of nobles, of burgesses, of merchants, of artisans, of servants, all occupied in good and meritorious works.”[205] With the exception of this last clause, this description is perfectly true. A Jesuit was at the head of every congregation. At appointed times the members met together to repeat the office of the Virgin, and to listen to whatever exhortation or advice the Jesuit might think proper to give. His influence was greater or less, according to the quality of persons composing the congregation. Over the poor and the ignorant he had an almost absolute control, and whatever he enjoined, they unscrupulously obeyed. If he exercised no such absolute control over members of the higher classes, he still possessed a great influence over them, and had free access to their families, where he more leisurely practised those arts by which the Jesuit very seldom fails to attain his ends. One is amazed when he considers what immense power these congregations must have given the General of the society. His orders, his curses or commendations of a book, of a man, or of a measure, were repeated in the same tone throughout all the world by tens of thousands, who considered it a sin to disbelieve his word, or to disobey his commands. No wonder, then, that the Court of Rome itself was obliged to submit to the ascendancy of the Jesuits, and that the suppression of the order was with difficulty effected by the united efforts of almost all the sovereigns of Europe. After the order was suppressed, and during the political turmoil and the unsettled state of Europe, the congregations, although kept up secretly by some disguised Liguorist or Jesuit, were thinly attended, and had lost all their importance. But after the restoration of the Pope and of the Bourbons, missionaries of all kinds overran the whole of Italy, Spain, and part of France, and, among other religious exploits, re-established the congregations of the Virgin. Congregations both of men and women are now very numerous, although they perhaps want that unity of purpose and of direction, which in former times rendered them so dangerously powerful. Their denominations are numberless; congregations of the Rosary, congregations of the Assumption of the Virgin, congregations of the Blood of Jesus (del Sangue di Gesù). In those places where there are no Jesuits, they are directed by proxy, some other religious community, as the Liguorist, the Lazarist, the Passionist, or such like idle and corrupted crew, being appointed to that duty. In church affairs, the members of these congregations have, so to speak, privileges above the rest of the citizens. They go foremost in the processions and other exhibitions; they wear a distinctive badge; they are entitled to a greater number of days of indulgence, and so on. Besides these things, which satisfy the devotional feeling, and flatter the vanity, especially that of the common people in small towns, each individual member may