Christóval de Acosta, a Portuguese botanist,--who was accustomed to call himself “the African,” because he happened to be born in one of the African possessions of Portugal,--travelled much in the East, and after his return published, in 1578, a work on Oriental plants and drugs, to which he added at the end a treatise on the natural history of the Elephant. But, though he succeeded in attracting the attention of Europe to this publication, and though the early part of his life had been that of a soldier, an adventurer, and a captive among pirates and robbers, he spent many of his later years, if not all of them, in religious retirement at home, where, besides other things, he wrote a discourse on “The Benefits of Solitude,” and a treatise on “The Praise of Women.” The last was printed in 1592, and, except that it is too full of learning, may still be read with some interest, if not with pleasure.[236] [236] “Tractado de las Drogas y Medicinas de las Indias Orientales, por Christóval Acosta,” Burgos, (1578, 4to,) where its author was a surgeon; but there are other editions, (1582 and 1592,) and early Italian and French translations. The “Tractado en Loor de las Mugeres, por Christóval Acosta, Affricano,” was printed at Venice, 1592, 4to, and I know no other edition. Barbosa, in his life of Acosta, spells his name Da Costa. It was not, however, moral and philosophical writers, like Oliva and Guevara, nor writers on subjects connected with natural history, like Torquemada and Acosta, that were most favored in the reigns of Philip the Second and his immediate successors. It was the ascetics and mystics,--the natural produce of the soil of Spain, and, almost without exception, faithful to the old Castilian genius. Among the most prominent of this class was Luis de Granada, distinguished as a Spanish preacher, but still more remarkable for his eloquence as a mystic. His “Meditations for the Seven Days and Nights of a Week,” his treatises “On Prayer” and “On Faith,” and his “Memorial of a Christian Life,” were early translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English,--one of them into Turkish, and one into Japanese,--and, like his other Spanish works, have continued to be printed and admired in the original down to our own times.