The great names among the Spanish mystics of the golden time of their literature are those of Malon de Chaide, Juan de Ávila, Luis de Granada, Luis de Leon, Santa Teresa, and San Juan de la Cruz--and of these Santa Teresa alone is a living force. It is difficult to understand what sense the word mystic bore to the first person who applied it to Pedro Malon de Chaide (?1530----?). He was of the Order of St Augustine, and was a master of a fine-flowing, rather unctuous style. The work by which he is known in Spanish literature is _The Treatise of the Conversion of the Glorious Mary Magdalen_. It was written for a young lady who had resolved to take the vows, but was not published till many years later. Malon de Chaide was one of those who denounced the evil influence of the books of chivalry; but his own style is very often--at least to our modern taste--more fit for a romance than a book of devotion. He wrote verse--and well. It must be read with a constant recollection that it was not written for us, but in a time when the application of the language of _The Song of Solomon_ to devotion was justified by the all but universal belief in the allegorical character of the poem. In this practice, of which we have well-known examples of our own, Malon de Chaide never went to the extreme reached by Juan de la Cruz. [SN: _Juan de Ávila._] The venerable master Juan de Ávila (1502-1569), known as the Apostle of Andalucia, an older man than Malon de Chaide, was also much less the fashionable divine. The most famous of his many works is _The Spiritual Treatise_ on the verse _Audi, filia_--“Hearken, O daughter, and consider,” &c. It was at first only a letter of advice written for a lady, Sancha Carrillo, who had resolved to take the vows, but Ávila added to it largely, and in its final form it is a complete guide for those who wish to lead the religious life, whether in a monastery or in the century. It is not, perhaps, a book to be recommended to those who cannot read with the eyes of a Spanish Roman Catholic, or at least with as much critical faculty as will enable them to understand, and to allow for, that point of view. The style of Juan de Ávila, though verbose in the weaker passages, has an ardent eloquence at times, and has always a large share of the religious quality of unction. [SN: _Luis de Granada._]