that the Jesuits
alone, at the time of their expulsion in 1767, had twelve
colleges and universities in Peru, the oldest of which
dated from the middle of the sixteenth century and offered
courses in philosophy, law, medicine and theology.

The Peruvians seem to have been content with their lot
as a favored Spanish colony, and they declared for
independence only when incited to do so and aided by
Bolivar of Colombia and San Martin of Buenos Aires. After
the revolution, Peru was torn by internal discord rather
more than other Spanish-American countries during the
period of adolescence; and it was its misfortune to lose
territory after territory. Bolivar took northern Peru,
including the valuable seaport of Guayaquil, and made it
a part of the first Colombia; and largely through the
influence of Bolivar much of Upper Peru was made a
separate republic, that of Bolivia. Lastly, Chile, for
centuries a dependency of Peru, became independent and
even wrested a considerable stretch of the litoral from
her former mistress. It is hard to realize that Peru,
to-day relatively weak among the American countries, was
once the heart of a vast Inca empire and later the colony
whose governors ruled the territories of Argentina and
Chile to the south, and of Ecuador and Colombia to the
north. With the decline of wealth and political influence
there has come to Peru a decadence in letters. Lima
is still a center of cultivation, a city in which the
Castilian language and Spanish customs have been preserved
with remarkable fidelity; but its importance is completely
eclipsed by such growing commercial centers as Buenos
Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile, and by page 302
relatively small and conservative towns such as Bogota.

In the sixteenth century Garcilasso Inga de la Vega (his
mother was an "Inga," or Inca, princess), who had been
well trained in the Latin classics by Spanish priests,
wrote in excellent prose his famous works, _Florida del
Inca_, _Comentarios reales_ and _Historia general del
Peru_. The second work, partly historical and largely
imaginary, purports to be a history of the ancient Incas,
and pictures the old Peru as an earthly paradise. This
work has had great influence over Peruvian and Colombian
poets. Menendez y Pelayo (_Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer._, III,
_Introd._) considers Garcilasso, or Garcilaso, and Alarcon
the two truly classic writers that America has given to
Spanish literature.

In