other religion save the Catholic could ever stand such an ordeal of free discussion as this. So far from any check being put on the liberty of the students, they are encouraged to press home every sort of objection, nowever At the end of this time he begins a new stage in his career. He is sent to one or other of the colleges of the Society to teach or to take part in the discipline. I will not dwell on this part of his training, as it is not my object to explain the system of Jesuit education in my present paper. It is enough to say that for some five or six years he is occupied in the ordinary work incident to teaching a class of boys. Whether he takes a higher or a lower form depends of course on his own classical or other attainments. Yet there is this difference between the Jesuit system and that of the ordinary public schools, that in all the lower classes the Jesuit teacher generally moves up with his class. I imagine that the motive of this is to give him a stronger moral influence than can be gained by a master who has the teaching of boys only for a single year. But the two or three higher forms, corresponding to the sixth and upper and lower fifth, have almost always a permanent master. This reminds me of another distinction between the Jesuit and other systems, though it is one that does not universally prevail. The searching and fundamental, however blasphemous and profane, that can be raised to the Catholic doctrine. In every class are to be found men who are not to be put off with an evasion, and a professor who was to attempt to substitute authority for reason would very soon find out his mistake. This perfect "liberty of disputation" is one of the many happy results of the possession of perfect and unfailing truth. When the two objicients have finished their attack, there still remains a quarter of an hour before the circle is over. This time is devoted to objections and difficulties proposed by the students. Every one present has full freedom to ask of the professor any question he pleases on the matter in hand, and may require of him an explanation of any point on which he is not satisfied. It is needless to say that full advantage is taken of this privilege, and the poor professor has often to submit to a very lively and search-time during which the young scholastic ing interrogatory. If any question is proposed that is foolish, or beside the subject, the questioner is soon silenced by the open marks of disapprobation on the part of the rest of the class, and a good objection is sometimes received with quiet applause. Any fallacy or imperfect knowledge on the part of the professor is very speedily brought to light by the raking fire he has to undergo, and while all respect is shown him in the process, he must be well armed if he is to win the confidence of the class by his answers. At the end of his first and second years of philosophy, the young Jesuit has to undergo a fairly severe examination in the matter of the year. If he passes these examinations successfully, he has in all three years of philosophy, at the end of which he has to undergo an examination in the combined matter of the three years, mathematics included. is employed in teaching does not, as a rule, extend beyond six or seven years. Hence permanent masters, in the strict sense of the word, are but rare. Sometimes, if a man has a special talent for teaching, he will return to the schoolroom after he becomes a priest. But it is the general experience of the Order that, with the exception of men who have a remarkable power of training boys, those who are in the full vigor of their youth prove more successful masters than those who have passed through the four hard years of theological study, and are already getting on in life. The time of teaching or disciplinary work generally terminates about the age of thirty, and the scholastic then proceeds to the theological college of his province for three or four years of theology. Here the work is certainly hard, especially during the first two years. On three days in the week, the student who has passed sucessfully through his philosophical course has to attend two lectures in the morning and three in the afternoon. The morning lectures are on moral and dogmatic theology; and those in the afternoon on canon law or history, dogmatic theology, and Hebrew, the last for half an hour only. Besides this, on each of these afternoons there is held a circle or disputation such as I have described above. In theology these disputations are as a rule fiercer and more searching than in the philosophical course. There often arises, not the odium theologicum, but the eager advo- | cacy with which even Jesuits defend their own opinions. The men are older, and bolder too, and take a delight in searching out any supposed weakness in the arguments proposed to them, so that there is no danger of any latent fallacy or inadequate proof escaping the observation of the more keensighted members of the class. In addition to these constant disputations there is held every three months a more solemn assembly of the same kind, at which the whole house is present and the rector presides, in which two of the students are chosen to defend for an hour continuously a number of theses against the attacks of all comers, the professors themselves included. During the third and fourth years of the course of theology, lectures in Scripture are substituted for those on moral theology and Hebrew. At the end of the third year the young Jesuit (if a man of thirty-four or thirty-five can be accounted young) is ordained priest, and during his last year his lectures are fewer, and he has privately to prepare himself for a general examination in theology, on which depends in great measure whether he has the grade of a professed father in the Society or the lower degree of what is called a "spiritual coadjutor." Even when his theology is over, and his final examination passed, the training of a Jesuit is not yet completed. He has still another year of probation before he is launched on the world as a fullblown member of the Society. He has to return during that time to the noviceship, and there to repeat all the experimental tests and trials of the first two years of his religious life. He has to sweep and dust the rooms and corridors, to chop wood, to wash plates and dishes, besides going over again the spiritual work of the novice, the long retreat of thirty days included. He has also during this year to study the institute of the Society, and during Lent to take part in some one of the public missions which are given by the various religious orders in the large towns and centres of population. This final year sometimes follows immediately on his theology, sometimes after an interval of a year or two, during which he is employed in one of the colleges or missions of the Society. When it is over he is generally well on in the thirties, and if he has had the full course, he will have spent some seventeen years in the training for his work. Of this period he will have devoted two years to the noviceship, seven years to study, six or seven years to teaching or the work of discipline, and one year to the second noviceship which he has to undergo after his priesthood. If I were asked to sum up the reasons for the position which the Society of Jesus occupies in the Catholic Church, and the reputation which it enjoys among educated men in every country of the world, I should ascribe it, as far as natural reasons go, mainly to three causes. The first is the extreme care with which its members are in the first instance chosen, and the process of natural selection which eliminates all who are not suited for its work. The second is the length and thoroughness of its training, both moral and intellectual, and the pains that is taken to adapt it to the special talents and capacities of the individual. The third is the spirit of implicit obedience, of blind obedience, in the sense in which I have explained it above, which is absolutely indispensable to every one who is to live and die as one of its members. There are other reasons be side, such as its system of government, the loyalty which animates those who belong to it, and the care with which men are chosen for posts to which they are naturally suited, and removed from positions where they are unable to do their work well. But these are really the result of the three I have mentioned, and would be impossible unless built on them as their basis. I cannot conclude without mentioning two others, though perhaps they are almost out of place in an article in a review. The one is the spirit of supernatural charity which is the very foundation on which the Society is built, and without which it would very soon decay and disappear. The other is one I have already alluded to, the almost universal reproach which attaches to the name of Jesuit, in which we gratefully recognize the fulfilment of the words of Him whose name we bear, and who long since forewarned us: "If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you. you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you" (St. John xv. 18, 19). From Blackwood's Magazine. If A STRANGE EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JAMES BROWNE, K.C.S.I., C. B., R.E., AGENT TO THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL AND CHIEF COMMISSIONER IN BALUCHISTAN. RELATED BY HIMSELF. WITH A SKETCH OF HIS SERVICES BY MAJOR W. BROADFOOT, r.e. The friends of Sir James Browneand he had many-were startled by reading in the Times of June 13, 1896, that his illness had assumed a very critical aspect, and this was followed by a telegram of the same date from Simla announcing his death at Quetta, and expressing the deep sorrow with which the news would be received throughout Baluchistan and the Afghan frontier, where his strong personality had gained the respect and admiration of a wild and rough people. The event was unexpected; no one had heard that he was ill, whilst robust health and moderation in living furnished grounds for believing that his useful life might long be spared. James Browne, son of Robert Browne of Falkirk, who, after an adventurous youth, practised as a doctor in Calcutta, was born in 1839. He was educated abroad and at Addiscombe, and was appointed to the Bengal Engineers in December, 1857. His elder brother Robert had been posted to the Bengal Infantry in the previous year, but died of cholera at Cawnpore, after escaping from the massacre and returning with Havelock's column, to which he acted as guide. When James joined the Military College he spoke English like a foreigner, with a burr which would do credit to a Northumbrian, and indeed to the last there were peculiarities of pronunciation which no doubt resulted from his early education. Without being a great linguist, he had the power of rapidly acquiring a good colloquial knowledge of the language of the country in which he happened to live; and this talent, specially in the case of Pushtu, the dialect which is commonly used by most Afghan tribes, gave him much influence with these people-a fact which should be remembered when reading the account of the strange events hereafter described. In person Browne was rather over than under middle height, powerfully built, hairy as an Ainu, beard and all reddish brown, eyes of blue, of a type not unknown among Afghans; and he was endowed with great powers of mimicry. These, indeed, at a very early stage of his career, induced the natives to think that he was a Mohammedan-a belief never wholly eradicated; for, impressed by the sonorous majesty of the "azán," or summons to prayer, from the minaret of a neighboring mosque, Browne used to rise at dawn, mount on the flat roof of his hut, and imitate with faithful accuracy the | voice of the Mu'azzin. The people listened respectfully, for the mere enunciation of the words signified that the chanter was at heart a Mussulman; people on earth. He has not, so far as we know, recorded the steps whereby illusion was dispelled, but he returned from the great republic a confirmed Conservative. Then in 1867 he was sent to examine the country between Sukkur and Quetta in view of making a railway; and next year Lord Lytton consulted him about impending complications with Afghanistan, and sent him to Quetta to use his personal influence with the Kakars and prevent them from taking part against us in the coming war. He had to travel alone, carrying his life in his hand, and submitting to much privation and exposure, but his mission was successful; and it was whilst thus employed that the first act of what he justly terms a strange episode was and when it became known that he Rough work on the frontier was followed by appointments in the most attractive districts of the PunjabKangra, where Browne built some remarkable bridges, and Dalhousie, where he successfully completed the works for water supply. Two years' leave enabled him to study railways and iron bridges in Europe and America, the results being afterwards utilized in India. The visit to America had special attractions for him: as an engineer, because of the great scale on which works were constructed; and personally, as having strong Radical proclivities, he hoped to find that policy carried to perfection under the most favorable circumstances by incorruptible patriots, the elect of the most enlightened When war broke out in 1878, Browne was appointed political officer to Sir Donald Stewart, and was occasionally employed in reconnaissances and work in front of the army which ordinarily would have involved great danger. Yet he was allowed by the turbulent Ghilzis to move about as he pleased unmolested, and even to occupy, with an escort of about eight troopers, their fort of Khelat-i-Ghilzi; whilst, as regarded supplies of food and forage, he was kept in plenty when others were suffering from scarcity. When the Egyptian war was declared (1882), Browne was selected as commanding engineer to the Indian Contingent, and for his services he was made C.B. After this, till 1887, he was chief engineer of the Sind-Peshin Railway. In 1889 he was appointed quartermaster-general of the army in India, and then, as he mentions, had to sacrifice his beard on the altar of military etiquette. Lastly, in 1892, in obedience to the viceroy's desire, though against his own wish, he succeeded Sir Robert Sandeman as chief commissioner and agent to the governor-general in Baluchistan. The post, needless to say, is a difficult one to fill, and Sandeman was in some respects a difficult man to follow. But Browne brought at least equal resolution and more varied at tainments to the task, with the result | 32d Pioneers. Just outside the Quetta that as soon as some local obstruction was removed his success as a "Warden of the Marches" became certain. During his tenure of office the State passed through a violent crisis, and its ruler, the kahn, after a long reign, had to be removed; yet not a shot was fired by British troops, and not a rupee of British money was spent on special military operations. It is sad to think that his services as a soldier, as an engineer, and in the political department, acknowledged in each capacity as they have been by her Majesty, are now lost to his country at a moment when a competent successor may be difficult to find. W. B. SIR JAMES BROWNE'S NARRATIVE. As far as I can remember, it was in the spring of 1878 that the first event in this strange affair took place. I was then in political employ at Quetta, whither I had been sent under the direct orders of Lord Lytton, with instructions to enter into negotiations with the Kakur tribes-or, as Lord Lytton put it, "to keep the door of the Kakur country open"-with a view to ensuring our being on good terms with them when war should break out with the Ameer Sher Ali Khan, as was then every day anticipated. I had for over two years been wandering over the country on this roving commission. I was very weather-beaten and sunburnt, and the thick brown beard I then wore was bleached and ragged from long exposure for many weeks together without even the shelter of a tent day or night. It is not uncommon for Affghans to have brown hair and blue eyes; and when a pure European has been much exposed and sunburnt, even if he be a fair man, he becomes, as far as coloring is concerned, very like a certain type of Affghan. I then spoke Pushtoo very well, but naturally not as an Affghan would speak his mother tongue the very rough mother tongue of a very rough set of children. I went out walking one afternoon with the late Colonel Fellowes of the Fort we saw a man in Affghan costume, and sitting on the ground, who at once attracted our attention. He wore a white sleeveless Bedford cord waistcoat and a very worn pair of Affghan-made shoes, and a big Persian greyhound was lying by him. Round his neck, and in a curiously stamped red-leather case, was hung a large book, presumably the Koran; but his brown beard and blue eyes, and the indescribable difference of bearing which distinguishes a European from an Asiatic, at once made me say to Colonel Fellowes, "That man looks uncommonly like a European, and he does not sit on his heels as a native would." Colonel Fellowes replied, "Not only does he look like a European, but he is the very image of you-so much so, that if you were dressed like him it would be impossible to distinguish you." I saw at once that the man was exactly like me the same height, figure, and powerful build. I thought, from the chocolate-reddish turban he wore, that he might be a man from Khost or Bunnoo; but as his features were more like those of a man from Central Asia, I asked him in Persian who he was. He got up, and answered in Persian, but with considerable hesitation; so I asked him again in Pushtoo, to which he replied more easily, but much as I would myself have done fluently, but with a foreign accent. He said he was a Kirghiz, and was going to Mecca on pilgrimage, having just come from Kandahar. He then asked me whether I spoke Turkish, and on my telling him I could not do so, he ceased speaking Pushtoo, and only answered my questions very reluctantly, in Turkish, with the obvious object of putting an end to the conversation. He was evidently very ill at ease, and reluctant to be questioned. He did not seem to me to speak Turkish anything like as fluently as he spoke Pushtoo. We then left him, and spoke about him most of the way home. At mess that evening, the extraordinary likeness the man bore to me was freely discussed. Before going to bed, and thinking the man might |
