10 JESUITICAL NATURE. 



for gew-gaws and perfumes. Manufactures were estab- 

 lished ; slaves laboured at a thousand looms ; the linen 

 goods of Egypt became celebrated throughout the 

 world. Laboratories were opened ; remarkable dis- 

 coveries were made. The Egyptian priests distilled 

 brandy and sweet waters. They used the blow-pipe, 

 and were far advanced in the chemical processes of art. 

 They fabricated glass mosaics, and counterfeited precious 

 stones and porcelain of exquisite transparency and 

 delicately blended hues. With the fruits of these 

 inventions they adorned their daily life, and attracted 

 into Egypt the riches of other lands. 



Thus when Nature selects a people to endow them 

 with glory and with wealth her first proceeding is to 

 massacre their bodies, her second, to debauch their 

 minds. She begins with famine, pestilence, and war ; 

 next, force and rapacity above ; chains and slavery 

 below. She uses evil as the raw material of good ; 

 though her aim is always noble, her earliest means 

 are base and cruel. But, as soon as a certain point is 

 reached, she washes her black and bloody hands, and 

 uses agents of a higher kind. Having converted the 

 animal instinct of self-defence into the ravenous lust of 

 wealth and power, that also she transforms into 

 ambition of a pure and lofty kind. At first knowledge 

 is sought only for the things which it will buy, the 

 daily bread indispensable to life ; and those trinkets 

 of body and mind which vanity demands. Yet those low 

 desires do not always and entirely possess the human 

 soul. Wisdom is like the heiress of the novel who is 

 at first courted only for her wealth, but whom the 

 fortune-hunter learns afterwards to love for herself 

 alone. 



At first sight there seems little in the arts and 



