Surveying the school, the refectory or the playgarden of a Loyolan college, no person could distinguish a boy of sixteen quarters from a peasant's son. At the college de Clermont, the grand Condé said his lesson and did every other exercise, in the ranks, as a common boy.-His impetuous mind, which, at a future time, disdained and burst through every restraint, shewed all its fire, but burned with regulated heat, while he remained within the walls of Clermont. It may be added, that, through life he preserved his affection for the society, and that, in his last very edifying hours, he was attended by one of its fathers.

It is admitted, that the jesuits were singularly pleasing to their scholars. "Their polite manners, says M. de Chateaubriand, "banished from their "lessons the tone of pedantry, so displeasing to ἐσ youth. As most of the professors were men of "letters, whose company was sought by the world "at large, their disciples thought themselves in à

polite academy; friendships were formed between "them and their masters, which ever afterwards *subsisted for their mutual good."

No attachment could exceed that of a boy brought up under them to his master. "I myself," says one of the authors of the Réponse aux Assertions, speaking of their final banishment from France, "was present at the moment of the separation of "the scholars, from their masters in the college de "Louis le Grand. Stupified with grief, they tore "themselves either in silent sorrow, or with tears "and sobs, from the embraces of their masters.

"Our enemies know that I exaggerate nothing.

They themselves beheld it, and it increased their "irritations: they comforted themselves by hoping "that, in time, the impression would die away.'

But the zeal of the jesuits was not confined to the catechism or the college. The pulpits resounded with their predication; confessionals abounded with their penitents; the sacred tables with their disciples, and repentance and resignation flocked with them, at all hours, into hospitals and prisons. They had their ascetics and their contemplatives; but the devotion of common life,-that devotion, in describing and inculcating which, in his "Intro"duction to a devout Life," St. Francis of Sales was so eminently successful,-the jesuits had a particular talent in disseminating. The most useful of all pious practices, but, till then, too much confined to the cloister, pious meditations on the life of Christ, on the four last things, and the motives of loving or fearing God, they adapted to the most ordinary capacities. The exercises of St. Ignatius, a course of meditations composed by him for the general use of the faithful, are equally suited to the highest and the meanest capacities; no one has yet read them without fruit.

"Simple and easy exercises of piety," says the cardinal de Baussêt, "familiar instructions, pro"portioned to every condition, and nowise interfering with the labours or duties of society, served "to uphold, in every state of life, that regularity of manners, that spirit of order and subordination, "and that wise economy, which preserve peace and

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harmony in families, and assure the prosperity of empires. The principal towns of France, still "remember, that there never was more order and tranquillity, more probity in dealings, fewer failures, or less depravity, than, while these congre

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gations lasted. The jesuits had the merit of attracting honour to their religious and moral cha"racter, by a severity, a temperance, a nobleness "of manners, and an individual disinterestedness, "which even their enemies could not deny." These expressions of the cardinal are particularly remarkable, as they were written more than thirty years after the destruction of the order; and many years before the slightest expectation of its renovation

was entertained.

Learning has not been more ably cultivated or more actively diffused than by the jesuits. They possessed in the supreme degree, the art of unfolding talent, and directing it to the object, in which nature designed its owner to excel. Did a young jesuit possess a talent for the pulpit? his masters were sure to discover it, and he became a Bourdaloue, a la Rue, a Segaud, a Neuville or a Beauregard. Did he discover a turn for serious studies, for literary discussion, for philosophy, for mathematics, for theology, for profound research? to these he was directed, and became a Petau, a Sirmond, a Cossart, a Bougeant, a Tournemine, a Rossweide or a Papebrooch. Was he enamoured with classical lore, or with poetry? he was consigned to the muses, and became a Brumoi, a Cerçeau, a Bouhours, a Rapin, a Commire, a

Casimir, a Vanier, a Juvençi or a Berthier; and the fruits of his pen, always elegant, but always chaste and always moral, found their way into the hands of every man of taste and letters.

But they had no philosophers! So said d' Alembert, and so said la Châlotais. "When I read this "assertion," says la Lande, the celebrated astronomer, "I was employed in framing the index to my History of Astronomy. I immediately drew

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up a list of jesuits eminent in that science; I was "astonished at their number. Afterwards, in 1773, "I met la Châlotais at Saintes; I reproached him "with his injustice, and he admitted it. But the jesuits were then no more! Two men, Cavalho "and Choiseul, had destroyed the most beautiful "edifice constructed by man! An edifice, to which "no establishment under heaven will ever ap"proach! The eternal object of my admiration,

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my gratitude and my regrets.' Such is the candid language of la Lande.-"Men of learning!" a true and impartial friend of the jesuits*, once exclaimed, "whatever be your pursuits, your "country, or your creed, ask your own hearts if you "have not some obligation to the jesuits? Have

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they not opened to you some door to knowledge? "Some to science? Some to taste? Have they not abridged to you some literary labour? Soothed "to you some scientific toil ?-Men of learning!"wherever you are,-love the jesuits,-to all of you they have been friends."

* The writer of a Letter signed S. in the Catholic Gentleman's Magazine for August 1818.

It should be remarked, that the system of educating children, in graduated bands, taught and inspected by one of themselves, for which Lancaster and Bell enjoy so much rival fame, was in universal use among the jesuits before the seventeenth century. Nor should it be forgotten that they had preceded this country, in noble efforts for the abolition of the slave trade. No friend to that measure can read the twenty-third chapter of Mr. Southey's History of Brazil, without venerating the exertions of father Lorenzana in this glorious

cause.

LXXV. 3.

Their Missions in Paraguay.

BUT, to appreciate justly the merits of the jesuits, we must traverse the ocean, and contemplate the jesuit missioner with his breviary under his arm, his beads fastened to his girdle, and his crucifix in his hand, presenting himself to the barbarous, suspicious, and cruel inhabitants of the Indian woods or morasses. Sometimes he is immediately massacred *; sometimes, the savages fly from him :-he

From two works of character,-Societas Jesu, usque ad sanguinem et vitæ profusionem militans, pro Deo, fide, ecclesiâ, pietate: -sive vita et mors eorum, qui ex societate Jesu, in causâ fidei et virtutis propugnatæ, violentâ morte sublati sunt: auctore, R. P. Matthiâ Tanner, e soc. Jesu, s. s. theolo giæ doctore, Pragæ, 1675: and Fasti Societatis Jesu; opera et studio, R. P. Joan. Drewe, s. s. Pragæ, anno 1750;—it appears that, in Africa 68,-in Asia 131,-and in America 55 jesuits had, before that time, suffered death, often after grievous