ANDREW STEINMETZ'S JESUIT IN THE FAMILY. WE - frequently hear of
a man of one idea ; and, unnatural as the fact may seem to some wearied reader of the Debates, there is upon record a Parliament-man of a single speech. The man of one book is more com- mon, though the circumstance may not have received so much attention. We do not mean the man who confines his reading to one author, still less the man who has written but one work. Unhappily, we speak of men who ought-to write but one: Accident of place, opportunity of ob- servation, or some strong bent. of mind, gives a man a subject which he may have enough skill in composition to present in a readable manner. The freshness, perhaps the interest of the matter, gives it attraction; the book excites attention, the author becomes a praised man, and ends with being. a public plague. Instead of attributing his success to circum- stances, he ascribes it. to himself; and instead of resting satisfied with his first success, or preparing for.another attempt by fallow, seed, ma. pure, and the other arts of cultivation, he proceeds to force an exhausted soil, with the necessary consequence attendant upon such an operation.
Mr. Andrew Steinmetz is in this predicament.. Aecident—or, as some may call it, kindness—others, a proselyting practice---made him ac- quainted with the course of study and discipline pursued by the English Jesuits at Stoneyhurst, and gave- him an opportunity of observing the characters of the professors and the working of their system. That sys- tem was curious in a metaphysical sense, and as a mode of education expressly adapted to cultivate or rather to coerce nature ; the litera- ture of the "order" had some novelty about it; besides the interest which is just now attached. to religious controversy, there was some- thing mysterious in the name of Jesuit, as well as stimulating in the idea of learning the " secrets of the prison-house." The book, too, was well managed—the tone mild, the anioaus, if there was any, well covered ; and if anything like ingratitude or breach of implied confidence lurked behind, the pupil,. no doubt, had been sufficiently instructed in casuistry to be able to answer his teachers on a case of conscience. Well-timed, curious in itself, and appealing to strong and perhaps exaggerated pre- judices, The Novitiate, or the Jesuit in Training, excited attention. Having succeeded so far upon a subject of which he knew something—
the Jesuits at college—the author determined to strike while the iron was hot, and he has written a book upon a matter of which he evi- dently knows nothing, " the Jesuit in the family."
The essence of the writer's position is simply this—that the Jesuits seek to convert everybody ; that they aim at attaching to their order any person of fortune or ability ; and that, in pursuit of their objects, they do not scruple to use what influence they may possess in a family, to disturb its domestic relations. Stated as we have now stated it, we be- lieve the proposition may be affirmed of any priesthood, except the mo- derate and larger section of the Anglican Church. The Presbyterian clergy carry interference to a great extent ; reciprocal as well as minis- terial interference is a leading principle of the Wesleyans ; and it is prac- tised to a greater or less degree in all the Nonconformist congregations. Within due limits and guided by a sound moral view, neither zeal for conversion nor some family interference is in itself to be censured : they are both, indeed, so consonant to human nature, that they may be called natural. The vice or virtue is in the excess, and the means employed ; and these, to a great extent, will differ more through personal character than creed. By their systematic training, the severity of their discipline, and the regulation of celibacy, the Romish clergy may be more active than the Protestants,—though Exeter Hall raises a doubt of this : but the ex- perience of nearly three hundred years has shown us, without any great Romish success ; Europe, in regard to religions boundary, is much as it was at the close of the Reformation ferment. If the position above stated were given as a theme for didactic fiction to different religionists, we sus- pect that really true and natural works would be essentially the same; always assuming equal quantities of ignorance and fanaticism in the flocks and shepherds. It is very difficult to convey by description an accurate idea of the manner in which Mr. Andrew Steinmitz has attempted to embody this theme. We have constant occasion to note in novels the improbability of some incident, the absurdity of some conduct or sentiment; but in The Jesuit in the Family all is improbable, and all is absurd. Again and again have we had to mark in didactic fiction the logical failure, either from too abstract or too extreme a mode of presenting the charac- ters and results : there is either no worldly conclusion at all, or of as little general utility as any atrocity recorded in the Newgate Calendar. But in the book before us, it is not logical failure; it is negation, or rather con- tradiction. The Jeanits, who are to be held up as the villians of the piece, are really the only respectable or even decently-conducted persons in the book. Strip them of the fee-fa-fum character of the dregs of the Radcliff school, and they appear strictly moral, ever at their posts, anx- ous for the salvation of souls, winning in their manners, and unobtrusive though skilful and eager convert-makers. Even taken as they stand with the vulgar exaggerations of the author, they are at least respectable,—which is more than can be said of most of the other personages ; and if the Jesuits confine their triumphs to such beings, we believe the most bigoted of any creed would say, "Take them, and welcome." Andrew Steinmetz's notions of an English gentleman. are the oddest conceivable ; his ideas of ladies seem derived from penitents of the Magdalen class. His subordinate liber- tine is a Count Valremy, taken from the modern Paris romance, with this difference, that the Frenchmen know something of what they undertake to describe, and their copyist does not: his principal libertine, afterwards Jesuit, is an English youth, a still grosser caricature than Yalremy ; and —but the master-roll is not worth reciting, still less the incidents or the nature of the story. The mere writing is as good as that of The No- vitiate, with touches of German mysticism and French vivacity, as if the author had drawn something from both his parents : but with these merits are mingled some of the ideal grossness of one country and the lax morale of the other. It is this foreign air that will injure the book. Otherwise, the notoriety of The Novitiate, and the pandering to religions prejudice in the subject of the volume, might have attracted those who, we fancy, will shrink from its Parisian style and treatment,, albeit rather clever in its way; for it is utterly contrary to English nature, and opposed to English ideas of taste.
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