tacked with a violent fever. Feeling that his end was near, he directed his attendants to carry him to the shore; and there, on the naked, treeless beach, he bade them leave him to contend with the tortures of a wasting fever. No downy couch received his sinking frame, no soft pillows supported his aching head, no anxious, sympathizing friends bent over him to catch his every wish. Death had no terrors for him; calmly he waited the progress of disease, noting the gradual departure of strength from the limbs that had borne him so faithfully; the growing dimness of the eyes whose fiery glances had made kings tremble; the failure of the voice whose warning tones, like a silver bell, could once be heard over the howling mob. Suddenly his countenance was suf fused with an unearthly light, and, partly raising himself with his expiring strength, he grasped his crucifix and “fell on sleep" with these words upon his lips: "In te Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum." The chill blast of the wintry wind on the bleak Chinese coast chanted his solemn requiem, while the waves, like bereaved friends, seemed to be murmuring his loss. Before such consecration and sacrifice, the voice of the critic is dumb. Notwithstanding this success in the far East, the work of the Jesuits in Paraguay was more remarkable. Perhaps this mission best illustrates the fair first-fruits of this order. They gathered together in the villages of that country three hundred thousand natives, taught them useful arts, united them in one tie of brotherhood, and prepared them to appreciate and enjoy the benefits of civilization. How much nobler was their employment than that of those Spanish desperadoes under the Christian name, who were burning and pillaging the towns and pursuing with bloodhounds the natives of Peru and Mexico, or of the English traders trafficking in human flesh on the coast of Africa! The story of the Jesuit missions in North America, as told by Francis Parkman, reads like a fascinating tale. He finds it, in his own words, "marvellous as a tale of chivalry or legends of the lives of the saints.... Trade, policy, and military power leaned on the missions as their main sup port: the missions were to explore the interior; the missions were to win over the savage hordes at once to Heaven and to France. Peaceful, benign, beneficent were the weapons of this conquest. "France aimed to subdue, not by the sword, but by the cross; not to overwhelm and crush, but to convert, to civilize, and embrace them among her children. The story of missions for many years is the history of New France."* It is a matter of special interest in connection with these missions of the Jesuits in North America that this year marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, if not of their first arrival on these shores, at least of their permanent settlement. In 1611, according to Parkman, "the close black cassock, the rosary hanging from the waist, and the wide black hat looped up at the side, and the features seamed with study, thought, and discipline, proclaimed the Jesuit priests' arrival on these North American shores. ... "Then first did this mighty Proteus, this many-colored Society of Jesus, enter upon that rude field of toil and woe where in after years the devoted zeal of its apostles was to lend dignity to their order and do honor to humanity.”† In 1613, under the Englishman Argall, who sailed up from the James River, the French Colony at Port Royal was attacked and the company were dispersed. Some of them, with the Jesuit Baird, were carried to Jamestown. In 1625 there appear again, at Quebec, three of the mys terious followers of Loyola, named Lalemant, Masse, and Brébeuf,- not altogether welcome guests, as they come to supplant the missionary work of the Récollet friars. They were received kindly, however, by the charitable friars. Their stay was very brief, hardly more than alighting before "a descent of Huguenots fighting under British colors overthrew for a time the miserable little colony with the mission to which it was wedded." But, eight years after, Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 417-18. Quebec was restored to France, and Champlain, under commission from Richelieu, resumed command. The boom of the saluting cannon on the morning of May 23, 1633, brought Champlain's confessor, Father Le Jeune, newly arrived, to the convent door, to find it darkened by the stately form of his brother Jesuit, Brébeuf, that moment returned. The broken thread of Jesuit enterprise was resumed (indeed if it could be said to have begun before) with Le Jeune as superior, "who in his journal exudes in praises of Richelieu, not always a theme of Jesuit eulogy." So we stand close upon the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the resumption of Jesuit influence, which was practically the beginning of their work in North America. "Who," says Francis Parkman, "can trace out the crossing and mingling currents of wisdom and folly, ignorance and knowledge, truth and falsehood, weakness and force, the noble and the base? Who can analyze a systematic contradiction, and follow through its secret springs, wheels, and levers, a phenomenon of moral mechanism?" In short, "who can define the Jesuit?" * Pleasant are many pictures which have come down to us. That of the "fearless Marquette" has always won admiration, who, about a century after the foundation of the order, set out for North America, calling himself "an ambassador of God to enlighten the New World with the gospel." With his companion Joliet, he traversed the whole distance from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, which he discovered June 17, 1673, and in his frail canoe passed down to the gulf, stopping on the way to teach the natives, who every where received him with joy. At one point in his journey, he was deserted by his Indian guide through fear of danger; but Marquette, unconscious of fear, proceeded on, calmly remarking, "I should esteem it the greatest happiness to die for the glory of God." Planting the seeds of his faith in the wildest of regions, Marquette returned to his former station among the poor Hurons, • Pioneers in North America, 417-18. in what is now Michigan, leaving the fame of his discovery of the Mississippi to be borne by others.* On the 18th of May, 1675, as he was passing Lake Michigan with his boatmen, having arrived at the mouth of a stream, Marquette proposed landing to offer mass. Withdrawing himself from his companions, he went off alone to pray, till, having remained so long away as to excite suspicion, search was made, and it was found his gentle spirit had taken its flight. His body was tenderly buried by the shore of the lake, near the mouth of the stream that bears his name; and so deeply was his character impressed upon the minds of those savages, that tradition says years after, when the fierce storms lashed the surface of the lake into wild fury and tossed the frail barks of the natives, they would call upon the quieting spirit of Marquette, and the winds would cease and the waves be stilled. The peaceful though lonely departure of Marquette was the lot of but few of the zealous defenders of this cause in North America. Many suffered most horrible martyrdom from the hands of those they would have blessed, and all bore witness to their fidelity with their lives, shrinking from no sacrifice and courting fatigue, danger, exposure, and terrible death. Few traces are left of their missions or conversions, a costly sacrifice for such poor results. Even had the mission work resulted in permanent French colonization, it would have at least added to the glory of France. But it is claimed by a recent writer in the February Atlantic for 1883 that the French have no genius for colonization. Certainly, when we see how little remains of what was obtained at so costly a sacrifice, we are forced to feel that something was lacking in the French character,- not the spirit of bold adventure, surely, but a certain power to stick. This is acknowledged by their observant men like Vicomte d'Haussonville, one of the guests of the nation at the Yorktown celebration in 1881, who mourns that the Empire of France. in the New World has departed, and that her influence, ex *See Memoirs and Writings of J. H. Perkins, vol. ii.. p. 133, cept in the matter of women's dress and the comic opera, is wholly extinct. (See April Atlantic, 1881.) But with regard to the devotion of those early French Jesuits, are we not too apt, in our prejudice of the order, to lose sight of these noble examples of fortitude and earnest desire to consecrate themselves for others, to "save souls," as they honestly believed? The principle of abject submission of mind and will may be altogether bad, but it did not prevent these men from showing forth the noblest spirit of self-sacrifice; and their failure-if it was so in God's sight was innocent. Few men live to see the fruit of their great projects mature; not so with Loyola. He lived until his order had reached the very zenith of its power. On the night of the 30th of July, 1556, a shadow passed over this great man's countenance; he bade all his attendants leave him, and gave himself to his thoughts. The hour of death is a solemn time to all conscious mortals, and not infrequently shrouded with dread and fear,- more so in that time than now; not so with the chief of the "Company of Jesus." He faced death as calmly as he had endured his many sufferings. He must have had a conviction that success had crowned his efforts, and he certainly felt he had been called of God to the work. Just as the gray beams of the morning were breaking, the Fathers gathered around their expiring leader. The feeble beating of his pulse was scarcely perceived, and but for the brilliancy of his eye, before whose calm yet fearful gaze the sovereigns of Europe had quailed, they would have thought he was gone. Perceiving a breath of life, they offered him cordials, but he waved them from him. They were about sending for medical aid, a feeble gesture forbade them. Kneeling by his bedside, they bent over him and caught from the last breathing the name of "Jesus." So great was the reverence felt for him, amounting almost to worship, that it is stated the learned Laynez, who succeeded him as general, was convinced that he was so beloved of God that no request was ever refused him; and the sainted Xavier was accustomed to kneel when he wrote |