geologist with his quick imagination and lively sense of the
picturesque--can answer the question.

On first perceiving the sudden, uncouth height of Montserrat the traveler
must assuredly ask in his own mind, "Why?"

The mountain is of granite, where no other granite is. It belongs to no
neighbouring formation. It stands alone, throwing up its rugged peaks
into a cloudless sky. It is a piece from nothing near it---from nothing
nearer, one must conclude, than the moon. No wonder it stirred the
imagination of mediæval men dimly groping for their God.

Ignatius de Loyola solved the question with that unbounded assurance
which almost always accompanies the greatest of human blunders. It is the
self-confident man who compasses the finest wreck, Loyola, wounded in the
defense of that strongest little city in Europe, Pampeluna--wounded,
alas! and not killed--jumped to the conclusion that God had reared up
Montserrat as a sign. For it was here that the Spanish soldier, who was
to mould the history of half the world, dedicated himself to Heaven.

Within sight of the Mediterranean and of the Pyrenees, towering above the
brown plains of Catalonia, this shrine is the greatest in Christendom
that bases its greatness on nothing but tradition. Thousands of pilgrims
flock here every year. Should they ask for history, they are given a
legend. Do they demand a fact, they are told a miracle. On payment of a
sufficient fee they are shown a small, ill-carved figure in wood. The
monastery is not without its story; for the French occupied it and burnt
it to the ground. For the rest, its story is that of Spain, torn hither
and thither in the hopeless struggle of a Church no longer able to meet
the demands of an enlightened religious comprehension, and endeavouring