The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

NEW SCHOOL-BOOKS. 505penalty of forfeiting the favour of their sovereign. As aconsequence, the Revolution of 1830 broke out, and fellupon the Jesuits like a thunderbolt. They saw their error,and resolved henceforward not to lean upon governments,but to operate directly upon the people, through the instrumentalityof the press, the pulpit, and the confessional.The interval since 1830 has been occupied in this way by thepriesthood. But it does not appear that their success hasbeen great ;for it is a fact too obvious to be denied, that infidelity,under its various forms of socialism, communism, andatheism, is more widely spread among the French people atthis moment than it was in 1830. But every new disasterthat befalls their system, instead of discouraging them, onlystimulates to greater activity. And since 1848 their zealhas been prodigious : they are in course of filling the schoolswith teachers thoroughly devoted to the priests ; new schoolbookshave been compiled ; and the main object kept in viewin their compilation is the initiation of the youth into theabsurdities of Popery. The following may be taken as asample of these books :—Of the tracts of the " blessed Alphonsede Liguori," which the priests are in the habit ofputting into the hands of their scholars and catechumens,there is one in great ardour of sanctity in the seminaries,convents of young females, and in all the institutions underthe influence of the Romish clergy, entitled Paraphrase deSalve Regina.* It was designed to recommend the worshipof the Virgin ;and amongst other methods to gain this end,it condescended to tell the following story :— " There lived atVenice [when, it is not said] a celebrated lawyer, who hadenriched himself by fraud, and all sorts of illicitHis soul was in a most deplorable state, and thethatpractices.only thingsaved him from the doom he so richly merited was hisreverence forcertain prayer.the Virgin, to whom he every day repeated aThis appeared from the following melo-dra-* See " London Tatriot," February 28, 1850. The little book is printedat Lyons, by the famous Roman Catholic publisher Rusand.