mmunity. When Madame Louise, the daughter of Louis XV. of France,
became a Carmelite nun, the first task assigned her was the washing of
coarse dishes and the sweeping of floors. A parallel case is that of
the Cistercian monks, who to this day, at their famous farm-monastery
at Mount St. Bernard, England, are bound by their rule to labor with
their hands so many hours a day. No exception is made for the abbot
himself; and when we visited the establishment a few years ago we had
to wait some time for the abbot, who was digging in a distant field.
Scholar and savant are not exempt any more than the humblest member of
the brotherhood; and as it is a very learned order, and attracts
many recent converts to Catholicism, it is not infrequently that one
recognizes in the monk-laborer, digging potatoes or hoeing turnips,
some Anglican clergyman of delicate nurture and scholarly renown.
To this monastery, entirely self-supported by its extensive farm,
is attached a boys' reformatory, one of whose products is the most
excellent butter known in England. Tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry,
turning, etc. are all taught under the supervision of the monks:
those among the boys who wish it are helped to emigrate, and others
apprenticed at the proper time to the trades they have already been
taught at Mount St. Bernard.

To resume our sketch of the Dominican nuns in Rome. It is the custom
in Italy for a young lady about to "enter religion" to choose a
godmother or _madrina_, a lady of proper age and mature experience,
who acts as her chaperon during the few weeks preceding the
"clothing." She comes forth from the convent where she has been a
postulant, and, dressed in the garb of the world, makes formal
visits to all her relations, friends and patrons, assists at public
ceremonies in the local churches, even visits some places of interest,
such as museums and galleries. This is her solemn farewell to the
world, and she is supposed thus to have another trial given to the
steadfastness of her resolve, another chance to abandon it before it
is too late. A young girl of an illustrious Roman family, but of very
slender fortune, was about to enter the Dominican order at the time to
which I allude, in 1853. Her only sister had for some years been a nun
of a strictly enclosed order, and Mademoiselle G----, having chosen as
her madrina an English Catholic lady who had been enabled to show her
some kindness while still in the world, went to bid far