A SUMMARY. I have often thought that it must be a curious, and by no means unimportant, or useless process, which the Roman Catholic is frequently called upon to go through, when preparing his mind for confession. The above sentence may startle any one who reads these pages, and he may exclaim— “The Roman Catholic!” Is not the writer—born in a Roman Catholic country, educated by a Roman Catholic priest, and with the force of his beautiful example to support all his precepts—is he not himself a Roman Catholic, or does he mean to say that he has never himself been to confession? Never mind. That shall all be explained hereafter. The process I allude to is that of making, as it were, a summary of all the acts and events, which have occurred within a certain period of the past, trying them by the test of reason and of conscience, and endeavoring to clear away all the mists of passion, prejudice, and error which crowd round man and obscure his sight in the moment of exertion or pursuit. Such is not exactly the task I propose to myself just now. All I propose to myself is to give a very brief and sketch-like view of the facts which occupied the next two or three years of my life. It will be faint enough. Rather a collection of reminiscences than of any thing else—often detached from each other, and never, I fear, very sharply defined. The truth is, events at that period were so hurried that they seemed to jostle each other in the memory, and often when I wish to render my own thoughts clear upon the particular events of the period, I am obliged to have recourse to the written or printed records of the events, where they lie chronicled in the regular order of occurrence. I know that after Mariette’s departure, I was very sad and very melancholy for several weeks. Father Bonneville with all his kindness and tenderness, and with much greater consideration for the faults and weaknesses of others than for his own, did not seem to comprehend my sensations at all at first, and could not imagine—till he had turned it in his own mind a great many times, and painted a picture of it, as it were in imagination, that the society of a little girl of six years old could have become so nearly a necessity to a boy of thirteen. He became convinced, however, in the end that I was, what he called “pining after Mariette.” He strove then to amuse me in various ways—occupied my mind with fresh studies—procured for me many English books, and directed my attention to the study of German, which he himself spoke well, and which I mastered with the ready facility of youth. We all know how children imbibe a language, rather than learn it, and I had not at that time lost the blessed faculty of acquisition.