al intention was
soon overruled by the Italian advisers of Saint Francis: the southern
European mind has ever been slow to conceive the idea of a more
spiritual protection than bolts and bars. But even in their cloistered
sphere the Visitation nuns clung to useful, active work, and became
a teaching order. They and the Ursulines (who in Italy, at least, are
cloistered) shared this task among them till the more modern order of
the "Sacred Heart" almost monopolized it. I have myself known women
of the most tried virtue and rare learning among the "Visitandines."
Their rule is less strict about visitors, and even strangers are
admitted to the parlor without a curtain being drawn behind the
grating. Their features are thus perfectly visible, and you can even
shake hands between the bars.

Even to this day there is hardly a noble family of Catholic Europe
that has not one or more representatives among the religious orders.
In England, both among "converts" and families of old Catholic stock,
there are many girls whose names have been absorbed into those given
at the same time as the ring and veil of a novice. In Flanders
there are fully half a dozen convents--at Bruges, Antwerp and
Louvain--emphatically called "English," and founded by scions of great
English families exiled for their adherence to the old faith under
Elizabeth and James I. They are mostly Augustinians. The new order of
the "Sacred Heart" has drawn to it women from Russia, Spain, America,
as well as from its native land of France, and the Sisters of Charity
have won a worldwide fame in the hospitals of the East and the recent
battle-fields of the West.

I have dwelt chiefly on the life of the old contemplative, cloistered
orders, because they are less known to the public and more mistakes
are made about their constitution and rules, and also because in these
old cradle-institutions are hidden the roots of the whole religious
system which to this day crops out so vigorously in works of mercy
over every land where the Catholic Church has a foothold. Among the
uncloistered orders of religious women--and here we expect to be
better understood and more fairly met by those whose knowledge
of "religion" is not personal--there are many that fulfill heroic
missions, perform useful tasks, or even silent, uncomplaining
drudgery. In all large European towns the _cornette_ of the Sister
of St. Vincent of Paul is seen in hospital, prison and asylum, in the
garret of the