The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by Tursellius and Orlandino, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with the details the greater was his reputation. When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its institution, by receiving father Bouhours into its body. He had another great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost inconceivable illusion, governed all catholic princes. Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than to write what was true. Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric. I have seen in the Jesuit's college, rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses; and above, the eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard descending to his waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their hands, and bending down to receive father Ignatius and father Xavier. Had any one publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend father La Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the sacrilegious scoffer honoured with a lettre-de-cachet. It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander, inasmuch as they both went to India,-so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into France, from {France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy : he then proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans, who doubtless understand his language as well as he understands theirs, and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora, which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the islanders, and builds a church. From thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a pillar, on which St. Thomas had engraven, that one day St. Xavier should come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptises them ;but his greatest delight was, to marry the Indians to their mistresses. From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and returns two He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls. But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman, spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, In short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes, joined together, would reach several times round the globe. Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in 1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in others, he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce. on One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself understood by twenty persons of different nations. Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The simple answer is, that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid a long time in the country, by favour of the treaties between the kings of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four hundred thousaud men. This is the most noted prodigy that the missionaries have worked in Japan. But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead. "Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of fatigue.” But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after, and brought it him between The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that "St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues;" but he acknowledges that "he had it not always." "He had it," says he, " several occasions; for, without, having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the Chinese every morning at Aman-its claws. guchi," which is the capital of a province in Japan." { The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived. Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis XIV. in the age of the Provincial Letters, of Racine's tragedies, of Bayle's Dictionary, and of so many other learned works. FRANKS-FRANCE-FRENCH. ITALY has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended establishment of Æneas; which should have left some traces of the language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemans, or Germans, who have by turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name. It would appear to be a sort of mira- The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vancle that a man of sense, like Bouhours, dals, Visigoths, and Saracens have, one should have committed such a mass of after the other, been masters of Spain, extravagance to the press, if we did not yet the name of Spain exists. Germany know to what excesses men can be car-has also always preserved its own name; ried by the corporate spirit in general, it has merely joined that of Allemagne to and the monachal spirit in particularit, which appellation it did not receive We have more than two hundred volumes from any conqueror. entirely in this taste, compiled by monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most deplorable that, in nineteen twentieths of Europe, there is no longer that profound respect and just veneration for the monks, which is still felt for them in some of the villages of Arragon and Calabria. The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote, the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal claim on our admiration and reverence. After speaking of Francis Xavier, it would be useless to discuss the history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly, consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi. Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit D'Aubenton, confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is smallbeer after brandy. In the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single resuscitation. The Gauls are almost the only people of the west who have lost their name. This name was originally Walch or Welch; the Romans always substituted a G. for the W, which is barbarous of "Weich" they made Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon. Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such a small number and little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by these words: "The Franks from whom we descend..." Ha! my friend, who has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clodowick, whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men, badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions of Welch or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a Frank. When the pirates of the Baltic sea came, to the number of seven or eight FRANKS FRANCE-FRENCH. thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and the close of the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic laws, they have been assembled into cities, consigned to public monuments, until all that characterises a civilised nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise. It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans. Am-and have a regular police, archives, and mianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says,-" According to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then desert. As to Æneas, he might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the Mediterranean, but Francus the son of Hector had too far to travel to go towards Dusseldorp, Worms, Solm, Errenbeistein, &c. Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia, and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on which alleged facts the monk Otfrid compliments the Emperor Louis the German. The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the Baltic sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion. It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts, caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts, in the amphitheatre of Treves, for his amusement. Two of their pretended kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine are in ecstacies. The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their marshes, and the French had not any written usages until { Salic law has been given to us in Latin; What is more ridiculous still, this as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine had learnt the Latin language. It is supposed to have been first digested the illustrious nation of the Franks was by Clovis, and it ran thus: -Whilst still considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law. They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast, Vindogast, &c. taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of places for those of men: Notre magot prit pour ce coup These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms. Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is { very clear that the Franks were not great legislators. Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme. word Frank? posed of Franks? It does not appear Clovis was the son of Childeric and being only a vague expression, by which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really how much they receive or how much they pay. Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of Arnold, Bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that Charle Dost thou really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Heruliansmagne regarded the Franks as strangers in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the standard of destruction? to him, is the fourth article of one of his capitularies on his farms. If the Franks, said he, commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according to their laws. The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his letter to the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves, expresses himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not em As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Bur-peror until after he had been crowned by gundians another. The rest submitted the pope. all that the emperor posto Clovis. The Franks divided the land sessed he held from us. And as Zaof the vanquished, and the Welch culti-charius gave the Greek empire to the vated it. Germans, we can give that of the Germans However, France having been divided The word Frank originally signified a to the Greeks." free possessor, whilst the others were slaves. Hence come the words fran-into eastern and western, and the eastern chise, and to enfranchise,-"I make you being Austrasia, this name of France a Frank," "I render you a free man.' prevailed so far, that even in the time of Hence francalenus, holding freely; frank the Saxon emperors, the court of Conaleu, frank dad, frank chamen,, and so stantinople always called them pretended many other terms half Latin and half Frank emperors, as may be seen in the barbarian, which have so long composed letters of Bishop Luitpraud, sent from the miserable patois spoken in France. Rome to Constantinople. Of the French Nation. Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king of the Franks, which did not happen until a When the Franks established themlong time after, but which reminds us of selves in the country of the first Welches, the origin of the monarchy. We still say which the Romans called Gallia, the twenty francs, twenty livres, which sig-nation was composed of ancient Celts or nifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar. Roman of the weight or value of the money, families who were established there, |