greater portion; and that nothing on earth could induce him, with the knowledge he possessed, to allow one of his daughters to take the veil; for that _the majority of nuns at Rome died of madness before they were five-and-twenty_ years of age!”--Pp. 181-183. Surely no one can read this testimony concerning the condition of _nuns at Rome_, without the deepest emotion and horror. The system that requires it must be inhuman and execrable; and those who administer it, though titled dignitaries in a priesthood, must be fearfully guilty. It may be said that the ladies are carefully taught in their seclusion the duties of religion, and directed to its divine consolations. But Mr. Seymour further remarks on the morals and religion of the Roman nuns. Referring to the testimony of his friend in the “papal court,” he says, “Now all this, though very different from our notions on the subject, seems very natural. There are some monasteries where the inmates have many privileges and many comforts, and can enjoy the world in a measure. There are some, too, where the nuns occupy themselves in the education of the young, and this gives an object of interest to their hearts and to their minds. But all these are the higher order of nunneries. The great majority of the nunneries of Italy are very different. There are no occupations for mind or body--there is no object before the mind; so that, with thousands, the heart is left to prey upon itself. For the greater part of the day, the sisters are left to themselves, to brood over the remembrance of the past, or to talk to each other about nothing. There they live, with far less enjoyment for the present, and infinitely less hope for the future, than those ladies of an eastern harem, on whom we think with so much compassion. They have no objects in which they can take an interest; they have no persons on whom their affections may be placed; and they have no means of being practically useful to others. “Such a state of existence is not conducive to the growth of a true and healthful religion in the soul. Accordingly it is found, that wherever there is religion in a nunnery, it runs into that wild and prurient thing that we rightly call ‘_monomania_,’ and results in the most extravagant claims to visions and revelations. It is the religion of madness; or perhaps, more correctly speaking, it is madness taking the direction of religion.