"In my humble opinion," said Frank, "every investigator moves in a limited circle. The most profound thinker does not go beyond these set limits; and if he would boldly over-step them, he would be thrown back by evident contradiction into that circle which Omnipotence has drawn around the human intellect."

"Very reasonable, Richard; very reasonable. But the desire of knowledge must sometimes be satiated," continued the doctor after a short pause. "If the human mind were free from the narrow limits of the deceptive world of sense, and could see and know with pure spiritual eyes, the barriers of which you speak would fall. Even the Bible assures us of this. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, 'We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known.' I would admire St. Paul on account of this passage alone if he never had written another. How awful is the moral quality of the human soul taken in connection with its future capacity for knowledge. And how natural, how evident, is the connection. The human mind will receive knowledge from the source of all knowledge—God, in proportion as it has been just and good. For this reason our Redeemer calls the world of the damned 'outer darkness,' and the world of the blessed, the 'kingdom of light.'"

"We sometimes see in that way even now," said Frank after a pause. "The wicked have ideas very different from those of the good. A frivolous spirit mocks at and derides that which fills the good with happiness and contentment. We might, then, say that even in this life man knows as he is known."

The doctor cast an admiring glance at the young man. "We entirely agree, my young friend; wickedness is to the sciences what a poisonous miasma and the burning rays of the sun are to the young plants. Yes, vice begets atheism, materialism, and every other abortion of thought."

Klingenberg arose.

"We will meet again at three," said he with a friendly nod.

Richard took from his room Vogt's Physiological Letters, went into the garden, and buried himself in its contents.

TO BE CONTINUED.

MORALITY OF THE CITY OF ROME.[18]

We promised in our last number to pay our respects to an infamous calumny about Rome, the capital of the Christian Church, and seat of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Vicars of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth.

This calumny has been extensively circulated. We have found it in each one of the works at the head of this article, and we suppose it has been repeated in many others which have not fallen under our observation; for our "evangelical" journals, as they style themselves, and a large portion of the secular press, seem to have very loose notions of morality where the Catholic Church is concerned. Every story to her disadvantage will be sure to please their public, or to supply the want of argument, and therefore it is seized upon with eagerness and repeated over the length and breadth of the land. It matters little to them whether it be true or not, so long as it answers the purpose. It is enough for them that somebody or other has started it, without inquiring who it was, or whether he had any right to make such a statement. It is also quite immaterial how improbable the story may be, or what contradictions it may involve, or out of what ingenious inferences, by putting this and that together, it may be constructed; it suffices that it be something injurious to the Catholic religion, and at once the end sanctifies the means; and God, they seem to think, will easily wink at any breach of the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," when that neighbor is only a papist. Besides, the appetite of the public for this sort of thing seems to be so insatiable that they are deemed ready to swallow any thing, however it may outrage common sense or probability; and therefore they do not fear any loss of reputation if they are detected in the circulation of the falsehood. Corporations are said to have no souls, and the reverend editor of a religious periodical easily seems to absolve himself from any obligation which Christian charity or even decency would seem to impose upon him, in regard to the papist, whom he readily classes with the infidel or the pagan.

The calumny we are about to refute furnishes us with an apt illustration of these remarks. It wears on its face an air of extreme improbability. It is to this effect: that in Rome nearly three fourths of all the children born are illegitimate.

This is simply incredible. When we read of half the children in Stockholm, in Protestant Sweden, or in Vienna, in Catholic Austria, being illegitimate, we can scarcely believe the naked statement. Without disputing the official figures, we look to see if there is no way of explaining this anomalous state of things—if the reality corresponds with the appearance. The large excess in the number of births in proportion to the population, and the existence of a large foundling hospital, as in Vienna, used by the poorer inhabitants of the country around even to a considerable distance, would lead us to a sounder conclusion in regard to its social state than the bare inspection of the figures. But the supposition that three fourths of all the children born in Rome or any other city, Protestant or Catholic, are illegitimate, is too exaggerated to be entertained for a moment. It seems to find ready credence, however; probably through some such mental process as this: "Catholics are corrupt and vicious. Rome is the chief of all Catholic cities, and therefore the most corrupt and vicious of all, and no story of its corruption is too big for belief. The more incredible for any other place, the more worthy of belief for Rome."

But let us come more to details about this statement in regard to Rome. We quote from Mr. Seymour's book:

"In the Italian statistics of Mittermaier we have the number of exposed infants received in Il S. Spirito, Il Conservatorio, and other establishments of this class. The number received during a series of ten years amounts to 31,689. This total distributed among the ten years gives as the mean, the number of 3160 infants exposed annually in the city of Rome."

He goes on to say that according to Bowring, an agent of the British government, the population of Rome was 153,678, and the total number of births was 4373. Hence we have,

And we are left to infer that there were only 1213 lawful children born in Rome in that year.

To make a still closer deduction from his premises, we should take his remark that the population of Rome should be taken at the mean of 130,000, instead of 153,678. The mean number of births corresponding to this would be 3700; hence, in strictness, we should have,

This is indeed a state of things described by Mr. Seymour as indicating "a frightful number of illegitimate births, and a number without parallel of cruel and unnatural mothers." And we may add, it indicates an unparalleled amount of gullibility in any one who will entertain for a moment such an absurd statement. It would be more creditable to Rev. Mr. Seymour and his friend Rev. L. W. Bacon and The New Englander, before circulating the story, to inquire who Mittermaier is; whether he has said exactly what he is quoted to say; whether he was misled about his statements; whether some one else has not altered what he said; whether some word has not been used in a double sense, to carry a wrong impression, or some word slipped into the general statement to put the reader on the wrong track; in short, to pay great attention and be extremely cautious in a matter which wears so great an improbability on its face.

The story is an absurd fabrication, and very clumsily put together at that. "The number of exposed infants in Il S. Spirito, Il Conservatorio, and other establishments of this class, according to Mittermaier, amounts to 31,689 in ten years." Mittermaier, or whoever else wrote this, proves conclusively that he knew very little of what he was writing about. There is no such establishment as Il Conservatorio in Rome. This is not the name of a particular place, but a general term signifying about what we mean by the term "asylum." There are more than a dozen asylums for children in Rome, but only one is a foundling hospital, that of Il S. Spirito. The conservatorios or asylums are not "of this class," but of a different class altogether. There may have been 3160 children provided for, annually, in Il S. Spirito and all the different establishments for children, for what we know, and we see no reason to dispute the statement; but this is the aggregate of children of all ages and all sorts, of the sick and destitute, and by no means the number of foundlings received, or even the number of orphans received within a single year.

There are over 400 children in one orphan asylum in Fiftieth street in this city, and the aggregate for ten years would be over 4000, but to say that over 4000 children were received there in ten years would be an outrageous statement. To obtain the real number, we should also ascertain the average number of years each child remains in the institution.

The hospital of Il S. Spirito is the only "foundling hospital" in Rome. It receives all the infants brought there, and if the person who brings them is unwilling to answer, he can refuse to do so. It is amply sufficient to accommodate all left there; has revenue enough, and, in short, renders the existence of "any other establishment of the sort" entirely superfluous. There are branches of this institution to which "foundlings" are transferred as they grow older. The institution looks out for them until they can look out for themselves; but there is only one place where they are received.

The total number of foundlings received in Rome is about 900 annually.[19] Maguire says:

"The number of 900 may seem very great as representing the annual average received; but it should be stated that the hospital of Santo Spirito affords an asylum not only to the foundlings of Rome, but to those of the provinces of Sabina, Frosinone, Velletri, and the Comarca, and also districts on the borders of Naples."

This number of foundlings does not represent the amount of illegitimacy, for very many of the foundlings are lawful children. Maguire says:

"If it happen, as it often does with people in the humblest condition of life, that their family exceed their means of support, one of the children is committed to the wheel of the foundling hospital of Santo Spirito—it might be, with some mark on its dress by which its identity would be afterward proved and it be reclaimed by its parents, a thing of no uncommon occurrence. Another frequent cause of having recourse to this institution is the delicacy of the mother, or of the child. The mother has no nourishment to give the infant, and she bears it to the hospital to be provided for. Or it is a rickety, miserable thing from its birth, stunted, malformed, or so delicate that in the rude hut of its parents it has no chance of ever doing well; then too, in its case, the wheel of the hospital is a safe recourse, and with parents of hard hearts takes the place of many an evil suggestion, such as is often present in the homes and the breasts of the destitute. Frequently the parent is known to argue that the infirm or malformed child, who is thus got rid of, has the best chance of recovery, and certainty of being provided for, where eminent medical attendance is always to be had, and where the greatest care is taken of the training and future interests of the foundling. It may be said that this facility of getting rid of legitimate offspring leads to a disregard of the manifest obligations of a parent's duty; but to this fair objection I can only offer a preponderating advantage, that it does away with that awful proneness to infanticide which distinguishes other countries, but pre-eminently England."

This estimate of Maguire's is confirmed by a statement taken from the records of the hospital for May, June, and July, 1868, and transmitted to us by an American clergyman residing in Rome. Of the total number, some were of legitimate births, as shown by authentic parish certificates; others of doubtful or uncertain birth; as follows:

This would give us an aggregate of 952 for the year, of which 584 would be of uncertain birth. A large proportion came from the provinces around Rome, and there is no reason to suppose all the uncertain births to be illegitimate; therefore we shall make a liberal allowance if we take the total number of foundlings of illegitimate birth, belonging to Rome itself, at 400. The real number is quite as likely to be below as above it.

When Mittermaier, whoever he was, stated the annual number of foundlings in Rome to be 3160, the mean population of that city was stated to be 130,000. It is now 215,573. By Mittermaier's proportion the annual number of foundlings should now be 5226. Are we called on to believe this, and to hang our heads in shame at this enormous number of 5226 illegitimates each year in the capital of the Catholic world? And this, when we know that the actual number of foundlings from Rome is not over 900, and the actual number of illegitimate children is about 400.

A small discrepancy, no doubt; a little peccadillo in the figures! We hope we have not shown any undue warmth in exposing it; for who knows, our "evangelic" friends may feel themselves insulted, and entirely absolved from any obligation of refuting us; our unchristian warmth of temper and vituperative manner being enough—to use the expression of Rev. L. W. Bacon, in The New Englander—"to discredit without any particular refutation" whatever we assert in this article.

But whence come the three thousand one hundred and sixty foundlings of "Mittermaier" annually received in Rome? Without doubt, from adding up all the inmates of the different asylums for children in Rome, and the foundlings of S. Spirito, and representing the total as an aggregate of foundlings received.

"Il Conservatorio and other establishments of this class" in Rome are as follows:

Asylums for children of all ages, with schools attached:

These are institutions of which Dr. Neligan, who visited them, gives an account in his Rome, published by Messrs. Sadlier; and to these must be added the department of S. Spirito, where female foundlings, after being nursed, are received back—if not otherwise provided for—and taken care of for life, or until they marry or get a situation; this numbers about six hundred, according to Maguire. If we add all the numbers together, and also the children under the care of the foundling hospital out at nurse, or being brought up in private families; in short, all the recipients of charity of the different institutions of Rome, we might approach a number corresponding to the three thousand one hundred and sixty of Mittermaier.

We can see by this "how the noble and Christian charity of Rome, excelling that of any other city of its size on the earth, is," by a base and groundless falsehood, sought to be turned into a means of holding her up to the scorn and indignation of the whole world.

We can show, also, in an entirely different way, by the official census of Rome, the absurdity of the statement of Seymour, and that in the most conclusive manner. In the Civilta Cattolica of 21st of December, 1867, we have the census of the population and the number of births for the year 1866; also a tabular statement of those for a period of ten years, ending 21st of April, 1867.

From these we find the present population to be 215,573; the number of the legitimate births for the year from Easter, 1866, to Easter, 1867, was 5739, and adding thereto the still-born, 6120. The average annual number of births in an average population of 197,737, excluding the still-born, was 5657 legitimate, for the decennial period. Adding the still-born, we have an annual average of over 6000 legitimate births.

Now, if we consider that in Rome there is a large class of the population who belong to the clergy, who do not marry; a large body of military; the Jews, whose children of course do not appear in any baptismal register, from which the number of annual births is made out; we may set down the average productive part of the population, corresponding to the population of any other city, at an average of not more than 175,000. From this number, according to the general vital statistics of the civilized world, we must look for from 6300 to 6400 annual births. Take from this the number of annual legitimate births stated above, and there remains no margin for any large number of illegitimate births. Any one can see that it is a moral impossibility that they should exceed three or four hundred.

The same thing can be made out by means of the number of the married, which is accurately taken every year. In April, 1867, there were 30,471 married women in Rome. Now, how many children could be expected to be born annually from that number? We can approximate very nearly to this by considering the census of the kingdom of Italy, as given in the Civilta Cattolica of 20th of June, 1868. From this we find that for about 4,297,346 married women there were about 900,000 births, which gives us one yearly for every five married women, very nearly. Applying this proportion to Rome, we should have of 30,471 married women, 6094 births. The actual number, including still-born, was, as we have seen, 6120.

The Civilta Cattolica says, "This proportion of 28.3 of legitimate births for every one thousand of the population speaks very well for a capital city." And so it does; it shows, what we have always understood them to be, that the Romans are as virtuous and moral as any people of the world.

In passing, we commend to the Rev. Mr. Bacon the figures of the official census of the kingdom of Italy, from which we find the percentage of illegitimacy for 1863 to have been 4.8; for 1864, 5. It is to be observed that there is somewhat of a deterioration in this last year, perhaps owing to the success of the efforts of the Bible and tract societies to throw the pure light of "gospel truth" on this hitherto benighted land. The rate of illegitimacy in Scotland, which Mr. Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller, calls the most religious Protestant country in Europe, is double that of Italy, the country most thoroughly Catholic.

And we ask, moreover, of Mr. Bacon, the direct question, What is the honesty of representing the relative chastity of England and Italy as 5 to 21, when the real proportions are 6.4 to 5? It may do very well to charge Brother Hatfield and Brother Prime, when you have your own good name to vindicate against their charges, with gross unfairness in controversy; but we consider your adroit shirking of all the statements of The Catholic World, on the plea of an error found in a quotation from The Church and World, as quite as dishonorable as any thing you have charged against them. Your persistence in repeating calumnious statements, and spreading them out as you do among readers who will not see the refutation, will give you and your friend, Mr. M. Hobart Seymour, an unenviable notoriety among the worst calumniators of the Catholic religion who have as yet appeared. You have repeated, some time ago, that most infamous calumny of the Tax-book of the Roman Chancery, so amply refuted by Bishop England; but although it has been called to your notice, you have never had the grace to apologize. The old maxim seems to have been, "Lie as hard as you can, and lay it on thick, for it will all be believed," and hence we had our Maria Monks and our Brownlees. Now the tactics are to be changed, and the maxim seems to be, "Let there be some semblance of truth mixed with the lie, so that it may sink deeper; let the calumny be sugared over with professions of 'fair play,' and it will work with better effect;" and hence come such things as the Moral Results of Romanism, by Messrs. Seymour and Bacon, the "model controversialists."

To come back to Rome. The Civilta Cattolica tells us that the census has been taken in the same way since the sixteenth century. The total number of births, 4373, of Bowring, were then the total of legitimate births, not the absolute total. The number of 3160 foundlings received turns out to be the number of orphans—some of them 80 years old, for all we know; for some are cared for as long as they live—and other destitute or abandoned children. And thus this beautiful piece of "mosaic work," intended to exhibit the horrible vice of Rome to the gaze of an admiring and astonished public, falls to pieces. Instead of the anomalous state of things in which each married couple in Rome would have on an average one child in the space of 25 years, they are found to be quite as prolific as other people, and quite as virtuous. Rome, in respect to offences against chastity, is probably the most orderly and decent city of its size in the world. Maguire says:[20]

"The returns (criminal) embrace all kinds of crime.... And among the rest they comprehend a class of offenders who, in some countries—for instance, in France—are under the control as well as sanctioned by the police authorities, and in others defy almost all authority or restraint whatsoever. I allude to women of depraved character, not one of whom is to be met with in the streets of Rome, which may accordingly be traversed with impunity at any hour of the evening or night by a modest female without the risk of having her eyes and ears offended, as they are in too many cities of our highly civilized empire. Offenders of this class are at once made amenable to the law, and committed either to the Termini, or to the institution of the Good Shepherd, where the most effectual means of reformation are adopted, and in very many instances with success—both institutions being specially under the care and control of religious communities."

It is the fashion to decry Rome—to represent her population as cowed down and discontented with their government; to this the reception which Garibaldi with his war-cry of "Rome or death"—though he lived to see another day, after all—met with from the Roman people, is a sufficient reply: or to say that they are miserably poor or degraded; to this, Count de Reyneval, in his report to the French minister for foreign affairs, says:

"The condition of the population is one of comparative ease.... An appearance of prosperity strikes the eyes of the least observant. Gaiety of the most expansive kind is to be traced in the faces of all. It may be asked whether this can be the people whose miseries excite to such a degree the commiseration of Europe?"[21]

Rome, then, with a garrison of over 7000 soldiers, and with an immense influx of visitors from all parts of the world, and particularly of wealthy pleasure-seekers from England and America; with a stern suppression of prostitution and public vice, still shows a rate of illegitimacy less than six per cent; a rate lower than that of England, or any Protestant country which has published statistics on the subject.

We have thus given this matter as thorough and complete an investigation as has been possible under the circumstances. We have given the reasons for all we have stated, and the reader can see for himself the force of our arguments. We neither desire to misrepresent nor to be misrepresented; and we would not make one misstatement to the disadvantage of any one, be he Protestant or any thing else; or conceal any thing which has a bearing on the question, even if it should put our side of it in an unfavorable light. If we have done any of these things, it is unconsciously to ourselves; and therefore we feel, perhaps too warmly and indignantly, this trickery, when it is attempted to make us the victims of it.

From our previous experience, we look for a more active circulation of this calumny, from our refutation of it; but we console ourselves with the reflection that there is a God in heaven who watches over all, and who will make the truth apparent in due time. At any rate, no such consideration shall hinder us a moment from exposing error and deception, so far as our occupations and duties shall afford us the leisure to do so.

ST. OREN'S PRIORY;
OR, EXTRACTS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN AMERICAN IN A FRENCH MONASTERY.

"Pour chercher mieux."—Device of Queen Christina of Sweden.

PART II.

I entered the novitiate on the 22d. The Veni sponsa Christi, accipe coronam quam tibi Dominus præparavit in æternum has been sounding in my heart ever since like a war-cry, animating me to the interior combat. For the cloister is that oasis in the great desert of the world where is carried on a vital combat between nature and grace, more furious than that between Christian and Paynim in the Diamond of the desert. I have been much happier since I entered upon my new life, and am glad I can go out no more. I love the solitude and calmness of the cloister, which at last extends to the heart; I love the shrines "where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep;" I love the companionship of those who seem unsullied by earthly passions; and I love this release from all earthly care, with no thought for what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be clothed. Is it not better than the bustle and vanity of the world, which almost efface the thought of God?

And then, you know, I have always believed that there are some who are called to perpetuate the glorious fellowship of Christ's sufferings; to share, as members of his body, the pains and sorrows of the great Head of the church; and to make reparation to heaven for the constant outrages against the Divine Majesty. As Faber says, "Nuns are the turtle-doves of the church, who have to mourn in a spirit of loving sorrow and sweet reparation over the wrongs of their heavenly Spouse."

The heart of St. Augustine was so full of the love of God and the sense of what is his due, that he is always represented holding it all aflame in his hands. Old legends tell us how an angel bore it away to a sanctuary, where it will still tremble in its crystal case if an unbeliever enters the church where it is exposed. So tremulously alive to the honor and glory of God should be the hearts that are gathered together in the cloister. How many souls fly thither to make up, as it were, to God what is wanting on the part of their sinful brethren! Apropos, I must tell you about one of our nuns, who is full of holy fervor. In the late retreat, the director asked her the subject of her particular examen. "Self-abnegation," was the reply. "Do you find many occasions for practising it?" inquired the père. "Not as many as I could wish." "What is the virtue which you particularly ask of our Lord in your devotions, and by the actions of each day?" "I ask for no virtue, mon père." "With what intention, then, do you offer them?" "For the conversion of sinners, and the greater glory of God."

Is not this admirable? I am sure many Protestants could hardly comprehend a piety so disinterested as to lose sight, in a measure, of one's own profit in zeal for God's cause.

The facilities are also great in the cloister for the frequent reception of the sacraments, which quicken the moral circulation. The pulsations of the soul are more healthful after the infusion of divine grace through them. I went to holy communion this morning. The Divine Host seemed to me a burning coal from off the altar of God, and the priest, the angel who placed it on my lips. "Our God is a consuming fire." I prayed that he might consume every affection in my heart that was not centred in him; and, as I felt the torrent of divine flame circulating in my veins, every earthly desire, every human passion, seemed to die away within me. For a moment, at least, I felt the signification of the words of the great apostle of the Gentiles, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." Might such moments be perpetuated! But it is of faith that those who have partaken of Christ's body and blood remain in him, and he in them, as long as they are in a state of grace. It is this interior presence of the divinity which animated the saints to the sacrifice, and made even this world, amid all their privations and austerities, a very foretaste of heaven. What sweet solemnity and thoughtfulness reign in the heart sensible of this divine presence! In its light the soul,

As you say, a great deal does depend upon the influences that surround us, especially with weak souls like me. I envy those men who are as gods, in spite of temperament, or clime, or any outward influence; who go on unchecked from one degree of glory to another, to the very heights of sanctity. I am always drifting along, awaiting the impulse of the sacraments, or the helping hand of some stronger friend, too glad if I do not recede. Ah! solitude brings us face to face with ourselves, and reveals to us our moral littleness. Nothing is more humbling than this revelation. Nothing makes us more distrustful of ourselves, and more willing to accept the appointed means of perfection. The life our director thinks the safest is a common life, lived in an uncommon manner; that is, while we do the same things as those around us, it is with motives so holy that each action is rendered in a degree supernatural. This is the great secret of the hidden and interior life, which the saints of all ages have loved and of which St. Joseph is the type.

I have been reading Fioretti; or, the Little Flowers of St. Francis d'Assisi—a collection of the sayings of the first Franciscans, with a rare bloom on them. These mediæval flowers, so long shut up in a foreign tongue, have a delicious fragrance, and while I inhaled their odor I forgot that I belonged to an incredulous age. There is a simplicity truly poetical in this collection, which is admirable. One little remark of Friar Egide struck me: "La voie la plus directe pour nous sauver, c'est de nous perdre." This loss, this annihilation of self, on the ruins of which must be built up the great edifice of our perfection, is what I daily sigh after, and what I ask for you. The Père Milley, a Jesuit, speaks much of "le pays des âmes perdues"—a country to which all my desires tend. It is a promised land which I see afar off; another Canaan, which I hardly dare hope to enter, though I look wistfully on those who are lost in God—that ocean without limit, where our littleness is swallowed up in immensity, and we almost forget our fears and our frailties; we know not whether we suffer or are consoled; conscious only of the divine atmosphere—conscious only that we love!...

Our novitiate is a large apartment with five immense windows in it. (When you are taxed for windows, you may as well have large ones, and the French love the air and live in it.) No matter how cold it is, the windows are always open—and when I say open, I mean the whole window; for, as I have already remarked, they swing open like folding doors. On cold days a few mottes are burning in the fireplace, around which a folding screen is drawn. These mottes are mostly of tan, pressed into flat round cakes like a small cheese. They give out strong heat. Wood is very scarce here, and consequently dear, and I have never seen coal. As for lights, we burn linseed-oil, which gives a clear yellow light, and the odor is not offensive like whale-oil. Each sister has a little coil of yellow wax-taper to light when she wishes to go about the monastery in the evening.

The floor is paved with square red tiles, as in all the houses here, but we have little mats to protect our feet from the chill. Each novice has her table and writing-desk, at which she studies or sews. At one end of the room is an altar, and the walls are adorned with engravings of a religious character. Leading from the novitiate is the chambrette of the mistress of novices, in which is the novices' library. It is always open to us, and we like an excuse for entering it.

Our manner of spending the day is nearly unvaried. We rise at half-past four, and, after completing our toilettes, (for even nuns have toilettes; one's garments must be put together somehow,) we descend to the chapel. The choir is impenetrably dark most of the year at this early hour. Only the little lamp is twinkling near the tabernacle! One by one the nuns come noiselessly in, like so many shadows. This hour of morning meditation is delicious. The perfect stillness, in which you can hear your own heart beat, disposes you to reflection. The soul becomes steeped in the spirit of the place and the hour passes too quickly away. Then we say the hours. The morning sacrifice follows with its awful mysteries, which are ever fresh and wonderful.

When we issue from the chapel, after our exercises of more than two hours, we go one by one, when we choose, to the refectory, for there is no breakfast, properly speaking. The nuns take a piece of dry bread, with perchance some fruit, and eat it, as the children of Israel ate the passover, standing and ready girded for the labors of the day, for which we are all ready at eight. That would be called a fast in America. But when a sister is delicate, she can have some coffee or chocolate. The world used to cry out against the good living of monastic orders; now it says their austerities are fatal to the health. It is always the way with the world—now, as in the days when John the Baptist came "neither eating nor drinking."

The French know nothing of the cup that cheers but does not inebriate. They only take tea medicinally, and seem to have no idea of how it should be prepared. It is a prevalent belief here that every Englishman in his travels carries his tea-kettle with him, and they suppose the whole race partial to the beverage. So, by way of a fête, they proposed regaling me with some the other day. I accepted what was no luxury to me. A good sister brought me what she styled soupe au thé, consisting of an abundance of milk and water, with a dash of tea. (I rely on the veracity of the cuisinière for this last item.) Into this, bread was sliced, and the whole served up in a soup-plate! Confucius himself would have laughed. I am sure I did till I cried, to the great scandal of all the nuns, who were gravely listening to some holy legend as they ate. Shall I tell you what I did with my soupe au thé? I hope I am not vain of the heroic act, but I—ate it!

Fifteen minutes before dinner we have examination of conscience. We go to the table saying, "De profundis clamavi" and leave it reciting, "Miserere Domine!" We eat in silence, listening to the gospel of the day, the lives of the saints, or some other religious book, read by one of the sisters from a high pulpit. After dinner is a reunion, when we come together with our sewing or other handiwork, and have the privilege of talking, and sometimes we make la cour du roi Pétaud, I assure you. At one o'clock the lay sisters come in, while we read aloud for half an hour, if no chapter has been convoked. They too bring their work. One old sister always brings her spindle and distaff, and twirls away, sitting bolt upright, and looking so grim that she always seems to me one of the Fates lengthening out the thread of life. At three we have vespers, and then make half an hour's meditation. From compline we go to supper at six, after which we walk in the garden or assemble together within doors. At eight o'clock is read the subject for the next morning's meditation, and we go to the choir to say the office, and for night prayers. Thus closes the day with prayer, as it began. We all light our little tapers and go silently to our cells for the night. Such is the outline of our life, which is so well filled up that we have few leisure moments. We hear of lazy monks and nuns, but there are no drones in our busy hive, with our boarding-school, day and free schools, with their hundreds of pupils, and this vast building to keep in order. Night comes before we know it, and another day is gone. There is one day less in which to struggle with self, and, alas! one day less in which to sacrifice something for God! You ask for the shadow in the picture of my life. There is ever one dark spot in our existence, the shadow of ourselves, which follows us wherever we go.

But we have one grievance just now. Finisterre is the name of the portal that separates us from the world, but it cannot wholly exclude its sounds. I will explain. The city rises so abruptly behind our monastery that the garden of the Count de T——, on the opposite side of the street, is on a level with our second story. And the street that separates us is one of those dim, narrow streets found only in old cities of the south, where it is desirable to exclude the heat. For several nights past when we have come from our dear quiet chapel, with our hearts all subdued and thoughtful, and pondering on the subject for the next morning's meditation, a "toot, tooting," is heard from the garden opposite that is enough to distract a saint. It is a French horn, or some other wind instrument, surely meant for some vast campagna. But, essayed in a small garden, with a hill in the rear to aid the reverberation, the whole volume of sound comes pouring across the corridor into our cells, the very embodiment of worldly discord and tumult. "Pazienza!" we say to ourselves, and try to turn a deaf ear. I dare say the performer has some idea of enlivening the poor recluses, who have no other wish but to be left to their own reveries, save that the time of the vintage may soon come when he can awaken the echoes of the vineyard.

It is the festival of the Assumption. While I write, all the bells of the city are ringing, statues and banners of Mary are borne through the streets by the clergy, followed by a long procession of people. The deep-toned "ora pro nobis" breaks in upon the stilly air. Each invocation seems like a cry of agony, which goes heavenward from hearts weary of the world and the things of the world. These processions are made throughout France in memory of the celebrated vow of Louis XIII., who consecrated France to the Virgin. It is also a national holiday in honor of Napoleon I., being his birthday. "St. Napoleon's Day," say the people with a smile!

I saw a pretty picture last evening—Sister Rose standing on a stool near the fountain of the court, surrounded by a group of gay young ladies, to whom she was preaching. She looked like a statue of St. Angèle. Sister Rose is a lay sister, wholly uneducated, but with a certain piety of a mystical nature which has given her quite a reputation for sanctity. She has an oval face of pale olive hue, jet black eyes with an indrawn look as if conscious of some interior Presence, and regular features, with a delicacy and refinement quite remarkable considering her laborious life. She never meets you without a smile and a "word for Jesus," as she says. The young ladies of the boarding-school love and revere her so much that they often lay violent hands upon her and force her to preach to them, which she does with a smile and the same inward look, and with a grace of gesture peculiar to her country. As her discourse was in patois, (one of the langues d'Oc, and the tongue of Jasmin, who lives at Agen,) which all understand here, I was not benefited thereby; but her appearance and her saintly face, with its gentle, serious smile, were impressive. The exuberance of her audience was soon subdued.

There are a good many Spaniards in this city who are exiled on account of their political opinions, being Carlists. They had a solemn mass of requiem chanted in our chapel, the other day, for the repose of the soul of Don Carlos. Nearly thirty Spanish gentlemen and some ladies were present. A bier was placed in the centre of the chapel and surrounded by lights, as if the body were there, and on the pall was placed a wreath of laurel. The officiating priest, too, was a Spaniard. I looked with interest on these exiles from their native land, and my heart grew warm toward them; they were extremely devout during mass, and I saw many of them wipe away their fast-falling tears. I could not repress my own; for separation from the fatherland seemed a bond of sympathy I could not resist. Thus, when I am gone, and my remains lie in a foreign land, may some kind souls gather together in the sanctuary of God to chant the Requiem æternam for my tried soul!

Once a month we meditate particularly on death, and offer all our devotions as a preparation for our last end. When mass is over, and the thanksgiving for our communion is ended—no, not ended, for it can never end; but while it is still ascending from our hearts, our dear mère, who is as pale as the wife of Seneca, goes forward and kneels before the grate that separates the choir from the chancel, and says in earnest tones the litany for a happy death. Her voice trembles as she repeats the awful petition: "When my eyes, obscured at the approach of death, cast their dying looks toward thee, O merciful Jesus! and when my lips, cold and trembling, pronounce for the last time on earth thy adorable name—" "Merciful Jesus, have pity on me!" sighs every heart in response. The impression of these prayers pursues the mind all day. "Lord, in that strait, the Judge! remember me!"

On St. Andrew's day we buried one of the nuns, who was about ninety years of age and quite superannuated. This death did not affect me so much as that of Sister Sophie. The transition from old age to the grave seems so natural that it excites less horror than when one dies in the full vigor of life. Mère Ste. Ursule was of a noble family of La Vendée. At the age of sixteen she entered a community of Poor Clares, one of the most rigid orders of the church; but, during her novitiate, the great French Revolution swept away nearly every vestige of religion, and the nuns of St. Clare were driven out from their quiet cells into the world. When the gendarmes forced them to leave the convent, these emissaries desecrated every thing and broke and threw out the sacred emblems. As Sister Ursule, who had a most tender devotion to her whom Châteaubriand styles "the divinity of the frail and the desolate," was leaving the cloister she had loved so much, she turned to give it a last look, and saw a small statue of Notre Dame de Grâce standing on the convent wall. She said to one of her sister nuns, "It seems as if the Blessed Virgin reproaches me for leaving," and she turned back to save the statue from insult. The gendarmes did not oppose the design of the young novice, and this bonne Vierge was for more than sixty years the ornament and tutelary genius of the cell of Mère Ste. Ursule, after her re-entrance into religion. With all the fervor of southern devotion toward Mary, she used to prostrate herself daily before this statuette, and when fallen into second childhood she would pour out her heart in effusions of child-like simplicity at once charming and poetic. She often said to her novices: "When I am dying, place my bonne Vierge on my bed beside me."

After the Revolution, the more rigid orders were not restored, and Mère Ste. Ursule, despairing of the re-establishment of the Poor Clares, joined the Ursulines, and was for a long time mistress of novices at the priory. In her last days she did nothing but pray and adorn the altar in her cell. She knew the office by heart, and always recited it at the canonical hours. Her beads were told many times a day, and she never failed to use the discipline with severity. I often went to see her and her bonne Vierge. She died suddenly of old age. Being somewhat more feeble than usual, one of the sisters remained with her during the night. Mère Ste. Ursule said her office and rosary, but did not sleep. Toward day the sister perceived the approach of death; she took down the statue of Notre Dame de Grâce and laid it in the arms of the aged nun, whose spirit instantly fled to the presence of Mary in heaven. It was at the hour of dawn. The first beam of the dayspring from on high carried her soul away from earth.

Again those solemn funeral services! I cannot tell you the effect they have on me.

A friend sent me a curious pear to-day, said to be peculiar to this city. It is called the Bon Chrétien, but very different from the one we called so at home. It is a large, coarse-grained pear, but juicy and toothsome, and has no seeds; that is, as every one says, those that grow within the limits of the city have none, while those that are found in the country are seedy enough. Old legends connect this peculiarity with St. Oren's miraculous powers.

December 8.—This is the festival of the Immaculate Conception, the patronal feast of the chapel of the priory. For nine days past the convent bell has rung out a joyful peal at the hour of the novena to Maria Immaculata, when her litany was chanted to a beautiful Spanish air which completely melts the heart. Unusual pomp has been given to this fête on account of the expected decision respecting the dogma of the Immaculate Conception at Rome. This morning we had more than a dozen masses, for the clergy love to come to this antique chapel on the feasts of Mary. At ten o'clock, about twenty priests came to sing high mass, and again this afternoon for vespers. The chapel was crowded with people from the city. Thus for centuries have the faithful congregated on this same day. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed all day. I passed hours in its presence, bearing in my heart all my innumerable wants, and those of my friends afar off. How like heaven is our dear chapel when the Lamb of God is thus exposed to our adoration! In a niche over the altar gleams the holy image of Mary. The Divinity is enshrined in light beneath her maternal eye, the air filled with incense, as if fanned by adoring angels. The arches are full of harmony. Every power of body and mind is captivated, and one abandons one's self to the impressions of the moment. It gives one a peculiar emotion to hear men chant the praises of Mary. What a reverence they must have for womanhood! Their Miserere nobis in the litany was the very cry of a contrite heart. I should have thought myself in paradise had not the supplicatory tones of the clergy announced a felicity still imperfect.

All this is infinitely beautiful and poetic, apart from every sentiment of religion. Every day of my life would seem to you a chapter full of poetry; but I have become so accustomed to what I once thought belonged to a bygone age of mystery and romance, that it all seems the natural order of events. And one soon learns to rise above the mere ceremonials of religion, which are so full of enjoyment to some natures, to that which they typify. Such is the design of Holy Church—to lead the heart up to God, its true centre. Perhaps, too, she wishes that every power of our being should be enlisted in his service; the imagination as well as reason.

After vespers we had a fine sermon from the Abbé Lassale upon the invocation: Regina sine labe concepta, ora pro nobis! It is the custom here now, as, from the sermons of Bossuet, we see it was in the time of Louis XIV., for the preacher, after invoking the Holy Spirit, to present a plan of his discourse, make some introductory remarks, and then stop. Both preacher and audience kneel in silence for the space of an Ave Maria, then all rise and the sermon is continued. The custom is quite impressive.

December 15.—Owing to the antiquity of our chapel, long since dedicated to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the archbishop permitted us, as a particular favor, to celebrate the octave of this great festival of Mary with a sermon and benediction every evening. The whole chapel was daily illuminated, and the effect was magical when it was lighted up. Imagine arches of light, pillars wreathed in flame, altar covered with flowers and brilliant with immense wax candles; while in the midst gleamed the Virgin in a perfect bower of pure white lilies. And, just as the imagination is fired with so much brilliancy and taste, Kyrie eleison! floats up with the incense in the most plaintive, heart-rending tones—a very tear of the heart dropped at the feet of Mary! It is the commencement of the litany of Maria Immaculata, chanted by the nuns in choir, and responded to by the crowds that fill the chapel without. Light and music are the two ideas of which Dante's Paradise is composed; and I felt with what true poetic instinct, when kneeling before that shrine of light, my ears listened to harmonies approaching those that swell for ever before the throne of God! This struck me from the first; and I have since found my thoughts expressed by another far better than I could express them. Leigh Hunt says: "It is impossible to see this profusion of lights, especially when one knows their symbolical meaning, without being struck with the source from which Dante took his idea of the beatified spirits. His heaven, filled with lights, and lights, too, arranged in figures, which glow with lustre in proportion to the beatitude of the souls within them, is the sublimation of a Catholic church. And so far it is heavenly indeed; for nothing escapes the look of materiality like fire. It is so airy, joyous, and divine a thing, when separated from the idea of pain and an ill purpose, that the language of happiness naturally adopts its terms, and can tell of nothing more rapturous than burning bosoms and sparkling eyes. The seraph of the Hebrew theology was a fire."

Christmas.—Yesterday was spent in retreat, by way of preparing our hearts for the solemnities of the nativity; and I have kept a real old-fashioned vigil—a vigil of the middle ages. I wish you could have heard the joyful ring of all the bells of the city as midnight approached. At the cathedral, the clear tones of the smaller bells, like the voices of nuns in choir, and the great Bourdon among them, "like the chanting of a friar," as Longfellow says; the carillon, too, from St. Pierre; and then all the convent bells sounding from Carmel, the Oratory, the Filles de Marie, and La Miséricorde, and those of the Hospital, Le Grand Séminaire, etc., etc., are infinitely impressive in the stillness of the night—the prelude of a great joy, breaking in upon our meditation on the birth of Christ. When the bells were all hushed, the priest stood at the foot of the blazing altar; all the rest of the chapel was in darkness—not a taper in the choir. There was not a sound but the night wind. The saints on the walls, half revealed in their dim recesses, looked like the spirits of the old monks come forth at this mystic hour to guard the chapel their hands once raised.

It was the second time I ever communicated at midnight mass, and I imagined my heart the manger in which the Infant Jesus came to repose. I thought, as I returned from the holy table to my prie-dieu, of the first tears of the Divine Babe, and that he bewailed my continued imperfections. "Ah! why should not thy tears," I exclaimed, "wash away my sins, that thou be not forced to shed also thy most precious blood! I, too, weep. I, who deserve to weep, join my tears to thine. O Virgin Mother! take back thy child! His presence makes me an object of horror to myself. His tears scald my very heart. His caresses are like arrows that pierce my soul. Thou alone canst console him; only clean hands and a pure heart should embrace spotless innocence. My spiritual vision is too weak to bear the Orient from on high. Yes, Mary, thou alone canst console him; for thou art immaculate. Embrace him for me—those hands and feet which will be pierced for me; and wipe away the tears that have commenced to flow but too soon."