inform herself on the subject, has most humbly endeavored on the present occasion to raise a finger-post, which shall give a due warning of a danger impending over every individual girl in England now, to her freedom and her happiness. Not many years ago, the mother of a happy cheerful family, known to the Author, expressed a wish, for once, to see all the wonders of the Popish ritual, and, after some slight opposition from her Protestant husband, she obtained leave to take her daughters there, and went. Nothing more was said between the parents upon that subject till several months afterwards, when it was unexpectedly discovered that the young ladies clandestinely wore crucifixes. Then the unhappy father, on investigation, to his astonishment ascertained that their visits to the chapel and to the priests had been secretly continued, till his whole family around him had become Papists. He died soon after, literally of a broken heart; his wife and daughters live now in a foreign convent; and his son, relinquishing his whole inheritance, became a Popish priest.

Who has not read, with a just indignation, that it was necessary for the Principal of Glenalmond College to publish a letter in the newspapers remonstrating with a Popish priest for clandestinely lending books of Romish theology to his pupils? And in an English public school it was discovered lately, to the inexpressible grief of the parents, that two pupils had been privately perverted by similar means; yet British fathers abroad, placing their children in foreign convents for the benefit of accomplishments, do so on a mere vague understanding that their religion shall not be tampered with! They might as judiciously dip a white dress into the dyer's vat of black, on the positive assurance that it shall come out white again! The

Author could name one young lady of fortune, who was entrusted to the care of a Popish governess, on a solemn agreement that she was never to be spoken to on the subject of religion; but the unfortunate parents omitted to stipulate also that she was not to be lent any books on Romanism, therefore she had a complete course administered to her of the most enticing Popish works, which produced their almost inevitable effect in teaching the young pupil to prefer a religion of fancy and fiction to one of sober and truthful reality. She was lately, of course, 'received' into the Romish Church.

The Author read a letter, some time since, from an English nun in a foreign convent, mentioning that the Virgin Mary is often seen in their garden, and that one of the nuns had obtained a vision of her there very recently-perhaps, sowing the seeds of Popery! Such is the result of solitude, sleeplessness, fasting, and a very excited imagination!

A relation of the Author's, the late Mr. Johnston, of Straiton, printed for private circulation once, and sent hér a copy of the following curious narrative: He was travelling on the continent, about fifteen years ago, when, seeing a funeral procession enter a church, he followed to witness the solemn rite. On an open bier lay the corpse of a lovely young girl, and beside it stood her sister, whose beauty and grief so moved the young Scotchman, that he gazed at her earnestly and mournfully, till quite on a sudden she looked up, and sprung forward, with an exclamation of devout reverence, declaring, in an ecstacy of rapture, that she had prayed all the morning to her patron, St. Sebastian, for comfort, and that here he had come in person to console her. The astonished traveller, a shy, reserved man, unaccustomed to Popish visions, felt greatly startled on finding himself thus the subject of one; but became

afterwards so interested in the adventure, that he had his own picture done, by an eminent Italian master, in the character of St. Sebastian, which may still be seen at Glasserton, stuck full of arrows.

In the present day, many children are allowed no imaginative reading, except on religion. The universal craving which they all have for something supernatural used to be humored by allowing their young fancies to expand over the harmless wonders of 'Mother Bunch'; but now their books of relaxation or amusement consist of conversations on science or on history— very dry, often, to the young pupil, who sits down with rapture afterwards to read of modern visions and miracles, of guardian angels visibly appearing, of speaking trees and talking birds, of dark rivers flowing over golden sands, and miraculous flowers, that droop when a child is naughty, and hold up their heads again as soon as he becomes good. These very pretty books' have generally a frontispiece, resembling those prints and images now so sadly in vogue for school rooms and nurseries, in which a visible guardian angel leads a child onwards, with upturned eyes,' who is evidently walking straight to Rome. These are the fairy tales of the present day, but written with a purpose; and that purpose is anything but Protestant!

The object of Romanism is entirely to subjugate the will and the intellect; therefore, as Niebuhr says of the Italians, their slavish subjection to the Church is ' ghastly death.' He adds, 'I am perfectly correct in saying, that, even among the laity, you cannot discover a vestige of piety. The life of the Italian is little more than an animal one, and he is not much better than an ape endowed with speech. There is nowhere a spark of originality or truthfulness. Slavery and misery have even extinguished all acute susceptibility to sensual

enjoyments; and there is, I am sure, no people on the face of the earth more thoroughly ennuyé, and more oppressed with a sense of their own existence, than the Romans. Their whole life is a vegetation.' Thus it becomes with all nations, or individuals, whose misfortune it is to fall under the tuition of Papal tyranny. May English girls long remain in the free and happy exercise of that mental and personal liberty in a domestic home, of which none can deprive them, unless they deprive themselves, by heedlessly venturing among the rocks and quicksands of Romanism, which they will now be often asked to do, probably in a tone of mere jest -perhaps at first to hear some very fine singing, or to meet some very eminent Popish dignitary; but it all turns to very serious earnest at last. A girl who blindly rushes into conventual life, reduces herself to the same state as if every relative God ever gave her had died in a day; and it were well to pause till she has come to very mature judgment, before venturing beyond the help of old and tried friends, into the power of those who sell and buy pardons for any offence.

In England, the friends of the most abject criminal, or the most delirious maniac, may gain uncontrolled access to certify that she is treated with kindness and propriety; besides which indispensable protection, the inmates of a prison, or of a lunatic asylum, have the inestimable privilege of being occasionally visited by the authorised Crown officers, to take legal proof that they are either justly or willingly incarcerated; but a convent is the only spot in her Majesty's wide dominions to which the law of British liberty does not extend. It is better, perhaps, for the community that those whose minds have got into a morbid state, should thus voluntarily imprison themselves while the delusion lasts, but care should be taken that, if

cured, they can emerge into liberty again. In Italy it is considered that, where the manners are so dissolute, the only safety for 'unprotected females' is in a convent; but experience has shown that the propriety of Englishwomen can be preserved in their own families, without having recourse to solitary imprisonment. The Protestants are one great anti-slavery society, anxious to preserve for all men that 'liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free,' but the Papists make their votaries, bodily and mentally, slaves, who buy liberty in this world to sin, and in another world an escape from the punishment of having sinned.

A lively author, describing his visit in 1843 to the Ursuline Convent at Cork, says,* 6 Here I was in the room with a real live nun, pretty and pale. -I wonder, has she any of her sisterhood immured in oubliettes down below? Is it policy, or hypocrisy, or reality? These nuns affect extreme happiness and content with their condition, a smiling beatitude which they insist belongs peculiarly to them, and about which, the only doubtful point is, the manner in which it is produced before strangers.

-Is it possible that I shall see a nun's cell? Do I not recollect the nun's cell in "The Monk," or in "The Romance of the Forest"? or, if not there, at any rate in a thousand noble romances, read in early days of half-holiday, perhaps-romances at twopence a volume. Here is the cell.. I took off my hat and examined the little room with much curious-wonder and reverence. There was an iron bed, with comfortable curtains of green serge. There was a little clothes-chest of yellow wood, neatly cleaned, and a wooden chair beside it, and a desk on the chest, and about six pictures on the wall-little religious pictures;

Titmarsh's Irish Sketch-book.