They are confessed by the Capucins, and communicate every fortnight. All Genoese are received freely here, others pay a small sum. Again, the hospital called Pammatone, endowed by various noble Genoese, can receive 1000 sick; it had more this last winter. It is served by eighteen Capucins and thirty-four sisters. We saw here, in a shrine over the altar, the body of St. Catherine of Genoa, who died in 1510, after serving thirty-two years as a sister here. It is apparently solid and quite uncorrupt. The other great building, which we saw yesterday, is the Albergo dei Poveri--a poor house in fact, but as unlike an English poor house, as poverty in the person of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord is unlike poverty as treated by a board of guardians, and kept alive on the smallest pittance they can devise. It is a most magnificent building, with four huge courts, the chapel in the centre, of which the altar is commanded on one side by a great chamber for the men, and on the other side by one for the women; while in front it is open to the public, and behind to an infirmary for the sick. In all these buildings what most pleases one is the bringing home the entire offices, hopes, and consolations of religion to every individual soul. I do not see how this can be done without sisters of charity, and the system of confession. Everything I see impresses on me more and more our own need of a complete renovation and restoration, if we would rise as a communion to be a reality and not a sham. Yesterday we visited the Fieschine, an institution for educating orphan girls, of which it now holds 187. They are taught reading and writing and work of all kinds, the most beautiful embroidery, artificial flowers, &c. It was founded by the Count Fieschi, and is in the patronage of his family, directed by a chaplain, and a superior, with the rules of a convent, but without any vows, as a great many marry out of it. The full recognition of the ascetic and monastic life, as a Christian state, and the highest in its kind, is of incalculable importance. For want of this, all our great institutions, whether for the maintenance of learning, or the direction of youth, or the care of the sick, fail just where they ought to be strong; they have no _authority_; the world, its views, and principles, and measures, rule in them as in ordinary life; and the reason why is, that the very life which alone is above the world, its wants, and its measures, is excluded and condemned. We have men, we have minds, we have money; but how are we to get back principles which we have in practice given up? The under-valuing celibacy, the not possessing religious orders, seems a system of christianity without the cross.