SECOND JOURNEY. 



81 



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 inha- 

 bitants telling you how good, how clever, how cha- 

 ritable 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 com- 

 forts 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 hordes of Americans % to clothe the 

 naked ? to encourage the repenting sinner 1 to aid the 

 dying Christian ? The fathers of the Society of Jesus 

 did all this. And for this their zeal is pronounced to 

 be " the most fanatical, directed by the coolest policy." 

 It will puzzle many a clear brain to comprehend how it 

 is possible, in the nature of things, that zeal the most 

 fanatical should be directed by the coolest policy. Ah, 

 Mr. Laureate, Mr. Laureate, that "quidlibet audendi" 

 of yours may now and then gild the poet, at the same 

 time that it makes the historian cut a sorry figure ! 



Could Father Nobrega rise from the tomb, he would 

 thus address you : — " Ungrateful Englishman, you have 

 drawn a great part of your information from the writings 

 of the Society of Jesus, and in return you attempt to 

 stain its character by telling your countrymen that ' we 

 taught the idolatry we believed ! ' In speaking of me, 

 you say, it was my happy fortune to be stationed in a 

 country where none but the good principles of my order 



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