times he accomplishes his sacrifice there, and sometimes he escapes the danger."

Father Jacques Cachod thus writes to Father Tarillon:-"I am now superior to all the fears excited by contagious distempers; and, if it please God, I shall not die of this disease, after the risks which I have run. I am just leaving the prison, where I have administered the sacrament to eighty-two persons.

In the daytime I felt not the least symptom of fear. It was only at night, during the short slumbers which were allowed me, that my mind was harassed with alarming ideas. The greatest danger that I incurred, or perhaps ever shall go through in my life, was in the hold of a man-of-war of eighty-two guns. The slaves, in concert with their overseers, had made me go down to them in the evening, to confess them all night and to say mass very early in the morning. We were shut up, according to custom, under a double lock. Of fifty-two slaves whom I confessed, twelve were sick, and three died before my departure; judge, then, what an atmosphere I must have breathed in that close place without the smallest aperture! God, who, in his goodness, saved me on this occasion, will preserve me on many others.' 112

A man who voluntarily shuts himself up in a prison in time of pestilence, who candidly acknowledges his terrors, and nevertheless overcomes them from a motive of charity,-who afterward obtains access by a bribe, as if to enjoy illicit pleasures, to the hold of a man-of-war, in order to attend the infected slaves,-such a man, it must be allowed, obeys not any natural impulse; here is something more than humanity. This the missionaries admit, and they assume not the credit of these sublime actions. "It is God," they frequently repeat, "who gives us this strength; none of the merit belongs to us."

A young missionary not yet inured to dangers like those veterans, bending under their hardships and evangelical laurels, is astonished at having escaped the first peril; he fears that it has happened through his fault, and seems mortified at the circumAfter having given his superior an account of the pestilence, during which he was often obliged to lay his ear close to the lips of the infected, that he might catch their expiring words,

stance.

1 Lettr. édif., tome i. p. 288.

2 Ibid., tome i. p. 24.

he adds:-" "I was not worthy that God should be pleased to accept the sacrifice of my life which I offered him. I therefore request your prayers that the Almighty may forget my sins and graciously permit me to die for his sake."

Father Bouchet writes from India in the following terms:"Our mission is more flourishing than ever; we have this year had four great persecutions." It was this same Father Bouchet who sent to Europe the tables of the Bramins which Bailly made use of in his History of Astronomy. The English Company of Calcutta has not yet made public any monuments of Indian science which had not been explored or mentioned by our missionaries; and yet the enlightened English, now the sovereigns of several extensive kingdoms, having at their disposal all the resources of art and power, must certainly possess superior means of success to those enjoyed by a poor, solitary, wandering, and persecuted Jesuit. "If we were to appear ever so little openly in public," says Royer, "we should easily be discovered by our looks and complexion. In order, therefore, not to raise a still more violent persecution against religion, we are under the neces sity of keeping ourselves concealed as much as possible. I pass whole days either confined in a boat, which I never quit but at night, to visit the villages contiguous to the rivers, or concealed in some sequestered habitation." The boat of this good religious was his only observatory; but he who possesses charity is truly rich and ingenious.

CHAPTER III.

MISSIONS OF CHINA.

Two monks of the order of St. Francis, the one a Pole, the other a Frenchman by birth, were the first Europeans who penetrated into China, about the middle of the twelfth century. It was afterward visited at two different times by Marco Paolo, a

1 Lettr. édif., tome i. p. 8.

Venetian, and his kinsmen Nicholas and Matthew Paolo. The Portuguese, having discovered the passage by sea to India, formed a settlement at Macao; and Father Ricci, a Jesuit, resolved to penetrate into the vast empire of Cathay, concerning which so many extraordinary things were related. He first applied himself to the study of the Chinese language, one of the most difficult in the world. His ardor vanquished every obstacle, and, after many dangers and repeated refusals, he, in 1682,1 obtained permission of the Chinese magistrates to reside at Chouachen.

Ricci, who was a pupil of Clavius, and was himself well versed in the mathematics, by means of this science gained patrons among the mandarins. He relinquished the dress of the bonzes, and assumed the habit of the learned class. He gave lessons in geometry, in which he contrived to inculcate the more valuable precepts of Christian morality. He resided successively at Chouachen, Nemcham, Pekin, and Nankin, sometimes meeting with ill-treatment, at others being received with joy; encountering adversity with invincible fortitude, and still cherishing the hope of succeeding in introducing the knowledge of Christianity. At length the emperor himself, charmed with the virtues and the talents of the missionary, permitted him to reside in the capital, and granted several privileges to him, and also to the partners of his toils. The Jesuits conducted themselves with the utmost discretion, and displayed a profound knowledge of the human heart. They respected the customs of the Chinese, and conformed to them in every point that was not at variance with the laws of the gospel. Embarrassments attended them on every side. "Jealousy," says Voltaire, "soon destroyed the fruit of their prudence; and that spirit of restlessness and contention, attached in Europe to knowledge and talents, frustrated the grandest designs."

Ricci was equal to every exigency. He answered the accusations of his enemies in Europe; he superintended the infant congregations in China; he gave lessons in mathematics; he wrote controversial books in the Chinese language against the literati who attacked him; he cultivated the friendship of the emperor,

I This date, which we find in three different editions of the work, is incorrect. It should be 1582. T. 2 Essai sur les Maurs, ch. cxcv.

and ingratiated himself with the court, where his polished demeanor gained him the favor of the great. All these harassing occupations shortened his days. He terminated at Pekin a life of fifty-seven years, half of which had been spent in the labors of the apostleship.

After Ricci's death his mission was interrupted by the revolutions which happened in China; but when Cun-chi, the Tartar emperor, ascended the throne, he appointed Father Adam Schall president of the board of mathematics. Cun-chi died, and, during the minority of his son Cang-hi, the Christian religion experienced new persecutions.

When the emperor came of age, the calendar being in great confusion, it was found necessary to recall the missionaries. The young prince conceived a partiality for Verbiest, the successor of Schall. He directed that the doctrines of Christianity should be examined by the tribunal of the states of the empire, and made remarks with his own hand on the memoir of the Jesuits. The judges, after mature investigation, declared that the Christian religion was good, and that it contained nothing inimical to purity of morals and the prosperity of nations.

It was worthy of the disciples of Confucius to pronounce such a sentence in favor of the precepts of Christ. Shortly after this decree, Father Verbiest summoned from Paris those learned Jesuits who carried the glory of the French name to the very centre of Asia.

The Jesuit who was bound for China provided himself with telescope and compasses. He appeared at the court of Pekin with all the urbanity of the court of Louis XIV. and surrounded by the retinue of the arts and sciences. Unrolling maps, turning globes, and tracing spheres, he taught the astonished mandarins both the real course of the stars and the true name of Him who guides them in their orbits. He combated errors in physics only with a view to correct those of morality; he replaced in the heart, as its proper seat, that simplicity which he banished from the understanding, exciting at once by his manners and his attainments a profound veneration for his God and a high esteem for his native land.

It was a proud sight for France to behold her humble religious regulating in China the annals of a great empire. Questions

were transmitted from Pekin to Paris: chronology, astronomy, natural history, were so many subjects for curious and learned discussion. Chinese books were translated into French, and French into Chinese. Father Parennin, in his letter addressed to Fontenelle, thus wrote to the Academy of Sciences :-" You will perhaps be surprised that I should send you from this distant part of the globe a treatise on anatomy, a course of medicine, and questions on natural philosophy, written in a language with which you are doubtless unacquainted; but your surprise will cease when you find that it is your own works which I have transmitted to you in a Tartar dress." The reader should peruse this letter from beginning to end: it breathes that tone of politeness and that style of urbanity almost entirely forgotten at the present day. Voltaire characterizes the writer as a man celebrated for his attainments and discretion, and who spoke the Chinese and Tartar languages very fluently; and continues, "He is more particularly known among us by his luminous and instructive answers to the difficulties started by one of our most eminent philosophers respecting the sciences of China."2

In 1711, the emperor of China gave the Jesuits three inscriptions, composed by himself, for a church which they were erecting at Pekin. That for the front was :-To the true principle of all things. For one of the two columns of the portico was designed the following:-He is infinitely good and infinitely just; he enlightens, he supports, he directs all things, with supreme authority and with sovereign justice. The other column displayed these words:-He had no beginning; he will have no end: he produced all things from the commencement of time; he it is who governs them and is their real Lord. Whoever takes any interest in the glory of his country cannot, without deep emotion, behold poor French missionaries imparting such ideas of the Supreme Being to the ruler of many millions. What a truly noble application of religion!

The common people, the mandarins, the men of letters, in crowds embraced the new doctrine; the ceremonies of the church, in particular, found the most favorable reception.

1 Lettr, édif., tome xix. p. 257.

2 Age of Louis XIV., vol. ii. ch. 39.