"However divided public opinion may be as to secular and religious schools--no matter what differences in opinion may exist in the community as to the policy of aiding or discouraging purely sectarian systems of education--there can be but little opposition from any quarter to the verdict of experience given by many thousand families, that these devoted women--the Sisters of the Catholic Church--are the best teachers of young girls, the safest instructors in this age of loose, worldly, and rampant New Englandism. Those matters of education which make the lady, in their hands, subordinate to the great object of making every girl committed to their care a true woman, are imbued with those principles which have made our mothers our pride and boast. Those of us who cavil at Catholic pretensions, sneer at their assumption, and ridicule their observances, must acknowledge that the Sisters are far ahead and above any organization of the sort of which Protestantism can boast. The self-sacrifice, the devotion, the single-mindedness, the calm trust in a Power unseen, the humility of manner and rare unselfishness which characterize the Sisters, has no parallel in any organization of the reformed faith. The war placed the claims of the Sisters of Charity fairly before the country; but these Sisters of the different branches have, in peace, 'victories no less renowned than in war.' Educating the poor children, directing the untutored mind of the youthful alien savage in our midst, or holding the beacon of intellectual advancement bright and burning before the female youth of the country, and beckoning them to advance, they are ever doing a good and noble work." We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools; if they are multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education will become higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the Republic; the moral tone of the community, and the standard of private and public morality, will be elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that will enable us, as a people, to escape the dangers that now threaten us, and to save the Republic as well as our own souls.