and not human laws, we are under obedience, not to nature, but to grace. Remember, my dear brethren, the day you each consecrated yourselves to God. If you did not then resolve to follow the Captain of your salvation who was made perfect through sufferings, and if you did not intend to have fellowship with him in those sufferings, even to death, you are not worthy of him. O! my brethren, how little did I expect when I received your vows, to behold these very altars where you pronounced them venerable by their antiquity, and by the successive generations of saints who have for centuries surrounded them, imbrued and defiled, for so they are, even by the mere semblance of blood and carnage. The horrors of war are ever dreadful to the Christian mind; but surely this is as that abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, when that which is unclean, shall even defile the holy places and the temple of the Most High.'

"Such were the sentiments of our reverend pastor. Nor did his children need

to have them twice repeated. Though the judgment had erred, the heart had remained pure. Arms were banished Port Royal. The nuns returned to their monastery. We resumed our former occupations, and Port Royal became as heretofore an house solely dedicated to prayer and praise."

Meanwhile the horrors of war raged all around with redoubled fury. Pillage and assassinations desolated the country on every hand. Incendiaries and marauding parties laid waste the produce of the land, and famine and pestilence depopulated the cities,

In this hour of exigency, the inhabitants of Port Royal proved the guardian angels of the land. This hospitable seclusion became an asylum to the distressed. Their whole attention was turned to assist their unhappy country. Several hundred persons were every day supplied with food from this monastery. Multitudes of sick and wounded were attended by the recluses. They visited every part of the district, to relieve the wants of the inhabitants, and to preach peace and concord. Their houses were crowded with persons who sought an

asylum from the tempest. Many of their most bitter enemies were entertained at Port Royal during all the time of the siege. The whole of the monastic enclosure was crowded with the effects which their poor neighbours brought there as to a place of safety. The Rev. Abbess Angelica writes in the following terms to one of her friends: "We are all occupied in contriving soups and pottage for the poor. This is, indeed, an awful time. Our gentlemen, as they were taking their rounds yesterday, found two poor persons starved to death; and met with a young woman on the very point of killing her child, because she had no food for it. All is pillaged around; cornfields are trampled over by the cavalry, in presence of the starving owners; despair has seized all whose confidence is not in God; nobody will any longer plough or dig; there are no horses, indeed, left for the former, nor if there were, is any person certain of reaping what he sows; all is stolen.

"Perhaps I shall not be able to send you a letter to-morrow, for all our horses and asses are dead with hunger. O how little

do princes know the detailed horrors of war! All the provender of the beasts we were obliged to divide between ourselves and the starving poor. We concealed as many of the peasants and of their cattle as we could in our monastery, to save them from being murdered, and losing all their substance. Our dormitory and the chapterhouse were full of horses. We were almost stifled, by being pent up with these beasts. But we could not resist the piercing lamentations of the starving and heart-broken poor. In the cellar were concealed forty COWS. Our court-yards and out houses are stuffed full of fowls, turkeys, ducks, geese, and asses. The church is piled up to the ceiling with corn, oats, beans, and pease; and with caldrons, kettles, and other things belonging to the cottagers. Every time we enter the chapel, we are obliged to scramble over sacks of flour, and all sorts of rubbish. The floor of the choir is completely covered with the libraries of our gentlemen. Thirty or forty nuns from other convents have fled here too for refuge. Our laundry is throng

ed by the aged, the blind, the maimed, the halt, and infants. The infirmary is full of sick and wounded. We have torn up all our rags and linen clothes to dress their sores. We have no more, and are now at our wits' ends. The cold is excessive, and all our fire-wood is consumed. We dare not go into the woods for any more, as they are full of marauding parties. We hear that the Abbey of St. Cyran has been burnt and pillaged. Our own is threatened with an attack every day. The cold weather alone preserves us from pestilence. We are so closely crowded, that deaths happen continually; God, however, is with us, and we are in peace."

Such is war! How impossible does it appear that any Christian should be engaged in it! How wonderful that the perpetrators of such horrors, should be so deluded, as to imagine themselves amongst the children of the God of love!

Port Royal continued to be distinguished for its charity during the whole period of the war.