Their adroit admixture of falsehood with truth in all departments of knowledge, their substitution of veneer for solid timber, and of pinchbeck for sterling metal, was more profitable to the end they had in view than the torture-chamber of the Inquisition or the quarantine of the Index.

Mediocrities and respectabilities of every description--that is to say, the majority of the influential classes--were delighted with their method.

What could be better than to see sons growing up, good Catholics in all external observances, devoted to the order of society and Mother Church, and at the same time showy Latinists, furnished with a cyclopaedia of current knowledge, glib at speechifying, ingenious in the construction of an epigram or compliment?
If some of the more sensible sort grumbled that Jesuit learning was shallow, and Jesuit morality of base alloy, the reply, like that of an Italian draper selling palpable shoddy for broadcloth, came easily and cynically to the surface: _Imita bene_! The stuff is a good match enough! What more do you want?
To produce plausible imitations, to save appearances, to amuse the mind with tricks, was the last resort of Catholicism in its warfare against rationalism.

And such is the banality of human nature as a whole, that the Jesuits, those monopolists of Brummagem manufactures, achieved eminent success.

Their hideous churches, daubed with plaster painted to resemble costly marbles, encrusted with stucco polished to deceive the eye, loaded with gewgaws and tinsel and superfluous ornament and frescoes, turning flat surfaces into cupolas and arcades, passed for masterpieces of architectonic beauty.