' as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her
heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us
only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm
aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of
excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the
green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wished to get some
personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did
not contribute to the immediate desire of her heart, being of a
temperament, more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions not
landscapes."

You shall see with what delicate precaution the author has introduced a
saintly old maid, and how, with a purport of teaching religion, there is
allowed to slip into the convent a new element, through the introduction
of romance brought in by a stranger. Do not forget this when the subject
of religious morals is under consideration.

"At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched
away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on
the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long
chapters in the intervals of her work."

This is nothing but marvellous, speaking from a literary point of view,
and absolution can but be granted a man who has written these admirable
passages as a warning against all perils of education of this kind, as
an indication to young women of the stumbling-blocks in the life in
which they will be placed. Let us continue:

"They were all love, lovers, sweet-hearts, persecuted ladies fainting in
lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to
death on every page