gular 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.

The Grand Master, whose authority was absolute, was elected by the
Knights from their own body, and held the office for life. In the choice
of this individual, the order seemed to be almost always influenced by
more than common wisdom, their election being guided by the best
influences and wisest judgment. They realized the proper qualities which
should characterize one placed in this responsible position, and chose
accordingly. They did not seek to elect such a leader as should favor
this or that "language," this or that section of the fraternity, but one
who was endowed with sufficient courage and conscientious piety to rule
over them with impartiality. That there was an element of weakness ever
present among them, emanating from the division into languages, is very
true, and it was this influence which the Grand Master had always to
guard against. National rivalry was inevitable, no matter how much the
fraternity endeavored, as a body, to avoid it.

The Knights of St. John made the island of Malta the bulwark of
Christendom against the advance of the pale, but bloodstained standard
of the Turks. Even after settling here, which proved to be their final
home, a bitter and murderous conflict was carried on by them with the
Ottoman power, both on sea and land, but especially in their galleons,
until at last, after triumphantly sustaining an unprecedented siege,
during which they actually killed the enemy in the trenches, three times
their own number, the Knights, with ranks seriously thinned, were left
in undisputed possession of these islands. Victory not only crowned
their sanguinary warfare with the Turks, but they also rid the
Mediterranean, at least for a considerable period, of a much-dre