. BIOGBAPHY. 



379 



ing at the same time the christian do6lrine so perfe6lly, that it 

 was his task to instru6l all the other children in the school. His 

 stature was prodigious : at seven years of age he appeared to 

 have attained his fifteenth year*; and at five-and-twenty he 

 had grown in such a proportion, that there was not any per- 

 son in the kingdom whom he did not, like Saul, exceed from 

 the shoulder upward. He was scarcely ten years of age when 

 he had learned by heart the whole of the Psaltery, with the 

 pious intention of replying to the priest when he accompanied 

 the holy sacrament. 



In 1579, he began his grammatical studies; and in the 

 space of two years completed his course of philosophy. At 

 the age of seventeen years, in 1582, he entered into the society 

 of Jesus, and was received, as a noviciate, into the college 

 named St. Joseph, situated in the suburb del Cercado, it being" 

 the first the society possessed in the capital. His noviciate and 

 theological studies having been completed in the space of two 

 years, he was appointed professor of philosophy, notwith- 

 standing he had not yet been ordained. This privilege, 

 among the Jesuits, was exclusively enjoyed by father Fran- 

 cisco Suarez in Salamanca, and by our father Menacho in 

 Lima. 



He next became professor of theology in the city of Cuzco, 

 and after having resided there for some years, returned to 

 Lima to fill the same chair in the college of San Pablo. The 



* This is not the only example which might be cited, to confute the foreign au- 

 thors, those who have been engaged in drawing up the Encyclopaedias more par- 

 ticularly, who ascribe to the descendants of the Spaniards in America, a diminutive 

 stature. 



3 c 2 royal 



