AT HOME & ABROAD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 324, 4 July 1879, Page 1

AT HOME & ABROAD

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ttffli9'4(£Nio de» Deux Mondea of April 15th, M. Othenin d'Haonjbnville concludes his able series of papers on the youthful criminal classes of Paris. In this concluding paper also we find strong testimony borne to the value of the religious orders ; to their singular adaptability to whatsoever it is they undertake to perform, and their power of influencing for good. We also find indirect, but powerful witness borne to the necessity for a religious education. The paper is of considerable length and treats of many questions of prison management ; we confine ourselves, however, to that portion of it which deals more immediately with the religious question. By a provision of the French law then, it is open to parents to imprison unmanageable children for certain periods, and M. d'Haussonville describing the convent of the Magdalen, an institutiop devoted to this purpose, as well as to the reception of young girls who voluntarily demand a refuge there from some moral danger, and under the care of a religious community known as the Dames d* la Chnritidu Refuge proceeds to the following effect. The Government grants the community a subsidy of 60 centimes a day for each girl sent to them by her parents up to the number of 120. This number is often reached, because the custom of dealing in the manner referred to by refractory children is much resorted to by the Parisian populace, and many a father of a family, who declaims against the encroachments of clericalism, is not sorry to know that the child whom he has not been able to get the better of is placed for two or three months under the influence of the sisters. This convent is a difficult one for visitors to gain admittance to ; the writer was obliged to explain his motives for desiring to visit it before he was permitted to enter, but when the nuns found that his reasons were valid he was received, as in every other religious house, without affectation, and every facility afforded him of carrying out the object of his visit. The difficulty placed in the way of idle curiosity is wisely so placed ; those who come there to seek a refuge from their own weakness, and the temptations of the outer world, have a right to find there also shelter from indiscreet inquiries. The voluntary prisoners are a class not easily induced to remain in confinement ; frequently a young girl who comes in the evening to the convent gate, shedding tears and praying for protection against some unknown danger, goes away next morning without telling her name, and hindered neither by advice nor entreaties. Those, however, who pass through the stage of probation, and appear well-disposed, are admitted to a second division called Btpasseuses a nevf, whose work goes far towards the Bupport of the house. After they have been there for some time a good many of them go out ; some to rejoin their families, with whom they have been reconciled ; others to fill some situation that has been found for them. But there are some who shrink from recrossing the protecting threshold, and of them a special class has been formed, known as the Grande Perseverance. In this division the countenances are marked by an expression of mystic joy ; of the three divisions it was the only one in which the writer saw the inmates smile. The correctional department, however, gives the sisters much more trouble than their penitents give them. It is hard to find amongst the Parisian youth anything more rebellious than these young girls who have thus early nndertaken a struggle against the authority of their parents, and whom to subdue the harsh measures in question are only takeD in extreme cases. The sisters consider the time allowed them to gain an influence over these children far too short . The punishment, technically known as the correction, paltrnclle, lasts at longest only six months, but it is rarely inflicted for more than two or three months. But in spite of all obstacles they succeed in gaining a certain influence that it is their chief endeavour to prolong. "With this object they have opened a department called petite perseverance, where, with the consent of the girls and their parents, they retain those whose moral reformation has not yet been accomplished. Thanks to this institution, for which Government allows no subsidy, fair reßultß may be obtained. But as to those children who return to their parents, whatever be the appearance of amendment, the nuns

have little faith in its endurance. A special department in this convent is also maintained for the children of well-to-do people who have, in their degree, transgressed like those of the humbler classes ; for the maintenance of these their parents pay, and they are managed with much consideration and judgment. When one visits this singular house, whose exterior aspect has undergone no visible change since it received in the seventeenth century the visit of St. Jane Frances de Chantal ; when one sees in the spacious garden the sisters walking alone, each with a book in her hands, and lowering as you pass her thick black veil, you ask yourself if you are in the middle of Babylon, in the midst of the fight against clericalism, and what will become of this peacable population when the triumphant enemy turns out of their asylum seventy sisters, some of whom, perhaps, have not set a foot in the street for forty years. Young girls otherwise condemned than those spoken of are distributed amongst other educational establishments appointed for the purpose. These establishments are uniformly conducted for they are all, except one, under the care of religious congregations. The writer has a poor opinion of any attempts that are made to place them under any other direction. It is not that there might not be found a few lay directresses sufficiently intelligent and moral, but, in a country like France, the number of women whose time would allow them to give themselves up completely to the education of vicious children, who would be charitable enough to do so in a spirit of devotion, and who at the same time would be resolved to maintain their secular independance will riways be infinitely small. Besides the trials that have been made to place establishments for correctional education under the direction of laics have not shown happy results. Of three establishments so directed of late, two were obliged to be closed ; one because the directress had been compromised in an unfortunate transaction ; the other because it was found impossible to maintain harmony and agreement amongst the directory, and the third vegetates under conditions that, perhaps, will not long hold out. Until a new order of things obtains, then, the partisans of lay teaching would do well to direct elsewhere their efforts and their demands. The writer next describes such an educational establishment as he has been speaking of in the Rue Vaugirard. Having given several particulars that de not concern us, he says : one of the features of this house, which it has in common with all religious houses, is the facility with which obedience is enforced. In order to maintain order and submission amongst this population of little ramblers, babyish punishments are sufficient, and rewards in the shape of variously coloured badges have a supreme effect. But still more efficacious, perhaps, is the personal influence of the sisters, and their firm and gentle method of dealing that soon bends the most rebellious. A few years ago a young girl was removed from Saint Lazare to the hospital of Lourcine to be treated for a serious illness. She soon turned the ward in which she was placed upside down. Nobody could get any good of her, and all cried out for her expulsion. She was then sent to the Patronage Society, and under the care of the sisters in a few days she submitted to the rules of the house, and was guilty of no further misconduct. The females confined in the Central House of Clermont, a very rigorous prison, are under the care of an order known as the Sceurs de la Sagesse; their duties are terribly severe. For example, there is a vast penthouse upon which open the kitchen and other offices of the prison, and through which the prisoners are frequently obliged to pass. As they are forbidden to speak to one another, a nun is stationed in this penthouse to keep guard over them, and there she stands motionless from five in the morning until eight in the evening, exposed to all the variations of the weather. By this it may be judged how strictly the members of the order perform their duties. The writer, however, thinks that the mode of the sisters' life here seems to have communicated to their manner something of the rigour of the system. The custom of opposing Alike impassibility to scenes of violence or tears, of being on their guard against a show of hypocritical repentance arms them, exteriorly at least, with a certain coldness which, perhaps, might avert from them the confidence of those whose sentiments were sincere. When you pass through the work-rooms, over which they keep guard, two always together, they rise and salute you by an inclination of the head, but their eyes are not for one instant turned away from the prisoners, who might take advantage of this to establish clandestine communications. The writer, however, seems to show that the coldness he thought he

observed in these sisters, was but a necessary appearance lent by their occupation. What he narrates as confirming his opinion seems to us to weaken it, for the one sister who was not placed in so con■trained a situation was thoroughly sympathetic as he notices, and that she could never have been had she lived for over twenty years in a genuinely cold community. This nun is the schoolmistress, a position held by her for more than twenty years. She has not the less preserved the open and affectionate ways of a sister conducting a primary schoool. She it is, in fact, who enters more directly into moral contact with the prisoners, and whose ear receives more than one confidence that a nature less pure would hesitate to provoke. 11 Why did you ask leave to go to New Caledonia ?" inquired the Superintendent, instigated by the sister, of a prisoner in the school. "In order to rejoin my lover," replied she without hesitation or embarrassment. " And what made you change your mind ?" The young girl was distressed a little at this, and answered with tears in her eyes : "it was the sister who advised me to behave well so as to get pardoned, and go home to my mother." " That's right, my girl," said the sister in an affectionate tone. She had obtained what she wanted, the retractation of an imprudent request, made under a strong and dangerous influence. The writer then makes some further remarks, and speaking of the hymns sung by the prisoners concludes : Hope is there, nevertheless, in this moral and religious influence that many of them end by submitting to, which opens to some the gate of a refuge near Besancon, reconciles others with their families, and For all reduces relapse into crime to a figure much lower than that of the men ; a result so much the more remarkable that in the eyes of many who are skilled in criminal matters the situation of the liberated woman is worse than that of the man, and that in certain other countries the proportion of relapse is on the contrary less favourable to women. Surely the superiority of the sisters to lay guardians enters largely into this differance, and an acknowledgement of this superiority is paid willingly by the representatives of foreign countries to France. This is indeed most valuable testimony ; these simple recitals of their works speak more for the religious orders than volumes of the most eloquent sermons could do : and admonish us of the wickedness of those who with their eyes open are now attempting to weaken the holy and salutary influences. We find here, too, powerful evidence against every form of secularism, and to the worth of religion. M. d'Haussonville in conclusion thus testfies : The more we attempt to sound the mysterious depths of human destiny, the more we are reduced to raise our eyes towards the regions from whence descends the only ray that relieves their darkness a little. The contest between this darkness and this light has never been more admirably rendered than in the picture where Raphael has painted the Transfiguration. Whilst on the sumint of Thabor the figure of Uinst and those of the two prophets are pictured in a dazzling light, mght reigns at the foot of the mountain, and in this night, where all human afflictions are active, the Disciples weep the absence of the Master, the sick sigh for his return, and, culmination of sorrow, a mother looks with despair upon the dying throes of her child. Nevertheless in order to be comforted they would only have to turn their eyes towards the supernatural light which gleams at the top of the mountain, and whose slight reflection alone enlightens the dim and desolate plain. However far off and at times vacillating, this light may appear to our eyes, does it not remain the surest guide that has hitherto conducted humanity, and if this reflection were only a deceitful mirage, what other hope could balance the sufferings of the body, the miseries of the soul, and the tumults of thought ?

M. d'Haussonville, in the paper from which we have quoted narrates also the following circumstance. It illustrates the character of the Empress Eugenic and, even by the want of wisdom shown, tells us of a true and tender woman's heart. Some years ago the Empress heard them speak at Compiegnc of the severe discipline maintained in the prison of Clermont, and, with an impulse rather charitable than well-weighed, requested that the prisoners should be granted a day to spend as a holiday with permission to converse. This clay is still remembered at Clermont. In the midst of the general hum of conversation disorder kept growing. The prisoners thought that a revolution had broken out in Paris. They vainly attempted to make them understand the gratitude they owed the Empress. They would believe nothing about it, and ended the day by crying " Vire la JfcjjuMique .'" and throwing their tin porringers at the heads of the nuns.

The nature of those godly men, the missionaries to the heathen, over whose angelic career so much pious puffing periodically takes place, and iv whose interest small boys and girls gain a cherubic reputation by accumulating sixpences, has lately been much, canvassed, owing to various assertions made with respect to the value of their services in South Africa. One missionary we are informed in a paragraph now going the rounds of the papers, who " split upon his pals" and published an account of their maltreatment of the natives has himself been convicted of threatening a Kaffir who refused to do the washing of bis family ; another had interfered with a certain marriage which King Cetewayo wished to make, because it would spoil the

market in which he made a lucrative sale of brandy 4 Everything in fact tends to show us the justice of Mr. Anthony Trollope's valuation of an African convert to Christiariity/and'to confirm the sentence of the Saturday Review, which lately affirmed that "for the most part missionaries were men rather endowed with a lore of adventure than^ with spiritual minds. Such are the worthy Christians then from whoafl ranks are chosen those ardent apostles who, forsaking the humdrumß slums of their native lands in order to live the life on the contin^F of Europe' which is so attractive to Englishmen and Americans, there glorify their emptiness and gratify their adrentarons turn by an attack up*n the faith and morals of Catholic peoples. And, if we may judge by the fruits of their labours, such seem to have been the men also who spread the " Gospel" amongst the natives of this colony we live in. At least, take for example the following from the correspondence of our contemporary the New Zealand Herald :—" Happening to spend a Sunday in a mission station, not fifty miles north of Manganui, I thought proper to attend church service there in the afternoon. Everything went on quietly enough until three or four Maori curs, who had been meanwhile peacefully slumbering under the seats, became aware of each others' presence. All of a sudden they made a violent rush at each other, the sacred building echoing again with their yells. However, this was more than the congregation could bear. A youth, of giant proportions, rushed on the scene of action, and after five minutes exciting steeplechase over the seats, managed to clear the church of the intruders, amidst the cheers of the congregation. However, the joke does not end here. A man, with a large family of boys, who happened to be near the door, seeing the plate taken round, deemed it advisable to make his exit. Just as he had gained the door, the parson, seeing the clever little move, shouted out at the top of his voice " Stop ! stop !" The parson was determined upon securing the usual contribution, and dashed through the church, and amidst the laughter of the congregation, triumphantly brought his man back. The Maori style of conducting public worship beats everything. Picture to yourself, gentle reader, an old fryingpan suspended from the end of a teatree pole — the said fryingpan being used as a church bell to summon the wily savages to prayers. On one occasion, I remember, immediately after church service was over, the natives broke into a grog shanty owned by a native. The whole mob got beastly drunk, and vented their spleen on an unfortunate young Maori woman by throwing her to the ground and then bastinadoing her with a stick. So much for Maori religion."

WE have heard it said, when a young gentleman has seamed to be paying his addresses to several young ladies at the same time, that there was safety in numbers; the charms presented in so great variety to his view neutralized each other, and left him safe and whole-hearted. It seems to us that the various wining creeds now displayed for the admiration of Catholics generally throughout the world may produce a somewhat similar effect ; if, indeed, there beany tempted to tamper with them. It is most entertaining and instructive to listen to the hopes, aspirations, and impertinences, of the many propagandas, and to see how they tussle with one another over the expected proy. We have now a number of the Guardian, an English Ritualistic paper, before us. and we find it very amusing. It has a long correspondence an! a leader, on the subject of " Hyacinthe's" new venture, which is to bring the French people back to the condition occupied by them in the time of St. Denis ! That is, the Catholics of France, for the Calvinists and omne id gemis will not move a step in retrogression, although they are very far indeed from the state of things that existed at the period mentioned, The Guardian is much troubled anent a a Scotch Protestant bishop having promised to shepherd this worthy father ; as if the good man were trenching on the prerogative of the Archbishop of Paris, — but to appreciate this editor's discomfort it would be necessary to be a ritualist, otherwise it is utterly imposs^e to see why a layman may not take an excommunicated priest unj^l his wing if both of them so will it. The Archbishop of Paris has already condescended so far as to tell " Hyacinthe" that he regarded him as of no consequence whatever, and no doubt he so regards also his Lordship of Scotland, and his Lordship's idle pretensions. Meantime there come forward two gentlemen belonging to the " Reformed Church of Paris :" they write a letter to defend " Hyacinthe's" character, which had been attacked by a correspondent of the Guardian, or seemed to have been attacked, but they cannot help turn^fc up their nose at his opinions : '• Not being ourselves identified w^. his religious movement, we nevertheless look upon it as a matter of justice to make the above statement." So they say. Their sole bond of union, then, is that hatred of the Church which devours them in common with " Hyacinthe," and them and him in common with every abandoned creature that lurks in the foul haunts of the foul capital around them. " Hyacinthe," Bersier, de Pressense, these in their way are manifesting their hatred to-day ; to-morrow the cutthroat mob will manifest theirs ; attempted perversion to-day, accomplished murder to-morrow ; there may be some apparent difference in the results, but the motives are openly the same. Again, in Mexico there is a propaganda of which the Guardian informs us ; it also is episcopal and High Church, and it is opposed by "Non-Episcopalians

and Plymouth Brethren." Everywhere we have the happy family, Satan engaged in the divisions and squabbles that must characterize his kingdom everywhere. Plymouth Brethren against Episcopalians, "Reformed Church of Paris" against those travelling back to St. Denis ; but all joining in the attack upon the Church, and joining in it with all that is vile and disgraceful throughout the world,— Satan is not divided againit himself. " There is safety in numbers," but the nature of the numbers here surely adds much to the safety. What man of common sense is there who cannot perceive that those who attack one object and waste all their violence upon it must be" allies, however they may seem to differ from one another. If Satan cannot be divided against himself, neither has Christ anything in common with Belial, and when, therefore, we see the manifest " abomination of desolation" coming forward hand in hand with that which might appear of better repute, we know at once that there is one origin for both, and that both tend to th« same end. The revolution has stripped the cloak from Protestantism, and exhibited it in its true colours. Its day of growth and of deceiving the world is passed by for ever, and its propagandas are the propagandas of its elder and stronger brother, atheism, whose stupid tool it is.

It appears then that the Zulus hare found other sympathisers besides those members of the Dublin mob who cheered for them in the theatre, and those writers in the Dublin press who concluded that they were but defending their country against wrongs such as were not so very long ago, inflicted on Ireland. The renowned Dr. Colenso, grateful no doubt for his awakening to the true use of the open Bible and just Pentateuchal views, actually preached a sermon in their favour in March last, and attributed tke outbreak of the war to the unjust acts and merciless mind of his fellow-countrymen, and, we presume fellow-Christians. By the way is Bishop Colenso considered a Christian by the mats of the community to which he belongs ; a " true Christian," of course, in the eyes of other sects he cannot claim to be ? The Bishop said :— " If after this solemn day we will not do this — we, our kings, and princes, and prophets, and priests—will not do what the Lord requires of us, will not do justly and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God ; if we will go on killing and plundering those who have never seriously harmed us, or threatened to harm us, until we made war with them — treating this message of peace with contempt and neglect, even with ridicule, ascribing it falsely to the prompting of men in our midst, judging unfairly, and misrepresenting the Zulu Bong, both in the Colony and in words sent to England — if we will do these things, then indeed there will be reason to fear that some further great calamity may yet fall on us, and perhaps overwhelm vs — by the assegai, famine or pestilence." Surely if the arithmetical right-reverend could sum up matters in this style within sight almost of the field of battle, the Irish populace and pressmen might be excused, if not absolutely accredited with extreme sagacity, for having come to a similar conclusion thousands of miles away. We admit, however, that allowance in their case could not be made for the affection arising from spiritual relationship, such as that which exists between the Bishop and the Zulus ; they had not been begotten to a higher religious standing by private interpretation in the mouth of these savages. Meantime, according to Lord Beaconsfield's Bmart saying, the bishop who has been converted has done his part ; he has displayed due gratitude, and it now only remains for the general who has been beaten mutatis mutandis to go and do likewise.

A London clergyman has been telling his congregation some home truths concerning the fashions adopted of late by those fair dames of the upper strata of society who lead the march of vanity : and who undertook first to display as much of the human figure as common decency would admit of, and then set about trimming it up so as to suit the tastes they meant to be pleased. For it is to be observed that these imperious leaders of ton not only choose their own fashions but insist ®n having them admired by the whole civilised world of mankind whether they will or no. It seems, then, that our ladies determined not only to have tight dresses, clinging into their skin, so far as it is possible ; but they further insist on girding in their bodies to dimensions never meant for them by nature. But nature, it would appear, is not as accommodating as it might be desired : the most imperious female will can not subdue it, and it expresses it's disapprobation in a very rude and ugly way indeed. But far be it from us to enter upon a description of this way of our own authority ; the editorial chair is not surrounded by the sanctity and security that clothe the pulpit, and even this, we should say, had need of all its terrors and perogatives when its occupant spoke as follows :—": — " God has made you one way — you think you can do better. You alter the lines of his natural grace into a disgrace of your own creation — and the consequence ? Discomfort ! — that you do not care for. Disease 1 — that comes on slowly, and may be set down to other causes. Illtemper : — circulation checked, cold feet, hot head ; pinched extremities ; bitter, irritable temper, through disordered circulation. But all that ig set down to venial infirmities, common to the kind. Alai ! too common and unkind ! — for otherß suffer for the sake of your

vanity and your shame ! Aye, and your little children and unborn babes suffer, for you hand your debility on to them ; you blight them in the cradle ; they grow up with the wretched, sickly, disordered tendencies which you have first implanted in yourselves, with such ignorant, such thoughtless energy, such heroically vicious endurance I And what shall I say of premature death ? You look on a brilliant scene for an hour — you are surrounded by apparent glowing health and enjoyment ; but follow the victims — for some of these encased caricatures are victims ; they are in actual torments, their smiles are forced, their breath comes heavily, their blood is checked through every vein and artery, and each vital function whilst in the midst of this earthly Paradise is really in a hell of its own." But surely this candid parson might have given his fair hearers credit for their selfsacrifice. Did it not originate with their tender hearts to place themselves in a hell of sensation, that they might afford to others a heaven of vision 1 They are but the martyrs to a desire to please, and if they will please only in their own particular way that also is "pure womanly." Our parson, however, has no flattering tongue, he tells with all boldness the simple truth, and thus continues his warning : — " Look — look on this picture and on that I I say, follow the victim out of the ball-room into the doctor's consulting room, and thence to that couch of misery from which the unhappy body, deformed without and diseased within, will never again rise 1 When the door closes on the light and splendour of the revel, the veil is drawn quickly across — the public are shut ont ; but the true physician, of souls as well as of bodies, will invite you to enter that gloomier apartment, and hear the stern verdict upon another which to-morrow may be pronounced on you — ' Death from natural causes !' Lay no such flattering unction to your soul. ' Death from rut in the liver and corn on the heart, produced by tight lacing.'' These are the very words of a leading physician of the day to me."

Now-a-days, when the question of a market in which to dispose of their produce has become so important a one to the people of England, it is interesting to them to learn that there exists in Africa a large population capable of supplying them to a great degree with the much desired field for exports ; it is that of the Soudan, variously estimated to amount to forty, seventy, or even eighty millions. The value of this market is, however, fully appreciated by other countries as well as by England, and France and Germany are both engaged in the formation of plans by which to secure it ; meantime England has gone practically to work, and has established a trading station at Cape Juby on the north-west coast of the continent in question, from which communication is kept up with the Soudan by means of the Berbers, who undertake the carrying trade. It will be a fortunate thing for English manufacturers and the country generally if this market be secured, so as to make up for the falling off that has elsewhere become ©nly too apparent and too deeply felt.

There is a curious state of mind that induces folk to dress themselves up occasionally at night in white sheets for the purpose of, frightening other folk. We have even heard of a gentleman who was so festively disposed as to clothe himself in a bullock's hide and horns and thus attired parade the streets of a remote village at midnight, to the " awfu" terror of its inhabitants ; and it is on record that some such cantrips have cost people ere now the use of their reason and turned them idiotic. It ia a curious frame of mind that induces folk to play such tricks but we conclude it owns a common origin with the desire for notoriety which is very general, perhaps indeed it may be in some cases identical with such a desire, and in this rather silly way endeavour to attain its object. There is a reverend clergyman in Dunedin who informs us that his mind ia so flavoured ; we have his own word for it or we should not presume to venture on such a suspicion. He said the other night when he was delivering a lecture in a Presbyterian Church that he had no doubt " a good many persons stayed away, thinking that the Presbyterians were going to be ' run down' by a man who looked like a priest." Time was, we may remark by way of parenthesis, when Presbyterians would not be " run down" by any man whether he looked like a priest or a parson, but now, after the jobation they stood the other day in the midst of their own very stronghold from Dean Stanley, it is hard to say what they will not stand, and we think, perhaps, they might rather prefer to b» " run down," as it would help to furnish them with an excuse for making further alterations in a system of which the better sort of them are manifestly growing sick and tired. Meantime we are aghast at learning that there is a reverend gentleman amongst us whose delight it is, in the broad daylight, to walk too and fro, a conscious bug-a-boo. Let us hope the common sense of none of his victims may likewise become deranged.

We are a very young nation to have already a mystery connected with our history which may serve as food to the ingenuity and curiosity of coming generations. We have, however, attained to that dark spot in our annals that may count with that occupied in France by the Man in the Iron Mask, in Scotland by the murder of Darnley, and in England by the authorship of Junius's letters. We have had, in fact,

• most terrific shindy in our Ministry that has led to a wholesale and unprecedented throwing up of portfolios, and such as Lord Dundreary might affirm "no fellow can understand." It is rather embarrassing under the present ticklish circumstances of the colony to find the Cabinet thus extraordinarily routed, and what may come of it who shall tell. But there it is an accomplished fact, the Ministry scattered helter-skelter like something that had unexpectedly burst *11 to bits. Meantime there is a disposition to come down on Sir George Grey for despotism, and goodnessonly knows what; but, although we do not in the least suppose " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," will ever be fully revealed, we are quite confident that, however hotly Sir George may have been betrayed into acting, good cause wag given him for doing so. Amongst all the nonsense and scandal that is continually written concerning the Prince of Wales, it is refreshing to find something that shows his Royal Highness to be actuated by creditable sentiments. The manner in which he conducted himself during his nsit to the sanctuary of Lourdes in February last, and in which he expressed himself concerning it afterwards proves that he is not the wholly frivolous minded man that some would represent him to be •His Royal Highness," the Annales reports, "always dignified and respectful, gave evidence of sentiments of religious emotion. He said on his return that he had not expected to find in France in this century of unbelief a place where faith was so strikingly manifested " It is gratifying to find that a Prince destined to rule many Catholic subjects should show himself open to the influence of their manifest faith, and taken in connection with the respectful demeanour of Her Majesty the Queen in the church of the Trappist Monastery visited by,ner in Italy, it assures Catholics that their religion is no longer only a thing to be scoffed at, and detested by the occupant of the throne »f England.