home safe from the prospect of reverses.

If the destiny of woman is a problem that calls for grave attention even
in our enlightened times, and if she is too often a sufferer from the
inevitable movements of society, what must have been her position and
needs in those ruder ages, unless the genius of Christianity had opened
refuges for her weakness, made inviolable by the awful sanctions of
religion?

What could they do, all these girls and women together, with the
twenty-four long hours of every day, without reading or writing, and
without the care of children? Enough: with their multiplied diurnal
prayer periods, with each its chants and ritual of observances,--with
the preparation for meals, and the clearing away thereafter,--with the
care of the chapel, shrine, sacred gifts, drapery, and ornaments,--with
embroidering altar-cloths and making sacred tapers,--with preparing
conserves of rose-leaves and curious spiceries,--with mixing drugs for
the sick,--with all those mutual offices and services to each other
which their relations in one family gave rise to,--and with divers
feminine gossipries and harmless chatterings and cooings, one can
conceive that these dove-cots of the Church presented often some of the
most tranquil scenes of those convulsive and disturbed periods.

Human nature probably had its varieties there as otherwhere. There were
there the domineering and the weak, the ignorant and the vulgar and the
patrician and the princess, and though professedly all brought on the
footing of sisterly equality, we are not to suppose any Utopian degree
of perfection among them. The way of pure spirituality was probably, in
the convent as well as out, that strait and narrow one which there be
few to find. There, as elsewhere, the devotee who sought to progress