AN ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT ON ST. IGNATIUS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 352, 16 January 1880, Page 16

AN ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT ON ST. IGNATIUS.

The house of Ignacio de Loyola is a square Basque mansion three storeys' high, and built in brick and stone. Over the doorway is an inscription that says Ignacio de Loyola was bora here A.D. 1 498, and gave himself up to the service of the Lord in A.D. 1531. The staircase that leads to the unique room on each landing is broad and the steps are very easy. Catholic devotion has turned every floor into a chapel, where lamps burn always and masses are said every day in the year. Quite up at the top is the room of the saint, and a wooden railing separates the altar and relics from the small space where the faithful are allowed to kneel and gaze. The ceiling, which is very low, is gilded and carved, the altar profusely gilt and decorated and in a gold case is preserved, we are told, a bone of San Ignacio. Mass was being said by an aged priest when I entered the chapel, and the people kneeling were a singular medley of classes. Basque peasants were devoutly praying with their boina in their hands, and old peasant women telling their huep rosaries close to a well-known family of the nobility ; and some French pilgrims seemed quitff wrapt in their prayers. We hurried forth not to disturb these good people, and we could not help musing on the daring and enterprising Basque gentleman, who, after leading the life of a soldier, suddenly determined, in a moment of affliction and sickness to devote the rest of his years to the service of Rome in the great battle againnt Reform and Protestantism. Ignacio de Loyola carried into his bold enterprise of Catholic reaction the stubborn and fierce energy of his race ; that strange originality and obstinate love of independence which have

allowed three provinces to retain through twenty invasions and long centuries of war the customs, institutions, the language, and the fueros which have proven a riddle not easy to solve for antiquarians and historians up to the nineteenth century. In this silent and solitary vale Ignacio de Loyola spent the first years of his life, and here the powerful auxiliaries of Papacy raised this monastery to his memory around his old family tower. The Basques are proud of their Patron, as he is styled, and well can their peasantry say that his spirit lurks yet in their land, when we recollect that the Pretender found thirty thousand volunterrs as soon as he unfurled the banner of Monarchy and religion against the Revolution that had triumphed in Madrid, and in the tower of the Peninsula. At the- shrine of Loyola, as at most of the pilgrim haunts of Spain, can be found the real causes of the strength of Carlism a few years ago in Spain. The pilgrims that came to Loyola represent every year those rural elements, the aristocracy and conservative classes which joined Carlism out of hate for the Revolution, and which as quick deserted the Pretender when Don Alfonso restored the Church to its pristine position in the State, and when Senor Canovas del Castillo also pulled to pieces, one after another, the fabric of reform and democratic legislation that the majority of Spaniards did not even comprehend and consequently abhorred. — Exchange. -