no doubt delusions due to the highly wrought imagination and
ecstatic state of the mystic; but with Loyola they did not end here.
They bore fruit. He was practical as well as theoretical: and dead as he
became to self, a little of the sensible, matter-of-fact discipline of
his early training must have clung to him to the last. His after life
was full of activity and action. It would be difficult to say where he
did not go, what countries he did not visit with practical issues, in
days when men could not easily run to and fro on the earth as they do
now.

Loyola died as he had lived, full of faith and hope. He had caught the
malarial fever in Rome, and was not strong enough to fight against it.
In August, 1556, the end came, when he was sixty-five years old; but in
everything except years he might have gone through a century of time.
His physical powers were worn out with hard work and abstinence; and
perhaps the greatest miracle in connection with Ignatius Loyola was the
fact that he lived long after the vital forces should have ceased to
hold together. After his death the doctors found it impossible to
discover what power had kept him alive during his later years, but
agreed that it was nothing less than supernatural.

Thus Manresa is for ever connected with the name and fame of Ignatius
Loyola the saint.

* * * * *

Crossing the bridge and winding through a very ancient and dilapidated
part of the town, we presently reached the church, which struck us as
being new and gaudy, with very little to recommend it. But we had come
to see what had once been the cave, and wished we could have found it in
its original state. Certainly the saint himself would never recognise it
as the old earthy cavern, nine feet by six, whose mouth was concealed by
brier bushes, and where he was wont to pass long days and nights in
prayer and penance. The walls are now lined with marble; a light burns
before the altar; some poor sculpture represents Loyola writing his book
and performing his first miracle.

The view from his cave must have been magnificent even in his day. There
in front of him ran the famous river, and there stood the old bridge.
Beyond it rose the rock with its hollows and gardens; and towering above
were the splendid outlines of the collegiate church. Beyond all in the
distance rose the chain of the Pyrenees, undulating and snow-capped;
whilst in one distant spot, standing alone, cleaving