his own responsibility and at his own peril, render that worship, study that law, and seek the guidance of the Supreme Ruler. Here was a problem for the learned and wise, for schools, and presses, and pulpits. But it is not by sages nor in the spirit of philosophy that such problems receive their practical solution. Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but it is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs. It is by antagonist passions, prejudices, and follies that the equipoise of this most belligerent planet of ours is chiefly preserved, and so it was in the sixteenth century. The German pointed the way to that sacred solitude where beside the worshiper himself none may enter; the Spaniard to that innumerable company which with one accord still chant the liturgies of remotest generations. Chieftains in the most momentous warfare of which this earth had been the theatre since the subversion of paganism, each was a rival worthy of the other in capacity, courage, disinterestedness, and love of the truth, and yet how marvelous the contrast! Unalluring and, on the whole, unlovely as it is, the image of Loyola must ever command the homage of the world. No other uninspired man, unaided by military or civil power, and making no appeal to the passions of the multitude, has had the genius to conceive, the courage to attempt, and the success to establish a polity teeming with results at once so momentous and so distinctly foreseen. Amid his ascetic follies and his half-crazy visions, and despite all the coarse daubing with which the miracle-mongers of his church have defaced it, his character is destitute neither of sublimity nor of grace. Men felt that there had appeared among them one of those monarchs who reign in right of their own native supremacy, and to whom the feebler will of others must yield either a ready or a reluctant allegiance. It was a conviction recorded by his disciples on his tomb in these memorable and significant words: “Whoever thou mayst be who hast portrayed to thine own imagination Pompey nor Cæsar or Alexander, open thine eyes to the truth, and let this marble teach thee how much greater a conqueror than they was Ignatius.” THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX. BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.