Society is ever accustomed to clothe its ambitious designs. Analyse all this carefully, and it resolves itself always into the same leading principles. Piety, perfect obedience, universal sway, unscrupulousness in regard to means. Even if you seek to find some details of how these principles are to be brought to act in individual cases, you still find that all resolves itself into the same bombastic generalities. There are some few exceptions, and of these we will avail ourselves. Take, for example, the views entertained by one of the Jesuits, who, it appears, had toiled in the great cause, in that susceptible field, Ireland.

And now, learn what is the baptism of fire, which, at each confession, I used to pour on the heads of my penitents in Ireland.

"Poor people!" I said to them, "how have they degraded you! they esteem you less than brutes. Look at these great landlords! They revel in wealth, they devour the land, they laugh at you, and in return for the wealth they draw from you they load you with contempt. And yet, if you knew how to count up your strength, you are stronger than they. Measure yourselves with them, man to man, and you will soon see what there is in them. It is nothing but your own stupidity that makes them so powerful."

Such was pretty nearly the substance of all my discourses to them. And when their confession was ended, I added, "Go your ways and do not be downhearted; you are white doves in comparison with those black and filthy crows. Take them out of their luxurious dwellings; strip them of their fine clothes, and you will find that their flesh is not even as good as your own. They do you gross wrong in two ways-they sully your faith and degrade your persons. If you talk of religious rights, the rights on which all others depend, yours come down to you direct from Jesus Christ; as eighteen centuries-and what centuries!—are there to testify for you. But they!—who is their father? One Luther, or Calvin, or a brutal Henry VIII. They reckon, at most, three centuries; and these they have dishonoured by numberless crimes, and by the blackest of vices! The Catholics alone are worthy to be free; whilst the heretics, slaves every one of them of Satan, have no rights of any kind. Impious as they are! did they not stigmatise as false the religion of their fathers? a religion which counted more than fifteen centuries. In other words, they declare all their ancestors damned, and believe that they alone are saved."

The same father designates O'Connell by the name of "chosen vessel." So with many other rampant Utopianisms, in which we cannot find so much to blame as many of the antagonists of Jesuitism do. The aim of the Jesuists has always avowedly been to establish a universal theocracy-to win over the heathen-to train a rising generation in submission and obedience, and to undermine and sap the Reformation. To accomplish this they adopt a system which, in its generalities, is not much more exceptionable than that which is pursued by many temporal authorities in the acquirement and the retention of power-especially in our revolutionary times. The truly objectionable part of the Jesuit system is exactly that which the abbate passes over most tenderly, the enslaving of minds and consciences, the perpetuity of ignorance and bigotry. Another curious thing in the abbate's revelations is, that whereever he makes a point in bringing out a clear and distinct general principle, he always quotes a previous authority to sanction it. Some people might be ill-natured enough to think that the text did not serve more to illustrate the quotation, than the quotation the text.

Be this, however, as it may, the strong point on which the abbate attacks the Jesuits, and the most novel, is their immorality. On this subject he is as unsparing as he is detailed in his revelations. Here is a

parable by which a reverend confessor soothed the conscience of a fair penitent.

"Two fathers had each a son. These youths had a passion for the chase. One of the fathers was severe, the other was mild and indulgent. The former positively forbade his son the enjoyment of his favourite pursuit; the latter, calling his son to him, thus addressed him :-'I see, my son, that it would cost you much to renounce your favourite sport; meanwhile, there is only one condition on which I can allow you to indulge it; namely, that I may have the satisfaction of seeing that your affection and zeal for me increase in proportion to my indulgence.' What followed? The young man to whom the chase had been forbidden, followed it in secret, and at the same time became more and more estranged from his father, until all intercourse was broken off between them; whilst the other redoubled his attentions to his father, and showed him every mark of duty and affection."

If the lady could understand the bearing of this Jesuitical advice, the reader may possibly do the same. It becomes monstrous, however, when we see the text of St. Paul perverted, to attest the right to have a sisterwife, and David quoted as an example of polygamy. The Jesuits consider confession to be the foundation-stone of the Catholic edifice, and confession cannot exist without celibacy-yet celibacy is not a natural state of things. Hence Cardinal Bellarmin said, "For those who have made a vow of continence, it is a greater crime to marry than to give themselves to incontinence." Jesuits also make a distinction between what they term "a successive and invisible polygamy and an interior and spiritual celibacy." One of the fathers spoke of the "Sisters of Charity" as follows:

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I refer (he says) to the Sisters of Charity! charming women, who owe it to us not to forget that "well-ordered charity begins at home." I have visited and been intimate with many of them in different countries. They are very accessible and very confiding; almost all whom I have known have spoken to me of their secret sorrows. I have listened to their complaints against priests and monks, -as if they expected our hearts to be as tender and as ardent as their own! It is my opinion that these are the sort of nuns adapted to our own times. I wish, indeed, it were possible to lighten the yoke of all the rest (allegerire il giogo dell' altre), who are condemned unnecessarily and uselessly to see nothing all their lives but one little patch of sky and one little patch of earth; and what is still worse, to remain always shut up together, seeing the same eternal faces without any possibility of removing to another convent, even when such a change appears reasonable. I would have the cloister abolished altogether, so that there might be less difficulty, less ceremony in approaching them. What a spring of cheerfulness for the poor hearts of these maidens! What an opportunity for them to vary, if not their pleasures, at least their griefs! The Sisters of Charity have this advantage.

But we have followed these revelations as far as propriety will permit. We cannot accompany the author into the mysteries of the Hospital of St. Roch, as developed by himself and M. Poujoulat. It is sufficient that we have assisted in giving them publicity to a certain extent, as in duty bound to do, by the ties which attach us to our own church system, and by the imperious necessity that always exists of exposing fraud and immorality, when it assumes the most dangerous of all masks-that of piety and perfection. M. Victor Considérant has lent his name and pen to the abbate's revelations for other purposes-to exhibit in its odious nakedness what he calls "the pseudo-Christianity, the Christianity of the profit-seekers, of Theocracy of Despotism." We may be fairly allowed to doubt if the "true Christianity, the democratic Christianity, which he would exalt in its stead, would be a bit better-we should say rather worse.

CASTLE SCHILDHEISS.*

BY JOHN OXENFORD, ESQ.

I.

HOW THE PRINCESS ADELAIDE WAS SENT TO A CONVENT, AND HOW LONG SHE STOPPED THERE.

It would have been a blessed thing for Bohemia, if the convent at Ratisbon had been less famous, if the abbess had not been so renowned for her piety, and the nuns had not sung so extremely well, for in that case the Emperor of Germany would never have dreamed of sending his daughter there. This same daughter, whom historians call Adelaide, was a little, plump, blond personage, with large fair curls lying close to either cheek, and with a habit of looking out of the corners of her eyes, through very long lashes, which, if not commendable, was considered highly fascinating by the court. If had wished to choose a personage for a nun, the Princess Adelaide would have been the very last you would have selected; but the convent at Ratisbon was famous, and the emperor was crotchetty,-so to the convent she was sent. Many of the courtiers exchanged knowing glances at each other in the course of this proceeding, as if they foresaw a dreadful failure, but the emperor had a knack of turning his head sharply, and giving a look when it was least expected, so that the gentlemen around him were speedily obliged to reduce their countenances to their habitual wont of expression.

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The Princess Adelaide was received by the abbess with the greatest kindness, and was as miserable as possible. In words she thanked the good lady for her friendly attentions, but the corners of her lips seemed to quiver uneasily as she spoke, and her eyes became red and moist in spite of her efforts to smile. She regretted the festivities at her father's palace, she regretted the knights whom she had often seen gazing in admiration upon her, but chiefly she regretted the King of Bohemia, whom she had never seen at all, but of whom she had heard wonders. Indeed, from all we gather respecting the history of that monarch, the wonders she had heard of him were rather greater than those he had actually performed.

Bearing in mind this predilection of the Princess Adelaide for the yet unseen, but highly enamoured King of Bohemia, we do not feel as startled as we otherwise should have been, on hearing that when an illlooking wight introduced himself into the convent, telling the abbess that he was a messenger from the emperor, but privately informing the princess that he had come from the king, she did not fly into a violent rage, but was rather gratified than otherwise at the intelligence. The wight in question, whose name was Dietwold, and who was the king's tutor, gave her a most ardent epistle from his sovereign, and informed

*This is no translation, but the subject is taken from a German popular story The last chapter will remind the reader of "Sir Guy the Seeker," in Lewis's ballad.

her that he had made a little arrangement by which she could fly from the convent, and reach in safety the capital of Bohemia, which, as all know, is the city of Prague. The princess blushed deeply; first said "no," and looked "yes," and then said "yes," without looking "no;" and when all the nuns were engaged in vespers, she was on horseback with the artful Dietwold, on her way to the confines of Bohemia. It is said, that Dietwold, as he held her on the horse, pressed his arm rather more tightly round her waist than was absolutely necessary to render her position secure.

The abbess and the nuns soon missed the fugitive, and set up a dismal cry; and the citizens of Ratisbon, moved by the circumstance, placed chains across the streets. These chains were of little avail, from the simple cause that the princess was already out of the city before the nimble Ratisbonians had thought of setting them up.

The nuptials of the Princess Adelaide and Eginhard, King of Bohemia, surpassed all description. There was eating, and drinking, and dancing; and there were tournaments, at which an unprecedented number of ribs were broken-in short, there was all that jovial practical "fun" by which the middle-ages were distinguished. And the happiest man in Bohemia was Dietwold, the king's tutor; for he it was who had planned the felicitous abduction, and who had boldly carried his plan into execution. Had it not been for the suggestions and counsels which he had whispered into the ear of King Eginhard, the princess might have died in her convent, and been canonised into the bargain, and this famous history would never have been written.

II.

SHOWING THE PROMPT MEASURES TAKEN BY THE EMPEROR WHEN HE HEARD OF THE FLIGHT OF THE PRINCESS.

BUT while all this joviality was going on at Prague, the scene at the emperor's court was vastly different. There was such a talking about family dishonour, and gray hairs going with sorrow to the grave such a cursing and swearing and uttering of wicked words, that many thought the very d was on the imperial throne. Those courtiers who had already by eloquent winks expressed their disbelief in the convent scheme, felt inclined to chuckle at the fulfilment of their silent forebodings, but they smothered their self-complacency, and united their voices into a chorus of wrath, by which the indignant emperor was highly edified.

The good emperor was not a person of mere words, but was one of a those strong-minded men, who have a great objection to standing nonsense. With the smallest possible delay he got together an army of some thirty thousand, and set out for the Bohemian frontier. The Bohemians were not a little alarmed at this prompt mode of proceeding, for their own military department was lamentably deficient.

And alarmed they well might be. The worthy emperor had no sooner entered Bohemia than he showed his mettle in good earnest. The horrors which he created were worthy of King Attila. Village after village, town after town, was attacked,-victory was the sure consequence of attack, -slaughter and conflagration were the sure consequence of victory. Heaps of aches lay where cities had stood before-fields were covered with

corpses

-trees were loaded with peasants, hung up for no other crime than because they were subjects of King Eginhard-and the good emperor rode through it all, and ordered a conflagration here, and a massacre there, without the slightest pang of conscience, and with the agreeable notion that he was merely doing a rational act of justice. At Prague there was a little revolution going on, for though the emperor had not yet reached the capital, the inhabitants shrewdly guessed what was coming, and heartily cursed King Eginhard, and the fair Adelaide, and the crafty Dietwold, who, by his excessive talent, had brought all these calamities about their ears. The king stopped the popular movement by cutting off his preceptor's head and pitching it out of the palace-window to the crowd below, but the progress of the invading army was not so easily to be checked. Adelaide thought she would try the effect of a letter, and accordingly sent an affectionate epistle to her father, in which she confessed that she had acted wrong, but argued that it was rather hard that the poor devils of Bohemians, who had nothing to do with her elopement, should be made to suffer. She represented, moreover, that her husband, Eginhard, had acted as handsomely as possible under the circumstances, for he had cut off the head of his tutor, who had originated all the mischief.

The emperor's answer was as follows:

"Beloved daughter. Your humble supplications have moved me to compassion, and therefore, instead of putting you to death as I originally designed, I shall merely send you back to the convent, where you will be kept in solitary confinement for the remainder of your days. But as for that villain, your husband, it is my intention to load him with chains, and afterwards to strike his evil head from his shoulders. I would suggest that he come to my tent of his own accord, that I may put this intention into effect, for if he does not, there shall not be a single man, woman, or child alive in Bohemia, from one end to the other."

It is needless to remark that the king and queen did not find this letter consoling.

III.

HOW KING EGINHARD RETIRED FROM PUBLIC LIFE, AND HOW THE EMPEROR LOST HIS WAY.

UNDER the pressure of these melancholy circumstances, King Eginhard began to reflect that discretion is the better part of valour, and he also bethought himself of an old strong castle, in the middle of the Bohemian forest. So to this same castle he retired with his wife Adelaide and a few trusty friends, taking good care that no other of his subjects should be acquainted with his place of retreat. There he lived for many a month, knowing nothing of what was going on around him, and perfectly satisfied with his own state of obscurity, till one night he was dreadfully frightened at the sound of a bell in the vicinity. The bell, however, boded no harm, for the tinkle only came from a neighbouring hermitage, and the hermit, whose name was Paul, was soon taken into the service, and employed as a sort of scout.

Whilst King Eginhard was snugly ensconced in his retreat, the plundering, burning, and hanging were going on as vigorously as ever. When