full activity. Rumours, not favorable to his respect for one of his vows, had been afloat.But the cloak of charity, always ready to be thrown over a Priest on such occasions, had skreened him. People of all classes are instinctively aware, that in almost every thing, there is a balance of evil and good. The Church reaps the greatest advantages from the celibacy of the clergy. That morals suffer very frequently, is well known to all, and especially to the clergy themselves. But let a few years pass, and the stumbling young priest, helped by the charity of his flock, becomes tolerably steady. After all, cela vient avec l'âge; and indeed, at sixty, their conduct is generally exemplary.

It was quite clear that Father Sohan was still out at sea, and far away from the tranquil haven of three score. But the most scrutinizing eye could not discover the slightest fault in his public conduct.

That he showed the most parental attachment to Miss Cusiack was natural and fully expected.

He had begotten that pure soul to the cloister. It was he who had gradually turned her views away from this present life. It was he who had most ably managed a mind naturally bold and ardent, and pointed its enthusiasm to heaven. As nature had cast her soul in a similar mould to that which produced a St. Theresa, he made her acquainted with the works of that charming enthusiast. St. Theresa's life written by herself, which would raise a painful sympathy in most readers, only waked the ardour of our religious heroine. Father Sohan with equal adroitness had overcome the strong reluctance of a widowed mother, whose health was weak and declining, to renounce the last remnant of earthly happiness in parting with one who was the joy of her heart.

Nor could I, when I began to frequent the house, find fault with this conduct.

It was indeed the priest's bounden duty to promote the interests of the Church with a total disregard of worldly considerations. My first dislike (and, shall I say suspicion ?) arose from

my sure though slow perception of the bitter jealousy of myself, which Father Sohan's dissimulation could not totally suppress. The occasion of my becoming aware of Father Sohan's dislike to me, was my undertaking to assist Miss Cusiack in learning to read German. During my residence near Professor Stratchenback,* I had acquired such a knowledge of the language of Germany that I could read the most abstruse and mystical books in it with ease. As I had chosen Roman Catholic writers to teach my young friend, there could be no plausible objection on the score of orthodoxy. The eagerness of my pupil was, besides, too ardent to be opposed; and Father Sohan knew the human heart too well to venture his authority and controul beyond certain limits. My lovely pupil, whose gentleness of heart was quite heavenly, had a sense of mental dignity, which, if injudiciously opposed, would render her perfectly fearless. She might die of the pain which

* See Vol. II.

the necessity of resisting would give her; but she would die resolutely sooner than submit to tyranny.

He

Father Sohan's means of disturbing our German studies, and in general my conversations with Rose, though indirect, were too effectual not to give me considerable annoyance. was unusually assiduous in his attendance on both mother and daughter. He dined at Mrs. Cusiack's almost daily. But his most powerful instrument of annoyance to me was the confessional. It was there that he could, by artful questions, make Mrs. Cusiack uneasy in regard to my intimacy in the house. Fortunately the good lady's heart nourished a kind of hopeless longing that her daughter might give up the idea of taking the veil. Against this sunken rock the priest's insinuations were constantly dashed to pieces. He had it more in his power to rob me of the enjoyment which I had in conversing and sitting near Rose Cusiack. The works of penance imposed on the innocent girl encreased almost in proportion to the growth

of her innocence and virtues. The days of retirement for religious exercises were multiplied. Besides the reading of the office for the day, the recital of the Rosary, and occasionally that of the office of the Virgin Mary, she had sometimes to repeat the Penitential Psalms. With a simplicity, which had something of archness and playfulness, she used to tell me all her spiritual burdens when she excused herself for not attending at the hour of our German lesson. Her spiritual tasks appeared to me (though I never was so determined a Catholic as at that period) quite dangerous to the health and spirits.

Nettled by these frequent disappointments, and tracing them to an individual priest, I confess that my reverence for the legal fiction of church infallibility was very much disturbed. To make a fiction (said I to myself) the foundation, or rather the boundary of a political system; to fix a point where constitutional questions must stop, is not only expedient but necessary. In every civil society there must be a supreme