disturbed the serenity of the Casa Professa. | side. Long and frequent were their conversa. The dreaded purple was again pressed on him tions; but the record of them transmitted to us with all the weight of papal admonition. To by the historians of the Order of Jesus, nas but avoid it, Gandia fled the presence of the little semblance of authenticity. Charles aspope, and Ignatius returned to Spain, per- sails, and Borgia defends the new Institute, formed a pilgrimage to the castle of Loyola, and the imperial disputant of course yields to kissed the hallowed ground, and then burying the combined force of eloquence and truth. It himself in a Jesuit college at Ognato, once seems less improbable that the publication of more awaited the decision of the emperor. It Memoirs of the life of the Emperor, to be soon arrived. He was no longer a duke, a written by himself, was one subject of serious knight of St. Iago, nor even a Spanish gentle- debate at these interviews, and that the good man. Solemnly, and in due legal form, he re- father dissuaded it. If the tale be true, he has nounced all these titles, and with them all his certainly one claim the less to the gratitude of property and territorial rights. Even his secu- later times. What seems certain is, that he lar dress was laid aside, and his head was undertook and executed some secret mission prepared by the tonsure for the Episcopal from Charles to the court of Portugal, that he touch, emblematic of the most awful mystery. acted as one of the executors of his will, and The astonished spectators collected and pre- delivered a funeral oration in praise of the deserved the holy relics. And now bent in lowly ceased emperor before the Spanish court at prostration before the altar at Ognato, the Fa- Valladolid. ther Francis had no farther sacrifice to offer there, but the sacrifice of a heart emptied of all the interests and of all the affections of the world. Long and silent was his prayer, but it was now unattended with any trace of disorder. The tears he shed were such as might have bedewed the cheek of the first man before. he had tasted the bitterness of sin. He rose from his knees, bade a last farewell to his attendants; and Father Francis was left alone with his Creator.

It was a solitude not long to be maintained. The fame of his devotion filled the Peninsula. All who needed spiritual counsel, and who wished to indulge an idle curiosity, resorted to his cell. Kings sought his advice, wondering congregations hung on his lips, and two at least of the grandees of Spain imitated his example. His spiritual triumphs were daily more and more splendid; and, if he might escape the still threatened promotion into the college of cardinals, might be as enduring as his life. The authority of Ignatius, not unaided by some equivocal exercise of his ingenuity, at length placed Father Francis beyond the reach of this last danger. They both went down to the grave without witnessing the debasement of their order by any ecclesiastical dignity.

From this point, the life of Borgia merges in the general history of the order to which he had attached himself. It is a passage of history full of the miracles of self-denial, and of miracles in the more accurate acceptation of the word. To advance the cause of education, and to place in the hands of his own society the control of that mighty engine, was the labour which Father Francis as their general chiefly proposed to himself. His success was complete, and he lived to see the establishment, in almost every state of Europe, of colleges formed on the model of that which he had himself formed in the town of Gandia.

Borgia is celebrated by his admirers as the most illustrious of all conquerors of the appetites and passions of our common nature; and the praise, such as it is, may well be conceded to him. No other saint in the calendar ever abdicated or declined so great an amount of worldly grandeur and domestic happiness. No other embraced poverty and pain in forms more squalid, or more revolting to flesh and blood. So strange and shocking are the stories of his flagellations, of the diseases contracted by them, and of the sickening praetices by which he tormented his senses, that even to read them is of itself no light penance. In the same spirit, our applause is demanded for feats of humility, and prodigies of obedi

that his biographers might seem to have assumed the office of penitential executors to the saint; and to challenge for his memory some of the disgust and contempt which when living he so studiously courted. And yet Borgia was no ordinary man.

But there was yet one tie to the pomp and vanity of this world, which could not be entirely broken. During his viceregal adminis-ence, and raptures of devotion, so extravagant, tration, Father Francis had on one occasion traversed the halls of the castle of Barcelona in deep and secret conference with his imperial cousin. Each at that interview imparted to the other his design of devoting to religious retirement the interval which should intervene between the business and the close of life. At He had great talents with a narrow capaevery season of disappointment Charles re- city. Under the control of minds more comverted to this purpose, and abandoned or post-prehensive than his own, he could adopt and poned it with each return of success. But execute their wider views with admirable adnow, broken with sickness and sorrow, he had dress and vigour. With rare powers both of fixed his residence in a monastery in Estre- endurance and of action, he was the prey of a madura, and summoned the former viceroy of constitutional melancholy, which made him Catalonia to the presence of his early friend dependent on the more sanguine spirit of his and patron. Falling on his knees, as in times guides for all his aims and for all his hopes; of yore, Father Francis offered to impress the but once rescued from the agony of selecting kiss of homage on the hand which had so his path, he moved along it not merely with lately borne the sceptre of half the civilized firmness but with impetuosity. All his imworld. But Charles embraced his cousin, and pulses came from without; but when once compelled him to sit, and to sit covered, by his 'given they could not readily be arrested. The

To Ignatius, the founder of the order of the Jesuits; to Xavier, the great leader in their missionary enterprises; to Laynez, the author of their peculiar system of theology; and to Borgia, the architect of their system of education, two names are to be added to complete the roll of the great men from whose hands their institute received the form it retains to the present hour. These are Bellarmine, from whom they learned the arts and resources of controversy; and Acquaviva, the fifth in number, but in effect the fourth of their generalswho may be described as the Numa Pompilius of the order. There is in the early life of Bellarmine a kind of pastoral beauty, and even in his later days a grace, and a simplicity so winning, that it costs some effort to leave such a theme unattempted. The character of Acquaviva, one of the most memorable rulers and lawgivers of his age, it would be a still greater effort to attempt.

very dejection and self-distrust of his nature | evil. Divine justice is lenient, because there rendered him more liable than other men to alone love can flow in all its unfathomable impressions at once deep and abiding. Thus depths and boundless expansion-impeded by he was a saint in his infancy at the bidding of no dread of error, and diverted by no mishis nurse-then a cavalier at the command of placed sympathies. his uncle-an inamorato because the empress desired it a warrior and a viceroy because such was the pleasure of Charles-a devotee from seeing a corpse in a state of decomposition-a founder of colleges on the advice of Peter Faber-a Jesuit at the will of Ignatiusand general of the order because his colleagues would have it so. Yet each of these characters, when once assumed, was performed, not merely with constancy, but with high and just applause. His mind was like a sycophant plant, feeble when alone, but of admirable vigour and luxuriance when properly sustained. A whole creation of such men would have been unequal to the work of Ignatius Loyola; but, in his grasp, one such man could perform a splendid though but a secondary service. His life was more eloquent than all the homilies of Chrysostom. Descending from one of the most brilliant heights of human prosperity, he exhibited every where, and in an aspect the most intelligible and impressive to his contem- "Henceforth let no man say," (to mount on poraries, the awful power of the principles by the stilts of dear old Samuel Johnson) “come, which he was impelled. Had he lived in the I will write a disquisition on the history, the times and in the society of his infamous kins- doctrines, and the morality of the Jesuits-at men, Borgia would not improbably have shared least let no man say so who he has not subtheir disastrous renown. But his dependent dued the lust of story-telling." Filled to their nature, moulded by a far different influence, utmost limits, lie before us the sheets so rerendered him a canonized saint; an honoura- cently destined to that ambitious enterprise. ble, just and virtuous man; one of the most Perhaps it may be as well thus to have yielded eminent ministers of a polity as benevolent in to the allurement which has marred the original intention as it was gigantic in design; and the design. If in later days the disciples of Ignatius, founder of a system of education pregnant obeying the laws of all human institutions, with results of almost matchless importance. have exhibited the sure though slow developeHis miracles may be not disadvantageously ment of the seeds of error and of crime, sown compared with those of the Baron Manchau- by the authors of their polity, it must at least sen; but it would be less easy to find a meet be admitted that they were men of no common comparison for his genuine virtues. They mould. It is something to know that an imtriumph over all the silly legends and all the pulse, which after three centuries is still unreal follies which obscure his character. His spent, proceeded from hands of gigantic power, whole mature life was but one protracted mar- and that their power was moral as much as intyrdom, for the advancement of what he es- tellectual, or much more so. In our own times teemed the perfection of his own nature, and much indignation and much alarm are thrown the highest interests of his fellow-men. Though away on innovators of a very different stamp. he maintained an intimate personal intercourse From the ascetics of the common room, from with Charles IX. and his mother, and enjoyed men whose courage rises high enough only to their highest favour, there is no reason to sup- hint at their unpopular opinions, and whose pose that he was intrusted with their atrocious belligerent passions soar at nothing more darsecret. Even in the land of the inquisition he ing than to worry some unfortunate professor, had firmly refused to lend the influence of his it is almost ludicrous to fear any great movename to that sanguinary tribunal; for there ment on the theatre of human affairs. When was nothing morose in his fanaticism, nor we see these dainty gentlemen in rags, and mean in his subservience. Such a man as hear of them from the snows of the HimmaFrancis Borgia could hardly become a perse- laya, we may begin to tremble. The slave of cutor. His own church raised altars to his his own appetites, in bondage to conventional name. Other churches have neglected or de- laws, his spirit emasculated by the indulgences, spised it. In that all-wise and all-compassion-or corroded by the cares of life, hardly daring ate judgment, which is uninvaded by our nar- to act, to speak, or to think for himself, manrow prejudices and by our unhallowed feelings, gregarious and idolatrous man-worships the his fervent love of God and of man was doubt-world in which he lives, adopts its maxims, less permitted to cover the multitude of his and tread its beaten paths. To rouse him from theoretical errors and real extravagances. his lethargy, and to give a new current to his Human justice is severe, not merely because thoughts heroes appear from time to time on man is censorious, but because he reasonably the verge of his horizon, and hero-worship, distrusts himself, and fears lest his weakness pagan or Christian, withdraws him for awhile should confound the distinctions of good and from still baser idolatry. To contemplate the

motives and the career of such a man, may teach much which well deserves the knowing; but nothing more clearly than this-that no one can have shrines erected to his memory in the hearts of men of distant generations un

less his own heart was an altar on which daily sacrifices of fervent devotion, and magnanimous self denial, were offered to the only true object of human worship.

TAYLOR'S EDWIN THE FAIR.*

[Edinburgh Review, 1843.]

THIS is a dramatic poem full of life and Such is the law to which all the great tragic beauty, thronged with picturesque groups, and with characters profoundly discriminated. They converse in language the most chaste, harmonious, and energetic. In due season fearful calamities strike down the lovely and the good. Yet "Edwin the Fair" is not to be classed among tragedies, in the full and exact sense of the expression.

writers of ancient or of modern times have submitted themselves-each in his turn assuming this high office of interpreting the movements of Providence, and reconciling man to the mysteries of his being. Thus Job is the stoic of the desert-victorious over all the persecutions of Satan, till the better sense of unjust reproach and undeserved punish"To purge the soul by pity and terror," it is ment breaks forth in agonies which the denot enough that the stage should exhibit those scending Deity rebukes, silences, and soothes. who tread the high places of the earth as vic- Prometheus is the temporary triumph over tims either of unmerited distress, or of retribu- beneficence, of a power at once malignant and tive justice. It is farther necessary that their omnipotent, which, at the command of destiny, sorrows should be deviations from the usual is blindly rushing on towards the universal economy of human life. They must differ in catastrophe which is to overwhelm and ruin their origin, and their character, from those ills all things. Agamemnon returns in triumph to which we have learned to regard as merely a home, where, during his long absence, the the established results of familiar causes. avenging furies have been couching to spring They must be attended by the rustling of the at last on the unhappy son of Atreus-every dark wings of fate, or by the still more awful hand in that fated house drooping with gore, march of an all-controlling Providence. The and every voice uttering the maledictions of domain of the tragic theatre lies in that dim the infernals. Edipus, and his sons and region where the visible and invisible worlds daughters, represent a succession of calamities are brought into contact; and where the wise and crimes which would seem to exhaust the and the simple alike perceive and acknowledge catalogue of human wretchedness; but each in a present deity, or demon. It is by the shocks turn is made to exhibit the working of one of and abrupt vicissitudes of fortune, that the the most awful of the laws under which we dormant sense of our dependence on that in-live-the visitation of the sins of parents upon scrutable power in the grasp of which we lie, is quickened into life. It is during such transient dispersion of the clouds beneath which it is at other times concealed, that we feel the agency of heaven in the affairs of earth to be a reality and a truth. It is in such occurrences alone (distinguished in popular language from the rest, as providential) that the elements of tragedy are to be found in actual or imaginable combination. There the disclosure of the laws of the universal theocracy imparts to the scene an unrivalled interest, and to the actors in it the dignity of ministers of the will of the Supreme. There each event exhibits some new and sublime aspect of the divine energy working out the divine purposes. There the great enigmas of our existence, receive at least a partial solution. There, even amidst the seeming triumph of wrong, may be traced the dispensation of justice to which the dramatist is bound; and there also extends before his view a field of meditation drawn from themes of surpassing majesty and pathos.

their children to the third and fourth generation. Macbeth is seduced by demoniacal predictions to accomplish the purposes, by violating the commands of Heaven, and so to meditate, to extenuate, and to commit, the crimes suggested by the fiend in cruel mockery. Hamlet is at once the reluctant minister and the innocent victim of the retributive justice to the execution of which he is goaded by a voice from the world of departed spirits. Lear is crushed amidst the ruins of his house, on which parental injustice, filial impiety, foul lusts, and treacherous murder, had combined to draw down the curse of the avenger. Faust moves on towards destruction under the guidance of the fiend, who lures him by the pride of knowledge and the force of appetite. Wallenstein plunges into destruction, drawing down with him the faithful and the good, as a kind of bloody sacrifice, to atone for treachery to which the aspect of the stars and the predic tions of the diviner had impelled him. And so, through every other tragic drama which has awakened the deeper emotions of the spectator TAYLOR, author of "Philip Van Artevelde." London: or the reader, might be traced the operation of the law to which we have referred. How far

Edwin the Fair: an Historical Drama. BY HENRY

12mo, 1842.

this universal characteristic of tragedy-the | Leolf proceeding to the north, with a part of perceptible intervention in human affairs of the army, to rescue Elgiva, and Athulf assum powers more than human-is to be discovered ing the conduct of the power destined for the in "Edwin the Fair," the following brief and deliverance of the king. imperfect outline of the plot may sufficiently determine.

"O'er hill, through dale, with interlacing arms, And thrid the thickets where wild roses grow, Entangled with each other like themselves." But their sun had scarcely risen above the eastern horizon when the dreams of childhood faded away before the illusions of youth. He ascended the Anglo-Saxon throne, and she plighted her troth to Earl Leolf, the commander of the English armies. The earl was "a man in middle age, busy and hard to please," and not happy in the art of pleasing. Such, at least, was the more deliberate opinion or feeling of Elgiva. In a day of evil augury to herself, and to her house, the inconstant maid-in its ample cavity,) forbade the ratification en crushed the hopes of her grave, though generous suitor, to share the crown of her early playmate.