[Footnote 171:  Lettere, vol. ii. p. 174.]

There is no need to trace the further history of the Jesuits.  Their part in the Counter-Reformation has rather been exaggerated than insufficiently recognized.  Though it was incontestably considerable, we cannot now concede, as Macaulay in his random way conceded to this Company, the spolia opima of down-beaten Protestantism.  Without the ecclesiastical reform which originated in the Tridentine Council; without the gold and sword of Spain; without the stakes and prisons of the Inquisition; without the warfare against thought conducted by the Congregation of the Index; the Jesuits alone could not have masterfully governed the Catholic revival.  That revival was a movement of world-historical importance, in which they participated.  It was their fortune to find forces in the world which they partially understood; it was their merit to know how to manipulate those forces; it was their misfortune and their demerit that they proved themselves incapable of diverting those forces to any wholesome end.  In Italy a succession of worldly Popes, Paul III., Julius III., Pius IV., and Gregory XIII., heaped favors and showered wealth upon the order.  The Jesuits incarnated the political spirit of the Papacy at this epoch; they lent it a potency for good and evil which the decrepit but still vigorous institution arrogated to itself.  They adapted its anachronisms with singular adroitness to the needs of modern society.  They transfused their throbbing blood into its flaccid veins, until it became doubtful whether the Papacy had been absorbed into the Jesuits, or whether the Jesuits had remodeled the Papacy for contemporary uses.  But this tendency in the aspiring order to identify itself with Rome, this ambition to command the prestige of Rome as leverage for carrying out its own designs, stirred the resentment of haughty and intransigeant Pontiffs.  The Jesuits were not beloved by Paul IV., Pius V., and Sixtus V.

It remains, however, to inquire in what the originality, the effective operation, and the modifying influence of the Jesuit Society consisted during the period with which we are concerned.  It was their object to gain control over Europe by preaching, education, the direction of souls, and the management of public affairs.  In each of these departments their immediate success was startling; for they labored with zeal, and they adapted their methods to the requirements of the age.  Yet, in the long run, art, science, literature, religion, morality and politics, all suffered from their interference.  By preferring artifice to reality, affectation to sincerity, shams and subterfuges to plain principle and candor, they confused the conscience and enfeebled the intellect of Catholic Europe.  When we speak of the Jesuit style in architecture, rhetoric and poetry, of Jesuit learning and scholarship, of Jesuit casuistry and of Jesuit diplomacy, it is either with languid contempt for bad taste and insipidity, or with the burning indignation which systematic falsehood and corruption inspire in honorable minds.