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A DAY AT A CONVENT.

us, with all the politeness of the nation in which so many of his years had been passed, MORE years since than it is desirable to into the carriage that was to convey us to remember, or pleasant to recall-for time, New Hall, the residence of a sisterhood of alas! has crushed some fair and cherished nuns who had been driven from Liege blossoms in his rushing flight-I was visiting by the republican army. Apart from the a Catholic family in Essex, in which family peculiar interest we attached to it, New Hall was domesticated a priest, whose kind heart is most worthy of note; it was originally and courteous benignity of manners, won the called Beaulieu, and in 1524, Henry VIII. affections of all the younger members of the kept the feast of St. George there: his arms, happy party assembled in that dear old finely wrought, adorn the hall, and we were house. O the early morning walks-the told that the Duke of N- had offered a noonday idleness-the gay, gossiping, even- most magnificent sum for them, which, howing rambles, amid the pastoral scenery that ever, was refused; there were also the arms surrounded us in all the luxuriant leafiness of Queen Elizabeth, with an inscription in of summer-the mizzy maze of our entangled the Italian language. The door was opened arguments, argued with all the wisdom and by the portress, a comely dame, whose round experience of eighteen or twenty years, and pleasant face displayed no symptoms. passed in calm and peaceful retirement, un- of fasting. We were shown by a lay sister disturbed by care, unexposed to anxiety. into the parlour of the Lady Abbess, who How widely is that happy group scattered! advanced to meet our kind introducer, and One, a blithe and bonnic wee thing, all knelt to receive his benediction with the smiling, mirth, and innocent vivacity, the sweetest grace imaginable; she had only very personification of Thalia, married to been a few months in her office, and was the the most sedate, dispassionate, calm, cold- sister of Sir William J. I shall never calculating, of human beings. Another help-forget my surprise at the sight of this lady less victim of super-fastidiousness, that would wrinkled, austere, meagre, on the shady shriek if a spider but fell on her fair neck, and horrify our good priest by throwing herself into his arms for protection against the tiniest frog that crossed her path, is now a wife with a large little family, in the far off back woods of America. 66 Another, and another, and yet another," sleep beneath the green turf, or the cold stone; one-only one with our early friendship uneffaced by time, unchanged by sorrow;-another-but enough of the unquiet retrospect.

Our good priest, who had nothing of a proselyting spirit about him, would occasionally talk to us heretics of the imposing ceremonies of his own church-its dignified ritual-its touching music-its splendid and sublime paintings-its fragrant incense-and all the etceteras that characterised it; but it was of convents and their inmates that we loved to hear, "and with a greedy ear devoured up his discourse." One day, after I had in a tête-à-tête wearied him "exceed ingly" with my numberless questions, he promised that on some bright day, that should unite all that was desirable, and exclude all that was disagreeable, he would take me and my chosen friend and companion to see a convent that was not more than twenty miles off-a promise with such a contingency, made at this very now, I should never expect to see fulfilled, but then I looked forward with the romantic confidence of youth to many such; indeed, life was all couleur de rose, and blue skies, and bowers of roses, where every gale was perfume, and where "the trail of the serpent" was never to come, were alone put down on my chart of the future.

At length a day that came up to the good priest's idea did arrive: it was a bright sunny morning in September, when not a leaf had lost its freshness, and no tint foretold that autumn was nigh, that he handed

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side of sixty, with thin cheeks, hollow eyes, pale and trembling lips, had been the picture that my imagination had drawn of a lady abbess. O how different was the beautiful woman before me!-she could have been scarcely thirty, with the most dazzling complexion, the softest eyes, the sunniest smile, displaying the whitest and most even row of teeth I ever beheld; you could not look at her without feeling sure that she was as gentle and good as she was graceful and lovely; and to think of her looking so captivating in her nun's dress of black serge! with a bodice and sleeves of lawn, pure and white indeed as the snow-no glossy tresses escaping from the firmly bound fillet of lawn that crossed, and concealed her forehead, passing under her chin, covering her ears, and leaving no part visible but her face: over her head was a black veil, that, when down, must have reached to her feet; she had a rosary at her waist, and a small red cross on her bosom, which I presume was a distinctive mark of her office, for, as far as I recollect, the other nuns had no such ornament. She desired a sister to bring refreshments, which consisted of various wines, fruits, and cakes, most delicious to the sight and taste; and conversed with us on various subjects with the most winning cheerfulness, and to our reverend companion of the dear and distant, with deep and tearful emotion. She requested one of the nuns, Lady Elizabeth

to show us the chapel and other parts of the convent; a request that was complied with, with the kindest alacrity and cheerful good-will. In the establishment, beside near a hundred nuns, there were, at the time I am writing, sixty young ladies of the Catholic nobility that were educated under the auspices of the sisterhood, and amid all this large number, the most quiet happiness seemed to reign; but a day is but

One

praise

of a life of retirement. The only two

a short space to judge of these things. of the nuns interested us greatly; she was I recollect I transcribe as they were written.

"In these deep solitudes and lonely cells
Where heavenly pensive Contemplation dwells,
And gentle Charity for ever reigns,

No tumult can disturb the vestal's veins!

BEATRICE."

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot!
To her unknown the anguish of a tear,
Save that she sheds upon a sister's bier!

MONICA."

indeed beautiful enough for a heroine of romance, and withal possessed the indispensable look of tender melancholy with which they are generally invested: her beautiful eyes, with their long dark lashes resting on her marble-like cheek, with the look of a lovely downcast penitent, seemed as if there was a silent sorrow and unimparted grief brooding at her heart. We were conducted by our fair guide to the entrance of a long and spacious corridor, at which she paused, and said it was called the Gallery of Silence, and the laws of the convent, enjoined its ob- At the very primitive hour of two we dined servance; a wise regulation, I suspect; for with the priests belonging to the establishfifty or sixty of the gentle sex, even if they ment; beside these, there was a lady in the happened to be nuns, would produce a con- gay garb of the world, who presided, and siderable clamour in a quiet establishment. two lovely girls who had abjured the ProOn each side of this Gallery of Muta were testant faith, and taken refuge with the kind the cells of the nuns; the bedsteads were of nuns; one was a Miss S, niece of the iron, with curtains of a coarse material, and Duke of M. All the dishes were French, of a dark-blue colour: a chair, a table, a and the dinner throughout served in the true confessional, a crucifix, and an hour-glass, Parisian style, and never, in that proverbially with one or two pictures of saints, completed gay country, was there a gayer party, or a the furniture. All was scrupulously clean, greater display of that peculiar kind of wit and possessed, in spite of its homeliness, an that makes a social dinner so pleasant. After air of comfort, though of a solitary kind. coffee, which it were worth going a pilgrimEach room had a large window, looking out age to sip, we attended vespers, at which all on scenery that would make almost any soli- the pupils were present, as well as the nuns, tude delightful. At the end of this gallery though the latter were not visible, except was the representation of the sepulchre of as their dark forms were faintly discerned our Saviour, with his figure resting in it; through the high screen behind which they the effect of which was most striking, though sat. O! the melody of that sweet voice that somewhat startling, coming on us as we sang the Evening Hymn to the Virgin !—the emerged from the dimly-lighted corridor. silvery sounds seem now to float upon my The nuns are of the Sepulchera order. ear. We felt it could only proceed from the From thence we proceeded to the chapel, lovely mouth that had given us so kind a which is effective and impressive, and most welcome in the morning; it was the lady judiciously arranged; it is about a hundred abbess, who thus finished the enchantment feet long, fitty wide, and from thirty to forty she had begun. After the service we went in height. But when did a woman stop to with our good priest to make cur adieus to calculate numbers or measure feet? The this beautiful woman. With her blessing altar was adorned with the freshest and she gave us a small ivory cross as a token rarest flowers, and otherwise splendidly or- of her good wishes, and as a memorial, as namented. A nun was kneeling at it as we she said, of the day we had passed at a entered, but she appeared so absorbed in convent-a privilege that few have to record. devotion, that she remained undisturbed by How often has all that passed on that day our approach. Some most rare and exqui-risen unbidden to my waking thoughts, and site paintings hung from the walls. haunted my night visions! The noble hall After attending us thus far, Lady Eliza.the tapestried parlour-the quiet cellsbeth resigned us to an older nun, the magnificent chapel, with all its rich and with whose family my companion was on beautiful tracery-the mellow light streamterms of intimacy. She conducted us through ing from its painted windows-the incense the beautiful grounds surrounding the con--the altar-the pealing organ-the hymn to vent, and, seated on one of the many temples the Virgin-the stately trees-the classic with which it was studded, asked us a thousand questions of the world she had for so many years resigned. She was an exceedingly lively, intelligent woman, and related to us the difficulties and perils the sisterhood encountered in their escape from Liege; their chief anxiety was manifested for the security of the relics, the ornaments of the altar, plate, pictures, &c., which were let down, in the darkest of all dark nights, from a window, into a boat where one of the holy fathers was stationed to receive it. On the walls of the temple were written numberless quotations it." in pencil, in a variety of handwritings, all in{

temple,-all throng upon my memory with resistless force and undecaying interest.

"Well, dear sir," said my companion, as we travelled homeward in the soft twilight, too much pleased and enchanted to be talkative, "would you recommend me to become a nun?"

"No, my child," replied the good padre, "I would not condemn you to a seclusion from the world, but would assign you the more difficult, though more honourable task, of walking uncorrupted and unsullied through

E. S. F.

DOUBT AND REALITY; OR, A SPAN-longer seen prostrate upon the cold pave. ISH LADY'S WOOING.

THE Duchess of Almeda, who was a creole of the Havana, was married at a very early age to the duke of that name and title. This union was in opposition to the taste of the youthful and imaginative Rita, who had a great predilection for a religious life; but, as her family insisted on her compliance with their wishes, she submitted in silence; and, until the period of her arrival in France, no other feelings than those that were prompted by the sincerest piety had occupied her bosom.

ment of the aisles in silence and in gloom, and counting the beads of their rosaries with enthusiastic devotion, and all the unction of religious fervour.

In France, the spirit of religion had been lost sight of, and its genius was perverted; its ministers and teachers endeavoured to dazzle the eyes by the splendour of the rituals, instead of the simplicity of the doctrine; the churches were elaborately adorned with gaudy trappings, but they had almost all lost, either by neglect or decay, those beau. tifully painted windows through which the beams of the sun penetrated like the mild The Duke of Almeda was an old gentle- and softened hues of a rainbow; the mass man of an infinity of wit; but, as was at that was only frequented to see and be seen; the time the case with numbers of his rank, he sun threw its laughing beams through large had been seduced by the false splendour with and lofty windows, deluging the interior of which the school of the encyclopædists was the churches with a flood of light, and, surrounded; and, deceived by the principles of universal philanthropy which that mischievous sect announced, he devoted himself, heart and soul, to the propagation of its doctrines. Participating in that strange but honourable enthusiasm by which the heads of half the French nobility of that epoch were distracted in the shadowy regions of an illusive Utopia, he hurried on, as far as lay in his power, the progressive development of those ideas and that system of philosophy which subsequently became so fatal to the aristocracy, the throne, and the altar.

dancing upon the profuse decorations of velvet, gold, and silk, flung their painted reflections upon a noisy, gay, and smiling congregation, who eclipsed in their dresses the splendour of the altars. Philosophy had banished religion from the pulpit; the sacred mysteries were solemnized amid sneers and ill-suppressed sarcasms; and, to crown the whole, the psalms and anthems were sung by the girls of the opera.

It must be admitted that Rita's principles were acquired rather than instinctive, the result of chance and accident rather than The bitter railleries with which he over- conviction and reason. She was endowed whelmed his wife on the subject of what he with a quick, fertile, and ardent imagination, termed her superstition, had no influence which had been inflamed by the pompous upon her mind so long as they continued in exterior of Catholicism, and touched by its Spain. The spiritual and secular authority grave and majestic ceremonies; but she had of the church and the clergy was so imposing, never yet suffered, or had occasion to require and the belief of the people so deeply and the consolations of religion, and had never firmly rooted; she breathed such an atmos- listened to the solemn and whispered echoes phere of piety, was surrounded by persons of that vast abyss in which the profound soul who so fervently partook of the sincerity of of Pascal had been plunged. She had expeher convictions, and encountered, wherever rienced nothing of religion but its poetry; she turned, the exterior symbols of her of the unfathomable ocean of faith she magnificent faith, that it was not possible perceived nothing but the fresh and sparkthe purity and integrity of Rita's faith could ling wave which gambolled on its expanse; suffer any attaint or diminution. But when and her soul was enraptured, while her she arrived at Versailles, and had lived for senses were intoxicated, by the inspiring some time in the centre of the fêtes, elegan perfumes of the incense, and the distant, cies, and enjoyments of a polished court, solemn, and murmured melody of the deepfamous for the refinements of its wit and the toned organ. And so, when the philosophers exquisite tone of its manners, she became, in composing the society of her husband had some degree, involved in the vortex of its laid siege to her spiritualised faith with their dissipations; and, in the giddy wind of its cold logic and dry algebraical reasoning, pleasures, the robustness of her religious Rita was incapable of reply or argument. convictions was imperceptibly impaired. In They spoke by rule, and supported their addition to this, the religion of France was cavils with mathematical figures and with not at all like the prevalence of the same mathematical precision, while she could only system in Spain; there were no longer in talk enthusiasm and ecstasy; when she the former those lofty churches, so glowing quoted the miracles and wonders by which and profound, with their glittering shrines of Christianity had been illustrated and its gold and jewellery which seemed to attract authenticity established, they opposed her around them all the light of the building, fervour with the unchangeable laws of naand shone in the surrounding obscurity like ture and the theorems of astronomy; on an emanation of the glory of heaven; the whichever side she turned, she encountered solemn and majestic chant of the monks was nothing but cold and heartless reasoning no longer heard in France; and its popula- and withering sarcasm; so that, frightened tion, which had a horror of the black or and distressed, she was reduced to silence; sad-coloured vestments of Spain, was no for the apparent clearness of certain objec

tions, although they could not entirely per- Rita's existence, it is because from this pesuade her of the hollowness of the system riod her life assumed a different aspect, and to which she had clung, had the effect of took another colouring; for her ardent and shaking her conviction and alarming her by passionate imagination, which had hitherto its possible and probable impositions. Then, fed upon the aliment afforded by the becoming conscious, as if by instinct, of all thoughts of infinity and eternity, which the happiness and comfort she was in danger open an immeasurable career for vivid of losing, she wished to take refuge in her minds to expatiate in, had quickly exhaustformer confident and undoubting belief; but ed what it received in exchange for the bethe time had passed, never to be recalled; lief which had been destroyed, and was the cruel spirit of analysis had stained with compelled to fall back upon its own natural his withering breath her ravishing visions of resources, or to waste away and consume azure skies and smiling heavens peopled by by its own fire. angels with rainbow wings, breathing music and sympathy which found an echo in her softened heart-all had disappeared like the visions of first and only love.

This may be easily conceived; for a person of a strong and powerful mind, or of a proved, strengthened, and confirmed religious faith, can contend advantageously, and even impress his antagonists with his own hallowed and earnest devotion, elevating them within his own sphere of belief by the spell of a seducing and persuasive elo quence; but Rita was quite powerless with the adversaries she encountered, because there was no depth in her fervid mind, which was carried along by impulse, as she had attached herself to the poetry of religion quite as much as to its doctrines and maxims. At last her mind became tired out, more particularly as she appeared always to be in the wrong in every argument; her self-love, too, was irritated by finding her confused but earnest convictions opposed by capricious and subtle reasoning; and she ended by doubting of everything, and of herself. From doubt to incredulity there is but one step; this step was taken, and Rita became a professed wit and freethinker.

Hitherto Rita had escaped the influence of earthly passions; but now, if her burning soul wished to indulge in emotions of joy or anguish, they could only be found or felt in love. For love is a religion, and has its faith and creed, and in Rita's case it was more particularly so; and if she had given herself up to the emotion, she would have loved with an utter and absolute surrendering of self-with a fierce and implacable jealousy which would have devoted to love what she would otherwise have sacrificed to heaven-her rank, fortune, and country. But at that time they did not love after such a fashion in France; and so it happened that Rita found no one worthy to excite such a feeling in her heart; and she remained unscathed in the general dissoluteness of manners and principles, an exemplary model of every female excellence, until the sudden death of the Duke d'Almeda left her at liberty, a young widow, with an immense fortune. Although she could not regret the duke very much, she paid the customary respect to his memory, and passed the period allotted to mourning in the country. Since her residence in France, Rita had never been so isolated from society and in such utter solitude as Incredulity must necessarily make a deep now; and this was the first time that she impression upon an organization so sus- regretted her former happy state of unceptible as that of Rita. In fact, on the doubting and intense faith; but that was first glance, there is a fatal attraction, a sort gone, and its departed influence was irreof fascination, in the contest against the vocable; and the duchess, wearied and Deity; there is a species of wild and fierce chagrined, dragged on the dull and melanpoetry in the revolt of the rebel angel; and choly hours, her ardent soul longing for there is audacity in blasphemy, when Jupi- some emotion to occupy her feelings, sufter retorts with a thunderbolt. But in an- fering from an unknown pain, and sighing alyzing the atheism of the eighteenth cen- for a wonted happiness. Her health betury, which so clamorously pronounced its came affected, she grew thin, and her pitiful pretensions, we are struck by its cheeks were stained and wrinkled by the meanness and cowardly character; for channels of involuntary tears; without aid, those who professed it believed in a state consolation, or refuge against these painful of utter annihilation after death, and had sorrows, and the nervous excitement which nothing to fear from the laxly-administered | preyed upon and fevered her, the thought laws during their lives. They could, there- of an early death was the only pleasing idea fore, blaspheme with perfect safety, and had that visited her solitude, and she sometimes not even the equivocal merit of being mar-even thought of accelerating its approach; tyrs to irreligion and impiety. As the Di- but whether her courage failed, or a secret vinity did not accept the challenge which presentiment withheld her, she continued was tacitly offered by Rita, her state of hesitation and doubt did not continue long; indifference took its place; and at length it happened that the Duchess of Almeda looked upon heaven with no emotions either of fear or love. If we dwell at more than usual length upon this incident of

to linger in this uncomfortable state until the whole current of her existence was altered by a new influence.

A female attendant came to her one day with the information that some fishermen, who had taken shelter from a storm in a ruined tower on the coast, had discovered

a young man, of singular beauty, who was all ties and connections, immensely rich, nearly expiring from exhaustion; and that, and her own mistress;-what obstacle, knowing the humanity of the duchess, they had come to the castle for assistance in reviving him. This account made an impression upon her romantic mind, and on the same day she bent her steps to the tower of Koatven, accompanied by a domestic. Then, for the first time, she saw Henri. Interested by the mild and saddened expression of the youth's beautiful and noble features, Rita explained to him with some emotion, the object of her visit; and that, having understood that her care and attention would be serviceable to him, she had come in person to tender them.

then, was there to prevent her devoting herself to Henri? And on his side, alone, isolated, with no parents, family, or friends, would he not be hers, and hers only ?— would he not be absolutely and entirely dependent upon her?-would he not hold everything of her?-and then, would she not be the only creature that loved him?— for so she understood love. Rita would have been jealous of Henri's mother or sister, if he had owned such relations; for love in her bosom was egotism in its purest sense, fierce, exacting, and exclusive. The more she knew Henri, the more she loved Henri warmly and gratefully thanked him. She spent whole hours in listening her, but added that there was no occasion to the outpouring of his artless and candid he should become a burthen to her. His soul, and delighted in the consciousness history was a simple one; he was an or- that she was feeling the same emotions she phan, and had been brought up by his un-excited in her protegé; for she was as great cle, an aged ecclesiastic, and had never a novice as the youth in the symbols and quitted him until his death. Left alone in symptoms of the delicious passion; so that the world, without fortune, friends or interest, Henri had determined to follow a vocation to which he thought himself called, that of the cloister. Nevertheless, before coming to an irrevocable decision upon this matter, and in order to ascertain whether he could fitly support the solitude, fasting, austerities, and privation of the monastic life, he had resolved to make the tower his place of retirement for some little time. But his strength had failed him-he had fallen sick-the old domestic who attended him had abandoned him when he could no longer pay for his services-and, had it not been for the unexpected visit of the fishermen, he must have perished unknown. He concluded his narrative by saying: "It is of little matter now, for I feel that my life is departing; and soon, poor orphan as I am, I shall go to join in heaven my mother, whom I never knew on earth."

an exchange was established between them of the ravishing details of each new discovery they made of the influence of the passionate tenderness in their own hearts, by which they divined what was passing in the other's.

And then the boy was so timid-so bashful! and as he never exacted the soft tribute of the lip, it would have been ungenerous not to make a free and unreserved surrender of its treasures. Thus, at length, a deep, burning, and concentrated passion took possession of the heart and soul of the duchess. At her age the development of such a feeling is impetuous and uncontrollable, and every consideration was postponed to the happiness of calling him her own. Her determination to effect this was invincible and unshaken; and regardless of her rank and fortune, forgetful of or despising her social position, she decided upon offering her hand to Henri, who, in one of their conversations, had avowed himself the offspring of a noble though impoverished family of Bretagne.

The melancholy resignation, abandonment, and misfortune by which the lad was oppressed, and his ingenuous countenance, touched the heart of the duchess, and she instantly felt a deep pity for, and a strong "Of what consequence is his fortune to interest in, one so unfortunate. From this me?" said Rita; "is he not noble? Moreperiod a new existence commenced for over, as I am the only child of a grandee Rita; and, by a strange contradiction, the of Castile, can I not endow him with the haughty lady who had resisted and repuls- name and title of my sire? I will do so; ed the homage of the noble and the elevat- for he shall hold everything that he has ed, felt an unknown sensation inspiring her from me-everything-even his name that at the sight of this being, so unhappy and name which he will worthily bear and galso destitute. Hitherto, the most elegant lantly illustrate. For my Henri is beautitrifling, the most distinguished manners, ful, brave, and accomplished. I never yet and the most graceful impertinence of the saw a gentleman that could be compared flatterers of the gay world, had never ar- to him. And then he loves me so! O he rested the passing glance of Rita; but the loves me to adoration-I feel it here-in sad and pale face of Henri remained en- my heart! I love him too well for it to graven on her heart; those features, which be otherwise; and has he not sacrificed to she had never beheld but once, seemed to me all that he could possibly surrender in haunt her wherever she went; and that this world?-the faith which he had sworn? soft and timorous voice was constantly-the pure and calm future of which he thrilling in her soul.

dreamed? And who knows," said Rita,

Rita was so happy in this newly-discover- with alarm, "who can tell that he has not ed sensation, that she did not dream of re-sacrificed his happiness to me?"

sisting its progress. She was freed from The three days, during which she had

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