first
takes the white veil, which is an expression of her intention, and
thus enters the grade of a novice. During the period of her novitiate,
which continues for several months, she is exposed to the severest
discipline of vigils, and fastings, and solitude, and prayer, that
she may distinctly understand the life of weariness and self-denial
upon which she has entered. If, unintimidated by these hardships, she
still persists in her determination, she then takes the black veil,
and utters her solemn and irrevocable vows to bury herself in the
gloom of the cloister, never again to emerge. From this step there is
no return. The throbbing heart, which neither cowls nor veils can
still, finds in the taper-lighted cell its living tomb, till it sleeps
in death. No one with even an ordinary share of sensibility can
witness a ceremony involving such consequences without the deepest
emotion. The scene produced an effect upon the spirit of Jane which
was never effaced. The wreath of flowers which crowned the beautiful
victim; the veil enveloping her person; the solemn and dirge-like
chant, the requiem of her burial to all the pleasures of sense and
time; the pall which overspread her, emblematic of her consignment to
a living tomb, all so deeply affected the impassioned child, that,
burying her face in her hands, she wept with uncontrollable emotion.

The thought of the magnitude of the sacrifice which the young novice
was making appealed irresistibly to her admiration of the morally
sublime. There was in that relinquishment of all the joys of earth a
self-surrender to a passionless life of mortification, and penance,
and prayer, an apparent heroism, which reminded Jane of her
much-admired Roman maidens and matrons. She aspired with most romantic
ardor to do, herself, something great and noble. While her sound
judgment could not but condemn this abandonment of life, she was
inspired with the loftiest enthusiasm to enter, in some worthy way,
upon a life of endurance, of sacrifice, and of martyrdom. She felt
that she was born for the performance of some great deeds, and she
looked down with contempt upon all the ordinary vocations of every-day
life. These were the dreams of a romantic girl. They were not,
however, the fleeting visions of a sickly and sentimental mind, but
the deep, soul-moving aspirations of one of the strongest intellects
over which imagination has ever swayed its scepter. One is reminded by
these early developm