a large, roomy, silent villa, two hours from Paris.  Behind the house was a garden and grove crossed in all directions by bewildering little paths leading into unexpected hollows where a rustic altar and statuette of Our Lady would be placed, or a crucifix erected in startling loneliness on a little hillock.  A wide avenue of lime trees, where the pupils might be seen early in the morning studying their tasks, or in the afternoon eating their luncheon of grapes and brown bread, traversed this grove in a straight line, and here on certain feast-days nuns and pupils would form picturesque processions, with the customary banners, tapers, white veils and swelling hymns.  Here the Ratisbonne brothers came to rest from their work of furthering the interests of the order—­the elder a fatherly, portly man with white hair and a gentle manner, the younger a bronzed, black-bearded man, a true Oriental, with enthusiasm expressed in every line of his countenance and every flash of his piercing eye.  He was only on a visit at that time, and then, as now, made Jerusalem his permanent home.  There are one or two convents of this order in England, but I think none as yet in America.

The convent of the Assumption at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, is one renowned for its excellent educational advantages.  I spent a week there one winter on a visit to a near relative among the pupils, and had an opportunity to observe the clock-like life of the place.  All the girls I have known to be educated there were better scholars than any brought up elsewhere.  There were many English and American girls, besides Poles, Germans and West Indian Creoles.  The war of 1860-64 left traces of strange animosity among the Northern and Southern children:  it was hardly credible that such a spirit could animate young children so long removed from the immediate home influences that would otherwise have accounted for the feeling.  Among the nuns were several English women, clever and deeply read, but softer-hearted than most scholars who have had too much to do with the world.  There was also a sister of Pere Hyacinthe among the Assumptionists, and the great orator himself often came to the convent-chapel to preach simple little sermons to the school-girls.  His sister was terribly crushed by the news of his defection from the Catholic Church, and, I believe, refused even to see him again.

A very beautiful scene which I witnessed on the 8th of December in this convent was the renewal of the vows.  The mass was celebrated in the chapel at five in the morning, of course by gas- and candle-light.  The body of the chapel was perfectly clear, the community sat in carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very perfect choir of nuns and children.  The hymns of Pere Hermann, a famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism, and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of these the music