younger of the two knights remained at the court of Shah Abbas, while the elder was sent as envoy to the Christian princes of Europe, whose alliance the Shah desired to obtain, with a view to combined operations against the Turks. Nothing of importance resulted from these endeavours, and the English traders in the East, after some operations which will be related further on, failed to obtain the advantages they had expected. Shah Abbas died at Kaswin in 1628, and a strange story is told of the methods adopted to carry out his orders for concealing the fact of his death until the throne was secured to his grandson. His body

it bears too much resemblance to what is recorded of the Turkish Sultan Mohammed I. to find acceptance with the critical. Ispahan was by Abbas made the metropolis of Persia, and he caused some mountains at the distance of thirty leagues to be cut through, that the water-supply of the Imperial city might be augmented. Public works of the highest value were executed; the Armenian Christians, who were known for their industrious habits, were encouraged to settle in the kingdom; and the prosperity of Persia followed the independence from foreign rule which was secured by Abbas the Great.

The

in foreign lands belonged to the Society of the Jesuits, who spread themselves far and wide in the interests of their Order, and of the religious views which they professed. Francis Xavier, the friend and associate of Loyola, was the first to penetrate into the East, and to bring all the forces of Jesuitism to bear on populations distinct from those of Europe. In 1542 he founded a college at Goa, a Portuguese settlement on the coast of Malabar, which had been commenced, thirty-three years before, by Alfonso Albuquerque. primary efforts of Xavier in this remote spot were directed towards reforming the manners of the European colonists, which had become extremely dissolute; after which, he was the better enabled to operate with effect upon the native mind. Many of the pearl-fishers along the coast, from Cape Comorin to a point opposite the island of Manaar, accepted his teaching, and it is said that in Travancore he baptised ten thousand Indians in the space of one month. Such statements are always to be received with grave distrust; yet we need not on that account question the general fact that Xavier laboured in the East with unremitting zeal, and that the number of his proselytes was considerable. Something of the fervour of early Christian times had undoubtedly been revived by the Society of Jesus, and the results were not altogether out of proportion to the means employed.

Having obtained the assistance of three other Jesuit missionaries, Xavier went to Malacca, to the Banda Islands, and to the archipelago of the Moluccas. Here he found himself in the midst of a Malay population-a race not usually accessible to religious influences; yet he succeeded in a remarkable degree. On his return voyage to Goa, in 1548, he converted the sovereign prince of Kandy, in Ceylon, together with several of his subjects, and then organised an expedition to Japan, the conversion of which country had been suggested to him by a native whom he met at Malacca, and who adopted the Christian faith on the persuasions of his Spanish friend. Xavier prepared himself for this enterprise by learning on the voyage as much Japanese as would enable him to give expression to a few elementary religious ideas; and, thus furnished, he entered Japan in May, 1549. The country was scarcely known to Europeans, though it had been visited by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, and by Mendez Pinto about 1542: of its previous history, scarcely anything can be related. The empire is said to date from the seventh century B.C.; but its doings for many ages were unrevealed to the West. When

Xavier entered the land, the principal religions were the Buddhistical and the Confucian, if the latter can be called a religion at all; but the most ancient faith was that of the Sinto, a being supposed to be the offspring of the sun, and the founder of the original line of kings. Until 1585, the Daïri Soma, the head of the Sinto religion, was the only sovereign in Japan; but in that year the Siogun (or chief general of the State) deprived the Daïri of his political functions, and left him little more than the supreme administration of ecclesiastical affairs. This change, however, had not occurred when Xavier entered the country: at that time, the priestly authority was sole and undivided. We have seen in our own times a disposition on the part of the Japanese to adopt the manners and civilisation of Europe, and can therefore the more readily understand the quickness with which, in the sixteenth century, several of their nation received the teachings of Xavier. The success of the great Jesuit, however, was not immediate, though his converts ultimately became numerous. After two years and a half of devoted toil, he left Japan for Goa, and, while on a voyage to China, which was to be the next scene of his labours, died in the island of Sancian, near Macao, on the 22nd of December, 1552. The faith which he had planted in the extreme east of Asia lasted nearly a hundred years, and in 1582 the native Christians were sufficiently numerous to send a deputation to Rome; but a fierce persecution began in 1590, owing, it is said, to the assumptions of the Jesuits. Thousands of converts were put to death, and the Portuguese (who suffered from the interested rivalry of the Dutch) were totally expelled in 1642. Christianity disappeared with its foreign protectors, and has never again struck root in Japan: one amongst many facts showing the fallacy of the popular belief that persecution is powerless to destroy ideas. The evangelisation of China, which the disciple of Loyola was unable to carry out, was attempted at successive periods by the Jesuits Ricci and Schall, with a little temporary success, but ultimately with as complete a failure as in the case of Japan.

Though we are at present concerned with the East, it will be convenient, before parting with the Jesuits and their missions, to relate one of the most remarkable of their achievements in the West. Paraguay is a large country of South America, lying between the rivers Paraguay and Parana. Originally discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1526, it subsequently passed into the hands of the Spaniards, who laid claim to all that part of the New World. The first European colony was

A.D. 1535.]

settled there in 1535 by Pedro de Mendoza, who established Paraguay as a province of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The Indians of this region, however, were a martial and spirited race, and the Spaniards made little progress in subjecting them to their rule or their religion. It was not until the arrival of the Jesuits that any striking results were effected. These missionaries were, in the first instance, Portuguese from the neighbouring country of Brazil, who wandered into Paraguay about the middle of the sixteenth century. The great work of the Spanish Jesuits began in the early part of the seventeenth. With that practical genius which so often distinguishes the members of their order, they introduced not merely the tenets of their faith, but arts and industries to which the Paraguayans had always been strangers. Flocks and herds were brought into the land, and the people were familiarised with the peaceful and humanising pursuits of agriculture. They were

also taught to make bricks, to build houses, and to manufacture raw material; and in time their savage habits were subdued to the ways of civilisation. After a while, the Spanish Government consented to place in the hands of the Jesuits the sole administration of the province, which, being destitute of the precious metals, was not valuable as a source of revenue. For every one of their subjects, the Jesuits paid a piastre to the treasury at Madrid, and about 1690 they were invested with the right of excluding all other Europeans from the colony. Their efforts had previously been to some extent defeated by the intrusion of profligate adventurers from the old country, whose evil example corrupted the natives; but thenceforward the settlement progressed with extraordinary rapidity, and, unless the accounts are exaggerated, a species of Christian Utopia existed in Paraguay until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768. The natives were allowed to possess neither money nor arms, and a state of peaceful communism was developed under the guidance of a theocratical autocracy.

Another great enterprise of the Jesuits had Constantinople for its object. The design of these restless enthusiasts was to overthrow the Greek Patriarch, and to bring the Oriental Church within the bounds of Rome-an attempt in which they were supported by the French and Austrian ambassadors to the Porte, and strongly opposed by the representatives of England and Holland. The Jesuits spared neither labour nor money to effect their purpose, and in 1622 a payment of 40,000 dollars to the Turkish Government purchased the exile of the Patriarch Cyril. The English

243

envoy, Sir Thomas Roe, interested himself in the fate of this dignitary, and after a while obtained his recall. Cyril is said to have been a Calvinist; at any rate, he was antagonistic to all interference from Rome, and was therefore not unreasonably befriended by a Protestant kingdom. The Mohammedan authorities, moreover, were little disposed to see the dominion of the Pope established in their midst, and for a time the Jesuits were entirely discomfited. Ultimately, however, they planted themselves in the Turkish capital, but do not appear to have enjoyed any great influence amongst a people whose ideas were so entirely distinct from their own. It was in consequence of these numerous establishments in non-Christian lands that, in 1622, Pope Gregory XV. commenced the "Congregatio de Propaganda Fide," to which, five years later, Urban VIII. presented a collegiate building, which is still known by the same name.

But, however much we may concede to the energy and zeal of the Jesuits, the invasion of the East by Western ideas was mainly owing to commerce and maritime adventure. It was the secular, rather than the religious, spirit which discovered America, explored the coasts of Africa, and crossed the wide and little-known oceans of the South in pursuit of riches on the shores of India and the eastern islands. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, while the Netherlands were still in the most terrible throes of their great struggle with Spain, a certain Fleming, named Cornelius Houtman, was employed by the merchants of Amsterdam to open a trade with the Indies. Houtman had served under the Portuguese, and made several voyages to India, with the more frequented parts of which he was well acquainted. Starting in the early days of 1595, he penetrated as far as Bantam, in Java, and was not slow in discovering that the influence of the Portuguese in that part of the world had of late years considerably declined. The report which he brought home with him in 1597 encouraged the Dutch people in their ambition to found settlements in more opulent lands; and, in the following year, upwards of eighty vessels were despatched from the Low Countries to various parts of the world, including the East and West Indies, the coasts of Africa, and the Pacific Ocean. Many of the ships were provided with troops, for those were days when Holland was fighting for its very existence, and dared not count on the forbearance of any Power. It says much for the enterprise and vigour of the race that, while still engaged in a deadly conflict with Spain, the Dutch should already be taking steps to form a great

colonial empire, in the face of rival interests and antagonistic States. Several trading companies were commenced, but in 1602 all were fused into a single body, called the East India Company, which possessed a joint-stock capital of about £600,000 sterling. This association was invested with the right of appointing governors, executing justice, building forts, raising troops, and performing other administrative acts; and, being thus armed with extensive and peculiar powers, the directors of the Dutch East India Company established factories and settlements along the coasts of Asia, from Bassora, in the Persian Gulf, to Japan. Their central emporium was at a place in Java to which they gave the national appellation of Batavia. The Moluccas and other spice-islands fell entirely under their rule, and in the course of a few years their trade had acquired extraordinary proportions in all the Eastern seas. The English East India Company was formed between one and two years before that of Holland, but not until after the Dutch had begun their extensive trade with the Indies. On the 31st of December, 1600, a charter was granted by Queen Elizabeth to a number of London merchants, under the title of "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London, trading to the East Indies." All Englishmen not belonging to this association were prohibited from traffic within the limits assigned to the Company, which included the entire space, whether of land or sea, between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn-that is to

say,

the whole of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The charter was for only fifteen years; but it was renewed from time to time, and the East India Company ultimately became one of the most important associations in the world. The first doings of the adventurers consisted of nothing more than the despatch of ships to Java and Sumatra, which returned laden with calicoes, silk, indigo, and spices. It was not until a somewhat later date that any attempt was made to establish settlements in Hindoostan itself.

When the English entered India, the chief military Power existing within its bounds was that of the Moguls. The country had passed through many revolutions since the fall of the Ghaznevides in 1186; but, during the whole of that time, the Mohammedans had asserted a paramount authority amongst the various princes who divided the peninsula into several distinct realms. The annals of the Ghûrian dynasty, which succeeded to the Ghaznevide, are extremely obscure; yet it appears certain that its power was established at Delhi by the Viceroy of one of the Sultans. This would

seem to have been about the close of the twelfth century; but the royal house came to an end almost immediately after, the reigning prince being assassinated in 1206. A few years later, all the sovereignties of Hindoostan were threatened by the resistless Mongolian, Genghis Khan, who, however, turned back without crossing the Indus ;* and in 1284 the Mongols made an irruption into Hindoostan, but were eventually defeated and driven out. A second invasion by the same multitudinous and ferocious tribes occurred in 1290, when they were encountered by the heroic Zafir Khan, who, in a series of successful battles, expelled them from Hindoostan. At this time, the main seat of power in Northern India was at Delhi, the princes of which city (belonging to a Pathan or Afghan stock, like the Ghaznevides) extended their sway over the adjacent regions. One of the most brilliant of these rulers, but at the same time one of the cruellest, was the Sultan or Emperor Allah, who acquired the throne in 1295 by the assassination of the previous monarch, Ferose, whose justice and humanity might have produced the best results, had they been accompanied by a resolute will.

Allah was a great general, and previous to his usurpation of the crown had led a small army into Aurungabad, a part of the Deccan, whence, after taking the city of Deoghur, he returned in safety through hostile territories, with an enormous booty, consisting of gold and silver, pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones, four thousand pieces of silk, and various commodities of incalculable value. The Rajah of the invaded territories

-one of the Hindoo race and religion-appears to have been completely panic-stricken by the suddenness and fury of Allah's attack. His son endeavoured, but in vain, to intercept the forces of the Mohammedan on his retreat; and Allal returned to Delhi with the fame of a mighty, almost a supernatural, conqueror. It was probably this marvellous success which induced him to murder Ferose, and take the reins of power into his own hands. His supremacy, however, was not uncontested. He had several times to repel the assaults of the Mongols, and, on some of these occasions, Delhi itself was threatened with capture. Nevertheless, Allah subdued Gujerat, Ajmeer, and other places governed by native Rajahs. Much was accomplished by the Emperor's favourite general, Kafoor, who particularly distinguished himself in the reduction of the Carnatic and various southern regions. In the temples of Bellal-deo,

*See the Volume on the Middle Ages, p. 417.