tended in the city; established a missionary
work in all parts of the town, recalled a great number to the discipline
of the Church, and not only created something like an enthusiasm of
devotion among the women, who are said to have monopolized the religion
of Cuba in times past, but have introduced among the men, and among many
influential men, the practices of confession and communion, to which
they had been almost entirely strangers. I do not take this account from
the Jesuits themselves, but from the regular clergy of other orders, and
from Protestants who are opposed to them and their influence. All agree
that they are at work with zeal and success.

I met my distinguished acquaintance of yesterday, the rector, who took
me to the boys' chapel, and introduced me to Father Antonio Cabre, a
very young man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands
so white and so thin, and eyes so bright, and cheek so pale! He is at
the head of the department of mathematics and astronomy, and looks
indeed as if he had outwatched the stars, in vigils of science or of
devotion. He took me to his laboratory, his observatory, and his
apparatus of philosophic instruments. These I am told are according to
the latest inventions, and in the best style of French and German
workmanship. I was also shown a collection of coins and medals, a
cabinet of shells, the commencement of a museum of natural history,
already enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and an interesting
cabinet of the woods of the island, in small blocks, each piece being
polished on one side, and rough on the other. Among the woods were the
mahoganies, the iron-wood, the ebony, the lignum vitae, the cedar, and
many others, of names unfamiliar to me, which admit of the most
exquisite polish. Some of the most curious were from the Isla de Pinos,
an island belonging to Cuba, and on its southern shore.

The sleeping arrangement for the boys here seemed to me to be new, and
to be well adapted to the climate. There is a large hall, with a roof
about thirty feet from the floor, and windows near the top, to give
light and ventilation above, and small portholes, near the ground, to
let air into the passages. In this hall are double rows of compartments,
like high pews, or, more profanely, like the large boxes in restaurants
and chop-houses, open at the top, with curtains instead of doors, and
each large enough to contain a single bed, a chair, and a toilet table.
This