In modern foreign congregational colleges the divisions of the school take the form of junior boys, middle grade and seniors, and as communication of the youths of one grade with those of any other grade are most strictly forbidden, mainly on the ground of morality, a considerable system of espionage is from the outset part of the institution's plans. In foreign schools the spies of any particular grade are officially known by the other boys, just as monitors are known in ordinary schools. The functions of the foreign school-spy go, however, very much farther than those of the monitor, and so busy is he in the performance of his duties, that espionage enters into the minds and habits of foreign youths from their earliest years. When the late Cardinal Vaughan—a typical Englishman if membership of a territorial family of half-a-score of generations counts for anything—was laying plans for the founding of a Catholic school in England, he visited many of the principal colleges in France with the object of obtaining ideas for his proposed foundation. Everywhere he was depressed at the absence of individual liberty and the ever-present prevalence of espionage. Nor was he consoled very much, on once asking the distinguished head of such an establishment what provision was made for training youths in the proper use of individual freedom, to hear that the school authorities saw to it that no freedom whatever was allowed except under the eyes of the official supervisors. Neither does the system fail in its application among the members of any governing confraternity itself in which the lay-brothers are spied upon by the functionaries in minor orders, and these in their turn by clerics in higher orders, the superior exercising espionage upon the entire community while the sport begins again in inverse order, and the chief finds out that his reports dealing with the subordinate end of the line are fully supplemented by spies who report with equal completeness on his own end of the game. Contemplative Orders, as they are called, are not, it may be said, confined to the Roman Catholic Church, and we presume monastic espionage is as prevalent among the non-Catholic monks as among the Catholic. XVII AMERICAN SECRET SERVICE