was only between three and four years of age. Mother Mary Ermenild had charge of them (i.e., she and her sister Ada), and she would lash them both with the Discipline.' Little Ada, too, would constantly be carried to her cell, which was next to mine, and there laid on the bed and lashed on her bare flesh by Mother Ermenild. Once, being in my cell, I heard the Mother scolding Ada dreadfully as a naughty, disobedient little girl for touching the ink and spilling a little (poor child, she had been trying to write a letter to her father, whom she worshipped). The Mother then made this dear child lie down, and she gave her seven lashes with the Discipline' on her bare flesh, in all 49 cuts.* Later in the day I went to look at the table, expecting to find it spoilt, but there was only one spot of ink on it, about the size of a pea."—Ibid., p. 116-119. And this "Discipline," remember, is the same instrument the law uses on grown men for garrotting and assaults with violence, who, I was informed by the Governor of one of H.M. jails, beg and pray to be excused, and sob like babies at every stroke; and yet "Holy Religion" deals out such monstrous cruelty on little children! Remember, also, the Zirenburg home. What, then, does this parallel teach? That this religious fury of devotion and confession destroys all womanhood and feeling; for we have even an Irish bishop (Daily Chronicle, June 8, 1892) upholding an act for which the Japanese pronounced a sentence of lifelong imprisonment ! Again, page 28 of Edith O'Gorman's work clearly shows that another orphan was cruelly murdered by one of the sisters, who had frequently been unkind to the child. And to crown all, is a letter in the Daily Telegraph in 1865 (relative to the Colwich nunnery case of 1857). Evidence was given that coffins were made on the premises, and that nuns were buried in the grounds of the convent. The census for 1861 gives the inmates of 33 Roman Catholic convents; the total is 2,211, average 67 in each. Lately, there were 460 convents in England and Scotland, which at the above average would give a total of 30,820 inmates. The last returns for Great Britain are 233 religious houses for monks and 512 for nuns, which, estimating that there are 10 inmates in each convent (Maria Monk speaks of 30), would give 2,330 monks and 5,120 nuns in addition to the 2 cardinals, 2 archbishops, 17 bishops, and * See p. 101 for description of this instrument. 2,689 secular and regular priests. Now add to this 30 Anglican Sisterhoods with 177 different branches—that is, hospitals, missions, schools, etc., under direction of sisters, which, as the Clewer Sisterhood has 200 inmates, would give roughly a total of at the very least 6,000 sisters, who are practically (as shown herein) Roman Catholics. Then there are several Anglican monasteries and brotherhoods with, as shown by the total in June, 1892, of the English Church Union, 27 bishops and 4,035 clergymen, all more or less pledged Ritualists. So that Protestantism, when the Ritualist has thrown off his disguise and cast in with the Romanist, has to meet an army, all trained in a greater or less degree to implicit obedience, standing at the following appalling figures : In addition to which there are, of course, the laity. The following are the names of the Anglican Orders :1. Sisterhood of St. Margaret, East Grinstead, in addition, 20 branches. 2. Sisters of the Holy Cross, Haywards Heath, 3. 3. Sisters of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, Worthing. 4. St. Michael's Repository, managed by Sisters. 5. St. Mary's Home, Queen's Square, Brighton, about 40 pupils. 6. The Sisters of Charity, St. Raphael's, Bristol, 10. 7. Sisters of St. Michael and All Angels, Bussage. 8. Sisterhood of All Saints, Margaret Street, W., 17 Mission Houses at Wolverhampton, Lewisham, Helmsley, Bradford, Nottingham, Chatham, Westminster, Hammersmith, Finsbury Park, and Liverpool. A coloured Sisterhood, schools, and mission work, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cape Town, and Bombay. 9. Sisters of Bethany, 13, Lloyd Square, Clerkenwell; II, some abroad. 10. St. Mary and St. Scholastica, Twickenham, Middlesex, devoted to devotional life. 11. St. Cyprian's, Park Street, Dorset Square. 12. St. Saviour's Priory, 18, Great Cambridge Street, Hackney Road; branch of East Grinstead. 13. Nursing Sisters of St. John the Divine, 68 and 70, Drayton Gardens, 3. 14. 'St. Peter's Home, Kilburn, 18 branches. 15. Sisters of the Church, Randolph Gardens, Kilburn, 16 branches. 16. St. Katherine's, Fulham, 6. 17. Sisterhood of All Hallows, Ditchingham, Bungay, 5. 18. St. Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, principally schools, 6. 19. Sisterhood of St. John the Baptist, Clewer, more than 200 sisters employed, 30 branches. 20. Sisterhood of St. Mary, Wantage, schools, 16. 21. Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the Convent, St. Giles Road, Oxford, schools. 22. Sisterhood of St. Lawrence, Belper, 5. 23. Sisterhood of St. James, Kilkhampton. 24. Community of the Epiphany. 25. Sisterhood of St. Peter, Horbury, Wakefield, 4. 26. Community of the Mission Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus, Convent of the Holy Name, Malvern Link. Object, to honour the Holy Name of Jesus in the strength of union and in the fervour of a devoted life by winning souls to Him, 9 branches. 27. Sisterhood of the Holy Rood, North Ormesby, Middlesbro, 4.-Official Year Book of the Church of England, pp. 135 to 140. 28. Secluded Convents at Feltham. 29. Slapton, Devonshire. 30. Llanthony. (Three last mentioned by Sister Mary Agnes.) Attention is called to No. 26, evidently a female Society of Jesuits a similar Society to the Roman Catholic "Faithful Companions of Jesus" (nuns). Thus, at the dissolution of monasteries in 1539, there were 645 religious houses. In 1861 there were 33 ditto. In 1881, the last census but one, there were This shows that the two systems have, though their establishment is illegal, defied Parliament and the laws of England, and gained 134 since the dissolution, or allowing for increase of population they have regained their position. This is to be noted. Apropos of the birth of so many luckless infants Mr. Smee wrote in 1863, and it is again reiterated in Monasticism Unveiled, that certain monastic institutions, such as the oratory at Brompton and Sydenham, have secret burial grounds without boundary walls and without public access, that they falsified the inscriptions on the tombstones, and kept no register of burials. We have reason to believe the same might be said of certain nunneries. See article of March, 1859, in Daily Telegraph. It is curious, but most of these convents stand within grounds like the Roman Catholic one at Brighton and St. Peter's, Horbury (Ritualist), surrounded by high walls, and barred entrances, and one never hears of a public burial, no, not even of the Lady Abbess or Mother Superior, when the decease of so holy and good a person would surely be used as an invitation to enter, or rather, "O come into my parlour,' said the spider to the fly, etc., etc." Nor do they ever publish any record as to their doings like most other societies-religious as well as secular. All is enveloped in mystery, silence and death. When will our eyes be opened at least to give the sisters and nuns the right (which they can never have under obedience) openly to declare their wishes and feelings? It is likewise asserted by those who have studied the subject, that the coroner's jurisdiction does not extend to within the convent walls, so that seduction, cruelty, murder and infanticide reign undisturbed even in England. (See Monasticism Unveiled, part II., p. 4, published by J. Kensit, 18, Paternoster Row, price 3d., already quoted.) How long, John Bull, will your chivalry for the weaker sex allow you to neglect their vain cries, that ever and anon pierce those massive walls and oaken doors? You help the poor unfortunate, though she is free; you aid and protect children from cruel parents; but you leave the nun or sister, though perhaps not much older, to all the wickedness and devilry the priest or superior thinks fit to invent or perpetrate—and, O trust an evil woman for fiendish cruelty to her sex! Shame on you, men of England—a lasting shame! And it will serve you right, when in revenge for our tears and groans and blood, you have to shed your own to protect at the finish your homes from, not the intrigues or wiles of the Jesuits, under garb of Ritualism or Romanism, but their marshalled armies of armed devotees, introduced in secret into these religious castles, solid of build and well nigh impregnable! Then when the time is ripe the Jesuit will as heretofore cast off his disguise, and try to seize on civil power, and then you will realise, O John Bull! the viper which you have been nourishing in your breast, and your heart will reproach you for the sufferings you have neglected when torture and death are before your eyes. Pray God, the day may far distant! But with the spread of Ritualism, the country, our dear country, happy old England, the land of the free, is half way there already. Look to it then. Arise and demand that these cursed prisons be abolished as heretofore, and still more strenuously demand and insist that not a hole or corner be left unexamined-aye, not once, but periodically, and above all suddenly, so that they may be seen in all their naked ugliness and crime, so that if they claim freedom of worship, at least it shall not be the cloak for sins and crimes so horrible that one shrinks from the authentic recitals of them. And, moreover, to crime is added shame and hypocrisy. Read "Sister Maude " and see how the poor sisters had to drag about to wait upon the Angel Mother (Angelica). Observe how she fared daintily. Read "Rebecca Read" and note the same. And in the writer's knowledge it is true that, on visiting the Revd. Mother Superior and Acting Mother of a Ritualistic sisterhood, tea, in which the writer be |