request them to leave her soil, accompanying her dismissal of them with an emphatic declaration of how ill they had deserved the hospitality she had extended to them. In a manifesto which the King addressed to his Roman Catholic Bishops in 1759, he declared the three leading features of the Jesuit policy to be "falsehood, murder, and perjury;" adding, emphatically, that their maxims would dissolve the strongest bonds that could be found for preserving the commerce and union of mankind. Even Spain, with all its devotion to the Papal See, found itself at last unable to continue her protection and entertainment of them. One night in 1767, all their establishments in the kingdom were surrounded with troops, and the whole fraternity, amounting to 7000, being secured, were shipped off, and set ashore on the coast of Italy, where, it was presumed, they would feel themselves more at home. So, too, in Naples. The Neapolitan can tolerate most things, but the Neapolitan could not put up with the manners of the Jesuits, and had to request them to begone. In great countries like Austria, and in the Islands of the Sea, as in Malta, in short, wherever they made their abode, a little while sufficed to show that the land was not able to bear them, and that the Jesuit and truth, the Jesuit and peace, the Jesuit and settled order could not exist together. Their steps burned the soil wherever they trod, the air grew dark wherever they came, all joy died in their presence.

While these multiplied humiliations and indignities were befalling them; while nation after nation was rising up and driving them out as the "Cain" of the human family, a blow was dealt them by a hand which they deemed it impossible should ever be raised against them. The stroke caused them the most poignant pain of all. Et te Brute! exclaimed the Sons of Loyola as, amazed and stupified, they beheld the Pontiff in the group of conspirators that now enclosed them, and felt the keen edge of his poignard in their flesh. Pope Clement XIII., at

the solicitation of the Roman Catholic sovereigns of Europe, summoned a conclave to enact the "eternal extinction" of the "Order." The Pope died suddenly on the evening of the day preceding that on which the conclave was to meet. The blow that impended over them was thus warded off. The death of the Pope gave life to the Jesuits, but the respite was only for a little while. His successor, Clement XIV., the virtuous Ganganelli, found himself necessitated to carry out the purposed suppression of his predecessor. In the preparatory brief which he issued, he said that the measure contemplated by Clement XIII. was required "to prevent Christians rising one against another, and massacring one another in the very bosom of their common Mother, the Church." On the 21st July, 1773, Clement XIV. issued his Bull, in which he declared the Order of the Jesuits "for ever annulled and suppressed."

Following in the wake of the Pope whose edict had given effect to their own expressed wishes, the princes of the Popish world declared the Society of Jesus abolished in their dominions, and these troublers of the world appeared to have passed finally and for ever out of existence. The very Mother out of whose bowels they had sprung, was compelled to confess that she had given birth to a progeny that would devour her, unless she should find some means of ridding herself of them. Clement did the bold deed, knowing that he risked his life in doing it. On laying down his pen after affixing his name to the Bull of Suppression, he gave vent to the presentiment that oppressed him. “I have signed my death-warrant," he ejaculated. A short while thereafter, he read on the doors of St. Peter's Church the words -"The Holy See will be vacant in September." Clement was then hale and vigorous, but it soon became apparent that the prophecy written on the portals of St. Peter's was not to fail of its accomplishment. The gentle, but deadly, touch of a hand he could not see, was laid on Clement. From that hour he began

to droop and waste away. No medicine could stay the ebbing tide of his life. It was being dried up at the fountain. His features became livid, his eyes glassy, his limbs shrunken, his belly swollen; the very bones began to rot and moulder beneath the loose covering of dried and violet-spotted skin that enveloped them. A ghastly spectacle! truly, as he. tottered through the halls of the Vatican, on days of ceremony, or climbed up the steps of his throne, like one from the grave come to sit in the chair of Peter. In September, 1774, as the mysterious writing had bodefully announced, Clement XIV. died. They took his poor remains, and swathing them in spices, the perfume of which however, failed to drown the rank stench of the mephitic poison with which the corpse was saturated, they put him in his coffin-no tear ever bedews the bier of Pope,—and carried him to the vaults, in the dimness and silence of which his predecessors repose, of whom, few had reigned so well or died so miserably. If such things were "done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" If even Popes are not spared when they offend against the "Order of Jesus," what monarch, or statesman, or offender of any degree may hope for impunity if within the reach of the long arm of the Jesuits? Italy is not the only land which is blessed with fountains and springs, the waters of which possess the rare properties of the far-famed Aqua Tofana.

CHAPTER XVI.

Resuscitation of the "Order," and Renewal of their Plots.

We have seen the Jesuits suppressed. For how long? “For ever," said the Bull of Pope Clement XIV. Not for a year; not for a century; but for "eternity!" And the monarchs of

the Popish world, thinking that they had seen the last of these troublers of Europe, re-echoed the "eternal" of the pontiffical bull in the sentence of banishment which they severally passed against the "Sons of Loyola." "But though cast out like dogs," as one has said, "the Jesuits grow young again like eagles !"

'Surgimus plures toties cadendo."-BALDE.

The "eternal" of the Papal Bull lasted only till 1814. Even during the forty years that the Bull was in force, there is good ground to conclude that the Jesuits had passed out of sight only, not out of existence. During the second half of these forty years, the awful tempest of the French Revolution had been shaking Europe. On every side was heard the crash of thrones and altars. It was these terrors rather than the Bull of Clement which kept the Jesuits in their hiding-places. They sought shelter in the caves and dens of the earth, from the wrath of Him who sitteth on a mightier throne than that of the Pontiff. But when the storm had passed, and Rome again opened her gates to receive her Pope, the fallen altars of Papal Christendom were set up as aforetime, and the Jesuits as necessary adjuncts were invited to come abroad and show themselves in the light of day. Pius VII., by a Bull dated, 7th August, 1814, formally restored the "Order."

They were not only revived, they were revived in greater power than ever. The Pope judged that the Jesuits were the agents the times and the work to be done specially needed. Pius VII. leaned upon them, and the jealousy which had hitherto existed between the "Order" and the Papal chair was henceforward at an end. In an incredibly short time they overspread Europe. Their colleges and schools arose in the various countries, and their swarms were further multiplied by the formation of Sodalities, such as "St. Vincent de Paul," "Brothers of the Christian Doctrine," "The Mailita of Jesus

Christ," and numerous other fraternities and sisterhoods, which affiliated with the Jesuits, and working under their direction, vastly strengthen their influence. The power of the Roman Church is now in their hands, and by a thousand instrumentalities they touch the springs of human affairs, and bring about startling events, without the world's knowing whence have proceeded the phenomena that surprise, perplex, and distract it.

Since their restoration in 1814, their action has been on a larger scale than before. They still move in the old grooves, so far. A select portion of the "Order" lay themselves out to seduce youth, pollute the public literature, divide families, and corrupt Churches. They work small at the same time that they work large. They eat into society as the moth does into a garment. They come forth as the locusts, not at first in a cloud or swarm, but as a straggling vanguard, and alight in little bands, and soon the moral verdure of a country begins to be spotted. They do not disdain the triumph of a single convert, especially if he be a man of wealth, or title, or professional eminence. But they aim at loftier things. Their greater labours these fifty years past have been undertaken in the wider sphere of politics.

They justly recognise the present era as a great formative one. The world is in a state of transition, the nations are taking on a new mould, and society is putting forth new and mightier powers. This state of things, in one view, is full of danger to them, in another it is full of promise, according as they shall play their part, and succeed by skilful and cunning management in recasting the world in a mould and fashion that shall be answerable to their purpose, which is, to be its masters. And consequently there is not a political current flowing at this hour in Europe, from one side of it to the other, which they do not intently watch, and labour with their utmost strength to regulate and control.