ms, institutions, or opinions. And hence Saint Theresa
virtually belonged to the age of Bernard, and Anselm, and Elizabeth of
Hungary. She was of a good family as much distinguished for virtues as
for birth. Both her father and mother were very religious and studious,
reading good books, and practising the virtues which Catholicism ever
enjoined,--alms-giving to the poor, and kindness to the sick and
infirm,--truthful, chaste, temperate, and God-fearing. They had twelve
children, all good, though Theresa seems to have been the favorite, from
her natural sprightliness and enthusiasm. Among the favorite books of
the Middle Ages were the lives of saints and martyrs; and the history of
these martyrs made so great an impression on the mind of the youthful
Theresa that she and one of her brothers meditated a flight into Africa
that they might be put to death by the Moors, and thus earn the crown
of martyrdom, as well as the eternal rewards in heaven which martyrdom
was supposed to secure. This scheme being defeated by their parents,
they sought to be hermits in the garden which belonged to their house,
playing the part of monks and nuns.

At eleven, Theresa lost her mother, and took to reading romances, which,
it seems, were books of knight-errantry, at the close of the chivalric
period. These romances were innumerable, and very extravagant and
absurd, and were ridiculed by Cervantes, half-a-century afterwards, in
his immortal "Don Quixote." Although Spain was mediaeval in its piety in
the sixteenth century, this was the period of its highest intellectual
culture, especially in the drama. De Vega and Cervantes were enough of
themselves to redeem Spain from any charges of intellectual stupidity.
But for the Inquisition, and the Dominican monks, and the Jesuits, and
the demoralization which followed the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro,
Spain might have rivalled Germany, France, and England in the greatness
of her literature. At this time there must have been considerable
cultivation among the class to which Theresa belonged.

Although she never was sullied by what are called mortal sins, it would
appear that as a girl of fourteen Theresa was, like most other girls,
fond of dress and perfumes and ornaments, elaborate hair-dressing, and
of anything which would make the person attractive. Her companions also
were gay young ladies of rank, as fond of finery as she was, whose
conversation was not particularly edifying, but whose mor