arries, I should say, the lightest heart in London.

"I have no doubt there is more system, more decorum--I use the word in
its literal sense--in the Anglican sisterhoods now. I'm quite amazed
sometimes at the closeness of the imitation of the real thing when I go
to Margaret street, or to St. Alban's--the altars, the lights, the
confessionals, the stations, the black-cassocked figures gliding about,
removing their berettas and dropping on one knee as they pass the
altar--all the furniture; but a dreadful feeling of emptiness--as if the
house's owner had moved away! Do you ever look at the pictures and the
titles of books in the windows of the High Church bookshops? What would
have been thought of them five years ago even? And at ----'s in Oxford
street, a High Church friend tells me, they have a room into which you
may be ushered by inquiring for the 'Penitential Department,' if the card
bearing the name of a clerical voucher, which you must present, be
satisfactory, and where you may purchase disciplines--nail-studded
armlets, waist-belts--perhaps hair shirts, though I don't remember that
they figured in my friend's list.

"And, two years ago, I think it was, I witnessed a little scene that
was as extraordinary as it was absurd. I was coming up from Cromer, and
our train had halted for the usual time in the station at Norwich. It's
a large station, trains constantly rolling in and out, and crowds of
passengers, guards, porters flying about. While we waited, above the
din suddenly was heard a singular and regular thud! thud! coming down
the platform. Thud! thud! on it came, and the noise, and the queer,
sudden hush of most of the other racket made us all look eagerly out to
see what it could be. _It_ was a progression--a procession--a man in
soutane, barefooted, I believe, preceded by some sort of a servitor
carrying a monstrous book--breviary, 'Livre des Heures'--I know not
what, and a tall wooden crosier, whose foot it was that made the thud!
thud! At a little distance behind the man in the soutane, whom I
recognized directly as Mr. Lyne--the famous Father Ignatius, a self
constituted Benedictine Abbot--followed two Anglican Sisters. The
servitor and Father Ignatius betook themselves into a first-class
carriage, the Sisters remaining outside, and presently the crosier head
was thrust out of the window, and Father Ignatius appeared behind it
with hand outstretched to bless the Sisters, who knelt devoutly on the
platf