of the society, there were men among them revered and consulted by the most eminent professors and academicians, who disdained to be mere disciples of Voltaire and D'Alembert. The best mathematicians of Italy bowed to the names of Ricati and Lecchi. The most eminent astronomers frequented the observatories of the Jesuits at Rome, Florence, and Milan, directed by the fathers Boscovich, {243} Ximenes, and La Grange. Fathers Meyer and Hall were celebrated through Germany, and the Polish Jesuit Poczobult, the royal astronomer at Wilno, was known wherever astronomy was cultivated. The celebrated M. La Lande, and our own astronomer, Dr. Maskelyne, did not disdain his correspondence. La Lande, in particular, in his writings, mentions these Jesuit philosophers with honour. It is the remark of M. Chateaubriand[92], that, without any prejudice to other literary societies, the Jesuits were truly styled _Gens de Lettres_, because the whole circle of sciences was more or less cultivated among them. It was a rare case to meet with a Jesuit devoid of scientific knowledge. Their reputation, in this point of view, contributed much to the esteem in which the society was formerly held, before the strange concurrence of causes, which has not been hitherto explained, had operated upon the {244} catholic princes to discard them, and, in so doing, to open volcanoes beneath their thrones. The destruction of the Jesuits was, literally, the destruction of that education, in catholic countries, by which order was established on its best and surest foundation, the belief of future rewards and punishments, and the conviction, that man was on earth but a transient being, whose chief object was to work out his salvation and eternal happiness in another world; a conviction, that could only be impressed upon the mind by the truths of revelation. It is no part of my object here to enter into a dissertation upon the comparative excellencies and defects of religious systems; but I maintain, that the distinguishing faculty of comprehending religious subjects, and the disposition to be influenced by them, interwoven in the nature of man, are proofs, that it is intended by God that he should be principally and generally influenced by religious motives; and that morality, with all its beauty, to be valuable, must originate in {245} that source. Let even temperate philosophers say what they will of morality, independent of religion, there is one striking advantage to states arising from the latter, which the former cannot yield. Contentment and resignation are the fruits of religion; insulated morality generates discontent, and has a perpetual tendency to doubt the justice of the inequality of conditions in this life; very naturally too, if the short race of it be all to which our hopes and fears can extend. There is also a gradation in morality; there is a confined and a _refined_ morality. _Suum cuique tribuitur_ is a maxim of confined morality; the _refined_ moralist