from that eminence the attempts of others, Oriental Philology. Elegant Latin writing and measured exactly the degree in which was no longer enough. New lines of inquiry they approximated to success. He never and research were being opened up, and men tramples upon modest and unassuming merit, had no longer the same ear for polished verhowever imperfect its attempts. What he sification and sounding oratorical periods. cannot stomach is presumptuous dogmatism, The philologers must be converted, and their ignorant what it is to know. This class of dangerous researches stopped or diverted. writers, always a large one, hopeless of cor- The society itself, too, must breed its own rupting or softening their inexorable critic, philologians, and get up criticism in order had no resource but to combine against him. to defend the ecclesiastical traditions. In But it was not from them that the envenomed one part of this tactic they had tolerable suchostility proceeded which broke in a storm cess. Muretus and Lipsius were carried over upon the last ten years of Scaliger's life. in triumph. Of Casaubon they had strong The provocative lay much deeper: it lay in hopes. But Scaliger? He was known to the attitude which, as a critic, Scaliger had be as immovable in his Protestant faith, as taken up towards the documentary evidence he was invincible in the field of criticism and on which the Catholic controversialists rested knowledge of antiquity. As long as this their case, and in the irretrivable overthrow Achilles remained in the Protestant camp, by him of the credit of the Jesuits as ex- his single arm secured the victory to his pounders of antiquity, classical or ecclesias- party. There was but one resource-tyrantical. They were sunk past recovery by the fair weapons of learning and argument. It only remained for them, by a combined and systematic assault upon the individual, to attempt to counterbalance that supremacy which his powers and knowledge had, by this time, secured to the Protestant cause. The danger to the Church, which could not be parried upon the open field of erudition and critical debate, might be averted by the moral assassination of the Protestant champion.

In the history of the "Society of Jesus," its second period is marked by a desperate effort to obtain possession of the region of letters and learning, in the same way as it had, in its first period, conquered that of religious sentiment. In the first half century of its existence-1540-1590-it had almost monopolized the reputation of sanctity, of the skill to handle the tender conscience, to sound the depths of casuistry. It had gained for the Church a complete triumph upon the purely religious and devotional ground. In the Middle Ages a triumph here would have been enough. There was then no other public opinion or common feeling. But in the sixteenth century this was no longer the case. The mind of Europe was awakened. He who would rule opinion now must show not merely credentials of his piety, but proof of his knowledge. The women and the ignorant-both very important conquests-had been recovered through the confessional and the pulpit. But there remained to be subdued this new, hitherto unknown, element of public opinion. The Jesuits were not daunted by the formidable nature of their novel enemy, though Church-history supplied them with no precedent to guide their tactics. They saw the strength which the Reformation derived from possessing all the leaders of the new school of Classical and

nicide. The knife of the bravo might take off the captain who could not be worsted in the field. The pen of the slanderer might write down the archcritic, whom it was impossible to foil at his own weapons. The whole learning of the Jesuit schools could not vindicate the integrity of the false Decretals, or prove the works of Dionysius to be the production of the convert of St. Paul, but persevering calumny might silence those who dared to intimate the imposture which had been so long palmed off upon the world.

In this spirit the Jesuits entered the territory of letters. Their efforts were but too successful. They clouded the serenity of Scaliger's declining years, and have hung an air of doubt round his character with posterity. Where opinion has to be acted upon, truth, it is often taken for granted, will in the end prevail. Not always, nor without drawback. No individual, however superior, can fight a party, even in the cause of truth. Even Achil les must have his Myrmidons. Nor did the Jesuits merely succeed in damaging the individual. They struck a heavy blow at ancient learning, by introducing into it that spirit of personal polemic of which it never rid itself during the whole of the seventeenth century. They not merely effectually disguised the defeat of the Roman controversialists in a cloud of scurrilous personalities, but they created an aversion to philological studies, lowered their credit, and broke up the alliance which had in the outset been so happily formed between honest research and the Reformed doctrines.

The signal of battle seems to have been given somewhere about the first year of the seventeenth century. Scaliger's withdrawal from France had relieved him from the local entanglements and hatreds of his own country, only to expose him to a wider sphere of religious animosity. It is remarkable that

none of his assailants were French. From of the volume, Drusius, professor of Hebrew whatever cause this proceeded, it was not at Franeker. In this epistle, written in a from any lurking sympathy. Neither then vein of caustic humor, in which Scaliger has nor since have his Catholic fellow-country- never been surpassed, he throws down his men shown any remorse for having exiled challenge to the whole Order: "Till now their illustrious compatriot, or made any at- he had kept silence under their provocations. tempt to "reclamer" him as their own. If the offence were repeated he should not Flanders and Germany were the positions take it so quietly in future." Friend and from which the Jesuit guns were pointed foe felt that this epistle was a declaration of against Leyden. At Antwerp, Louvain, and war. The Heidelberg Calvinists congratMainz, they had establishments for training ulated themselves upon this out-spokenness; their literary banditti. Here renegades from and the Jesuits no longer delayed the proProtestantism were received, and were es- duction of their heavy artillery. In 1605 pecially welcome if they could bring contri- Carolus Scribonius, rector of the Jesuit Colbutions of scandal against their old associ- lege at Antwerp, produced the " Amphiates. Having lived with the Protestants, theatrum Honoris." The " Amphitheatre" they knew their friends' weak points; ruined is not directed against Scaliger only; it inin character themselves they were zealous to cludes the Calvinists generally. It is diffi ruin others. If an imputation could not be cult to give the English reader any idea of made to look plausible, it could be made to this production. It must suffice to say that look black; quantity was not stinted; they it is one of the most shamelessly beastly were laid on, says Scaliger, "by the wagon books which have ever disgraced the printload." Martin Delrio, who had taught at ing press. The leading characters among Liège and Louvain in Scaliger's neighbor- the Reformed are brought up one after anhood, but was now removed to Grätz-one of other, and the most filthy imputations althe Jesuit strongholds for the blockade of leged against them, without the smallest Germany-opened the game in 1601. Del- evidence, or the pretence of it. Even the rio's language is comparatively decent. It titles of its chapters could not be reproduced is a noisy lament over Scaliger as a blas- in these pages. In any moral condition of phemer and contemner of the "authority of the Church," in denying the genuineness of the writings of Dionysius, and in having affirmed that monarchism was unknown in the Apostolic age. He goes on to a personal description of Scaliger, offensive and insulting, but not wholly untrue; a caricature rather than a libel. Delrio, in fact, was only a light skirmisher put forward to draw Scaliger's fire. But it would not do. The man was too inconsiderable. Scaliger took no notice, or awarded him only a conversational sarcasm.

The trenches, were, therefore, opened on a new quarter. Scaliger had that feeling for his Hebrew attainments which we often have for that point which we are conscious is not exactly our strongest. His reputation as an Orientalist was a tender point with him. Serarius, a Jesuit of Mainz, who had some skill in Hebrew, was set on with this bait. They printed for him at their press in Mainz a book on "The Three Jewish Sects" (Trihæresion), in which, quite by the way, some of the Hebrew criticisms in the "De Emendatione" were called in question, but without violating the received courtesies of controversy. Scaliger could not resist the temptation. Though not replying himself, he appended to a friend's reply to the book a contemptuously-savage demolition of Serarius; and, finding his hand in, he could not refrain from a castigation of Delrio by the way. More important was an epistle addressed to the friendly editor

society the compiler of such a mass of ordure would have been driven from among men as a pollution of his species. But fifty years of Jesuit reaction had told terribly on the moral sense of Europe. Scribonius was a defender of the Church, that was enough.

The "Amphitheatre" speedily reached a second edition, to which a new part was added, spiced with fresh turpitudes, and a special chapter on Scaliger. Nothing gives a more shocking impression of the depravity of party-spirit in those times than the hearty reception given to this infamous production. It has not a single redeeming point; neither wit, eloquence, piquant scandal, nor plausibility of imputation. It is a cesspool of filth, in which sectarian hate and an impure imagination do not seek to disguise themselves by any arts of composition. Good men were aghast, and recoiled from this "Amphitheatre of Horror;" but the Catholic public applauded; and where an attempt was made to get the sale of the book prohibited in France, Henry IV. interfered in its favor, and sent the author a message of encouragement, and letters of naturalization as a citizen.

In 1607 the Jesuits followed up this first success by a second. The “ Amphitheatre had thrown dirt upon the whole Protestant body promiscuously, and only in the second edition had a point been made against Scaliger in particular. He was now made the subject of a companion volume, devoted entirely to himself, his personal history, and

character. The "Supposititious Scaliger "had cherished, in this inward persuasion, a (Scaliger Hypobolimus) of Gaspar Sciop- sensitive, even irritable, love of truth, which pius, is a thick quarto of four hundred pages, had made him abhor disguise and scorn pruin which all the slander and gossip about dence, and now he found himself exhibited Scaliger and his family which could be raked to the world as an impostor and a cheat. A together in the Jesuit colleges in Italy and sudden revolution had shaken the foundaGermany is retailed as matter of fact. But tions of his authority. The proud fabric of instead of the obscure style and clumsy com- his reputation was dashed to the ground position of the "Amphitheatre," the "Sup- amid the jubilant exultations of enemies and posititious Scaliger" is set off by all the arts the cold condolence of friends. He was of an accomplished rhetorician. Scioppius alone. Upon his single head was discharged was a master of Latin style; he wields, with all the venom of a triumphant party. The a force and nerve not inferior to Scaliger's triumph, too, was not over himself, but over own, a precise and pungent diction, a ter- science and learning, and over Scaliger as rible weapon in such a warfare and in the their representative. On every side the work hands of such an adversary, reckless of truth of the Reformation was being undone. A and only intent upon wounding his opponent. torrent of fanatical passion had set in, and We seem to see the steel of the assassin was sweeping away all that the human intelgleam cold and keen in the moonlight, as he lect had for nearly a century been so laboriwithdraws it again and again to repeat his ously constructing. It was time for him to blow and make sure of his victim. A more go; his life had been lived in vain. Put judicious selection of a champion the Jesuits away the "Thesaurus Temporum!" What could not have made. No stronger proof are honor, truth, virtue, science ?—A dream. can be given of the impression produced The Jesuits are masters of the world. by this powerful Philippic, dedicated to the defamation of an individual, than that it has been the source from which the biography of Scaliger, as it now stands in our biographical collections, has mainly flowed. Such is the power of style! The Jesuits, in their most sanguine dreams, could never have hoped that the pure fictions of Scioppius would establish themselves throughout the literary world as the genuine tradition of the family history of the Scaligers.

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Recovered from his first consternation, Scaliger thought it necessary to reply to Scioppius' libel, though he had not noticed the Amphitheatre." His "Confutatio Fabulæ Burdonum," published in his sixtyeighth year, is one of the most vigorous specimens of Scaliger's unrivalled Latin style. For the general reader this little tract is the most attractive of any thing which he has left. It is overflowing with spirit and power, with historical knowledge and literary allusion. Scaliger was in his sixty-seventh year when As a refutation of Scioppus it is most comthis terrible blow was dealt him. He might plete; but it had no success with the pubwell reel under the shock. A man of irre- lic. An answer never has. It is the priviproachable purity of morals, of religious hab-lege of slander that it does not admit of being its, who had devoted every hour of his life removed, but attains its end by being utto the pursuit of knowledge, and had done more than any living man to dignify the pursuits which all men agreed to honor, might at least have thought he had earned a peaceful if not an honored old age. And this was what it was come to! As the reward of his toil, himself and his ancestry were held up to the execration or ridicule of the world, and the world received the portrait with rapture. In denying his descent, the Jesuits had found out the heel of Achilles. Upon his belief in his noble blood his whole attitude and demeanor in the world had been founded. If his intellect had broken the bonds of opinion and enjoyed a freer scope and ampler range than that of ordinary scholars, it was because he had started with a consciousness of being the peer of the best and noblest in Europe. His princely birth was but the other side of his princely genius. He had sought and won this principality in letters as some small compensation for the territorial principality of which his forefathers had been robbed. He

self:

lent passions, unless by studiously dissembling | bius, and had drawn a sketch of the pilum his gifts, and painfully conforming to the fashion from the description of that weapon in Lipof living and thinking of those around. But if sius' "De Re Militari." About Christmas you cannot escape envy you may vanquish it: he took to his bed; dropsy had declared itenvy, itself, I mean, not the envious, which is but a poor triumph. Gifts of intellect and acquirements of learning are worth little if they do not furnish the soul with resources to meet the spite they excite. Perfer itaque et obdura. I am well acquainted with this sort of men, and am indeed daily exposed to their assaults. I can, however, afford to laugh at their stupid malignity, and despise their rage; and sustain myself by a good conscience and lofty purpose."

I

sius' narrative," and asked him how he felt. "I came to him one morning,"-this is HeinMy son,' he answered, 'you see me in extremis. suffer. My body is worn out by lying here and I cannot any longer bear up against the distress by the stress of my malady. My mind is as active as ever. If my enemies could see me now, they would say it is the judgment of God upon me. You know how they have said it of others. But you can testify to what you have seen. Go on as you have begun. Watch over the memory of him who has loved thee tenderly. God, I cannot doubt it, has thee in his favor. He will continue to do so; do thou only acknowledge that all thou hast is from him. Be not ostentatious of thy gifts; they will shine all the brighter. Whatever thou dost, shun arrogance and a haughty temper. Never do aught against thy inward convictions for the sake of adavncement. Whatsoever is in thee is God's alone. Dear son! thy Scaliger is leaving thee!""

the fair sex-and to elicit the truth so often advanced by many writers, that "a good face is a good letter of introduction." I can fancy him now before me, his jocund laugh, his ready wit, his prompt and energetic language, his facility of investing all subjects, whether refined or sportsmanlike, whether of the school or of the stable, whether intellectual or material, with the interest which passion and earnestness can give them. Could it, then, be a matter of surprise that such a being should succeed in winning upon the affections of a young and artless female?

has arrayed as the most fascinating lure to lead the youth of sanguine temperament to sin and to transgression, love presents the most engaging appearance; of all the charms that fancy could present to the gay and ardent temperament, the presence of beauty was the most powerful to influence the taste and to control the actions.

Of the character and nature of Irish murder we have many essays written, and manifold are the leading articles in the Times especially, and in other publications occasionally, denouncing it, commenting on its horrors, and dilating upon the extensive agency Of all the temptations which the the tempter in organizing crime which exists in the country where it is dominant. I would address myself to those who read these talented and gifted productions, who weigh the cogency of their arguments, and who accede to the truth of their corollaries. I would solicit their attention to the details of a fact which came before my own notice, and which lives in my memory recorded as one of those There was a young female, a Quakeress, incidents which time, changes of scene, or who resided in the town at the house of her events of more importance intervening, could father, and, as is usual with the persons of never serve to obliterate from it. It is not that persuasion, he was engaged in business. a statement treating of the agrarian crime His shop was the usual resort for purchaswhich so often has shown itself in that un- ers of haberdashery and fancy articles; it happy country; it is not the narrative of was much frequented, and the officers, deeds which were the impassioned result of amongst others, used to go thither, as well an injured and infuriated tenent being goaded from idleness as from the attraction which to frenzy by a cruel and tyrannizing land- the graces of the young person who presided lord; it is not the story of the effect which at the counter presented and she was one designing and delusive priestcraft had pro- of the fairest and loveliest specimens of youth duced by working on the impulsive passions and beauty of the age of eighteen that it was of men who were sunk in barbaric ignorance possible to conceive-her figure tall, her feaor brutalizing superstition; it is the "round tures of Grecian mould, her face of a softunvarnished tale," treating of what happened subsequent to an event of a commonplace kind. It was very many years ago that I was stationed with my regiment in the town of Clonmel, in Ireland. Of all the young officers which then belonged to the corps, there was not one, in personal appearance, talent, or gayety of manner, could match with the youthful Frederick Clany. His fortune was ample, and his liveliness of temper, undaunted spirit and pleasantry, rendered him a universal favorite with hls brother officers, and a guest whose society was much courted by all the gentry with whom he came in contact. In stature he was above the middle height, and his frame was both athletic and graceful. At the period I speak of his age was twenty-two, and there were few indeed who could excel him in feats of agility and strength; his countenance had the promise of openness and generosity, that ruddy hue of health and glow of youthful exuberance of spirit, and that faultless symmetry of features, which tended to prepossess the minds of all that he was thrown in company with-most especially

ness congenial to the choicest of Guido's colorings; in look, voice, manner, and deportment, she would have well become the scenes alloted for ladies in the highest rank of life, and her mild, hazel eyes of bewitching innocence in their expression, could make one quite forget all the circumstances of her situation, and imagine that one was in presence of a being whose sphere was to adorn the drawing-room, or move the "cynosure of many eyes" in the brilliant assembly. The extreme neatness and simplicity of the costume which is peculiar to her sect, contributed to render more engaging the characteristics of beauty which nature had endowed her with; and amongst all the females which met the admiring glances of the young and gay in the neighborhood, there certainly was none who shared them so largely as the fair Emilia Graves, and her education seemed far superior to what one would expect from the daughter of a Quaker in a provincial town.

To those who are unacquainted with the style of locality which comprises the idea of an Irish town, it may be necessary to say