world in flames and smoke. The German Cæsar of that empire, in which the sun never set, far from feeling disposed to swim against the mighty stream flowing conventwards, was actually washed off his throne by the all-pervading monastico-magnetic current of the time, which landed him, an imperial wreck, in the hieromitic cloister of the most backward and depopulated of Iberian provinces. The surgy, rising tide of monkhood submerged all the land, the national assemblies, the court and royal palace, the highest watchtowers in the seigneurial castles, crowning the peaks and hills of mountainous Aragon, the loftiest cathedral's belfries projecting their shadow far away on the flat Castilian ground, the most towering heavenwards Andalusian Giraldas. Woe to those who did not manage, propped up by the confessional, to keep afloat on the surface of that infuriated raging sea of monachism, excessive and exceeding, pestilent and pestilential, overflowing on all sides. The remotest chance of salvation was taken from them; they were past redemption in this world and in the next, as far as depended on the monks. Ahead, on the crest of the topmost wave, in the foaming inundation, the Messiah of modern Pontificalism advanced to the front of the Hispano-priestly stage amidst that chaotic pèle-mêle of suppressed privileges and freedoms, agonizing independent classes and kingdoms, indigenous institutions and dynasties worn out to insanity. Loyola was to be the spiritual lawgiver of those waifs and strays of Ishmael and Israel, who had deserted the God, and law, and land of their fathers, and lost their path across the trackless wilderness, which was growing apace in every direction, around the sumptuous mansions of Spanish monks. It was Loyola's task to illuminate the present and trace out the outlines of the next future, to classify or become the standard-bearer of that motley crowd of renegadoes and foreign kings, nobles, and villains, from all parts, huddled together like monastic chattels, waiting for the butcher, at the threshold of the Iberian inquisitor. Loyola was, and deserved to be he had been expressly born and cut out to be-the successful prophet within his own age and country. To his countrymen and countrywomen, uncovering, bowing, and kneeling to the friar, devoutly bent on kissing his unwashed hands and feet, Loyola cried, "Obey, obey, and obey." Like the blind mueddin from the top of eastern mosques, breaking incessantly the silence of night with his cry, "There is no God but Allah; prayer is better than sleep," Loyola spent all his unconquerable energies in teaching, night and day, around him, by his voice and example: "The Pope is all but God on earth. That is for you the Law and the Prophets. Practice obedience, dress yourself in obedience, train yourself to obedience, put all your hearts and human faculties in the acquisition of obedience, the greatest and supreme Christian perfection, the most desirable and sublime of Roman Catholic virtues." Saint Ignatius gave these instructions: "Other religious associations may exceed us in fastings, in vigils, and the like rigorous observances; it behoves our brethren to be preeminent in true and absolute obedience, in abnegation of all individual will and judgment." In the Constitutions it stands written, "Let all be convinced that those who live under obedience are bound to let themselves be set in motion and directed by Divine Providence through the medium of their Superiors, exactly as if they were dead bodies." Every full member of the society was sworn by a special vow to the service of the Pope. . Loyola proved to be a man wise in his generation. In spite of his reactionary bias, he did not fail to perceive that the age he lived in was not that of St. Benedict, St. Francis, and the other founders of renowned religious orders, bearing the adjectivized Christian name of those who called them into existence. A newly-arrived chief of a sect in monachism, such as Loyola pretended to be, if he was of the old type and school, had then very few chances of success left to him, the encouraging dispositions of dispositions of Catholic Majesties and Popes notwithstanding. The pioneer of western monkhood at its more than eleventh hour was in honour bound to be a man of original creative genius. No success would crown his most strenuous exertions, if he contented himself with paltry imitations of his more exalted predecessors in the holy mission of calling into life new varieties and sub-divisions of monachism, cenobitism, asceticism, hermitism, anchoritism, &c. Loyola's cherished enterprise, so carefully planned, so seduously and distinctly mapped out, and so obstinately adhered to during his mortal career, was in need of new and startling props and puffs to be rendered from its cradle as acceptable and general as he wished it to be, come what might. Ignacio de Loyola, although morally infinitely superior to them, had this in common with his most successful countrymen of the inquisitorial period, such as Borgia, Torquemada, Cisneros, Cortez, and Pizarro, that he felt ready to astonish the world with the most unexpected and unprecedented strokes of human audacity, if he only thought them in any way conducive to the furtherance of his pious and ambitious designs. So that he determined to start his pet Pontifical bubble, Ad majorem Dei Gloriam, not under his own name and firm, or under the patronage of any of the many saints of the Romish communion, but under the direct and, so to speak, most personal patronage of the founder of Christianity, heading his prospectuses with something like, "By special appointment to the Divine Family, Jesus, and the Holy Virgin." And agreeably to Rivadeneira, of all his biographers the most intimately acquainted with this epoch of the life of the patriarch of the order, on this point, putting aside all his past fits and maxims of humility, he announced himself determined not to follow any other opinion but his own. And Loyola was right, monastic quackery had just then reached a height unexampled in the annals of western mankind. The French clergy and universi ties could protest or object, and the foremost Spanish divines rail or sneer at such pretensions, the Pope nevertheless declared to perceive the Digitus Dei in Loyola's scheme. The very special character which, from the outset, he meant to impart to his institution was already symbolized in the title he devised for it. In his design the society should be more than merely one amongst various organs of the Church. The The amount of distorted conceptions and mental aberrations of the Spaniard of the inquisitorial monarchy are positively unparal leled in the Christian world. logical perverseness shown in everything they did and said, by those races under the training of monks, is as unexampled as it is incomprehensible at the present day. Thus, for instance, they had come to designate by the name of autos-de-fé, par excellence-as if they actually were entitled to be considered the most accomplished specimen, the most conspicuous manifestation, of sainted evangelical piety-those damnable human holo causts in direct and flagrant incompatibility with the doctrine and life of Jesus Christ. They applied in all earnest, and with entire good faith, the superlative of Most Holy Tribunal to the most abominable institution ever established among the children of men. In strict conformity with this (sort of linguistic) spirit, St. Ignatius selected the name of Company of Jesus, as the most adequate to christen this body-guard for the absolute authority of the Pope, composed of his most enthusiastic and zealous adherents, and whose most noticeable functions have been either to intrigue in favour of the extension of papal supremacy, or to scour the Catholic kingdoms in diligent search of janissaries, willing to mount guard at the gates of the tottering Roman Caliphat. No doubt to such recruiting sergeants of the papacy the designation of Company of Jesus," par excellence, was neither more nor less well fitted than the name of autos-de-fé applied to the execrable human butcheries, and the superlative_of superlatives applied to the Inquisition throughout the dominions of their most Catholic Majesties. 66 Loyola sheltered himself and his disciples under the divine name of Jesus, and under the temporal and spiritual authority of the Popes. The general of the Jesuits will sit, or stand, behind the person of the Pontiff, attempting to rule the mind and conscience of the chief of the Church as noiselessly and unnoticed as possible. His disciples, from the beginning, took deliberately their strong and commanding position, midway between priests and monks, at the doors of the Vatican, between the Pope and his Church-inside the royal households, between kings and queens and their favourite courtiers of both sexes. Perhaps the most strongly marked feature in the teaching of Jesus was his intense aversion to Pharisees and Pharisaism. The disciples of Loyola, introducing themselves to the Christian world, not so much as the lawful spiritual children of the founder of their order, but as the privileged mortal children of the founder of Christianity, have managed to call into existence a derivative of Jesus synonymous everywhere, and most particularly throughout Roman Catholic kingdoms and republics, with that epithet of Pharisee, in the sense attached to it by Christ. Pharisee and Jesuit convey to the modern mind exactly the same idea of religious, or rather ecclesiastical, hypocrisy. Among the many taunts, humiliations, and injuries, in word and deed, unsparingly directed, in his last hours, against the Son of God, expiring on Golgotha, none thought of announcing to him such bitter news. VICTORIANO CARRIAS. OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY. SECOND SERIES.-No. 21. JAMES WILLS, D.D. THE clearing up of a literary puzzle with respect to the authorship of the poem entitled "The Universe," reputed to be by the late Rev. Charles Maturin, recently discussed at some length in Notes and Queries, and the yet more recent publication of the "Lives of Illustrious Irishmen," re-cast and completed under the title of "The Irish Nation" (Fullarton, Edinburgh), have recalled attention to a distinguished literary man, who, a few years ago, passed away from amongst us. Dr. Wills was the great biographer of Ireland, and it would be rank ingratitude if he should find no biographer himself. He contributed many memoirs to THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, to which he was at one time a chief contributor. Indeed, for twelve months he was entrusted with the editorship during the absence of the editor from Dublin. It was in a curious way that Dr. Wills's close connection began with the Magazine. He had already been an occasional contributor, when his friend, Dr. Petrie, requested him to become the champion of his famous theory as to the Round Towers of Ireland against` a Mr. O'Brien, who had written a book to refute it, and set up a theory of his own. Dr. Wills's review of O'Brien's book so completely upset it that the author, it was said in consequence, committed suicide. The reviewer was horrified at this result, but he had used no unfair or poisoned weapon. The consequence was that he was taken on the staff of the Magazine, and everything he in sent was accepted. But in giving Dr. Wills a niche in our "Gallery" we are not merely discharging a personal debt-for his intrinsic claims are high, and worthy of recognition and honour. He was the last of a brilliant group, including Wolfe, McCullagh, Anster, Petrie, Cæsar Otway, and the O'Sullivans; and in the many branches of literature which he himself took up he showed great and varied capabilities. His most important work was the "Biographical History of Ireland," and it is probably by this, in time to come, he will be best remembered. The idea of this work was to build up a history of biography, each life being a stone in the pile, and the entire edifice being far more complete in its scope than the mere chronicle of public events. In this biographical history all the elements which constitute human progress, and to which wars, treaties, revolts, and legislative acts are but straws in the current, were to be represented, and to unite their various streams; it was to be history by induction—the natural and the philosophical method. If we |