XII. THE SOCIETY OF SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL XXIV. SOURCE OF LOCAL RATE, AND THE RATING AUTHORITY, IN EACH CASE, FOR THE PURPOSES OF SCHOOL XXV. BYE-LAWS OF THE LIVERPOOL SCHOOL BOARD AS ΤΟ COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE AND REMISSION OR XXIX. THE OFFICE OF MOTHER SUPERIOR OF A CONVENT TERRA INCOGNITA. CHAPTER 1. THE STORY OF A PICTURE. Ut pictura poesis. HORACE. ONE DAY in the summer of 1868, as I was viewing the exhibition of the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square-being one of a large number of visitors in the north room-my attention was attracted by a half-subdued exclamation, or rather series of exclamations, in my immediate neighbourhood:-Oh! how dreadful! Why are such things tolerated? Can't Government interfere? Are such things possible at the present day? The voice was evidently that of a female, and the tone and accent bespoke the lady. The reply, 'I am sure I don't know,' uttered in an insouciant tone, evidently came from one of the other sex. My curiosity was excited. Clearly something very dreadful had met the eyes of the fair querist, amidst the confusingly dense crowd of pictures, the embarras de richesses, on the wall before her. I was anxious to see what was the subject referred to, and who were the persons whose conversation I had unavoidably overheard. By shifting my position, I perceived that they were a gentlemanly young man, attired as a clergyman of the Church of England, and a young lady of distinguished air and considerable personal attractions, apparently his bride. I followed the direction of their gaze, which was rivetted on a large picture, on beholding which, I saw at once that the young lady's exclamations of horror were not without good cause. The picture was thus classed in the catalogue:- 633. Not a whit too soon. F. B. Barwell.' The scene was in a convent -a large vaulted apartment. There, within a niche in the wall, stood a beautiful girl, with a profusion of rich auburn hair streaming down her shoulders; her arms meekly crossed on her breast; her tearful blue eyes turned towards heaven; her features, attitude, and whole air bespeaking despair of mercy in this world, but hope in the next-a mingling of terrible awe and gentle resignation. A monk was hard at work with trowel, and brick, and mortar, closing up the front of the niche in which she stood. The gentle victim seemed to be gradually passing from the state of consciousness. Already the fatal wall of her living tomb had reached as high as her knees. Around were grouped four or five ill-favoured old nuns, with habits, rosaries, veils, and other appropriate costume. In their stern and hard-set features not one gleam of compassion was discernible, not even the faintest trace of woman's sympathy, to which the agonized sufferer could appeal. The group was completed by a second monk, who appeared to be directing the proceedings. If the painter's object had been to present a striking contrast between the victim about to be immolated and her executioners-between that sweet innocent girl and those aged and forbidding-looking nuns and monks-the impersonation of heartless cruelty and fanaticism—he was assuredly most succeessful. The impression left on the mind of the spectator was indeed most painful; but, happily, this was relieved by a group entering on the right-hand side of the picture-a gallant young knight, in full armour, with his followers, rushing into the apartment just in time to rescue his beloved one-‘not a whit too soon!' This large picture, of a highly sensational character, admirably executed, and deservedly one of the best-placed in the exhibition, was naturally calculated to attract much attention, and to make a lasting impression. Doubtless, in many another instance, it had called forth remarks similar to those which had reached my ear. On going out of the building, on the footway directly in front, I met a boy selling at a shilling a pamphlet styled Revelations of a Convent, or the Story of Sister Lucy,' a low, scurrilous production, fully as absurd as it was false and malignant. As I moved away, my feeling was one of deep regret that there should extensively prevail among the people of England ---not merely the ignorant, but even a large proportion of the educated classes-such strange misconceptions of the nature of conventual institutions, and that those communities, which, were they known in the reality of their inner life, would be revered and cherished by the professors of other creeds, as they are by the Catholic millions of these realms, should now be so misrepresented and misunderstood, as from time to time to become the marks of public invective, or the objects of covert insinuation, and number among their assailants members of that body which has been truly designated the first, assembly of gentlemen in the world. My regret at such a state of things was not the less that around me were grouped so many monuments of the munificence of that great and wealthy nation-its hospitals, asylums, and other institutions for the succour of suffering humanity. Then, naturally, recurred to my mind several recent instances of its noble exercise of benevolence on a grand scale, on extraordinary emergencies, as exemplified in the Patriotic Fund at the close of the Crimean war, the collections for the sufferers in the Indian mutiny, and the Lancashire cotton famine, and, not least, its generous contributions to Ireland in the terrible crisis of 1846-49.1 1 Such also were the collections made in 1871, and the personal services rendered, in aid of the sufferers by the Franco-Prussian war, and the contributions for the victims of the Chicago fire. |