162 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



Go to Brazil, and see with thine own eyes the effect of 

 Pombal's short-sighted policy. There vice reigns trium- 

 phant, and learning is at its lowest ebb. Neither is this to 

 be wondered at. Destroy the compass, and will the vessel 

 find her far-distant port ? Will the flock keep together, 

 and escape the wolves, after the shepherds are all slain ? 

 The Brazilians were told that public education would go 

 on just as usual. They might have asked government, 

 who so able to instruct our youth as those whose know- 

 ledge is proverbial ? who so fit, as those who enjoy our 

 entire confidence ? who so worthy, as those whose lives are 

 irreproachable. 



They soon found that those who succeeded the fathers 

 of the Society of Jesus had neither their manners nor their 

 abilities. They had not made the instruction of youth 

 their particular study. Moreover, they entered on the 

 field after a defeat, where the officers had all been slain ; 

 where the plan of the campaign was lost ; where all was 

 in sorrow and dismay. No exertions of theirs could rally 

 the dispersed, or skill prevent the fatal consequences. At 

 the present day, the seminary of Olinda, in comparison 

 with the former Jesuits' college, is only as the waning 

 moon's beam to the sun's meridian splendour. 



When you visit the places where those learned fathers 

 once flourished, and see with your own eyes the evils their 

 dissolution has caused ; when you hear the inhabitants 

 telling you how good, how clever, how charitable they 

 were ; what will you think of our poet laureate for calling 

 them, in his " History of Brazil," " Missioners, whose zeal 

 the most fanatical was directed by the coolest policy " ? 



Was it fanatical to renounce the honours and comforts 

 of this transitory life, in order to gain eternal glory in the 

 next, by denying themselves, and taking up the cross ? 

 Was it fanatical to preach salvation to innumerable wild 



