to feel their way in Mexico.  In the year of Loyola’s death, 1561, thirty-two members of the Society were resident in South America; one hundred in India, China, and Japan; and a mission was established in Ethiopia.  Even Ireland had been explored by a couple of fathers, who returned without success, after undergoing terrible hardships.  At this epoch the Society counted in round numbers one thousand men.  It was divided in Europe into thirteen provinces:  seven of these were Portuguese and Spanish; three were Italian, namely, Rome, Upper Italy, and Sicily; one was French; two were German.  Castile contained ten colleges of the Order; Aragon, five; Andalusia, five.  Portugal was penetrated through and through with Jesuits.  Rome displayed the central Roman and Teutonic colleges.  Upper Italy had ten colleges.  France could show only one college.  In Upper Germany the Company held firm hold on Vienna, Prag, Munich, and Ingolstadt.  The province of Lower Germany, including the Netherlands, was still undetermined.  This expansion of the Order during the first sixteen years of its existence, enables us to form some conception of the intellectual vigor and commanding will of Ignatius.  He lived, as no founder of an order, as few founders of religions, ever lived, to see his work accomplished, and the impress of his genius stereotyped exactly in the forms he had designed, upon the most formidable social and political organization of modern Europe.

In his administration of the Order, Ignatius was absolute and autocratic.  We have seen how he dealt with aspirants after ecclesiastical honors, and how he shifted his subordinates, as he thought best, from point to point upon the surface of the globe.  The least attempt at independence on the part of his most trusted lieutenants was summarily checked by him.  Simon Rodriguez, one of the earliest disciples of the College of S. Barbe at Paris, ruled the kingdom of Portugal through the ascendency which he had gained over John III.  Elated by the vastness of his victory, Rodriguez arrogated to himself the right of private judgment, and introduced that ascetic discipline into the houses of his province which Ignatius had forbidden as inexpedient.  Without loss of time, the General superseded him in his command; and, after a sharp struggle, Rodriguez was compelled to spend the rest of his days under strict surveillance at Rome.  Lainez, in like manner, while acting as Provincial of Upper Italy, thought fit to complain that his best coadjutors were drawn from the colleges under his control, to Rome.  Ignatius wrote to this old friend, the man who best understood the spirit of its institution, and who was destined to succeed him in his headship, a cold and terrible epistle.  ’Reflect upon your conduct.  Let me know whether you acknowledge your sin, and tell me at the same time what punishment you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.’  Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain