would be difficult to describe it without being suspected of exaggeration. That Mr. Doughty met with grand examples of hospitality and of occasional generosity may be allowed; but with this exception there is hardly a redeeming feature in the dark picture. The land is full of violence and the old prophecy meets a present fulfilment. Ishmael is a wild man, his hand against every man. Where order prevails, owing to the energy of some able chieftain, the result is purely personal and ceases on a change of rulers. Human life, female honour, regard for truth, respect for property, are all held in contempt. Towards the close of his sojourn at Aneyza Mr. Doughty records, 'I passed this one good day in Arabia, and all the rest were evil because of the people's fanaticism.' With the name of God upon his tongue the Arab violates every precept of the moral law, so that our author says of him that he sits steeped in a cloaca to the lips whilst his brows are in the skies. It is the deliberate verdict of Mr. Doughty after his long acquaintance with every phase of Arab life, and despite the unprejudiced goodwill with which he regards those who were so long his hosts, that'Islam never can be better;' and the conscientious student of Arabia Deserta will arrive at the conclusion sorrowfully expressed by native lips, 'All is shame in Islam.'

ART. IX.-ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.

Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. COLERIDGE, of the Society of Jesus. (London, 1886.)

By HENRY JAMES
New edition, 2 vols.

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER was canonized in 1622, and he was not only a Roman Catholic but a Jesuit. Yet the Christian world accepts his canonization, and bigotry cannot question or atheism deny his charity, his self-denial, his courage, his humility, his purity of motive, his untiring zeal for souls. He was one of those men to whom doing good was a passion. Winged by pity, armed by faith, and fired by love, he traversed seas and explored lands that were only known to Europe by report. His life was proved faithful by peril. He braved dangers and endured privations which we might well

consider superhuman, and literally compassed sea and land to win one single human being to Christianity. He was not insensible to hardship, nor unaffected by fear of death, but no man, probably, since St. Paul ever faced both in so triumphant a spirit. From the moment when he beheld in a vision all the labours of his missionary career, and cried aloud 'More, O Lord, more!' till he breathed his last upon the desolate shores of the island of San Chan, his efforts never relaxed. Among the Indians on the Comorin coast, among the Malays in the Malay Archipelago, among the highly cultured Japanese, he carried the Cross of Christ. Travelling barefoot, clad in a patched, worn cassock, bearing on his shoulders a satchel which contained the Eucharistic vessels, his reliquary, and a few religious books, living on alms, sleeping on the bare soil -often for only four hours out of the twenty-four-in daily peril from shipwrecks, pirates, cannibals, idolaters, or his own countrymen, he never flinched or turned back from the plough. No employment was too mean for his hands, no drudgery too monotonous for his mind, no enterprise too exalted for his enthusiasm, no danger too appalling for his courage, no human being too degraded for his love. If any think that this is the language of exaggerated panegyric let them read the records of his life, and they will agree that the praise is rather inadequate than excessive.

Lives of Xavier were written by Orazio Torsellino (1596), by Massei, and by Joam de Lucena, whose Portuguese Historia da Vida do Padre F. de Xavier (Lisbon, 1600) was translated into Italian by Mansoni in 1613. Other details of his life may be gleaned from such books as Emanuel Acosta's history of the Jesuits in the East down to the year 1568, which was translated in 1571 into Latin by G. P. Maffei, whose own Indian history (Florence, 1588) is a valuable authority; the Commentarium de Origine et Progressu Societatis Jesu of Simon Rodriguez; Nicolaus Orlandini's history of the Society; Ribadeneira's Lives of Loyola, Laynez, and Salmeron; Daniello Bartoli's Asia, and the Peregrinaçam of F. M. Pinto. In 1682 Dominique Bouhours wrote his Vie de S. François Xavier, and Dryden's translation of this work was published by Tonson in London, in 1688. To come down to more recent times, a translation of the Lives of Xavier by Bartoli and Massei was published in 1858, with a preface by Dr. Faber, and in 1862 appeared Venn's Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier. None of these biographies, however, make much use of Xavier's letters. Some of these letters were contained in the Epistolæ Indica (Louvain, 1566);

VOL. XXVIII.-NO. LV.

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but the first important collection was published in 1575, when forty-one of the letters were printed by order of Joannes Suarez, and translated into Latin from the original Spanish or Portuguese by Torsellino in 1600. Sixteen additional letters were given to the world by Possino or Poussines in 1661. But the first complete collection was made by Rocco Menchacha, whose Bologna edition bears the date of 1795. These letters were translated into French by Leon Pagès, and published with some valuable notes and introductory matter at Paris in 1855.

The first biography which makes full use of all the letters of Xavier is the one before us, by Father Coleridge. He has incorporated a complete English version with the text of his Life, and this fact alone gives him a superiority over all his predecessors. His first edition was published in 1881, but the interest of the subject is so great that we do not apologize for calling attention to a book which contains the only complete and adequate biography of a Christian hero, before whose saintly character all religious differences are necessarily forgotten.

One preliminary observation must be made before we present our readers with a sketch of the life and character of Francis Xavier. No mention will be made of Xavier's claims to miraculous powers, although they naturally occupy a large space in the work of Father Coleridge. In 1689 the Abbé de T. compiled a Histoire de l'Eglise de Japon from the writings of Jesuit Fathers like Du Jaric and Solier. He is himself a devout believer in the miracles which helped to build up the Japanese Church, and had, as he tells us in his preface, selected the most striking which Father Solier related; but 'des gens fort sages m'ont conseillé de les ôter pour condescendre à la foiblesse de quelques délicats du siècle, à qui ces récits merveilleux ne plaisent pas, et qui se dégoûteroient d'un livre s'ils y trouvoient un miracle en leur chemin.' In the nineteenth century we may be permitted to follow the example of the Abbé.

The life of Francis Xavier falls into three main divisions(1) his early life from 1506 to 1530; (2) his life in Europe from his first acquaintance with Loyola to 1541, when he left Lisbon for India; (3) his missionary career from 1541 to 1552. And this third division may be further subdivided according to the countries in which he preached—in India from 1542 to 1545, in the Malay Archipelago from 1545 to 1547, in Japan from 1549 to 1551, concluding with his expedition to China and his death in 1552.

Francis Xavier was born in April 1506 at the Castle of Xavier, which stands on the river Aragon, about twenty miles from Pampeluna. His father was a man of the robe and of the pen, the trusted councillor of John III., King of Navarre; his mother was a rich heiress of noble birth. Francis was their youngest child. Little or nothing is known of his brothers; but his sister, who was considerably older than himself, took the veil as a poor Clare, and as Abbess of Gandia was renowned for the sanctity of her life.

Among the southern slopes of the Pyrenees Xavier laid the foundations of that strength and endurance which enabled him to support the hardships of his subsequent career. That he was proficient in manly sports, and proud of his skill and activity, we learn from the severe measures which he afterwards took to mortify his athletic pride. But from the first he seems to have been marked out for a learned profession. In 1523, at the age of 17, he went to the University of Paris, then the most famous in Europe and crowded with students from every part of the civilized world. He lodged in the College of St. Barbara, where his room companion was Peter Favre, by birth a Savoyard shepherd, but destined to become one of the first members of the Society of Jesus. Xavier, who obtained his degree of Master of Arts in 1530, aspired to become a Doctor of Theology. For this degree it was necessary that he should, among other studies, lecture upon Aristotle, and he delivered his courses at the Collège de Dormans or Beauvais.

Xavier became a brilliant teacher. With characteristic ardour he threw his whole heart into the work. Tall, faircomplexioned, with brown hair and bright blue eyes, and well-knit figure, his appearance was remarkably attractive. To a winning address and singular charm of manner he added a powerful intellect and an enthusiasm for study. In those days the rewards of learning were great and rapid. Xavier with his abilities and connexions was certain to become a prelate of commanding influence, the trusted adviser of his sovereign, or a world-famous teacher. He had the ball at his feet, and enjoyed his success. But a complete change in his aspirations was at hand.

In 1528 a middle-sized, middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, and halting in his gait, meanly clad and subsisting upon alms, knowing scarcely the rudiments of the learned languages, entered the University of Paris as a student. No one could look at his deep-set, glowing eyes, strong, massive brow, and powerful face without seeing at a glance that the

stranger was a born ruler of men. The man was Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. Seven years had passed away since Ludolph of Saxony's Life of Jesus Christ and the Lives of the Saints had turned towards God the thoughts of this distinguished Spanish knight while he lay on his sick-bed at Pampeluna. He had spent that interval in vigorous self-discipline by mortifications of the flesh and heroic acts of charity at Barcelona, Alcala, and Salamanca. Persecution and contempt had pursued him, but he had found the reward that he sought. Studying deeply the spiritual growth of man, he had drawn up the Spiritual Exercises, that initiatory discipline which he exacted from his followers, that severe course of devotional training which he had framed after his own conflict with evil in the caves of Manresa. was a rare instinct which prompted him to the step that he had now taken. Paris, not Salamanca, became the cradle of the Jesuit Order; and thus it was that the Society was not Spanish and national, but Catholic and universal.

It

From the first, Loyola seems to have marked Xavier for his own. But his task was difficult, for the distinguished lecturer rejected the advances of the unlettered student. The discipline of the University of Paris was very slight, and, although no breath of suspicion ever tarnished the moral purity of Xavier's life, the absence of control was intellectually dangerous. The recent endowment of the Royal College, with its large staff of professors and free lectures, had created a breach in the University. The older teachers, who depended for their livelihood upon the fees of the students, held aloof from the new comers. These last assumed the attitude of reformers, and gathered round them numbers of the younger and more ardent spirits. From advocating changes in University discipline they passed to teaching new forms of philosophy, and thence drifted into unorthodox opinions on the subject of religion. To this younger school, in one or other of its phases, Xavier was attracted. In the first of his extant letters he tells his brother how much he at this time inclined towards the insidious friendship of the new teachers. Nor was this all. On the one side the young, high-spirited Xavier was preoccupied by the applause which he won as a lecturer; on the other he shrank into reserve when thrown into the society of one whose presence seemed to rebuke his own ambitions.

But little by little he succumbed to the patience and skill of the attack. All Xavier's hopes were at this moment Written from Paris to his brother in March 1535. See vol. i. p. 33.