Equally impotent and unavailing was all the mighty power of France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria to fill the void, left by the discarded Jesuits, in the quiet ministry of schools at home. {326} Cast a retrospect on the former state of Europe. There were, in all considerable towns, colleges of Jesuits, now, alas! struck to ruins, in which gratuitous education was given. They were temples, in which the language of religion hallowed the language of the Muses. They were seminaries where future senators, magistrates and officers, prelates, priests, and cenobites, &c., received their first, that is, the most important part of education. Not even an attempt was made to supply the room of the ejected instructors, excepting, perhaps, for form sake, in a few great cities; and here what a woful substitution! The Jesuits of Clermont college, in Paris, had, for two hundred years, quietly instructed and trained the flower of the French nobility, to religion, patriotism, and letters. Within a few years after the expulsion of the old masters, Clermont college vomited forth, from its precincts into France, Robespierre, and Camille des Moulins, and Tallien, and Noel, and Freron, and Chenier des Bois, and Porion, and De Pin, and other {327} sanguinary demagogues of that execrable period; names of monsters, now consigned to everlasting infamy. The game was, indeed, by this time, carried rather farther than the Pombals, the Choiseuls, the Arandas, and others, who had planned the ruin of the Jesuits, had either designed or foreseen; but the mound was thrown down, and how could the torrent be withstood?