strict domestic discipline, to
the several studies of poetry, rhetoric, logic, physics, metaphysics,
natural history, and mathematics. Seven years of preparation qualified
these proficients to commence schoolmasters, during five or six succeeding
years, in the several colleges of their respective provinces. It was
generally at this {193} period of their religious career, that several
young Jesuits, instead of being employed to teach schools, were detached
from the several European provinces, to the Asiatic colleges of Goa, or
Macao, or to the American colleges of Mexico, Buenos Ayres, or Cordova in
Tucumaw, where, in expectation of priesthood, they made a close study of
the barbarous languages, which they were afterwards to speak in their
missions. These were usually selected from the number of those, who had
spontaneously solicited such a destination; and the number of these pious
volunteers being always considerable, the succession of missionaries in the
society of Jesuits could never fail. But it is time to say something of
their schools.

The education of youth in schools is one of the prominent features of the
Jesuits' institute. Their founder saw, that the disorders of the world,
which he wished to correct, spring chiefly from neglect of education. He
perceived, that the fruits of the other spiritual functions of {194} his
society would be only temporary, unless he could perpetuate them through
every rising generation, as it came forward in succession. Every professed
Jesuit was bound by a special vow, to attend to the instruction of youth;
and this duty was the peculiar function, the first important mission, of
the younger members, who were preparing themselves for profession. Even the
two years of noviciate mainly contributed to the same purpose. They were
not lost to the sciences, since novices were carefully taught the science
upon which they all depend. The religious exercises of that first period
tended to give them that steadiness of character and virtue, without which
no good is achieved in schools. They then acquired a fondness for
retirement, a love of regularity, a habit of labour, a disgust of
dissipation, a custom of serious reflection, docility to advice, a
sentiment of honour and self-respect, with a fixed love of virtue; every
thing requisite to support and advance the cultivation of letters and of
science in future years. It has been already observed, {195} that the
serious studies, which filled fi