terest about them, since the mere recital of these proceedings would make up a story that should far surpass in extravagance, and in the wildness and oddity of its details, all the works of fiction that were ever penned. For instance, no imagination could conceive a story of more thrilling, or perhaps painful, interest than would the history of Jesuit Robert de Nobili in the Madeira mission. No writer of fiction ever imagined a character like that of the Jesuit Saniassi; nor was anything ever written that could exceed in interest the details of the life of another Jesuit, the Padre Beschi, and especially under his assumed Pagan name of Viramamouni. This man's whole life was a lie, and the every thought and action of his life was to screen himself from the detection which hourly threatened him. from the people among whom he lived. He assumed the dress and character of a Brahmin of the purest caste, and as such had four provinces assigned to him for a maintenance, with a yearly revenue of 1,200 rupees, and the office of prime minister to the nabob. He had with him on all occasions an escort of thirty horsemen with twelve standard-bearers, and four attendants with silver staves; while camels with cymbals, and drums, and trumpets, with mass ornaments, and baggage, and tents, accompanied him in all his movements.

Equally curious and equally indicative of the one mind of the Jesuits to be all things, right or wrong, with all men, were the doings of Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall in China. How indomitable was their perseverance-how great and unceasing their labours-how wonderful their attainments-how varied their fortunes-and how fruitless in the end their efforts! No lovers of the marvellous will ever find in tales of fiction such strange incidents recorded, as are recorded in these volumes, of the Jesuit missionaries in heathen lands, most of whom were men of very great intellectual and scientific attainments, of great strength of character, of determined purpose to make good their object; who thought all things possible to their labours; who worked in the conviction that success must inevitably go with their works; and that they must infallibly triumph in the end over all the difficulties and obstructions that were opposed to them.

To the reflecting Christian, indeed, these volumes will present innumerable subjects for his meditations, and many also for his consolation. He will here see the result of the craftiest and subtlest of all human devices and systems that were ever framed to promote the interest of a class at the expense of all honesty and truth-never was the rule of right so glaringly departed from-never was rectitude of principle so utterly disregarded as

it was by the Society of Jesus, whenever either interfered with their views. Equivocation, deception, suppression of facts, perversion of the truth, falsehood open or concealed, were unsparingly used whenever it seemed expedient to them to use them; and never was a system of expediency so fully carried out as by the Jesuits-never was craft and guile by any people so unscrupulously employed-until at length the society became execrated by all the Roman Catholic States of Europe-intolerable even to the Pope himself, who pronounced its doom in these words:"Inspired by the Divine Spirit, as we trust, urged by the duty of restoring concord to the Church, convinced that the Company of Jesus can no longer effect those purposes for which it was founded, we abolish and annul the Company of Jesus, its offices, houses, and institutions." Thus spoke the Pope Clement XIV.; but another Pope, Pius VII., bas annulled his predecessor's decree, and restored the Company of Jesus, which again appears as an order in the Roman Church. They have, however, already again earned to themselves the ill-will of every people among whom they were found; and have within the last two years been expelled in consequence from Switzerland, Bavaria, Sardinia, Austria, Naples, and even from Rome; and are now, with their general, Roothaan, congregated together here, in the full hope and most eager desire of making England their prey. Their history tells us that they will leave no means untried to gain their ends; that as De Nobili assumed the Brahmin and Acosta the Pariah, in order to ingraft Christianity on Paganism, so may they assume to be priests in the English Church and professors in our Protestant universities-to engraft Romanism on Protestantism-and secretly to corrupt and destroy the faith which they profess openly to teach and uphold. When our historians-the men most anxious to make them appear in the best light possible-incontestably prove that they are capable of any fraud-would stop at no deceit to accomplish their purpose that one after the other, during a whole hundred years together, they would persist in using the same deceitful means to secure their objects, no length of time wearied them, no deceitfulness of unrighteousness deterred them.

Mr. Steinmitz, indeed, is of opinion that their day is past for ever. Awhile, he thinks, they may interfere in the concerns of the world; but never more will they either rule or convert kingdoms. They have, however, a most earnest longing to rule more or less despotically over us; and we know that every effort will be made by two or three of the most zealous patronizers of popery and expediency among our present Ministers to

give to the Jesuits the utmost latitude of power, to do all the evil possible indirectly in this kingdom, and directly throughout all its colonies. The determination is, we repeat, to legalize the order of the Society of Jesus in England openly, if the strength of the Russell and Peel party will suffice to carry it: otherwise, what cannot in this way be gained, will secretly be carried by obscure and crafty clauses in Acts of Parliament, where such things would not be looked for; and power then be given them to hold, under the express sanction of a law, all the lands in England which they may be able to clutch by force or by fraud.

With regard to the volumes before us we cannot, indeed, say too much in commendation of them-so fall and so faithful is the information they give of the general doings and designs of the craftiest enemies that Protestant England has, of the deadliest foes to the peace, purity, and safety of our Church. Nor are the writer's own reflections upon the extraordinary facts, as they pass under his observation, the least interesting portion of the work the whole is ably written in very forcible language that allows of no yawning or slumbering over the pages. We might have wished the chapters had been more in number; since comprising, as each of them does, so large an amount of information, and that on objects of such peculiar interest, each chapter contains more than by one reading most memories could retain; and a great help to the work, as a book of reference, would undoubtedly have been a full index of persons and places as well as of subjects. But all who desire to know what Jesuitism has ever been and what it now is what its power in past times and what its influence and means at present

should consult these volumes: they are of the highest interest, and abound with anecdotes and histories and characters of men very eminent in their day, who exercised an almost unlimited influence in several of the kingdoms of this world, and who will live to fame so long as history carries down the stream of time the names of those who made themselves memorable in their day for their virtues or their crimes, as a blessing or a curse to their several generations.

It is very evident the publisher has spared no expence to make these volumes worthy of their subject, and worthy also of a place in any library in the land. The letter-press, the por traits, and engravings, are all that the most fastidious could desire; and we welcome the work as one of the most elegant, and amusing, and instructive, that the press of late years has brought under our observation.

Ireland before and after the Union with Great Britain. By R. M. MARTIN, Esq., Author of the "History of the British Colonies," &c. Third Edition with Additions. London: L. B. Nichols and Son. 1848.

THIS work has been frequently and favourably noticed. That it is generally appreciated is manifested from the fact that it has reached a third edition. This edition appeared at a time when, according to one of the magniloquent addresses issued from the Dublin Corn Exchange, England stood charged with tyranny, injustice, and cruelty, towards Ireland, and when the Irish were about to commit themselves to a formidable resistance; and, in this address, it is asserted that "England has inflicted more grievous calamities upon Ireland than any country on the face of the earth besides has done upon any other. In the history of mankind there is nothing to be compared with the atrocity of the crimes which England has perpetrated on the Irish people." Again: "The voice of the civilised world lays to the charge of the English Government the guilt of having produced this exasperation of national feeling this misery, this wretchedness, this exhaustion, this destitution." So says this veracious document. The object of those who penned this and similar productions has been made manifest by subsequent events: it was to drive the poorer classes of their countrymen into open rebellion and to profit by the outbreak. The promised rebellion has at length come off, and has turned out a mere station-house affair: it has been seized by the collar by a few policemen, and ignominiously marched off to the lock-up amidst the derisive shouts of those who were solemnly called upon to witness the issue. The civilised world will know better henceforth how to estimate Irish wrongs and Irish patriotism. The conclusion of this long threatened assault upon the Saxon, to which every sympathising ruffian in revolutionised Europe looked forward with such glee, is worthy of the men who commenced it-it is contemptible. Every body can now measure, from an experience common to all, the exact value of the sayings and doings of Irish agitators. From the solemn promise of Mr. John O'Connell, to "die on the floor of the House of Commons," down to the warlike position taken up by Smith O'Brien amongst the cabbages of widow M'Cormack's garden, it has been one big bounce-a lie, and that of no small dimensions-in constant action and expressed in every variety of form in which it was possible to manifest its unblushing nature. The best excuse that is now made for the great promoter of the outbreak, the "not yet" " King of Munster," is, that he is mad; but, if he be mad, his madness

VOL. XXIV.—I I

has that "method in it" which brings it legitimately within the cognizance of the law; and we, therefore, trust that, whatever may be the ultimate decision of those with whom his judgment will rest, it will not be forgotten that life has been lost-that the animosity of an unforgiving race has been urged into frenzy -and that a large country has been thrown back at least twenty years in civilization and resource to gratify the insane vanity of some and the selfish wickedness of others. If the so-called patriotism of the Irish leaders had been backed by one particle of common sense, common honesty, or common courage, universally shared amongst them, the result might have been very different. As it is, the Irish have ungratefully smitten the hand that fed four millions of them day by day; and the same voice that must shortly plead for food has been loud in contemptuous execration of those by the sweat of whose brow bread to feed them must be procured. Last year the Irish cost us upwards of ten millions: it is more than probable that, in the coming winter, they will have again to appeal to English benevolence. They have spent the year in the mischievous and idle occupation of terrorism; and the natural consequence, added to the judicial visitation of Providence, will most likely be starvation and destitution. By way of thanksgiving for the past, and as a claim upon us for the future, we have witnessed Mr. Mitchell's ingenious and demoniacal theories of missile warfare, in the shape of broken bottles and vitriol-throwing, universally approved. Nothing but courage and opportunity have been wanting to give these theories a practical application. If the Irish will not work they are not ashamed to beg, and the cry for future help will be as abject as the indifference to past relief has been insolent. There was not a house in England that did not bear its share of the common burthen, either in the necessity for increased exertion on the part of those who worked, or in the amount of privation required to meet the exigency on the part of those possessing a bare competency. Yet in every house the burden was cheerfully borne. The Saxon was abused and vilified as a tyrant and persecutor, possessing a hand of iron and a heart of stone, and this at the very moment he was only busied in devising the means of relieving the Celt. The Saxon saw nothing but the misery of his brother; and, taking no heed to the abuse that was heaped on him, worked on the harder that he might, in addition to the wants of his own household, provide for the necessities of others. He did not complain-he did not ask the question how far this destitution was the result of a dishonest improvidence. But in towns and in villages-from