the conduct of the Jesuits was Jesuitical. If a pope was unfriendly to the Order, his life was deemed to be in danger from their practices; and whatever truth there may be in the accusations which, by persons of their own church, have been brought against them on that score, it is certain that, when their Order was abolished, their vow of special obedience appeared to have been taken with a mental reservation, saving always the interests of the Society; for as a Society, in defiance of the Pope's authority, the Jesuits continued to exist; and as a Society they were found existing when the papal church, upon a better view of its own policy, thought proper to revive them. Hence we may estimate the efficacy of the enactment concerning them in the late Relief Bill; an enactment which, like the other notable securities in that Bill, is worth-about as much as it was meant to be.

What consequences may be likely to arise from the restoration of the Jesuits might afford a wide theme for speculation. It has, indeed, been asserted by one of the diurnal directors of public opinion, that as a monastic institution, they have no more influence than the gypsies.' Yet gypsies do not exercise more influence over serving men and maids, than Jesuits have exercised over kings and queens, princes and princesses, statesmen, and their wives and daughters, and their mistresses, who have sometimes more ascendancy over them than either the young, whom they manage by their vices; the old, whom they govern by their fears; and the machiavelists of middle life, for whom they have a code of morals which provides a loophole for every expedient crime. This influence they have exercised, not only in the courts and cabinets of the Bourbon, and Austrian, and Braganzan families, but in the court and cabinet of Great Britain. Men may delude themselves and others by haranguing upon the change of times and the march of intellect; but human nature is now what it was at the Revolution, and those persons must be easily deceived who can believe, that there is at this time more stability of principle in our statesmen, more fidelity in our dignitaries of the church and of the law, more integrity in what are called public men, than at that great crisis of our civil and religious liberties. The Jesuits of this day are the faithful successors of those who then by their intrigues endangered both: they are governed by the same institutions; they teach and practise the same casuistry; they take the same vow of special obedience to the head of the Romish church, and to their own general, locum Dei tenenti! They have the same clear, definite, intelligible object in view; zeal and ability have never been wanting among them; and funds will always be forthcoming to any

extent that they may require, for they draw upon a Bank of Faith' which never stops payment.

'I will produce evidence,' says Mr. O'Connell, to show that literature, that science, that everything that is graceful in classic learning, has been increased more by the Jesuits, than by any other class of men. I will show that more heathens and pagans have been converted to Christianity by the Jesuits, than by any others; and that more of their blood, as martyrs, has been shed, than of any other class of Christians.' In the latter part of this estimate, abating something from its amount, a Romanist is bound to agree, if he believe those relations which have obtained, in some instances, the highest sanction of his infallible church, and in others, its unqualified approbation. They rendered the most important services to that church in the time of its greatest danger; and had it not been for the Jesuits, the Romanists would not have been more considerable at this day in Great Britain and miserable Ireland, than they are in Denmark and Sweden. The sincere Papist cannot regard them with too much gratitude, the Protestant with too much distrust. The Protestant, however, who is well versed in their history, will render them justice; and it is giving them no equivocal commendation to say, that when the story of their American missions is divested of all false colouring, and all fable, what remains might entitle the memory of their missionaries in those parts to any honours short of idolatry. There they did nothing but good; but in Europe their efforts have been so perversely directed, that the best men among them have laid down their lives with true devotion, in furtherance of what, in itself and its consequences, was evil.

The reader who desires thoroughly to understand the principles of this famous Society, should peruse the Lettres Provinciales; but let him bear in mind, that in that work, the most finished and most successful of its kind, Pascal has dealt as unfairly with the Jesuits, as if he had been trained in their own school. For the doctrines and practices which he exposes are charged upon them, as if they alone were guilty of so teaching and so acting; whereas the other Regulars held the same opinions, and went on in the same course of action; and it is not upon the Jesuits that the condemnation should fall, nor upon any other order, black, white, or grey; but upon that Romish church, in the service of which they were all equally engaged, which adopted their legends, applauded their crimes, and encouraged them to support its cause, by any means, per fas et nefas.

ART. II. Théâtre de L. B. Picard, Membre de l'Institut (Académie Françoise.) 12 tom. Paris.

PICARD, Member of the Institute, and manager of the

M. Odeon Theatre at Paris, died about a year since, leaving

behind him a numerous progeny of dramas and romances. The twelve volumes, published in his lifetime, and under his immediate direction, contain near half a hundred comedies, comic operas, and farces, yet not the whole of his dramatic pieces. The sin of omission, however, is one of the last that will be charged against him. He might have retrenched still more, with advantage to the reader, at least to the purchaser, -and to his own fame.

Had M. Picard's genius kept pace with his ambition, his plays, or as our neighbours express it, his théâtre,' would be. a precious bequest, not to the drama alone, but to general literature. He began his career as a writer for the stage in 1791, and laboured continuously, if not incessantly, from that period to his death. His leading and avowed object, both in his dramatic pieces and romances, from Médiocre et Rampant, ou le Moyen de parvenir,' to Gabriel Desodry, ou le Gil Blas de la Révolution,' was to exhibit the shifting aspects of French character, manners, and society, in his time. Thus professing, and really studying, to draw his characters, not from his imagination, abstract nature, or books, but from the community around him,-faithful in his delineations, even to personality, and bending to his purpose traits and incidents within his own knowledge or observation, his pen had the most ample and favorable scope. The reign of the Convention and of Terror was a distempered access of maniac inhumanity. But the fluctuations of fortune, character, and manners, which grew out of the revolution,—the whimsical changes, or rather interchanges, of social position, the vices and impertinences of base parvenus,-the comic solecisms and insolent airs of the valet suddenly exalted to the master, the fallen pride or grovelling servility of the master reduced to serve and cringe in his turn, the general prevalence of corruption, intrigue, cupidity, and vanity,-political, social, and domestic,-afforded the widest and most fruitful field that could be opened to the comic dramatist. Had it been traversed with competent ability, the result would be invaluable to the future student of that remarkable period. Strip Aristophanes of the exaggerations of his wit and malice, and his comedies present the most authentic and instructive pictures that have come down to us, of the social economy, follies, and

vices of the Athenians. What historian has given, or could give, pictures so faithful, so striking, so admirable, as are Molière's, of the age of Louis XIV. ;—of its vices, follies, fopperies, affectation,-in every rank, condition, and profession,-civil, literary, and religious, exhibiting, at once, the false taste of the Trissotins', and the false zeal of the Tartuffes'? Lesage has painted to the life, in his comedy of Turcaret, those ancient farmers of the revenue who plundered the nation, and robbed the government, and were, in turn, duped, robbed, and ruined by their valets and mistresses. Beaumarchais alone immediately preceded M. Picard as a dramatic satirist of the manners of the day—with the single exception of the lampoon by Pallisot, called The Philosophers.'

M. Picard, with materials newer and more curious than any possessed by his predecessors, is inferior to them all. He has not a touch of the philosophy or comic force of his great idol and model, Molière. He has neither the talent nor bitterness of Lesage, who is known to have written Turcaret' in revenge. for the refusal of some petty place which he solicited; and he has neither the gaiety of dialogue, nor the felicity of character and situation, nor the happy strokes of malice and observation, which have made the intriguing family of the Count Almaviva familiar to every stage in Europe. His personages, though faithfully drawn, are not brought out. They lie flat upon the canvass. He has few comic inspirations strictly his own. With some humour, he has few movements of wit or eloquence; (for the one as well as the other is within the range of comedy,) and his style, especially in verse, is, we believe, condemned by the best, if not the only proper judges-his countrymen. The comedies of M. Picard seem to us chiefly indebted for their success to the diligence with which he observed and appropriated all that he had read and seen,—to his knowledge of the stage from his long experience as a manager, and originally, we believe, as a comedian. His contrivances are sometimes ingenious, and his scenes farcical; but he wants originality and animal spirits. His principal merit with the reader and posterity will be the design, better conceived than executed, of transmitting the curious, but fugitive traits of the age in which he lived.

Of M. Picard's pieces several either succeeded equivocally, or wholly failed; others had a success, brilliant, but ephemeral; only a few, and those the more light and farcical, still maintain possession of the stage. He seems to have been subject to two opposite errors,-expanding the material of two acts into four or five, and setting out with a superabundance of materials and magnificence

magnificence of design which he is unable to master.

Hence

some of his less pretending comedies are thin and feeble, whilst his more ambitious pieces, those in which he would be at once comic and philosophical, the Satyrist and Annalist of the manners of his time-are incompact and ill digested.

The earliest and one of the best of the pieces which represented the new manners of the French, is 'Médiocre et Rampant ou le Moyen de parvenir.' The title and text are taken from one of the many clever and cutting aphorisms which Beaumarchais has put into the mouth of Figaro,- Médiocre et rampant, et on arrive à tout.' It was M. Picard's first comedy in five acts, and, if not his ablest, is certainly his most carefully finished. The characters are few, the design simple, and the march of the piece direct. The time may be supposed 1794 or 1795, when sansculottism was no longer the fashion, and ministers of state wore stockings, clean linen, and cravats; but before they were yet clothed in ermine robes and the title of excellency. M. Picard introduces, at this period, a minister who has been just called to the helm, like another Cincinnatus, from the plough. His name of 'Ariste' announces, of course, the best of ministers and of men. He does not appear with all the republican simplicity of Roland, who came to take possession of the hotel of the interior on foot, with all his baggage tied up in a pocket handkerchief in his hand; but he is still a plain gentleman, surrounded familiarly by his mother, an old country lady who loves verses and thinks she has taste; his daughter, a young person who has, of course, a lover; and three subalterns in his bureaus. One of these, called Dorival, is the hero of the piece. Destitute alike of capacity and moral worth, he has yet made his way so well by crawling and canting, that his mediocrity passes for talent, his hypocrisy for virtue, his subserviency for zeal,-and he is destined by the new minister for a vacant embassy, and the hand of his daughter. The second, called Laroche, is a well-meaning, wrong-headed, impetuous person, who, with the best intentions to hurt his enemy and serve his friend, acts so as to produce respectively opposite results. The third, named Firmin, is a man who unites in himself the perfection of modesty and merit. Were the scene in England, we should say this character wanted verisimilitude; but M. Picard paints from the life, and no doubt such a phenomenon did or might exist under the Directory and its edifying regime. This last personage has in his train his son, a young officer, and a pretty poet, yet modest in the extreme, like his father, and deeply enamoured of the minister's daughter, whom he had known whilst on a visit with her aunt at Strasburg.'

The