She took me at once to a convent, where I was received. The Superior had already spent thirty years in the same house. She was very kind to me,

and came regularly in the evenings to pay me a visit in my room.

I found her more visible than Superiors usually are; and once remarked to her that a Superior always reminded me of the queen-bee of the hive— the hidden centre of the community, setting it all to work, yet to outer eyes herself working not at all; the index the workers follow, without whom the whole community is disarranged.

She thought the conceit a good one; but it led on to another matter, for talking of the Superior and the office of Superior, led us to talk of that of the Director.

"There cannot," she said, "be direction, in the sense you mean, in a religious house. A convent has its Superior, and she has her rules. They rule her, and she rules it. She is in obedience to them, and her community is in obedience to her. As long as this is so, not even the Bishop can give us a coup de pied."

Well, but spiritual direction."

"Yes, for dryness, or deadness, if one feels it, one can ask one's confessor, naturally, and get counsel. Perhaps it may be well, perhaps stronger minds can fight against it."

"But you have a director for your Convent."

"Yes; all Convents have. He is required for

our counsel, he helps us in emergencies, and he sees that all is kept well."

"And if you were out of rule ?"

"Then he would say to the superior, 'Madame, your rule is relaxed; there are disorders; you must correct this.''

"And then ?"

"Then if she did not do so, he would report it to the Bishop."

This is in fact the office of our Wardens; and this office ought, of course, to be maintained in the Mother House, whether termed Director or not. "And if the sisters do not obey ?" I continued. "There is penance."

"And who administers the penance?" "The Superior."

"There is then less actual priestly direction in a religious house than in the world."

"In some sense there is; since its direction is in chief degree inherent in its constitution; and that constitution regulating its daily life no one can interfere with it.'

"Then the members of your community cannot choose her own confessor, or director, or spiritual adviser ?"

She raised up her hands, and with a slight but uncontrollable laugh she replied,

"The hive would soon swarm!"

"And the queen bee be stung to death!" I added, laughing more distinctly.

An incident, perhaps a little more droll, had led to this conversation, although I have, partly through inadvertence, related the last first.

I found myself once, in consequence of a circumstance I need not relate, in a strange place, and much to my own surprise, seated at the Grille of a severely closed Convent in conversation with its picturesque and talented-looking Superior.

Before I left I chanced to mention a Convent of her order I had known elsewhere.

"Ah!" she said, "it is no longer of our order; it has placed itself under the direction of Monseigneur of that place."

I looked the ignorance, I suppose, which I was ashamed to avow.

"Yes," she added, "it is no longer in obedience to our Mother House; it is in obedience to Monseigneur our sisters can no longer go there, for it has broken its rule. Yes," she repeated, approaching her face, and opening her splendid eyes close to the bars of the Grille, "it has left its obedience, it has broken its rule; and what do you think they do there now ?"

I could have gasped out the inquiry-" Have they turned Protestant ?"

"They iron their linen!" she half whispered.

There was not, I am sure, the least nervous tendency about my face, nevertheless, the excellent and really talented Superior added

"Well, it is a small matter certainly; nevertheless,

it is in our rules that we are to press our linen, not to iron it; and if a rule is broken in a lesser matter it will be broken in a greater. I only tell it to show you how dangerous it is for a Superior to place herself under other direction than her Mother House."

I did not ask if it was from the direction of Monseigneur that the linen came to be ironed; but I took the complaint as a proof that direction, in the extreme sense of the word, never can be employed in a religious house which has its own constitution, without upsetting that constitution; and the conversation I related first on this subject, was in fact the result of the last mentioned, for I wanted to ascertain if such were the fact.

Now if this cannot be done without some danger of such a result in a Church where all speak the same, or nearly the same thing, how much less could it be done, or attempted to be done, without a ridiculous result in the Church of England?

Let even two or three Clergy—of the High Church, or the Low Church-join together under the sanction of some one Bishop, to form Sisters of Charity who are to be one community, but when sent into their several parishes are to be for the time being dependent on these Clergymen's several direction-and what would be the result? Why evidently that there must be soon as many communities as there were directors, and, perhaps, finally as there were Sisters. Mr. A. might direct them in one way, and Mr. B. in another. The Sister left at liberty to

choose, might prefer a third to either; or, accustomed to one of these, would not like to change for the other. And in the midst of this, while one was of Paul and one of Apollos, as has so long been the case among us-where would be the rules given for their direction, where the obedience they had promised?

But even supposing that such a principle could be admitted into a really organized body, and that it might work well under the guidance of one generation of men, how might it prove with another? How would it prove if the priest of the parish of today was to be changed, perhaps, for his curate to-morrow, or where the new one that came in his place was one of a totally different stamp, yet, of course, claimed the same right of directing "the inner and the outer life" which his predecessor had exercised.

Whatever is done, ought to be done so that it may last, and unless this fundamental principle be carefully preserved, no such institution can last, especially in England.

A Sister of St. Thomas de Villeneuve was once speaking to me of a matter in which some assistance was required by one of my friends; the circumstance led to some observations which caused me to inquire whether a Sister might not ask counsel or spiritual help from any priest except the one appointed to the house by the Bishop. She answered in these words :