could seldom
equal. "At Paris," says cardinal de Maury, "the great college of the
Jesuits was a central point, which attracted the attention of all the best
writers, and of persons {208} of distinction in every rank. It was a kind
of permanent literary tribunal, which the celebrated Piron, in his emphatic
language, used to style _La chambre ardente des reputations literaires_;
always dreaded by men of letters, as the principal source and focus of
public opinion in the capital[70]." What the cardinal asserts of Paris, was
equally true of Rome, Vienna, Lisbon, and other great cities, which
possessed the colleges of higher studies of the society. I conclude with
remarking, that, if any part of what is prescribed in the institute had
been retrenched from the education of Jesuits, their society would not have
deserved such commendations from Piron and cardinal de Maury[71].

If the outlines of education, which have been {209} here traced from the
book of the Jesuits' institute[72], do not win approbation, they may be
presented to the reader, at least, as an object of curiosity. Serious men
will, perhaps, think them more deserving of attention than are many of the
ephemeral vagaries, which modern adventurers in the art of training youth
daily obtrude upon the public. The Jesuits' system is recommended by the
experimental success of two centuries; and, whether the plan was originally
conceived, or only adopted and methodised, by Ignatius and his followers,
certain it is, that, from the close of the council of Trent to the opening
of the Gallic revolution, the main principles, on which it rests, even the
practical details of it, with little variation, pervaded the education of
the catholic clergy in all distinguished seminaries, whether directed by
Jesuits or by others; and they may, therefore, be regarded as {210} the
source of all the virtue and learning which adorned the catholic church in
that period, and which the Gallic revolutioners were sworn to destroy. If
these antichristian conspirators first doomed the Jesuits to annihilation,
it was because their schools were widely diffused through Europe, and were
marked by them as hotbeds of every thing which they chose to term
fanaticism, bigotry, and superstition; that is to say, zeal, faith, and
devotion. These were to be extirpated, to make room for fanaticism,
bigotry, and superstition of another kind; those of equality, reason, and
philosophy. And mark with what avidity the