88 
WANDERINGS IN 
SECOND 
JOURNEY. 
tlie evils tlieir 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/' u 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 hordes of Americans ? 
to clothe the naked ? to encourage the repenting 
sinner ? 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 u 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 1 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 were called 
