A fresh attempt was made in 1677 to induce the Copts of Egypt to recognise the authority of the Pope. The now familiar device was adopted of impressing the monarch with a show of learning and art, and trusting to sow the Christian seed insidiously in his dominions. In twenty years of assiduous labour the scholar-missionaries added much to the slender geographical and archæological lore of Europe, but their secret religious mission failed. Abyssinia also still resisted their efforts. They converted an Emperor, and he was slain in civil war for endeavouring to force the new creed on his people; they secured the favour of his successor, and a Jesuit at last obtained the real dignity of Patriarch of Abyssinia. A threat of civil war moved the Emperor to restrict them, and, when they were found to be inspiring their converts with seditious sentiments, they were once more expelled and--save for an occasional invasion in disguise--their work was wholly destroyed. It may be added that some of the more heroic of the Jesuits penetrated the Congo, and endeavoured to reach the blacks at Tetuan, Angola, and the Guinea coast. Others followed the negro to America; and the noble and self-sacrificing labours of a Father Peter Claver for forty years (1615-1654) must be put in the scale against their general demoralisation. We turn now to the famous missions of South America, and must endeavour to attain an impartial estimate of their work, especially among the natives of Paraguay. I have previously described the model villages, or "reductions," which form the central interest of the Jesuit missions in America. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the fathers decided that they would not co-operate with the Spaniards of the South American towns. For this there was an admirable motive, and we saw that the spirit which animated the early missionaries in that region was excellent. They went out in couples or singly, unarmed, into the vast forests and along the great rivers in search of converts. The natives at first fled before them. A Spaniard was, to them, a man with superior weapons who sought only to enslave the natives and make wealth by their toil. It was at first for the purpose of removing this natural prejudice that the Jesuits dissevered themselves from the colonists and obtained from the King a declaration that the natives who had been baptized should never be enslaved. Later they obtained for them exemption from military or other service, and from any kind of local taxation. These things at once angered the great body of the Spanish colonists, and attracted the less savage natives to the missions. They therefore next secured permission to colonise independently of the laity, and, in 1610, founded the first reduction. They sent trained natives back into the forests, with axes, knives, mirrors, and other enticing presents, and the fathers themselves boldly penetrated time after time, so that by 1630 they had about 100,000 natives in