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formed man. He was the only one in the whole school that knew a word of Greek. He had been educated, though an Italian, at Prague, and practised as a lawyer. He then became a Jesuit, and certainly was sincerely devoted to religion. Though entirely free from the monkish gloom of the Père Alnot, there was a large infusion of fanaticism in his character. He believed firmly in witchcraft, and was versed in all the mysteries of demonology. The bodily presence of the Devil was among the articles of his creed, and I recollect him to have told me stories of the appearance of Lucifer, with such a minute specification of circumstance, as made "my fell of hair to stir as life were in't." Another point in which he was a little weak was the fatal influence of "the Illuminés" in Germany. He improved upon Barruel, which was his manual, and regarded Waishoupt as an incarnate fiend. I have heard him describe the midnight orgies of the German philosophers, who, according to him, assembled in chambers covered with rich scarlet cloth, and brilliant with infernal light, where, by the power of sorcery, every luxury was collected, and where men devoted themselves to Satan in a registry kept by the Secretary of the society, where every man's name was enrolled in his own blood. But, with the exception of these strange credulities, he was a most estimable man-he had an heroical disinterestedness of character, and dedicated himself with all the ardour of spiritual chivalry to the cause of the Jesuits, which he regarded as identified with that of true religion.

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I was for a considerable time placed under his care, and am indebted to him for a zealous solicitude for my welfare. He took the greatest and most disinterested pains in giving me instruction, and would devote hours of unremunerated labour (for the salaries of the boys were all paid in to Monsieur le Prince) to the explanation of difficulties, and in clearing the way to knowledge. He was exceedingly mild in temper, but had frequent recourse to punishment of a very intense sort. had a whip made of several strong cords, with knots at regular intervals, with which he used to lash the hands of the scholars in such a way as to make the blood leap from them. It seemed to give great pain to inflict this chastisement, and I have seen him weep at what he called the necessity of being severe. He had a very extraordinary method of reconciling the devouter students to this torture. tenced you first to nine lashes, and then ordered you to hold out your hand; "Offer it up to God and his saints," he would say, as a sacrifice." He would then select you nine saints. The first blow was to be suffered in honour of St. Ignatius,-" Allons, mon enfant, au nom du plus grand de tous les Saints-St. Ignace!" and down went the whip from a vigorous and muscular arm. "Oh! mon Dieu!" cried the little martyr, withdrawing his hand after the first operation. “Allons, mon enfant, au nom de St. Francis Xavier !" and he then inflicted a second laceration upon the culprit. "Mais, mon Père, ayez pitiéjamais, jamais, je ne ferai des solecismes-oh, mon Père, jamais." The Jesuit was inexorable-" Allons, mon enfant, au nom de Saint Louis de Gonzaga ;" and thus he proceeded till he had gone through his calendar of infliction. But with these singularities (to us at least they appear so), he was an exceedingly generous-hearted and lofty-minded religionist. He would himself have looked death in the face without dismay in the cause of St. Ignatius; and indeed he gave a practical proof of his en

thusiasm, by setting out at a week's warning for the deserts of Siberia, where he proceeded by order of the General to propagate the Gospel, and if possible to make his way to China, in the hope that he might obtain the reward of martyrdom in the service of the Lord.

The person who next to Molinari attracted my attention, was "Le Père Caperon." He was a great Oriental scholar, and was regarded as a master of the Arabic language; and was, I believe, as profoundly versed in the Koran as in the Gospel. He was not employed in teaching the boys, (an occupation for which he would have been wholly unfit,) but in composing essays upon the mysterious literature of the East. It was one of our favourite amusements to disturb him in his studies. A group would collect under his window and assail him with all kinds of strange noises, when he would rush forth with a huge stick, which made us all take to our heels, and woe betide the urchin on whom he first seized. "Oh, petit malheureux!" he would exclaim, as he grasped some intruder upon his meditations, and avenged upon him the losses which Oriental learning had sustained by the trespass which we had committed on his meditations. Père Caperon believed himself to be occasionally tempted by the Devil in a more direct and palpable fashion than Satan is apt to use. This conviction made him frequently an object of entertainment with us. When he said mass, he used to throw himself into such strange attitudes, and indulge in such extraclerical ejaculations, that the Frenchmen used to rejoice whenever he administered to their devotions. The poor man conceived that he was struggling with the demon in a corporeal wrestle, and cast himself into postures corresponding with his grotesque delusion. Sometimes he used to bid the fiend begone to "the Red Sea," and at other times used to stamp as if he had got the head of Lucifer under his feet.

There were few persons in this school who were very much calculated to create the respect of the students whose instruction was confided to them. There was, indeed, one very eloquent preacher," Le Père Colman," who was a German by birth, but was French in language and manner. He had a most noble bearing, a visage fit for canvass, a deep, sonorous voice, and a great command of pure oratorical diction. He was, however, too valuable to be allowed long to remain in so inferior a spot as Kensington House, and was ordered by the General of the Jesuits to proceed to Russia. So was Molinari, who acted towards me a part of great kindness and friendship previous to his leaving the establishment. The Prince de Broglio, he informed me, had got himself into great embarrassments, and had made an effort to induce the Jesuits of Stonyhurst to assist him. With this view he had sent a deputation to that college, and offered to annex Kensington House to the Anglican Province. To this proceeding, to which he was originally adverse, on account of his national disrelish to every thing English, he was reduced by his emergencies. The English Jesuits were, however, too shrewd to acquiesce in this proposal, and it was manifest that the institution must be broken up. Molinari farther informed me, that he had been himself ordered into the deserts of Siberia, with instructions to penetrate, if possible, into China, as a missionary of the Gospel. He recommended me to write home, and to apprise my friends of what was about to take place. Stonyhurst he pointed out as the best seminary which I could select, and said, that if he was at liberty to exercise

any selection, he should himself have chosen it as his residence; but that he had no will; that his volition had been laid down as an offering to his God when he had entered the order; and that he must at once proceed to the place of his destination. I thanked him; he shook my hand, and proceeded to that country from whose bosom it is not likely that he ever will return.

This man was the only example which I witnessed among the Pères de la Foi of that lofty devotedness to the interests of their society, and of that romantic dedication of their hearts and lives to the advancement

of Catholicism, for which the Jesuits are remarkable. The larger portion of the individuals who were assembled by the Prince de Broglio at Kensington House were Jesuits only in appearance. They were a few raw recruits, got together under the banners of the order. Molinari seemed the only genuine soldier of Ignatius. The promptitude and alacrity with which he at once precipitated himself into the wildernesses of Tartary, at the mandate of a priest living in a distant region, recalls to me what the Abbé Raynal, who had himself been a Jesuit, has said upon this subject. After describing the wonderful achievements of this extraordinary body of men, and the moral subjugation of the Indian tribes which was effected by them, he says:—

"It is impossible that any reader who reflects, should not be desirous of knowing what strange infatuation can induce an individual who enjoys all the conveniences of life in his own country, to undertake the laborious and unfortunate function of a missionary: to quit his fellow-citizens, his friends, and his relations; to cross the sea in order to bury himself in the midst of forests, to expose himself to all the horrors of the most extreme misery, to run the risk at every step either of being devoured by wild beasts or massacred by savages, to settle in the midst of them, to conform himself to their manners, to share their indigence and their fatigues, to be exposed to their passions or caprices, for at least as long a time as is required to learn their language and to make himself understood by them. If this conduct be ascribed to the enthusiasm of religion, what more powerful motive can be imagined? If to respect to vows of obedience taken to superiors, who have a right to order them to go anywhere, and who cannot be asked the reason for those orders, without committing the crime of perjury and apostacy, what good or what evil is it not in the power of hypocritical or ambitious masters to do, who command so absolutely, and who are so entirely obeyed? If it be the effect of a deep sense of compassion for a part of the human species, whom it is intended to rescue from ignorance and misery, what virtue can be more heroic! With respect to the constancy with which these extraordinary men persevere in so disgustful an undertaking, I should have imagined that by living so long among the savages, they would have become savages themselves: but I should have been deceived in this conjecture. It is, on the contrary, one of the most laudable of human vanities that supports them in their career.

"My friend,' said once to me an old missionary, who had lived thirty years in the midst of forests, and who, since he had returned into his own country, had fallen into a profound melancholy, and was for ever regretting his beloved savages-My friend,' said he, you know not what it is to be the king, almost even the God of a number of men, who owe to you the small portion of happiness they enjoy, and who are ever assiduous in assuring you of their gratitude. After they have been ranging through immense forests, they return overcome with fatigue and inanition; if they have only killed one piece of game, for whom do you suppose it to be intended? It is for the Father, for it is thus they call us; and, indeed, they are really our children. Their dissensions are suspended at our appearance. A sovereign does not rest in greater safety in the midst of his guards, than we do, sur

rounded by our savages. It is among them that I will go and end my days.""

I followed the advice of my friend Molinari, and caused myself to be removed from the school, which a little while afterwards was completely broken up. The system of instruction there was miserably defective. Molinari was, as I have stated, the only person who understood Greek ; and Caperon, though an Oriental scholar, was not acquainted with the language. Some attention was paid to composition; a Père Henri, (a gaunt-looking man, who used to sit for hours twisting two crumbs of bread between his forefinger and thumb, and revolving a sonnet to some favourite saint,) took the trouble to teach me how to write French rhymes. There was also some relish manifested for the beauties of the Latin writers, and pains were taken to make the scholars feel the strength of the expression. But arithmetic, geography, history, were all neglected. A worse course of education cannot be well imagined, though these Pères de la Foi conceived themselves to be greatly superior to the professors in either of the English Universities.

I left Kensington House for the great seat of British Jesuitism in the North of England. On arriving at Manchester in the mail, I proceeded in a post-chaise to Blackburne, and drove from thence to the school which has since awakened the eloquence of Leslie Foster, and the orthodox terrors of Sir Thomas Lethbridge. Through a long avenue, in the old fashion of English pomp, and which was bordered by ponds of broad deep water on either side, the horses carried me rapidly towards two huge towers, which rose to a great elevation out of a magnificent building of Elizabethan architecture. Before I had time to survey this fine and venerable structure with minuteness, and to observe its windows of massive stone-work, and to rest upon the groves of old yew trees that rose about the decaying walls of its gardens, the horses' feet clattered under the archway, and I was rolled into an old quadrangular court, that seemed to belong to the castle of a feudal baron, and not to the society of useful and meritorious votaries of Loyola, whom I shall describe in a continuation of this article in the next number of "The New Monthly Magazine."

THE LAUREL BRANCH.
TAKE this branch of the laurel tree,
Well may its leaves thy portion be;
Does not their emerald brightness tell
Of the dazzling scenes thou lov'st so well?
Dost thou not think of the taper's blaze,
And the vaulted dome, and the voice of praise?
Dearest, the gift thou may'st proudly claim,
'Tis the meed of talent, the crown of fame.

Deem me not vain, if I also see

In this fadeless laurel a type of me;
Like it, my love has through storm and ill
Smiled on in its lonely verdure still.
Short is the reign of the summer flowers,

Frail are the friendships of prosperous hours;
But wintry tempests, and worldly grief,
Can change not love, or the laurel leaf.

M. A.

SPORTING SCENES IN INDIA, NO. IV.

A Lazy Day and Shot-shooting.

"Here was no lack of innocent diversion

For the imagination or the senses."-BYRON.

WE had been out above a fortnight, when, as we broke up for the night, a gentleman informed us, in a most drowsy tone, that, as his charger was stiff and Devil-skin sore-footed, he did not think it would do for him to go out next morning; and though he burst into a selfaccusing laugh, as our lamps were held to his face to ascertain whether fag, bile, or simple, unsophisticated laziness, had made him thus considerate, we gladly seized the opportunity of indulging the sufferers and ourselves, and proclaimed with acclamation the succeeding day to be one of rest, or, in jungle-phrase, of revel. An antelope and sheep were divided among the varlets, sugar-cane was bought for the horses; all the native talent of the neighbourhood, tumblers, jugglers, and dancinggirls, were summoned to attend us; and what with Hodgson and Manillas on our side, and arrack and calleans* on our people's, before night we were, as Sterne says, "debtors and sinners before Heaven, a jolly set of us!" These were our days of dandyism; heads were shaven, faces washed, and foreheads painted amongst the men-servants; flowers were enwreathed with the oiled and glossy tresses of the ladies, whose cleanest rags enfolded limbs which merited more intelligible praises than they received from one who styled them "perfect simitars;" while the young hopes of Islam, or Pariahism, rolled about in unblushing nakedness, or proudly waddled in our discarded waistcoats, till their little pride would have its fall, as they realised the apparent difficulty of walking into their own pockets. Our taste was exhibited in the cut

of the mustachio and beard, and in the colour of the silk drawers, and the riband of the straw hat which we wore to protect us from the heat.↑ It was noon before our slug and breakfast were over, and we stretched at length on the mats of one of our tents, laughing at dear old Froissart's delicious jumble. I know nothing I have met in literature that puzzles me like his credulity, and the power he seems to have (for I cannot bear to think the old man a rogue) of holding an opinion he wishes in spite of legions of facts, and even his expressed deductions from them. Whether pity for the victims of our Black Prince's atrocity extorts his "God have mercy upon their souls, for they were veritable martyrs!" or one of the murders committed by Count Phoebus de Foix, who " was perfect in person and mind," makes him cry out, Holy Mary! was not this an act of great cruelty?" these facts no more affect his admiration of their perpetrators, than the dicta of the profession he belongs to, do his belief in the handsome and accomplished Knight Sir Acteon, who was turned into a stag to do penance for angering a

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A smoking apparatus. The most common ones are formed of a cocoa-nutshell, with two holes, in one of which is fixed a wooden trumpet-like tube, the end of which holds the tobacco, &c. The smoke is drawn through the water in the sbell by the other hole, to which the smoker brings his mouth.

I beg to state here that I mean what I say, in spite of the authority of the Commentator Jallalo'ddin, who, remarking on the words of the Koran, "He hath given you garments to defend you from the heat," declares that, in this case, heat means cold.

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