If mental ability is unequally distributed, so also is that energy of character without which it is of comparatively little use, and which, indeed, sometimes supplies its place. Some men are so largely endowed with this valuable quality, that, after ordering their own affairs, they have abundance remaining to bestow upon their neighbours; and, fortunately for society, energy and benevolence are qualities very often found in combination. But these benevolent persons occasionally violate the sacred rights of individuality by taking the concerns of others too unceremoniously into their own hands; consequently it is their trial—and a very keen and bitter one—to find their excellent arrangements too often set aside, with or without good reason, by the very persons for whose benefit they are designed. Don Fray Tomas de San Martin, prior of the Franciscan Monastery at Lima, was a man of this temper—at once energetic and benevolent. And it must be allowed that for such the Church of Rome makes admirable provision. As the head of a wealthy and influential religious house in the capital of the New World, Fray Tomas found ample exercise for his gifts; and eventually they were brought under the notice of his ecclesiastical superiors during a mission to Spain, which he undertook for the purpose of obtaining the establishment of a university in Lima. Shortly afterwards he was appointed to a post calculated to afford them yet wider exercise—the bishopric of Chiquisaca. This was an onerous charge, especially in a country that had yet to be reclaimed almost entirely from heathenism. It was to his credit that, amidst his preparations for undertaking it, he found time to recall to memory the pale, fiery-eyed, thoughtful-faced young monk whom he had sent eight or nine years ago to the heights of Cerro Blanco. He considered Fray Fernando just the material out of which a model missionary to the Indians might be moulded. Hence the summons that awaited the monk at the Franciscan convent in Cuzco. When Fray Fernando at length presented himself before the prior of his Order, Fray Tomas received him very cordially, and explained to him, with much affability and condescension, the important part he intended him to perform in spreading the faith amongst the Indians of his new diocese. For this work he conceived him eminently fitted by the zeal and the talents he had observed in him during his novitiate; and no doubt he would find the Indian youth, whom he had with so much Christian charity redeemed from slavery, baptized, and educated, an efficient interpreter. For the Indians of Chiquisaca had, fortunately, been subjects of the Inca, so they all spoke the “lengua general.”