The General Hospital, situated about a mile out of town, on the borders of the river St. Charles, is much the most agreeable of the three.  The order and the habit are the same with the Hotel Dieu, except that to the habit is added the cross, generally worn in Europe by canonesses only:  a distinction procur’d for them by their founder, St. Vallier, the second bishop of Quebec.  The house is, without, a very noble building; and neatness, elegance and propriety reign within.  The nuns, who are all of the noblesse, are many of them handsome, and all genteel, lively, and well bred; they have an air of the world, their conversation is easy, spirited, and polite:  with them you almost forget the recluse in the woman of condition.  In short, you have the best nuns at the Ursulines, the most agreeable women at the General Hospital:  all however have an air of chagrin, which they in vain endeavour to conceal; and the general eagerness with which they tell you unask’d they are happy, is a strong proof of the contrary.

Tho’ the most indulgent of all men to the follies of others, especially such as have their source in mistaken devotion; tho’ willing to allow all the world to play the fool their own way, yet I cannot help being fir’d with a degree of zeal against an institution equally incompatible with public good, and private happiness; an institution which cruelly devotes beauty and innocence to slavery, regret, and wretchedness; to a more irksome imprisonment than the severest laws inflict on the worst of criminals.

Could any thing but experience, my dear Lucy, make it be believ’d possible that there should be rational beings, who think they are serving the God of mercy by inflicting on themselves voluntary tortures, and cutting themselves off from that state of society in which he has plac’d them, and for which they were form’d? by renouncing the best affections of the human heart, the tender names of friend, of wife, of mother? and, as far as in them lies, counter-working creation? by spurning from them every amusement however innocent, by refusing the gifts of that beneficent power who made us to be happy, and destroying his most precious gifts, health, beauty, sensibility, chearfulness, and peace!

My indignation is yet awake, from having seen a few days since at the Ursulines, an extreme lovely young girl, whose countenance spoke a soul form’d for the most lively, yet delicate, ties of love and friendship, led by a momentary enthusiasm, or perhaps by a childish vanity artfully excited, to the foot of those altars, which she will probably too soon bathe with the bitter tears of repentance and remorse.

The ceremony, form’d to strike the imagination, and seduce the heart of unguarded youth, is extremely solemn and affecting; the procession of the nuns, the sweetness of their voices in the choir, the dignified devotion with which the charming enthusiast received the veil, and took the cruel vow which shut her from the world for ever, struck my heart in spite of my reason, and I felt myself touch’d even to tears by a superstition I equally pity and despise.