It was in the midst of this struggle, when the energies of the corrupt faith seemed to be sinking fast to deadness and decay, that a spark of apparently new life revived in the midst of the dry bones. The crash and struggle for victory had, as it were, roused up some dying or dormant power with all the freshness of new life. "It is not strange that the effect of the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in the other.". "From the

halls of the Vatican to the most secluded hermitage of the Appenines, the great revival was everywhere felt and seen." A spirit of revival seemed suddenly to awake and spread throughout the whole of the southern domains of the Romish Church, then, as now, the stronghold of idolatry and superstition; and the flame burned most brightly and purely where the darkness seemed most gross and deep, in the rise of Ignatius Loyola, of Spain, the founder of the Jesuits. "When Luther went to Wittenberg, earnest for the faith, Ignatius was a lad of seventeen, brave, gay, and gallant; when Luther struck his first blow at the corruptions of the Church, Loyola was a daring and devoted soldier of twenty-five."* The one, an unknown soldier of the Cross; the other, fighting for glory and the bubble reputation of the cannon's mouth; and yet both to become great in the history of the Church.

Very soon we find Loyola a volunteer leading a forlorn-hope. "The French guns have thrown down the walls" of the besieged city to which he has retired, and he is in the gap; suddenly he falls, his right leg torn by a cannon ball, his left torn by a splinter. He is a cripple for life. He underwent great agony, stretching himself even on the rack to lengthen his broken limb, and bearing every operation at the surgeon's hands without a word of murmur, but in vain. The polished courtier, the gallant soldier was hopelessly deformed. Thus he lay silent and uncomplaining; yet mourning secretly over his past dreams of glory, nervous and impatient for the future.

Between the chivalry and religion of Spain there is a close union; and Loyola, on his bed of pain, listening to the Lives of Saints, St. Benedict, St. Dominic, and St. Francis, soon heard with surprise and pleasure of other warfare than that of mere earth, of spiritual weapons, and a battle-field whereon great deeds might be done against the enemy of souls. "He would, he said, still be a soldier and knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the great Dragon. He would break the chain under which false prophets held the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the Syrian deserts

Cross, Crozier, and Crown, p. 103.

and to the holy sepulchre. He wandered back to the farthest west, and astonished the Convents of Spain and the Schools of France by his penances and vigils."-Macauley.

He enjoyed visions of the Virgin Mary; nay, of the Saviour Himself. His enthusiasm grew boundless; his faith unwavering; his zeal unwearied. He spared nothing of body or of worldly goods in the service of his new Master; no time was too great, no labour too vast to be freely given; to it were devoted the energies of mind, body and spirit. What wonder that success followed? His disciples caught the burning enthusiasm from him; “and with what vehemence, policy, exact discipline, courage, self-denial, and forgetfulness of the dearest ties, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe for several generations."

These glowing words of the great essayist need no addition from our feeble pen; they embody in a few lines a graphic sketch of Jesuit history. The order of Jesus (as they called themselves) still exists, and still fights with the same unscrupulous weapons as of old; and in it is still "concentrated the quintessence of the Roman Catholic spirit." Its boast, like that of the Romish Church from which it sprang, is that it cannot change. So far the boast holds good; but no further. Once the Jesuits were masters of "all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the pulpit, the press, the confessional, the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was too small for the audience." But a change has come over the spirit of their dream; the press can now speak with its own voice freely; the wiliest Jesuit that ever donned a cassock may preach in the finest chapel in St. George's Fields; but there will always be room, and to spare. Men's minds have awakened since those days, at least in our land, and dared to think alone, unfettered, and uncontrolled. Let the serpent charm never so wisely; the victims, if any, are few in number, poor in degree, hardly worth the toil. But in many a great nation of Europe is it far otherwise. The followers and emissaries of Ignatius Loyola went forth into all lands, ostensibly to sow the seeds of life; too often to sow those of discord, strife, misery, bloodshed, and ruin-doubting, unbelieving, and scoffing. The seeds, sown two centuries ago, have borne, are still bearing, deadly fruit. There were doubtless some few great and good men among the sowers; but the great body soon lost sight of their true work, and became entangled in schemes of ambition, in struggles for wealth, for power, for position. Doubtless the good seed produced its fruit; but no less surely the evil its evil fruit. As years rolled by, their unparalleled and unscrupulous dominion had penetrated almost every empire of the known world.

The Jesuits "were to be found in the depths of the African slave caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China." One object they ever kept steadily before them : never to drive any one person out of the Romish Church; no matter how infamous in character, position, or life. If he was a scoundrel, "that was no reason for making him a heretic too." "It was better that he should be a bad Catholic than a bad Protestant". -or even a Protestant at all. To maintain and enforce this doctrine, at any or at all cost, they scrupled not to use any means however vile, any agents however unworthy, to embroil the peace of families, to plot against kings and counsellors, to spread false rumours, to excite tumults, to kindle sedition into a flame, to arm the hand of the assassin.

Such is the Order of which Dr. Michelsen, in the book before us, has given so full and able a sketch. He is a sensible and clearheaded man, and has written a useful and well-intentioned volume. His pages might have been filled, perhaps, in a lighter and more popular style; but he deems his subject a grave one, and has written in a grave spirit; and we thank him for much valuable information. God knows the subject is grave enough: the snake is but scotched, not killed, after all. Wherever the grass is longest, fairest, and most brave, even there may lurk at its very roots the spring of poison, decay, and death. Moreover, the poison is moral, eating out, not the life of green grass, but of human souls-degrading, debasing, and enslaving them.

Is it then to be wondered at that we are deluged on all sides with papers, pamphlets, sermons, essays, tales, sketches, and histories, on the Jesuits and their ways of darkness P-that we hear of Jesuits male, and Jesuits female, who pervade all ranks, and penetrate into every society, from the cottage to the 'court? No wonder that Exeter Hall grows rampant, and exhorts the universe with loud and unmeasured eloquence. We do not wonder at all this; but we regret it. If the Jesuits must be fought-and they must be, these are not the weapons of success: abuse, scorn, insult, mockery, and derision, are not fit weapons of truth against lying, of light against darkness; but of darkness against light, falsehood against truth. The Jesuit's power grows by being exaggerated and brought into notice; it takes root where else it would never have been heard of. If Jesuits, in a false cause, are of unwearied zeal,-why are not disciples of truth equally zealous? If Jesuits labour unweariedly among the poor, needy, and ignorant,-why should not the messengers of a purer and holier faith meet them there, on that dark, stained, yet noble battle-field? If they "become all things to all men," why should not the agents of the right cause, the pleaders for freedom, the messengers of good tidings to the poor-not as the gift of man,

to be sold for money or bought for a price, but as the free gift of God-in like manner use the same weapons?

The Jesuit tempts the wanderer by a thousand devices to enter what he calls the true fold: to the churchman he offers more of the very discipline and doctrine in which life of the church consists; to the man of loose opinions, of vague belief, he offers freedom of opinion. Why should a lie be more attractive than the truth? If we have, as a nation, reformed our religious faith, and come out from the waters of the Reformation, as Naaman from the sacred river, rid of our leprosy,-is our power to win men utterly gone? Must they ever be scolded, driven, argued, preached into what is right? never persuaded, never led, gently led,-religion not crammed down their throats, but quietly and kindly insinuated into the stony heart, and the dead conscience, and the diseased mind? Are thunder and lightning the only weapons of Heaven? Is there no small and gentle rain, no beam of morning light, no breath of gentle wind?

We believe that by specious imitations of such weapons as these the Jesuits still exist and still succeed; to overcome and bring to an end their secret and apparently irresistible power, we must fight against it, not with imitations, but the true weapons. Thus, and and thus alone, will the cunning of Jesuistry be disarmed, its craft fail, and its corruption prove its own certain and swift ruin.

There are thousands and tens of thousands in this our own land among whom Infidels and Jesuits are almost the sole labourers. What wonder, then, that the order is still at work among us, with all its secrecy, craft, and malice, if but a shadow of its ancient power? We hear everlastingly of new mission fields, thousands of miles away, from Borrea-boula-gha to Timbuctoo; but there is no lack of work at home-work full of difficulty, honour, and promise of the noblest fruit. Why not a mission through the dens and wildernesses, the dark places of Babylon, where the wily soothing words of the Jesuit and the scoffing of the Infidel are welcomed by the depraved, the ignorant, and the vicious?

If our readers would know more of the utter misery of other European countries now under the full, or partial, rule of Jesuitism, let them read Dr. Michelsen's book. They will rise from its perusal, if sadder, at least wiser mortals.

LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF A BLIND TRAVELLER.

A PEEP INTO SPAIN BY THE SOUTH OF FRANCE AND THE

PYRENEES.

SPAIN is certainly one of the most interesting countries to all classes of travellers, from the many vicissitudes of fortune through which it has passed; the beauty of its scenery; the peculiarity of its inhabitants; the numerous romantic legends with which its history abounds*; from the early periods of the Visigoths and the Moors, so happily described by the pen of Washington Irving, to the more modern times of the Christinos and Carlist struggles. Spain has also furnished numerous instances of the ill effects produceable by despotic power when combined with religious bigotry: for although she might have now become one of the wealthiest and most powerful states in Europe, spite of the Dutch wars, the expulsion of the Jews and Morescos, and other misfortunes, and have held the respectable position of a good second-rate European power; yet she can do but little else than linger on in an uncertain and dreamy existence of inaction and procrastination, instead of rousing her dormant energy, and using her many valuable resources for the advancement of her social position amongst the family of nations.

There are various ways of reaching this land of wars, romance, and revolution, of idleness, dirt, pride, and poverty. The traveller may either betake himself to the comfortable vessels of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and try his nerves and his stomach across the stormy Bay of Biscay to Lisbon and Cadiz; or he may avail himself of the French vessels, which steam along the southern coast of Spain, from Marseilles to Gibraltar. Both these voyages I have made in the first, during the year 1840, I was unable to penetrate farther than Cadiz and Seville, owing to the unsettled condition of the country, which then made travelling dangerous to all but military amateurs, such as Lord Ranelagh; and in the second (1846), owing to the tempestuous weather in the Gulf of Lyons, where our rudder got broken, and we narrowly escaped, as one of our fellow passengers remarked, "either going to the bottom,

History of Spain, for Young People; by Rev. B. G. Johns, M.A.-Joseph Masters, 78, New Bond Street.