clusion.

We went over the kitchen, laundry, refectory, dormitories, chapel,
garden, etc. Just the same as before--a little "calvary" at one end
of the garden and a rough picture of a Madonna in an arbor, the
long, echoing corridors spotless as the deck of a man-of-war, and the
smiling faces making a very flower-garden of the community-room. We
left loaded with specimens of the nuns' work--Agnus Deis in frames of
silver filigree dotted with white roses and hanging from white satin
ribbon-bows; flake-like biscuits of peculiar flavor; and baskets,
pincushions, etc. of delicate workmanship. I do not know whether this
convent is still in the hands of the Dominicanesses, so many in Rome
having become barracks since the new royal authority superseded that
of the pope. But the picture of San Domenico e Sisto as it was in
1853 and 1863 may yet interest many who perhaps will never have the
opportunity of seeing such an establishment for themselves.

This is a very fair sample of the convents of the stricter and
cloistered orders: there are some exceptional houses, such as that of
the Sepolte Vive, where the rule is far more austere. There is but
one convent of this description in Rome, and I believe one or two in
France. It is a noteworthy fact that most of the strictest observances
of penance originated in France, and are continued there to this day.
This convent of the Sepolte Vive ("Buried Alive") is not formally
sanctioned by the papal authority, but only _tolerated_. The nuns
were forbidden more than ten years ago to admit any more novices, and
although the individual zeal of those who started the order was not
exactly censured, still a tacit intimation of its being considered
excessive and imprudent was given by the highest ecclesiastical court.
Among their customs (which much resemble those of the Trappist monks)
these nuns have that of digging their own graves, and as the cemetery
is small and included in the "enclosure," the oldest graves are opened
after a period of forty or fifty years, and the crumbling contents
ejected to make room for the lately deceased. The death of a nun's
nearest relation, be it father, mother, brother or sister, is made
known to the superior alone, and she in her turn announces it, _not_
to the bereaved one, but to the whole sisterhood, in this manner: They
are all assembled in the community-room, and admonished to "pray for
the soul of the father or mother" (as the case may be) "of one among