The most romantic period of the ever-changing history of this group of islands, subjected first and last to the control of so many different nationalities, is undoubtedly that embraced in the two centuries and a half of the eventful sovereignty of the Knights of St. John,--Knights Hospitallers, as they were very properly called at first, the most famous order of mediæval chivalry, whose name is more familiar to us as Knights of Malta. The first convent of the founders at Jerusalem was dedicated to St. John; hence the original name of the order. It was the earliest systematized charity of the sort concerning which we have any authentic record. If the true history of this organization could be written, it would overshadow the most vivid romance. It began in Palestine during the darkness of the tenth century, when the Saracens were masters of Jerusalem, and it extends to the verge of the eighteenth. It is but the outline of important events, which live through the ages to reach us. The individual is sunk in the mass, and yet real history is but enlarged biography. The truth of this is shown in the life of La Vallette, as handed down through three centuries. His biography gives us a better history of the order of which he was Grand Master than do writers who attempt it by treating the brotherhood as a whole. Had the moral character of the Knights of St. John been equal to their dauntless courage, the order would have formed a worthy example for all time; but their record shows them and their deeds to have been of mingled good and evil, the latter quality oftenest predominating. In the period when their material prosperity was at its height, they were equally celebrated for wealth, pomp, and vice. While they were boastful and claimed to be invincible, unlike most braggarts, they were undeniably brave. Nor was this by any means the only anomaly in the character of this singular and famous fraternity. Their career exemplified vice and self-abnegation, hospitality and piracy, the devoted care of the sick and the slaughter of their fellow-men, in about equal proportions. These clerical warriors presented a unique phase of human nature, the outgrowth of a period which, while demanding much sternness of character to cope with its exigencies, was also peculiarly amenable to the influence of religious superstition. The brotherhood owed a large degree of its influence to the cloak of sanctity which it so boldly assumed, but the humble spirit of which it so unhesitatingly and persistently outraged. The attempt to unite two professions so remote in principles was like trying to make oil and water mingle.