Sir John, Earl St Vincent, a distinguished naval officer, was born at Meaford, in Staffordshire, on the 9th of January 1734, old style. His father, Lwynfen Jervis, Esq., was counsel and solicitor to the Admiralty, and treasurer of Greenwich Hospital. Young Jervis was destined for the law, but having contracted a dislike to that profession, and a strong predilection for the sea, he ran away from school, and expressed his determination to be a sailor. He was therefore placed under Commodore Townsend, who was at that time going out in the Gloucester as commander-in-chief to Jamaica. This was in the year 1748. In 1754 he was made a lieutenant out of the Prince into the Royal Anne; and in the year 1759 he distinguished himself very much at the siege and capture of Quebec, when General Wolfe was killed. He was in consequence promoted by Sir Charles Saunders, the commander-in-chief, to the rank of commander, into the Porcupine sloop of war. In the following year he was made a post-captain. He commanded the Foudroyant in July 1778, when the memorable rencontre took place between Admiral Keppel and Count d'Orvilliers, and bore a very distinguished part in that action. In 1782 Captain Jervis fell in off Brest harbour with the French ship Pégase, of seventy-four guns and 700 men, and took her after an engagement which lasted three-quarters of an hour. The Pégase had eighty men killed and wounded, while Captain Jervis and four men only were wounded on board the Foudroyant. In consequence of this action, which at once raised his renown to the highest pitch, he was created a knight companion of the Bath. In 1784 he was elected member of parliament for Launceston, and he afterwards sat for North Yarmouth. In 1787 he was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral of the blue, in 1793 to that of vice-admiral, and in 1795 he became admiral.

In November 1793 an expedition was fitted out to attack the French Caribbee islands, and Sir Charles Grey and Sir John Jervis were nominated respectively to command the land and sea forces to be employed on the occasion. The expedition was at first completely successful, and Martinique, St Lucia, and Guadaloupe, were surrendered to the British arms. The French however succeeded in retaking Guadaloupe, and the rainy season and the yellow fever frustrated all the efforts of the British to regain possession of it. In 1795, on the resignation of Admiral Hood, Jervis was appointed to the command of the British fleet in the Mediterranean, and was employed in blockading the French fleet in Toulon, and protecting our trade in the Levant, a service which he performed with consummate skill and success.

In 1797 Admiral Jervis, with only fifteen ships of the line, gained his celebrated victory over the Spanish fleet, consisting of twenty-seven ships of the line. The engagement, which took place off Cape St Vincent, on the 14th of February, lasted about ten hours. The Spaniards were completely defeated, and four sail of the line, two of 112, one of 84, and one of 74 guns, were taken. The thanks of both houses of Parliament were voted to the fleet, and the commander-in-chief was created a peer, by the title of Earl of St Vincent. This victory was much more important in its consequences than might be supposed from the mere numerical loss which it caused to the enemy. It paralyzed the power of Spain, gave encouragement to our allies, and added fresh vigour to the efforts of the government in prosecuting the war. The battle of Cape St Vincent was followed by the mutiny of the British fleet at Spithead; and in the month of May and June following its effects were felt in the fleet which was cruising before Cadiz under the command of Lord St Vincent. But the ringleaders were executed, and the mutiny speedily repressed by the resolute and determined conduct of the commander-in-chief: with a combination of humanity and ingenuity eminently characteristic of the man, he contrived to make one execution produce the effect of many, by ordering it on an unusual day, Sunday morning. It was the practice to dispatch mutinous vessels to serve under his orders; and by his masterly operations of combined mercy and justice, he soon reduced them to order, restoring discipline by such examples as should be most striking, without being more numerous than absolute necessity required. In June 1799 he resigned the command of the fleet, in consequence of ill health, and returned to England in the month of August following. On the resignation of Lord Bridport, and his final retirement from active service, he was appointed to the command of the Channel fleet, and in the spring of 1800 hoisted his flag in the Ville de Paris. In the following year, on the formation of the Addington ministry, he was made first lord of the admiralty, and in that important office the great capacity for business with which he was endowed by nature shone forth in all its lustre. He instituted the celebrated Commission of Naval Inquiry, which not only led to numberless discoveries of abuse and extravagance, but laid the foundation of a system of economical administration, which has since been extended from the navy to all the departments of the state. The extent of corruption brought to light by the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry almost exceeds belief. From the dockyard alone the government was plundered at the rate of a million sterling annually; and the same nefarious practices prevailed in all the other departments. Lord St Vincent grappled boldly with these monstrous and deep-rooted abuses, and by his unsparing rigour, inflexible honesty, and resistless energy, succeeded in putting them down. "It is impossible," says Lord Brougham, "to calculate what would have been the saving effected to the revenues of this country, had Lord St Vincent presided over any great department of national affairs from the beginning of the war, instead of coming to our assistance after its close." The resignation of Mr Addington in 1804 put an end to the naval administration of St Vincent, as first lord of the admiralty; but the exigencies of the state caused him in 1806 to be called from his well-earned retirement and from the enjoyment of his domestic comforts, at the age of seventy-two, to take the command of the Channel fleet. He was at the head of the expedition and the commission sent to the court of Portugal in 1806; and his conduct in that delicate and important affair displayed great talents and address. In the spring of 1807, advanced age and impaired health compelled him finally to resign his command. The remainder of his life was spent in retirement at his beautiful seat of Rochets, where he died on the 14th of March 1823, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. The character of Lord St Vincent presented an admirable union of the brightest qualities which can adorn both civil and military life. As a statesman, he was distinguished for his sagacity and foresight, and the profundity of his views. He was a steady and consistent supporter of liberal principles, ever preferring the side of humanity and freedom. He was not more distinguished for his great talents than for his magnanimity and complete freedom from every feeling of jealousy or envy. And it has been justly said by one who knew him well, that "all good officers, all good men employed under him, whether in civil or military service, spoke of him as they felt, with admiration of his genius approaching to enthusiasm." (Brenton's Life of Earl St Vincent; Lord Brougham's Statesmen of the Times of George III.)

JESI (the ancient Etrium), a walled city of the Papal States, on the left bank of the Esina, delegation of Ancona, 16 miles W.S.W. of the town of that name. It is the see of a bishop, and has a cathedral, five churches, and twelve convents. Pop. about 6000, chiefly engaged in the manufacture of silk and worsted stockings.

JESSELMERE, a native state of Hindustan, in the province of Rajpootana, situate between the 26th and 28th degrees of N. Lat., and extending to the sandy desert, which constitutes the western boundary of that province. It is a barren country, being for the most part an uninterrupted tract of sand, without rivers, and the wells being of very great depth under ground.

The ruler of Jesselmere has an annual revenue of L.8500, of which about one-half is derived from transit duties, and the remainder from miscellaneous sources. A small military force maintained by the feudal chiefs is kept up for the service of the state. The history of Jesselmere is little known before 1808, when its ruler, alarmed at the encroachments of his neighbour, the chief of Bahawulpore, made advances to an amicable understanding with the British government. This relation matured in 1818 into an alliance by which Jesselmere became entitled to British protection, and engaged to act in subordinate co-operation with the British government, and with submission to its supremacy. Jesselmere, the capital of this state, contains about 8000 houses, and a population of 35,000. Distant N.W. from Calcutta 1290 miles. Lat. 26. 56; Long. 70. 58.

JESSORE, a district of the province of Bengal, to the N.E. of Calcutta, bounded on the N. by the district of Purnia, and on the E. by Dacca Jalalpoor, and Buckergunge; on the S. by the Sunderbunds, and on the W. by Baraset and Nudda. It is 105 miles in length from S.E. to N.W., and 48 in breadth. The area, according to official statement, is 3512 square miles. The northern part of this district is very fertile; but the southern division is in the Sunderbunds, and composed of salt marshy islands covered with trees. Some parts lie so low that embankments are found necessary to protect them against inundation. The land is Jesuitian fertile, and produces rice, indigo, sugar, and tobacco in large quantities. The population, according to official statement, is 381,744. According to recent authority, the Brahminists form one-half of the population, the Mussulmans the other; but this unusually large proportion of Mussulmans appears remarkable in a tract so remote from the seat of their former empire in India. Jessore, the chief town, is situated 77 miles N.E. of Calcutta, in Lat. 23. 10, Long. 89. 10.

JESUITISM.—If a very few exceptive instances are allowed for, it holds good, as a rule, that canonization shuts the door against authentic history. The instance now before us has no claim to be regarded as one of those rare exceptions. The existing memoirs whence we derive our knowledge of the personal history of the founder of the order of Jesuits, are probably genuine, and, in the main, they may be authentic; but it is impossible that we, at this time, should know them to be so. They contain indeed little that should be regarded as improbable, and very little that is absolutely incredible; and even this little is of a kind which the practised reader of the literature of the Calendar will find it easy to detach from the places where it occurs without a disintegration of the mass.

But then, in accepting these new extant materials, we do so in simple faith; for scanty means, if any, are within our reach by aid of which we might assure ourselves of the truth of what we admit to be true, or might effect an excision of the spurious parts. The life of "St Ignatius," just such as we find it in the documents which the Church of Rome and the Society itself recognise as authentic, is of a kind which would attract no special notice. It would take its place among instances without number of similar conversions, and of equal intensities of feeling, and of extravagancies of behaviour not less absurd. The only kind of surprise for which there can be ground in perusing the biographies of Ignatius Loyola, is this—that a narrative exhibiting so little which is indicative of extraordinary intelligence, or of any rare qualities of the moral nature, should be found standing at the head of a course of events which has no parallel in the history of the human family. The reader is impelled to exclaim, and to ask—"Is this the man from whose brain can have sprung the Jesuit institute and its polity?" An answer in the affirmative can scarcely be accepted apart from the supposition that the Jesuitism, of which Loyola himself may be regarded as the author, was little more than a germ-idea, caught at, cherished, evolved, by minds of far greater compass than his own.

Be this as it may, no proper account of Jesuitism can be presented without a preliminary, though it be a much condensed biography of the man who has been signalized as its founder, and who undoubtedly bore sway as its chief, through the period of its infancy and of its rapid growth.

The sources whence the customary notices of the life of Loyola have been drawn are, chiefly, those compilations which the Society itself has put forth, or which it sanctioned after the time when any independent testimony might have been collected and appealed to.

The Bolandists, in their vast collection, the Acta Sanctorum, have, in their usual elaborate manner, collected those materials of Jesuit history which came to their hand. These materials were digested and amplified by Orlandiuss; and his voluminous memoir of the founder is the one to which the Society has attached its sanction. The Jesuit, John Peter Maffei, an agreeable writer, and author of a History of the Indies, and a Life of the heroic St Francis Xavier, has brought the narrative within moderate compass, and given it a form acceptable to general readers. He appears to have availed himself of the notes of a contemporary, Polancus, who had lived on terms of intimacy with Loyola. Maffei's book first appeared in 1585. Ludovico Gonsalvo, a Spaniard, and one who had also been Loyola's companion, left memoirs relating to his master's earlier years, and these notes carry an air of truthfulness and simplicity.

At a later time, the Jesuit Pietro Ribadeneira, taking Gonsalvo's Memoirs as his text, with which he combined whatever had been done by his predecessors, compiled a formal and very copious history of the founder of the order. This writer differs in various instances from Maffei, and generally he does so when narratives involving the supernatural are to be disposed of; in these cases he trenches as little as possible upon the marvellous, and hastens forward to set his foot on firmer ground. It is from the writers above named that we are to learn all that can now be known of the personal history of the founder.