move his head, but with gravity when it was necessary to move it; at other times it was to be kept inclining a little forward, and with no declination to either side; the eyes looking downward, especially when conversing with persons of authority: the brow was not to be wrinkled; still more was any wrinkling of the nose to be avoided, to the intent that inward serenity might be denoted by a serene countenance: the lips were neither to be compressed nor opened widely; and the whole face was rather to denote cheerfulness than sadness, or than any less regulated emotion. In these instructions the real character of the Society appears; not such as it was designed by Loyola in the fervour of his first sincerity, but as it was moulded, and perfected, and stamped by Laines and his successors. What the founder's Exercises were to the devout and simple, their casuistry was to the children of this world. The Jesuits were, therefore, all things to all men. They could, as occasion required, inculcate the most uncompromising bigotry or the laxest morals: the right divine of kings, or the duty of deposing and putting them to death. Their Rule expressly forbade them to take any part in political affairs, yet they aimed at the direction of state affairs in every country where they were tolerated. Their Rule excused them from all those unnecessary observances in which other Regulars misspent so large a portion of their time; yet no others encouraged so greatly that puppetry and those puerile practices of devotion which amuse the vulgar. The use of any hurtful austerities was forbidden by their Institute; but there was a dispensing power for everything: and, if a Jesuit discovered a strong predilection for tormenting himself, he was allowed the gratification; and their histories accordingly vie with the Benedictine, and Franciscan, and Dominican Chronicles in disgusting feats of filthy mortification and selfinflicted cruelties, as well as in extravagant and audacious fictions. Being perfectly acquainted with the talents, acquirements, and character of every member, the Superiors could at all times find agents perfectly qualified for any service, however delicate or however desperate; whether it was to direct the conscience of a debauched king and his mistresses; to harden wicked hearts, or to pervert weak heads; to plot against the life of a sovereign, or the liberties of a state; to bring forward in controversy all the stores of learning with all the resources of art, aided by the most accomplished sophistry and the most intrepid falsehood; to go to the uttermost parts of the earth with the zeal and in the spirit of an apostle; to organize the bloodiest conspiracy against the Protestants, or engage with true benevolence in the conversion of the heathen; to suffer

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death

death as a traitor at Tyburn, or as a martyr in Japan,-the Jesuit Colleges could at any time supply men thoroughly qualified for all these services.

Such was the great machine which Ignatius, with the help of his first disciples, constructed and put in action. When the Pope approved of the Institution he limited the number of its members to threescore, but the limitation was removed three years afterwards. As soon as they were formally incorporated, they proceeded to elect a General; the nomination, of course, unanimously fell upon Loyola, and was accepted by him, after much histrionic reluctance, in obedience to the decision of a Confessor. The associated Jesuits then took the fourth vow, inserting these words immediately after those whereby they swore special obedience to the Pope, Et tibi, reverende Pater, locum Dei tenenti. As soon as the ceremony of his installation was concluded, this locum tenens went to work in the kitchen, as an example.

One of his benefactresses came to him from Spain, with two companions of her own sex, and intreated him to receive them into his order, and establish, by their agency, a community of female Jesuits. Loyola unwillingly undertook, at her desire, the spiritual direction of these three women; but, in the course of a few days, he found the task so difficult and so hopeless, that he besought the Pope to grant the Society an exemption from ever taking the charge of females. This broad exemption they accordingly obtained; it saved them from much embarrassment and a Jesuit could always obtain a special license when any politic end was in view.

To follow the remainder of Loyola's life would be to relate the history of his order during those years: he lived to see the spiritual dominion which he had erected extended into the twelve provinces of Portugal, Castile, Andalusia, Aragon, Italy, Naples, Sicily, High Germany, Low Germany, France, Brazil, and India. Nearly an hundred Colleges or Houses were founded for, or transferred to it, in these countries; and, when he died, at the age of sixty-five, thirty-five years after his own conversion, and sixteen after the establishment of his Order, the extent which that Order had obtained, the influence which it exercised, the ambitious projects which it had formed, and the power which it was exerting for evil and for good, might have made him look to the canonization he expected as his due. No scheme of policy ever more effectually answered the purpose for which it was designed; that purpose was to support the papal church, and, therefore, from that church, Loyola well deserved all the honours it could bestow. But, even with regard to the papacy,

the

the conduct of the Jesuits was Jesuitical. If a pope was unfriendly to the Order, his life was deemed to be in danger from their practices; and whatever truth there may be in the accusations which, by persons of their own church, have been brought against them on that score, it is certain that, when their Order was abolished, their vow of special obedience appeared to have been taken with a mental reservation, saving always the interests of the Society; for as a Society, in defiance of the Pope's authority, the Jesuits continued to exist; and as a Society they were found existing when the papal church, upon a better view of its own policy, thought proper to revive them. Hence we may estimate the efficacy of the enactment concerning them in the late Relief Bill; an enactment which, like the other notable securities in that Bill, is worth-about as much as it was meant to be.

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What consequences may be likely to arise from the restoration of the Jesuits might afford a wide theme for speculation. It has, indeed, been asserted by one of the diurnal directors of public opinion, that as a monastic institution, they have no more influence than the gypsies.' Yet gypsies do not exercise more influence over serving men and maids, than Jesuits have exercised over kings and queens, princes and princesses, statesmen, and their wives and daughters, and their mistresses, who have sometimes more ascendancy over them than either the young, whom they manage by their vices; the old, whom they govern by their fears; and the machiavelists of middle life, for whom they have a code of morals which provides a loophole for every expedient crime. This influence they have exercised, not only in the courts and cabinets of the Bourbon, and Austrian, and Braganzan families, but in the court and cabinet of Great Britain. Men may delude themselves and others by haranguing upon the change of times and the march of intellect; but human nature is now what it was at the Revolution, and those persons must be easily deceived who can believe, that there is at this time more stability of principle in our statesmen, more fidelity in our dignitaries of the church and of the law, more integrity in what are called public men, than at that great crisis of our civil and religious liberties. The Jesuits of this day are the faithful successors of those who then by their intrigues endangered both they are governed by the same institutions; they teach and practise the same casuistry; they take the same vow of special obedience to the head of the Romish church, and to their own general, locum Dei tenenti! They have the same clear, definite, intelligible object in view; zeal and ability have never been wanting among them; and funds will always be forthcoming to any

extent that they may require, for they draw upon a Bank of Faith' which never stops payment.

'I will produce evidence,' says Mr. O'Connell, to show that literature, that science, that everything that is graceful in classic learning, has been increased more by the Jesuits, than by any other class of men. I will show that more heathens and pagans have been converted to Christianity by the Jesuits, than by any others; and that more of their blood, as martyrs, has been shed, than of any other class of Christians.' In the latter part of this estimate, abating something from its amount, a Romanist is bound to agree, if he believe those relations which have obtained, in some instances, the highest sanction of his infallible church, and in others, its unqualified approbation. They rendered the most important services to that church in the time of its greatest danger; and had it not been for the Jesuits, the Romanists would not have been more considerable at this day in Great Britain and miserable Ireland, than they are in Denmark and Sweden. The sincere Papist cannot regard them with too much gratitude, the Protestant with too much distrust. The Protestant, however, who is well versed in their history, will render them justice; and it is giving them no equivocal commendation to say, that when the story of their American missions is divested of all false colouring, and all fable, what remains might entitle the memory of their missionaries in those parts to any honours short of idolatry. There they did nothing but good; but in Europe their efforts have been so perversely directed, that the best men among them have laid down their lives with true devotion, in furtherance of what, in itself and its consequences, was evil.

The reader who desires thoroughly to understand the principles of this famous Society, should peruse the Lettres Provinciales; but let him bear in mind, that in that work, the most finished and most successful of its kind, Pascal has dealt as unfairly with the Jesuits, as if he had been trained in their own school. For the doctrines and practices which he exposes are charged upon them, as if they alone were guilty of so teaching and so acting; whereas the other Regulars held the same opinions, and went on in the same course of action; and it is not upon the Jesuits that the condemnation should fall, nor upon any other order, black, white, or grey; but upon that Romish church, in the service of which they were all equally engaged, which adopted their legends, applauded their crimes, and encouraged them to support its cause, by any means, per fas et nefas.

ART. II. Théâtre de L. B. Picard, Membre de l'Institut (Académie Françoise.) 12 tom. Paris.

M PICARD, Member of the Institute, and manager of the

Odeon Theatre at Paris, died about a year since, leaving behind him a numerous progeny of dramas and romances. The twelve volumes, published in his lifetime, and under his immediate direction, contain near half a hundred comedies, comic operas, and farces, yet not the whole of his dramatic pieces. The sin of omission, however, is one of the last that will be charged against him. He might have retrenched still more, with advantage to the reader, at least to the purchaser, -and to his own fame.

Had M. Picard's genius kept pace with his ambition, his plays, or as our neighbours express it, his théâtre,' would be a precious bequest, not to the drama alone, but to general literature. He began his career as a writer for the stage in 1791, and laboured continuously, if not incessantly, from that period to his death. His leading and avowed object, both in his dramatic pieces and romances, from Médiocre et Rampant, ou le Moyen de parvenir,' to Gabriel Desodry, ou le Gil Blas de la Révolution,' was to exhibit the shifting aspects of French character, manners, and society, in his time. Thus professing, and really studying, to draw his characters, not from his imagination, abstract nature, or books, but from the community around him,-faithful in his delineations, even to personality, and bending to his purpose traits and incidents within his own knowledge or observation, his pen had the most ample and favorable scope. The reign of the Convention and of Terror was a distempered access of maniac inhumanity. But the fluctuations of fortune, character, and manners, which grew out of the revolution, the whimsical changes, or rather interchanges, of social position,―the vices and impertinences of base parvenus,—the comic solecisms and insolent airs of the valet suddenly exalted to the master, the fallen pride or grovelling servility of the master reduced to serve and cringe in his turn, the general prevalence of corruption, intrigue, cupidity, and vanity,-political, social, and domestic,-afforded the widest and most fruitful field that could be opened to the comic dramatist. Had it been traversed with competent ability, the result would be invaluable to the future student of that remarkable period. Strip Aristophanes of the exaggerations of his wit and malice, and his comedies present the most authentic and instructive pictures that have come down to us, of the social economy, follies, and