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 farewell to this elder sister.  The meeting was very affecting:  the sisters could not see each other face to face—­a thick grating separated them.  The elder had long been a spiritual guide to the younger:  she had led her mind in the direction of the cloister, and now rejoiced sincerely that God had smoothed away the family difficulties and pecuniary embarrassments which for some time had stood in the way of her vocation.  Still, natural affection was not stifled in the generous, unselfish heart of the cloistered nun, and she wept with her sister at the thought that, though the walls of the same city would hold them both till death, and hardly a few blocks of houses separate their convent homes, yet in the flesh they should never meet again.  The English godmother sat in a remote corner of the cool, shady parlor, sympathizing in silence with the touching scene, but keeping as much in the background as etiquette and custom allowed, that she might not intrude on this last farewell.  At length the