In the vestibule of the French Cathedral, I believe it is, you will behold a heart-rending sight in a glass case, namely, a group of children, babies in long clothes and upwards, in a dreadful state of being devoured by cotton-flannel pigs. Their poor little white frocks are stained with blood, and they are knocked about piteously in various stages of mutilation. A label in front informs you that certain innocents in certain localities are subject to this shocking treatment; and you are earnestly conjured to drop your penny or your pound into the box, to rescue them from a fate so terrible. You must be a cannibal if you can withstand this appeal. Suffering that you only hear of, you can forget, but suffering going on right under your eyes is not so easily disposed of. Leaving the pigs and papooses, we will go to--which of the nunneries? The Gray? Yes. But when you come home, everybody will tell you that you ought to have visited the Black Nunnery. The Gray is not to be mentioned in the same year. Do not, however, flatter yourself that in choosing the Black you will be any more enviable; there will not be wanting myriads who will assure you, that, not having seen the Gray, you might as well have seen nothing at all. To the Gray Nunnery went we, and saw pictures and altars and saints and candlesticks, and little dove-cot floors of galleries jutting out, where a few women crossed, genuflected, and mumbled, and an old woman came out of a door above one of them, and asked the people below not to talk so loud, because they disturbed the worshippers; but the people kept talking, and presently she came out again, and repeated her request, with a little of the Inquisition in her tones and gestures,--no more than was justifiable under the circumstances: but she looked straight at me; and O old woman! it was not I that talked, nor my party. We were noiseless as mice. It was that woman over there in a Gothic bonnet, with a bunch of roses under the roof as big as a cabbage. Presently the great doors opened, and a procession of nuns marched in chanting their gibberish. Of course they wore the disguise of those abominable caps, with gray, uncouth dresses, the skirts taken up in front and pinned behind, after the manner of washerwomen. Yet there were faces among them on which the eye loved to linger,--some not too young for their years, some furtive glances, some demure looks from the yet undeadened youth under those ugly robes,--some faces of struggle and some of victory. O Mother Church, here I do not believe in you! These natures are gnarled, not nurtured. These elaborately reposeful faces are not natural. These downcast eyes and droning voices are not natural. Not one thing here is natural. Whisk off these clinging gray washing-gowns, put these girls into crinoline and Gothic bonnets, and the innocent finery that belongs to them, and send them out into the wholesome daylight to talk