rimers,
manuals of history, enabled their pupils to learn with facility in a few
months what it had cost years of painful labor to acquire under pompous
pedants of the old _regime_. The mental and physical aptitudes of youths
committed to their charge were carefully observed; and classes were
adapted to various ages and degrees of capacity. Hours of recreation
alternated with hours of study, so that the effort of learning should be
neither irksome nor injurious to health. Nor was religious education
neglected. Attendance upon daily Mass, monthly confession, and
instruction in the articles of the faith, formed an indispensable part
of the system. When we remember that these advantages were offered
gratuitously to the public, it is not surprising that people of all
ranks and conditions should have sent their boys to the Jesuit colleges.
Even Protestants availed themselves of what appeared so excellent a
method; and the Jesuits obtained the reputation of being the best
instructors of youth.[172] It soon became the mark of a good Catholic to
have frequented Jesuit schools; and in after life a pupil who had
studied creditably in their colleges, found himself everywhere at home.
Yet the Society took but little interest in elementary or popular
education. Their object was to gain possession of the nobility, gentry,
and upper middle class. The proletariat might remain ignorant; it was
the destiny of such folk to be passive instruments in the hands of
spiritual and temporal rulers. Nor were they always scrupulous in the
means employed for taking hold on young men of distinction. One instance
of the animosity they aroused, even in Italy, at an early period of
their activity, will suffice. Tuscany was thrown into commotion by the
discovery of their designs upon the boys they undertook to teach.

[Footnote 172: See Sarpi's _Letters_, vol. i. p. 352, for Protestant
pupils of Jesuits. Sarpi's _Memorial to the Signory of Venice on the
Collegio de'Greci in Rome_ exposes the fallacy of their being reputed
the best teachers of youth, by pointing out how their aim is to withdraw
their pupils' allegiance from the nation, the government, and the
family, to themselves.]

'They were so madly bent,' says Galluzzi, 'upon filling the ranks of
their Company with individuals of wealth and birth, that in 1584, in the
single city of Siena, under the pretense of devotion, they seduced
thirty youths of the noblest and richest houses, not without grea