The Poor Gentlemen of Liége

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for was perfectly just. Alexander understood it to be so; but around him, and in the inferior offices of state, prejudices existed, ambition, and rivalries of sect or of worship, which were opposed to this act of emancipation. Some declared the Greek religion to be endangered; others demonstrated that very...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for was perfectly just. Alexander understood it to be so; but around him, and in the inferior offices of state, prejudices existed, ambition, and rivalries of sect or of worship, which were opposed to this act of emancipation. Some declared the Greek religion to be endangered; others demonstrated that very soon the Jesuits would take possession of every branch of public administration; and all agreed in saying that the Jesuits abused the liberty allowed them to supersede all the other teaching corporations. It appeared Note 5. almost an impossibility to the children of Loyola that they ?- '- should obtain what they asked for, when Count Joseph de Maistre threw himself into the dispute with his cutting eloquence and his reasoning, which went always straight to its aim, without regarding any obstacles. Count de Maistre was rather a great writer and bold thinker than a diplomatist. There was in his mind and heart a superabundance of life, such a complete devotion to the opinion which appeared to him to be truth revealed or demonstrated by reason, that he carried it triumphantly as far as it is permitted to human weakness. The half measures of party spirit, the delays of consideration, the difficulties of time and place, nothing could obstruct the rising sap of his genius, overflowing every subject he touched upon, and leaving on each its living impress. Possessed with a love of the true, the good, and the just, but perhaps not sufficiently distrusting his own cutting irony, his own originality, and his passion for polemics, Joseph de Maistre had obtained at St. Petersburg a position as new as it was decided. An ardent Catholic, he had known how to create for himself, among the schismatic Greeks, friends who honoured his faith, who esteemed his private virtues, and who were proud ...