brought to Paris by her uncle, the Bishop of Wilna. Geoffrin got her admitted to the Abbaye aux Bois, at Paris, where all the nuns and all the pupils were noble, every inch of them.

A. Did the noble nuns teach?

S. Oh, yes. They seem all to have had real departments, with plenty of lay sisters under them. Three days in the week there came masters, the other three the girls studied under the nuns. The young ladies all went by their surnames, but when the little Pole arrived, Helène Massalska, they gave up her Polish name in despair, and called her Helène. The first thing was that her uncle had to give twenty-five louis for a feast for all the pensionnaires, at which ices were indispensable! There were three classes-all in black frocks, but the youngest had blue sashes, the second, who were all being prepared for their first Communion, had white ones, and the elders, red-very naughty girls, some of them seem to have been.

A. Madame de Genlis' memoirs are full of almost incredible tricks played upon the nuns.

S. Once Helène and her friend Mademoiselle de Choiseul got into the chapel at night, and filled up the bénitier with ink, and when the poor nuns came down to prayers in early morning, they all made black marks on their foreheads. The Superior said it was sacrilege, out the Maîtresse-Générale, Madame de Rochechouart, said she could only call it childish mischief. Another of their scrapes was making acquaintance with their next neighbour's marmiton, through the opening of a drain, where he used to play the flute to them, and call them by their names, Choiseul, Châtillon, Montmorency, and so on, till some one overheard them, and the drain was built up.

A. Quite time, I think.

S. Madame de Rochechouart treated them with such cutting sarcasm that they were heartily ashamed. They were very fond of her, and she must have very been sensible and good. One class mistress used to punish them for telling fibs, and they did tell a great many, by making them wear a pair of donkey's ears, and a false tongue of scarlet cloth; but Madame de Rochechouart put a stop to this, and then the punishment was to kneel in chapel in the middle aisle with a night-cap on.

A. Did they have much religious teaching?

S. The nuns were Jansenists, and gave them a Jansenist Catechism to learn. The nuns used to read the Fathers a good deal. The Archbishop of Paris came to visit them, and put seals on all the shelves of these books; but they sent for the Général of the Order, and he took them off. After Helène's first confession, the old nuns entreated her to pray for them, as she was made quite pure from sin, and would be sure of heaven. I think she did not tell so many stories after that, but still I am afraid she did not turn out well very in the end. And I think it was while she was in the white class that there was the great uproar. The girls had an unpopular class

mistress, and knew that Madame de Rochechouart wanted to have her removed, but could not accomplish it; so, when she had really lost her temper, and behaved very ill to one of the girls, they all trooped into the kitchen, and barricaded themselves there, keeping only one young nun of sixteen, Soeur St. Clotilde, who entered into the fun as much as they did.

A. A regular barring out! How did it end?

S. The mothers of the girls were sent for, and called them out one by one, so that the party was broken up. They were all forgiven, and, after a month, their mistress was changed. Madame de Rochechouart was only twenty-seven. She and her sister had been made to take the veil at sixteen, and she died quite young, to the great grief of every one. There was a Mademoiselle de Montmorency, who also died young, but who must have been a very high-spirited young person. The Superior was sister to Marshal de Richelieu; and once, when in a great passion, she exclaimed to Mademoiselle de Montmorency, 'I could kill you,' the girl coolly answered, 'It would not be the first time a Montmorency has been murdered by a Richelieu.'

A. Rather strange both in Superior and pupil.

S. Very strange things there were. They had balls-all female, of course, for the pensionnat-and the young married ladies were allowed to come without their mothers-in-law. Once, two hid themselves in a cell, and came out at night, and ran all manner of rigs, fastening up the nuns in their cells, and so on. The Superior had the gates shut, and would not let them out till their families fetched them, when they went, very subdued.

A. Married very young of course.

S. There is the account of two weddings, the girls being told at twelve years old, and being pleased or unhappy according to whether they heard that the bridegroom was young and handsome, or old and ugly, and his mother good-natured or cross. Then, when he came to visit in state, all the young ladies watched him across the court, and made their remarks. The girl went home for the ceremony, and then was sent back to the convent to grow older, the only difference being that she was madame.

A. Poor child! It was just the disadvantage, which Madame de Genlis tried to show, that they had no training in family life.

S. They had in housekeeping though. The red class were told off to attend on the nuns in the store-room, the linen-room, the needlework-room, the sacristy, even the porter's lodge, so that they might learn a little of everything. It rather amused me that I had just been reading Miss Holt's In Convent Gates (Shaw), where we get the picture of a convent under Edward III., and there really was a general resemblance.

A. Miss Holt's books would be very good historical studies if she would not be so very Protestant and protesting.

S. I really thought this book quite free from that till I came upon a discussion where she quotes in Latin those holy words, 'Do this in remembrance of Me,' as proving that there was no idea of sacrifice; whereas I am sure I have learnt that the Greek word conveys the very sense of offering.

A. Quite true. It is very dangerous to rush into controversy without knowledge. You may find plenty of the outlines of the English Church in Mr. Foxley Norris's Ballads of the English Church (Parker). It is very Anglican, and I wish I could say more for the poetry; but 'False Decretals' and the like do not come very happily into verse. Another little book that may be a help is the Collects in Verse (Masters). Here, too, is a nice sketch of General Church History, divided by subjects, not epochs, by Mrs. Mitchell (Masters).

S. Mamma told me to ask you for a book to read at family prayers.

A. It is a very difficult thing to find. Seek and Ye shall Find (Nisbett) is arranged for the purpose on the Prophets Isaiah and Daniel; but it seems to me that the comment attempts to deal with too long passages of Scripture, and therefore is too slight. Whitaker's Daily Life, Miss Spooner's Daily Round (S. P. C. K.), are of a good length for the purpose; but I think the best thing for intelligent servants is to take some book like The Gospel Story, or Plain Church Teaching, and read a portion according to time. Let me mention in good time Canon Bright's Seven Sayings from the Cross (Parker).

S. There are some excellent Letters for reading to working-parties, by the author of Miss Toosey, all about the good works in different places-Haggerston, the Home of Rest at Torquay, and many more, all told in a pleasant lively way. The right name is Letters to our Working-party (Smith and Innes).

A. A very useful book. And oh, how pretty the little illustrated booklets are this Christmas! There is Tennyson's Brook, brought out by Macmillan, and a beautifully got-up little book of the Bishop of Bedford's Ballad of the Chorister Boy, about the monks listening to the charming voice, and forgetting real pain in the beauty of the music. Among illustrated books, there is no forgetting Mr. Heywood Summer's beautiful Undine (Chapman and Hall). His soulless and soulful faces are a wonderful contrast. Of all the illustrations of her, I never see any so graceful or giving the idea of her wateriness so

well.

S. And have you seen the two beautiful new pictures of the National Society's grand coloured series? I like the Easter-Eve one most particularly.

PAPERS ON ROME.

On the side of the Forum furthest from the Palatine were once five other Fora, built by different emperors to relieve the pressure on the Roman or Great Forum, as it was styled, as the population and the business kept increasing. Of these there are two beautiful relics in two half-buried columns, with entablature and bas-reliefs, which are all that is left of the Peribolus, or Enclosure, that surrounded the Forum of Nerva, and a porch of magnificent fluted pillars of white Luna (Carrara) marble, which belonged to the Temple of Mars the Avenger in the Forum of Augustus. But by far the most numerous remains are those of what must have been much the finest Forum, being indeed considerably larger than the Great Forum itselfthat of Trajan. It originally comprised a temple, a basilica with Exedræ, or halls for the recitation of literary productions or for philosophic discussions, two libraries, one for Greek and the other for Latin books, and a lofty column sculptured in spiral bands with marble reliefs of scenes from the Emperor's campaigns, and surmounted by his statue. Of these all have perished but the column, which remains intact with the exception of being crowned by a figure of St. Peter instead of Trajan. But excavations have brought to light at a considerable depth below the present level of the ground the site of the Basilica strewn with broken columns, a large number of which have been again erected on their bases; and against the side of the Quirinal are shops, following the curve of the Exedræ, before which may be made out fragments of the old polygonal pavement of basalt. I do not know why-whether it is because it is sunny, or because, being sunk so low, it is safe from intrudersbut I never saw such a resort for cats as Trajan's Forum has become. I counted twenty-six in it one fine morning.

Near the Station is to be seen a very interesting bit of the fortifications of Servius Tullius, one of the early kings of Rome. By the time he reigned Rome had grown from its original site on the Palatine to a size which embraced all the seven well-known hills (by the way, they are very much more of hills still, after the accumulation of rubbish at their feet for centuries, than I was at all prepared to see); and he defended all the more exposed part of the circuit by carrying across the plateau, from which the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline slope towards the city, a huge rampart of earth (agger), lined on the outside with a thick, and on the inside with a thinner, skin of masonry. And these fortifications with their bro

ditch continued to be the sole protection of Rome, the greater part of which in Imperial times lay outside it, till the reign of the Emperor Aurelian, who built the wall which forms its present ceinture, the extensive remains of which, with their imposing towers, their gates, bastions, and arcades forming a sheltered path for the rounds of sentinels, make such a picturesque object from all points commanding a panoramic view of the city.

Houses being forbidden within a certain distance of it, Horace tells us (Sat. i. 8, 14) that the citizens of his day used to sun themselves on the Servian rampart, as you may now do on the walls of Chester, another Roman town, where they are not overshadowed by buildings. Subsequently, however, these restrictions were removed, and you may see in the ruins of stuccoed and reticulated walls where houses have been built abutting on the Wall. All that is left of it now is the outer skin of masonry; and this is so thick, and composed of such huge stones both here and in the other fragments which are still standing in the Palazzo Antonelli and on the Aventine, as, with the Tabularium and the Cloaca Maxima, to give us a great idea of the power and magnificence of Rome towards the end of the Regal period. Much of its so-called history may be legend; but its monuments, which Mr. Parker of Oxford has done so much to bring to light and interpret, concur with the scanty authentic documents that survive in witnessing to a grandeur and dominion which it took the Republic a century and a half to recover.

Other interesting relics are the Theatre of Marcellus in the Piazza Montanara, and the Portico of Octavia at the entrance to the Ghetto, or Jews' quarter. The former, of which all that remains is the circular part for the spectators, having its wall on the outside decorated with two fine arcades of Doric pillars below and Ionic above (the third and uppermost has perished), was dedicated by Augustus to his nephew and heir, whose premature death is so touchingly alluded to by Virgil (Æn. vi. 860). In the Middle Ages it became a palace successively of the Savelli and Orsini, and is now let out in tenements to blacksmiths, greengrocers, and rag and bone shops. The other, a splendid fragment of a porch, with four marble fluted Corinthian columns, to what was once a vast colonnade including two temples, was built by the same Emperor in honour of his sister, the mother of Marcellus and the ill-used wife of Anthony. One of the pillars of the colonnade, with a punning allusion to the names of its architects, Batrachos and Sauros, in the shape of figures of a frog and a lizard in the volutes of its capital, is now to be seen in the nave of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura. Within its precints Vespasian and Titus are said to have celebrated their triumph over Jerusalem. And the street which forms the continuation of the ancient Roman fishmarket on which the portico abuts bears the appropriate name of Weeping Street (Via del Pianto); for, as I said, it is now in the Ghetto, the quarter to which the bigotry of Paul IV.,