■•Henry eel out for Poland, but after what had passed ' the Protestants were far from being nllaved,
and they resolved carefully to watch the conduct of the irch at his coronation, l-'irlev, the leader of
the Protestant party, insisted that on thai solemn occa- sion the oath taken at Paris should be repeated; and
even in the midst of the ceremony, when the crown was
about to he placed ou Helirv's head. 1'illev boldly ad- vanced forward and interrupted lli" proceeding-.
Ing iii the name of the Protestants ol Poland that, unless
' Bth was taken, the coronation w
I to i I in* ml. The scroll of the oath was
put into the king's i, ii id :,- he knelt on the steps or the
iiltar.aui I the crown, -aid to Heury with a
i ol swear, yon shall not reign.'
e Proti Btanl leader struck the
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whole assembly with awe, and the king had no alterna- tive but to repeat the oath. Thus the religious liberties of Poland were saved from utter overthrow, and the na- tion delivered from an impending civil war.
"The Polish Protestants were naturally suspicious of their new king, knowing that, having taken the oath by compulsion, he was not likely to respect their rights. The Romish bishops, on the other hand, supported by the favor of the monarch, formed projects for extending their influence, and an impression rapidly spread through the country that Henry had become a ready tool in the hands of the priests. This feeling, combined with dis- gust at his profligacy, rendered him so unpopular, and his subjects so discontented, that the country would un- doubtedly have been speedily plunged into a civil war had not the king fortunately disappeared, having secret- ly left Poland for France on learning that the death of his brother, Charles IX, had opened the way for his suc- cession to the throne of France. The crown of Poland was now conferred upon Stephen Batory, prince of Tran- sylvania, who had earned so high a reputation that, al- though an avowed Protestant, his election met with no opposition from the Romish clergy. The delegation which announced to Stephen his election to the throne was composed of thirteen members, only one of whom was a Romanist: but this man, Solikowski by name, suc- ceeded in persuading the new monarch that, if he would secure himself on the throne, he must profess the Roman Catholic religion. Next day, accordingly, to the dismay of the Protestant delegates^ Stephen was seen devoutly kneeling at mass. During his reign, which lasted ten years, he maintained inviolate the rights of the Anti-Ro- manist confessions, while at the same time, through the influence of his queen, who was a bigoted Romanist, he openly encouraged and patronized the Jesuits, by found- ing and endowing various educational institutions in connection with their order.
"Stephen Batory died in 15^6, and was succeeded by Sigismund III, in whose reign the Komish party acquired much strength, while many of the Protestant's had be- come dissatisfied with the general confession, and sought to renew the former controversies which had so much weakened their influence in the country. Poland was unhappily subjected to the rule of this infatuated mon- arch from 15ST to 1632, and throughout the whole of that long period his policy was uniformly directed towards the promotion of the supremacy of Rome. The Jesuits exercised an unlimited influence over the government; and all the offices of state and posts of honor were ex- clusively bestowed upon Romanists, and more especially upon proselytes, who, from motives of interest, had re- nounced the" principles of the Reformation. The whole country was covered with Jesuit colleges and schools, thus enabling the disciples of Loyola most effectually to exercise dominion over all classes of the people. 'The melancholy effects of their education,' says count Kra- sinski, 'soon became manifest. By the close of Sigis- mund Ill's reign, when the Jesuits had become almost exclusive masters of public schools, national literature had declined as rapidly as it had advanced during the preceding century. It is remarkable, indeed, that Po- land, which, from the middle of the 10th century to the end of the reign of Sigismund III (1032), had produced many splendid works on different branches of human knowledge, in the national as well as in the Latin lan- guage, can boast of but very few works of merit from that epoch to the second part of the ISth century, the pe- riod of the unlimited sway of the Jesuits over the na- tional education. The Polish language, which had ob- tained a high degree of perfection during the 10th century, was soon corrupted by an absurd admixture of Latin ; and a barbarous style, called Macaronic, disfigured Polish literature for more than a century. As the chief object of the Jesuits was to combat the Anti-Romanists, the principal subject of their instruction was polemical divin- ity; and the most talented of their students, instead of acquiring sound knowledge, by which they might become useful members of society, wasted their time in dialectic subtleties and quibbles. The disciples of Loyola knew well that, of all the weaknesses to which human nature is subject, vanity is the most accessible; and they were as prodigal of praise to partisans as they were of abuse to antagonists. Thus the benefactors of their order be- came the objects of the most fulsome adulation, which nothing but the corrupted taste acquired in their schools could have rendered palatable. Their bombastic pane- gyrics, lavished upon the most unimportant persons, be- came, towards the end of the 17th century, almost the only literature of the country — proof sufficient of the de- graded state of the public to which such productions could be acceptable. An additional proof of the retrocession of the national intellect and the corruption of taste un- der the withering influence of the Jesuits is that the most classical productions of the 10th century — the Augustan asra of the Polish literature — were not reprinted for more than a century, although after the revival of learning in Poland in the" second half of the ISth century they went through many editions, and still continue to be reprinted. It is almost superfluous to add that this deplorable con- dition of the national intellect produced the most perni-