n. On the banks of the
Cooper, amid the lovely scenes of "Magnolia," Charleston's city of
the dead, there stands a marble shaft enwreathed in the folds of the
rattlesnake, the symbol of Revolutionary patriotism, and beneath it
rests all that was mortal of William Washington and Jane Elliott his
wife.

ROBERT WILSON.

CONVENT LIFE AND WORK.

To those who have had but little opportunity to examine the inner
workings of the Catholic Church the subject of the conventual life has
always been something of a puzzle. Of course it has been difficult for
them to obtain a personal insight into its details, just as it would
be difficult to gain admittance into the mosque of St. Sophia or a
Hindu community of religious. Curiosity, unsatisfied, betakes itself
to hearsay, and since those who know most are generally most silent
about their knowledge, it is to the gossip of ignorance or prejudice
that curiosity looks for an answer. Distorted views or imaginary
descriptions end by being received into the mill of public opinion,
and issue thence ground into gospel truth and invested with mysterious
(because fictitious) interest. It is strange that a phase of life
which is in constant practice at the present day, often within a
stone's throw of our own doors, and which has personal ramifications
in the families of our neighbors and acquaintances, should still be
so much of a phenomenon to the public mind. In England, France, Italy,
Germany and America I have been familiarly acquainted with it, have
studied its principles and its details under many varying forms,
and never found it less interesting because it was _not_ mysterious.
Human, fallible beings are the inhabitants of monasteries either
for males or females, with individual peculiarities and different
sympathies--by no means machines, but free and intelligent agents,
each with a character as individual as that of separate flowers in a
large garden--full of personality and of human imperfection.

In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi--of whose waters it is
said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any
one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common
purposes--is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto. Here
the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot
is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers. In the
turbulent thirteenth century, when papal, feudal and democratic
parties oppose