SIR,—Nothing can come up to the Jesuits. I have seen Jacobins, doctors, and all sorts of people in my day, but such an interview as I have just had was wanting to complete my knowledge of mankind. Other men are merely copies of them. As things are always found best at the fountainhead, I paid a visit to one of the ablest among them, in company with my trusty Jansenist—the same who accompanied me to the Dominicans. Being particularly anxious to learn something of a dispute which they have with the Jansenists about what they call _actual grace_, I said to the worthy father that I would be much obliged to him if he would instruct me on this point—that I did not even know what the term meant, and would thank him to explain it. “With all my heart,” the Jesuit replied; “for I dearly love inquisitive people. Actual grace, according to our definition, ‘is an inspiration of God, whereby he makes us to know his will, and excites within us a desire to perform it.’” “And where,” said I, “lies your difference with the Jansenists on this subject?” “The difference lies here,” he replied; “we hold that God bestows actual grace _on all men in every case of temptation_; for we maintain, that unless a person have, whenever tempted, actual grace to keep him from sinning, his sin, whatever it may be, can never be imputed to him. The Jansenists, on the other hand, affirm that sins, though committed without actual grace, are, nevertheless, imputed; but they are a pack of fools.” I got a glimpse of his meaning; but, to obtain from him a fuller explanation, I observed: “My dear father, it is that phrase _actual grace_ that puzzles me; I am quite a stranger to it, and if you would have the goodness to tell me the same thing over again, without employing that term, you would infinitely oblige me.” “Very good,” returned the father; “that is to say, you want me to substitute the definition in place of the thing defined; that makes no alteration on the sense; I have no objections. We maintain it, then, as an undeniable principle, _that an action cannot be imputed as a sin, unless God bestow on us, before committing it, the knowledge of the evil that is in the action, and an inspiration inciting us to avoid it_. Do you understand me now?” Astonished at such a declaration, according to which, no sins of surprise, nor any of those committed in entire forgetfulness of God, could be imputed, I turned round to my friend the Jansenist, and easily discovered from his looks that he was of a different way of thinking. But as he did not utter a word, I said to the monk, “I would fain wish, my dear father, to think that what you have now said is true, and that you have good proofs for it.” “Proofs, say you!” he instantly exclaimed: “I shall furnish you with these very soon, and the very best sort too; let me alone for that.”