was well assured of his own innocence. Shortly after his arrest he drew up a profession of faith, declaring that he lived and died “now and in the future in the faith and belief of the Holy Catholic Church, and confessing his sins _con entrañable dolor_.” His defence was conducted throughout in a masterly way. During these five years of suffering he showed a fine sincerity and a clearness of argument that remind one very strongly of Pascal. Never was his style more trenchant and lucid, his reasoning more subtle than in the numerous “Unpublished Documents” that have come down to us. On no occasion was the patience and humility of the man more clearly shown. It is a strange reflection that many of these documents, in accordance with the secrecy of the Inquisition’s proceedings, were kept hidden from Luis de León himself, and that he probably never knew, as we know, that he came within a little of being examined upon the rack. In spite of his ingenious and elaborate defence, Luis de León’s trial was a long one, and one must shudder to think of the sufferings and despair of men of weaker metal and less subtle intellect, such as his intimate friend Grajal, who died in prison. The Inquisition proceeded as usual in an extremely slow and thorough fashion. “_Recato y secreto_,” caution and secrecy, were indeed its watchwords. Witnesses concerning Luis de León’s case were examined in many parts of Spain, and even at Cuzco, in Peru. It were easy to declaim against the cruelty and tyranny of the Inquisition, but on closer view it would seem unjust to lay the blame entirely at its door. The times, as we have noted, called for the utmost vigilance on the part of the upholders of the true and Catholic faith. They might hold themselves bound to investigate with unwearied diligence the most trifling disputes concerning the doctrine of the Church. Already unorthodox books had been filtering into Spain. A translation of the Psalms had been received at Cadiz, and one man alone, a kind of sixteenth-century Borrow, had brought two bales of heretical books to Seville. The life of the bookseller was rendered anxious and difficult by such proceedings. In a letter to the Inquisitors of Valladolid we read: “The booksellers of this town (Salamanca) have received and continue daily to receive bales of books from France and other parts. These they dare not open for sale without permission.” The evil must be stopped before it spread contagion through the country. It may be argued plausibly that the firmness of the Inquisition saved Spain from the religious dissensions that raged so fiercely in France, Germany, and England, nor may it be forgotten that the centuries of the Inquisition’s most rigorous power were the centuries of Spain’s greatest literary glory.