heir earnest zeal in amassing
riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power
(the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared,
and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the
new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their
religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded
that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the
cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and
the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.
Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society
of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest
blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great
learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to
promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been
employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great
design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the
purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest
hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized. But
though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to
mankind.

"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds
That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,
Still will some rotten part betray the structure
That is not bas'd on simple honesty."

{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these
twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians
their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that
Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from
France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also
to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the
wicked Londoners.

[652] _The dying._--The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks
of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of
humanity. The circumstances here mentioned are literally true. It is no
uncommon scene for the English ships to be surrounded with the corpses
which come floating down this hallowed stream.

[653]

_Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd
A dog their sire.--_

The tradition of this country boasted this infamous and impossible
original. While other nations pret