breathing again in the refreshment of its branches, and finding often beneath them spiritual as well as temporal life.

"Neither Vincent nor his pious co-operator had hoped for such speedy results. The example of these few modest and useful peasants drew others of the same station and disposition to join them; he resolved to have no ladies among them; but though the first object had been merely attendance on the sick and poor in parishes, the progress of the order and the providence of God led him and Madame le Gras to see how much more extensive might be the range of their work; by degrees they were intrusted with the education of the foundlings, with the instruction of young girls who had no other means of obtaining it, with the care of a great number of hospitals, and even of the criminals condemned to the galleys. Madame le Gras was constituted their superior for her life, and she died when Vincent was on his death-bed. As these diverse occupations made in some sort of one congregation many communities, Vincent gave them both general and particular rules, to sustain the entire body and the different parts which compose it.

According to these rules, which have always passed for a masterpiece of wisdom, the Sisters of Charity ought above all things to be so convinced that God had united them together to honour their LORD JESUS CHRIST as the source and model of all charity, that they should render to Him, in the per

sons of poor old men, of children, of sick people, and of prisoners, all the services temporal and spiritual of which they are capable; that in order to fulfil so holy a life they ought to maintain the interior exercises of the spiritual life together with the exterior exercises of Christian charity; that while they are not, and cannot be Religieuses, (or Nuns) because the estate of religion is incompatible with their employments, they ought to lead a life more perfect if possible than that of the holiest Nun, because in the world they were much more exposed to danger; and since the tenderest purity was to them indispensable, they ought to take the strictest care to avoid all that would offend the eyes of GOD or of their neighbour; and that their watchfulness over themselves should be redoubled since they had to go out so extensively into the world, to mix with persons of the other sex, to take care of them when sick or when dying.

"Perhaps the wisdom of the rules of Vincent de Paul is shown expressively in the assertion that they require much while seeming to require little. They prescribe no severities of any kind; the sisters observe no offices; 'their penance,' says the missionary priest, is their common life.' But they do not seem to think it so. To rise,' he says, 'at four o'clock summer and winter, to pray mentally twice a day, to live frugally, to render to the sick the most revolting services; to watch by them at night, to reckon as nothing the infected air of hos

pitals, to fear not the horrors of death or of the dying bed. Such is the sort of mortification required from the Daughter of Charity; if it is enough for vigorous men, certainly it should be enough for naturally weak women.

"As to the exercises of piety there are some which belong to the rule of the community, and others on which they ought to consult their director; but both must be subordinate to the wants of their neighbour; at the first cry of distress they must fly to his relief. They must watch the dying bed, and endeavour to bring the departing to feel sorrow for his sins, and urge him to call for the spiritual help which they cannot give."

The rules of Vincent de Paul, after having been practised for twenty years, were sanctioned by Cardinal de Retz, Archbishop of Paris. And the King Louis XIII. confirmed the foundation by letters patent. "A proof of the esteem which these virtuous girls had acquired." A remark made by the writer I have copied a little surprises me. He says

"After this they deserved yet greater praise, not by reason of their employments which have always been the same, but by reason of the persons who have performed them. Vincent having believed that GOD would bless more particularly the poor who served the poor, did not admit, during a number of years, any persons into the new community who were not of rather low birth. But after his death, young girls of condition having offered to partake