might have changed; but in
failure he left after him the clean memory of an honest purpose, which
was perhaps mistaken, but was honourable, patriotic and unselfish.

It is strange, unless it be an accident, that the great opponents, the
Dominicans and the Jesuits, should have established themselves on
opposite sides of the same street, and it is characteristic that the
latter should have occupied more land and built more showy buildings
than the former, extending their possessions in more than one direction
and in a tentative way, while the rigid Dominicans remained rooted to
the spot they had chosen, throughout many centuries. Both are gone, in
an official and literal sense. The Dominican Monastery is filled with
public offices, and though the magnificent library is still kept in
order by Dominican friars, it is theirs no longer, but confiscated to
the State, and connected with the Victor Emmanuel Library, in what was
the Jesuit Roman College, by a bridge that crosses the street of Saint
Ignatius. And the Jesuit College, on its side, is the property of the
State and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from them
altogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. But
the vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such a
trifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact both
are more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled from
their College, they merely moved to the other side of the Dominican
Monastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves in
the Borromeo palace, still within sight of their rivals' walls, and they
called their college the Gregorian University. The Dominicans, driven
from the ancient stronghold at last, after occupying it exactly five
hundred years, have taken refuge in other parts of Rome under the
security of title-deeds held by foreigners, and consequently beyond the
reach of Italian confiscation. Yet still, in fact, the two great orders
face each other.

It was the prayer of Ignatius Loyola that his order should be
persecuted, and his desire has been most literally fulfilled, for the
Jesuits have suffered almost uninterrupted persecution, not at the hands
of Protestants only, but of the Roman Catholic Church itself in
successive ages. Popes have condemned them, and Papal edicts have
expelled their order from Rome; Catholic countries, with Catholic Spain
at their head, have driven them out and hunted them