Equally is all this true of the other sex. Re-Christianised England of the pre-Norman days stands out in bold relief from the rest of Christendom for the readiness, nay, the eagerness, with which gentle ladies of royal blood and the proudest estate adopted the monastic life, discarding all outward pomp and circumstance. Rapin, the French historian, sneered at the number of royal saints produced by Saxon England, who knew, as he thought, no suffering; but a much greater Frenchman, the academician Montalembert, has amply justified their memory in a chapter of singular beauty of language blended with careful historical research. Nothing but the fact that the grace of God led these Saxon ladies of high degree to see the beauty of the sacred life can account for the way in which, throughout the seventh and early part of the eighth century, they gave up worldly ease for cloistered stillness. It was the same in nearly all the petty principalities--in Kent there were the saints, Eadburg of Lyminge, Eanswith, Sexberga, and Mildred; in East Anglia, Etheldreda, Wendreda, and Wimburga; in Mercia, Kyneburga, Kyneswith, Pega, Werburga, and Millburga; among the East Saxons, Ethelburga of Barking and Osyth; in Wessex, Frideswide, Everilda, Sidwell and Cuthburga; and in Northumbria, Ebba and Hilda. In the tenth century, also, there were the Saints Eadburga of Pershore, Edith of Polesworth, Edith of Wilton, and Wilfrida. Judged from the mere human standpoint, or even from the common-place platform of average modern Christianity, conduct of this kind seems mere foolishness; and worldlings have, forsooth, to imagine that all such had been crossed in love, and soured with disappointment, or were merely filled with a narrow-minded and tearful anxiety to save their own souls. But, after all, the example set by these Christian Saxon ladies has never died out, and never will, so long as the love of the heavenly Bridegroom endures. England from the seventh century downwards has never lacked delicately nurtured ladies, ready to forego worldly distinction, domestic ease, or intellectual ambition, in favour of a heart-whole sacrifice to the religious life. When Henry VIII. crushed out the nunneries in England, a large number of the Sisters belonged to the best of the nation’s blood; and ladies of the noble and high-born families who clung to the unreformed faith at once established and maintained English nunneries across the seas in Belgium or in France. With the blessed revival of Catholic life within the English Church, in the middle of the last century, there came about a re-establishment of vowed Sisterhood life, which has of late made a wondrous growth. Those best qualified to judge know well how these English sisterhoods and nunneries have been guided and endowed by those of the gentlest blood, whose names in religion hide those by which the world might have recognised them. And what was true of their origin is true of their