t its progress. His
uncle of Bavaria, in letters to his son and nephew, had stamped into
their minds with the enthusiasm of perfect conviction that all happiness
and blessing for governments depended on the restoration and maintenance
of the unity of the Catholic faith. All the evils in times past and
present resulting from religious differences had been held up to the two
youths by the Jesuits in the most glaring colours. The first duty of a
prince, they had inculcated, was to extirpate all false religions, to
give the opponents of the true church no quarter, and to think no
sacrifice too great by which the salvation of human society, brought
almost to perdition by the new doctrines, could be effected.

Never had Jesuits an apter scholar than Ferdinand. After leaving school,
he made a pilgrimage to Loretto to make his vows to the Virgin Mary of
extirpation of heresy, and went to Rome to obtain the blessing of Pope
Clement VIII.

Then, returning to the government of his inheritance, he seized that
terrible two-edged weapon of which the Protestants of Germany had taught
him the use.

"Cujus regio ejus religio;" to the prince the choice of religion, to the
subject conformity with the prince, as if that formula of shallow and
selfish princelings, that insult to the dignity of mankind, were the
grand result of a movement which was to go on centuries after they had
all been forgotten in their tombs. For the time however it was a valid
and mischievous maxim. In Saxony Catholics and Calvinists were
proscribed; in Heidelberg Catholics and Lutherans. Why should either
Calvinists or Lutherans be tolerated in Styria? Why, indeed? No logic
could be more inexorable, and the pupil of the Ingolstadt Jesuits
hesitated not an instant to carry out their teaching with the very
instrument forged for him by the Reformation. Gallows were erected in the
streets of all his cities, but there was no hanging. The sight of them
proved enough to extort obedience to his edict, that every man, woman,
and child not belonging to the ancient church should leave his dominions.
They were driven out in hordes in broad daylight from Gratz and other
cities. Rather reign over a wilderness than over heretics was the device
of the Archduke, in imitation of his great relative, Philip II. of Spain.
In short space of time his duchies were as empty of Protestants as the
Palatinate of Lutherans, or Saxony of Calvinists, or both of Papists.
Even the churchyards we