Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 622

1841.

Life of Father G. Magaillans.

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interesting mode of treating subjects, than in any other of their state- papers, that we ever perused. Though full of repetitions and quaint phraseology, the whole range of imperial thoughts is fairly submitted to our view, and we hear heaven's son speaking without reserve to our weak comprehension. As a literary production also, these dis- courses rank very high, and contain the essence of Chinese govern- mental papers.

ART. II. An abridgment of the life of father Gabriel Magaillans, of the Society of Jesus, missionary into China, writen by fa- ther Lewis Buglia, his inseparable companion for thirty-six years. From Magaillans' New History of China. London, 1688. FATHER Gabriel de Magaillans, a native of Portugal, was born in the year 1609. He spent his first years in the house of one of his uncles who was a canon, and who took care to educate him in piety and the fear of God. Afterwards he studied in the schools of the society of Jesus, in the famous university of Coimbre; where, moved by the good example of those fathers, he resolved to forsake the world, and was received into the Society at seventeen years of age. Being as yet but a noviciate, he begged leave that he might be sent to the missions of the East Indies, which would not be granted him how- ever, till he had completed his studies of rhetoric and philosophy. He arrived at Goa in the year 1634, where he was immediately employed to teach rhetoric to the young religious of the house. Two years afterwards he earnestly desired that he might be sent to the mission of Japan, which was with great reluctance at length con- sented to by his superiors, in regard of the great progress which their scholars made under such a master. When he arrived at Macao, the father visiter ordered him to teach philosophy, to which he thereupon began to settle himself: but at the same time there came a Christian mandarin, who discharged him from that employ. And indeed the father visiter was willing to lay hold of the opportunity of such an officer, by his means to get the liberty of sending a person of merit into China, to assist the missionaries there. For at that time there was no person in the whole college who was proper for that country; and this was the reason that father Magaillans, observing so favorable a conjuncture, earnestly begged

ment.