time, was the flourishing condition of Guayra, when (A.D. 1630) the Jesuit villages were attacked by an armed force, composed of the half-breeds, or Mamelukes, and several thousands of the Christian Indians were marched off captives of war to be sold as slaves to the settlers. In vain did Maceta and two other fathers follow the march of the captives, to console the dying and to obtain redress for the survivors. The efforts of the Jesuits in behalf of the natives were looked upon with far too much evil suspicion by the local European authorities, and no redress could be obtained. On perceiving this, the fathers called a council to deliberate, when it was resolved that all the survivors should migrate from Guayra to the Paraguay, to be at a still greater distance from the European attacks. Fathers Montoya and Tanno also went to Spain, and obtained permission to furnish the natives with firearms; so that the new villages of the Paraguay now became well-organised military colonies, which acknowledged the suzerainty of the crown of Spain, paying a yearly capitation tax, and proving themselves perfectly able to repel their assailants, and to keep them at a distance. From this period dates the great success of these missions, until the whole body of the Jesuit fathers, mainly through the ill-will of the Portuguese statesman the Marquis of Pombal, and the artifices of several other enemies and traitors, were taken away about the year 1766; whereupon the work which had been purchased by so many heroic sacrifices, added to so many martyrdoms, was found to fall to pieces, and the Indians were dispersed again, some to their woods, and others to slavery.

The Jesuit missions of the Paraguay have been very much cavilled at; but still, so long as they are seen to have raised the native Indians to a degree of civil culture and social elevation which has never been surpassed, and but rarely indeed equalled by the other missionaries, their work appeals against all its gainsayers with perfect safety to the criterion given by our Lord, 'The tree is known by its fruits.' What these fruits were, the Marquis of Vallombrosa, Don Pedro de Figuaroa, who visited the Jesuit plantations after they had removed them into the Paraguay, shall give us his testimony. Writing to the Royal Commissary of Spain, he speaks of them as follows:

You will see, when you go there, some real Christians, who appear to be full of the spirit of the first times of the Church. . . . Such are the riches which these apostolical men of the New World are seeking, and this is what constitutes the empire of the Jesuits. By their unexampled labours they are continually gaining subjects for Church and king, who, before they come into their hands, are so savage as to be barely men; and yet out of them they have constructed a republic which is daily peopling heaven with saints.'

§ 80. St. Vincent of Paul, and his works of charity at home and abroad. Our narrative now returns to Europe, to see a saint rise up in the noble Christian nation of France, whose charity is destined to embrace

the whole world, and whose practical wisdom and power of adapting his resources to the work which he sees has to be done is as wonderful as his charity is unfailing. Who is there who can avoid recognising St. Vincent of Paul even in this imperfect description?

St. Vincent of Paul was born on the 24th of April 1576, in the little village of Pouy, near Dax, south of Bordeaux, and bordering on the Pyrenees. His father's name was William of Paul, and his mother's name Bertrande of Moras. The family were owners of a little farm, which they cultivated themselves, and thus supported six children (two boys and four girls), of whom Vincent was the third. Vincent's father, by the sale of two oxen, and such other help as he could get, contrived in the end to have his son sent to Toulouse, to study theology. Here he remained for seven years, and was ordained priest in the year 1600. He subsequently fell into the hands of the Turks, and was sold as a slave in Tunis in the following manner. Some business, the exact nature of which is not known, took him to Marseilles; and instead of returning by land, a friend, whose acquaintance he had made in Marseilles, persuaded him to take his passage for part of the way by sea. This they did, and were met on the voyage by three Turkish brigantines, who boarded their vessel in spite of a gallant resistance, and carried off the crew and passengers to the slavemarket at Tunis. Here Vincent was marched through the town to be sold as a slave, and at length he was got rid of to a customer, who proved to be a fisherman. This man, finding his slave not able to bear the sea-air, sold him to a herb-doctor, who turned out to be a very humane and tractable person, whom Vincent calls a 'sovereign extractor of quintessences.' It was Vincent's lot after this to pass into the hands of several masters, the last of whom was a renegade, who, strange to say, was brought back from his apostasy by the persuasion of his Turkish wife. This lady used often to ask Vincent to discourse to her respecting the Christian religion, and to sing to her some of the Christian sacred melodies. The 'Salve Regina' and the psalm 'By the waters of Babylon,' which Vincent used to sing when thus asked, made such an impression on her mind, that she told her husband that he had done a very unwise thing in forsaking so beautiful a religion. These remonstrances from so unexpected a quarter led eventually to the result that the renegade escaped back with Vincent to France, where the former was reconciled to the Church, while Vincent found his way to Rome. Vincent after leaving Rome journeyed to Paris, where he remained some time in various employments, at last retiring to live as a boarder with the fathers of the Oratory in that city; from whence he used to go to serve the parish of Clichy, about a league from Paris. In the year 1613 he went to reside as private tutor in the family of the Count de Joigni, with whom he remained for twelve years. During this period he founded the Confraternity for the Relief of the Poor which has since become so famous.

Vincent's next great work was to found the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission, commonly known as Lazarists from the house of St. La

zarus, to which he removed with his fathers in the year 1632, when the College des bons Enfants had become too small for them.

The work, however, for which Vincent's name will be most beloved over the whole world is the foundation of the Sisters of Charity. Louisa de Marillac, the widow of Le Sieur Legras, placed herself under the direction of Vincent, to be employed in works of charity. Vincent's first thought was to revive the confraternities of the ladies of charity throughout the town and country parishes; but experience showed that the duties to be undertaken were disproportioned to the spiritual aids and encouragements that could be supplied by mere membership in a confraternity, the persons thus associated, living by themselves apart, without being able to afford each other the help and consolations of mutual society. Vincent, therefore, made selection of a few, whom he placed with Madame Legras, to try the experiment if they could be formed to the discipline of the community life, in which mental prayer would be combined with attendance upon the sick. From these humble beginnings came to be formed the now world-wide community of the Sisters

We cannot recount a hundredth part of Vincent's wise and good works, and must hasten to the close of his life. In his declining years he was a great sufferer, and he gently breathed his last on the 27th of September 1660; encouraging his fathers with the words, 'He that has begun a good work in you will perfect it.'

§ 81. The French Revolution and the military Empire of the first Napoleon. End of the thousand years' duration of the Holy Roman Empire, A.D. 1806.

The prophet Daniel, when called into the presence of the king Baltassar, reminded him in the presence of his court of the judgment which had befallen his father, to make him to know that the Most High hath power in the kingdom of men, and raiseth up over it whomsoever He will.' When Louis XIV. of France uttered the words, 'L'état c'est moi! 'I am the State !'-he little thought that the fatal pride and arrogance of his claim would bring on his family the Divine judgment of the execution of his great-grandson Louis XVI. on the scaffold, and on his country the extinction of legitimate monarchy in an ocean of bloodshed and civil commotion.

The storm commenced in the Parliament or General Assembly of the States, the same that in former times had been the servile instrument of the royal resistance to the Sovereign Pontiff, and which was now to become the destroyer of the throne, and the murderer of the clergy and the nobles. The revolutionary faction, whose members were chiefly in the tiers état, or the commonalty, gained the preponderance by introducing the system of individual voting. From this they proceeded to their master manœuvre, the formation of a civil constitution of the clergy, according to which, among other similar provisions, the promotion to vacant sees was explicitly removed from the control of the Sovereign Pontiff. Louis XVI. found no prelate in his kingdom courageous enough to advise him to resist, and he appended his signature to it. After the document had been signed by the king, the Bishops and clergy manifested their repugnance to accept it; and the General Assembly passed a decree that every Bishop and parish-priest who, on the expiration of a fixed term, had refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the civil constitution after having been summoned to do so, should be deemed to have resigned his post, which was to be immediately treated as vacant, and filled up. By this act of the Assembly the whole body of the clergy were forced into a position of direct antagonism to the revolutionary party, and from this moment a general persecution menaced all ranks among both clergy and laity.

It is impossible to recount the horrors of the persecution which was now commenced in the name of liberty and the rights of free citizenship. The dominant faction, perceiving that the clergy were the barrier to their attainment of supremacy, resolved on the policy of hounding on the people against the priests who refused the oath, as the declared enemies of their country. The scenes of bloodshed and cruelty which from this mo

ment desolated France baffle description. A general massacre of priests was perpetrated in cold blood in the garden of the convent of the Carmes —and those who were confined in the Abbaye and the Seminary of St. Firmin shortly afterwards shared the same fate.

Louis XVI. was seized by a tumultuous mob in his palace of Versailles, and brought a prisoner to Paris; and on the 21st of January 1793 he was taken from his prison to the scaffold, and beheaded under the guillotine. Social disorder after this reached its height, and a reign of terror set in, the records of which are written in the blood of an incalculable number of innocent victims.

At length the mercy of God was pleased to restore order and security of life and property to the people of France, by means of a military despotism. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to military eminence in the service of the Republic, and after getting himself elected First Consul, he seized upon the imperial power, when it became the turn of the other nations of Europe to participate in the scourge which had devastated France; for they were now overrun by French armies. Pope Pius VII. was sacrilegiously seized by Napoleon, and kept a prisoner at Fontainebleau. Yet here, again, St. Paul's words are seen to be verified: 'God is not mocked; the things that a man sows, the same shall he also reap.' Napoleon thought that he was strong enough to convert the Rock of St. Peter into an instrument for gaining universal dominion into his own hands; and it is worthy of note, that his end was such as, singularly enough, to match so arrogant a design. For he, who thought to make use of St. Peter's Rock for his own purposes, found himself confined on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where he went out of the world an unhonoured and an uncared-for captive, leaving a memory behind him, among the Christian nations, very similar to that of Attila, as another scourge of God. In the year 1806, August 6th, the Emperor Francis II., in obedience to an injunction from the irresistible Napoleon, formally abdicated the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, which thus became finally dissolved, after an existence of a thousand years from the coronation of Charlemagne. It had for some time ceased to fulfil the sacred purposes for which it had been instituted, and, like the degraded and degenerate throne of the Cæsars of Constantinople, it was also broken in pieces by the strong hand of a military aggressor.

§ 82. St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. Paul of the Cross.

Two remarkable saints now appear on the scene; and in addition to the edification of their holy example, we shall have the farther interest of being able to study their work as a fresh proof of the designs of God, determined to retain the people of Europe in their allegiance to the Christian cause, in spite of all the craft and power of the infidel and Antichristian party. The saints we speak of are St. Alphonsus Liguori and the Blessed Paul of the Cross, the respective founders of the Redemptorist and the Passionist Congregations.