Many of the girls’ and infants’ schools were taught by Nuns, and I have usually supposed that some co-operative arrangement was made in such cases with the convents, by which chaplain’s duty at the convent was set off (in part) against the sisters’ salaries. There are many Orders in the North-West, and their names, whether polysyllabic, or foreign, or both, are often a sore trial to the poor Irish. Outside Liverpool there may be some one that has not heard the story of the afflicted Irishman who gratefully acknowledged the kindness of “the Frightful Companions (Faithful Companions); they was very good to me; and the Little Sisters of Misery (Misericorde), they was very good, but the best of all was the Bone Suckers (Bon Secours).” Of these three the first named is the only teaching order: but there are many others, of whom the best known are the Sisters of Notre Dame, in Liverpool. And if any one wants to know what can be done for education, primary, secondary, tertiary for aught I know, he should go to Mount Pleasant in that city, and look around him. As teachers nuns have many advantages. They are wholly devoted to their work; not to their pay, for they never see a farthing of it: it goes to Domus. They regard their service as their permanent vocation without the distraction of possible courtships: in their ways with girls they are almost motherly: and the sisters from the better orders have a singularly refining influence on the children. There are also certain disadvantages. The good sisters are too unworldly: they never read a newspaper; I suppose they read few books: their chances of improvement are limited, and their tendency is narrowing. In the case of the less successful ones it is rather dispiriting for a school manager, or an inspector, to think that, as the happy dispatch of marriage is impossible, they must wait for the slower process of age to remove them from the list. Also they have too often a profound contempt for rules and codes. I think this is due to their Irish ancestry, which naturally disposes them to be “agin the Government.” And they are by no means subservient to their priestly managers: at their back in case of dispute is reverend mother, and only the boldest priest would go to war with so excellent and so powerful a person.