All is changed: she has rushed from extreme to extreme; her silks and laces and flowery wreaths are seen no more; she wears the most mortified raiment―generally shabby black-in anticipation of the garb she covets; she dances no longer, nor flirts, she says endless prayers and confesses to a priest instead; and when from force of circumstances she feels irritated, wretched, and isolated, she tells herself that there is no safe life but that of a recluse; and, while she forgives her tormentors, she profoundly pities them in their benighted state, which cannot recognise in the cloister a ' little heaven below," a foretaste of the immeasurable bliss of Paradise!

She regards, and very properly, her past life with loathing, and she is going to expiate its sins and follies by giving herself up to another life, which is little more to the glory of God than the one she has forsaken. If nothing intervene, or if the devotional mania do not pass away, the sacrifice will be completed, and there comes a day when the nuns and novices keep high festival, the vows are registered, and the curtain is dropped. Yes, dropped as it is dropped at a theatre! The spectators have seen the play played out, and they go home and talk about it; but behind the curtain is another drama performing-one that involves a terrible reality.

I will not refer here to the worst scandals of convent life. I will not talk at all about the guilt and folly of renouncing God's own ordinance of marriage only to rush into that which the Book of Common Prayer tells us holy matrimony is intended to "remedy." It is not a case for respectable magazines. The daily papers, which cannot afford to be too particular, must do the scavengery of the monastic system. But imagine if you can the consternation of the deluded girl when she finds out for herself all the pettiness, and shabbiness, and meanness, and sordid coarseness of the life she is to lead. There are plenty of Miss Saurins, only they do not or cannot come forth and make their plaint as she has done. Plenty of well-born, well-bred girls still washing the floors in disreputable boots and tattered hose, still kissing the floor, and holding dustboxes-did any one ever hear of anything so childish ?-still moaning over defective scrubbing-brushes, and objecting, not to "toujours perdrix," which is not considered criminal in society, but to toujours mouton, which does not seem at all unreasonable; still obeying their spiritual superiors, and consumed by an intolerable ennui far more hopeless than that from which they have escaped.

I think we must confess that Miss Saurin must have been a trying person to deal with, but then she was subjected to very trying experiences. And, oh! you tired-out girls of the period, whose High Church proclivities are gently leading you Romewards, such experiences may be yours. Ay, to the very letter and beyond

it! You, who are so daintily apparelled, who sit in silken boudoirs, ringing perhaps for your "own maid" to go and tell the page to go and tell the coachman that you want to drive to Mudie's!-yov, whose white, soft hands do their hardest work on pianoforte keys, or on illuminated scrolls; you, who are surrounded by all sorts of refinements and prettinesses, who live in an atmosphere of "sweetness and light," and fare delicately if not sumptuously every day; you, who scorn turned dresses and mended stockings, and cannot tolerate cleaned gloves;-how will it be with you when you have to wear one dress till it falls to pieces-stockings ditto, boots ditto, tunies ditto? You may come to be charged with surreptitiously devouring unripe gooseberries, and paying your devoirs clandestinely to hams behind pantry doors! I heard once of a girl, the daughter of an Irish gentleman, who was perverted by a Jesuit governess, and induced to enter a convent. She had been her father's pet, and accustomed to all the appliances of wealth, and of course to all the refinements of superior society. She took the veil in a fit of romantic impulse, all her ideas of convent life being taken from poetry and novels of a certain school. She supposed she was going to dwell in a region of spirituality, calm repose, simplicity, and culture; when lo! at the very outset, the habits of the nuns at meals greatly revolted her. Sister Martha put her knife into her mouth and Sister Mary put hers to the same use, and then helped herself with it to salt from the common salt-cellar! Poor Sister Agatha had never even conceived of such vulgarities.

But worse was to come. One morning she was summoned to take her turn at the wash-tub; and a six weeks' wash in a convert must be a very nasty affair indeed! And she, whose little fingers knew not what work meant, had to toil for hours, till, with bleeding hands and arms, aching back, and throbbing heart, she was released by faintness from her heavy toil.

But the hard work and hard fare are not perhaps the worst part of it. The dinner of herbs with peace and love is enjoyable, even a dry crust may be tolerable with harmony and good will surrounding one; but herbs, and crusts, and the kind of menu they represent, must be very difficult to put up with when all is envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness.

Convent life is unnatural; we cannot therefore expect it to be very different from what it is. It is well that it should be denuded of some of its fine trappings, that it should be stripped of its romance-the romance with which foolish women have ever invested it, especially when they have been unhappy at home, tired of an aimless life, or as people say "crossed in love." Disappointed affections have led many a weak girl to the cloister. Instead of trusting God's goodness, and waiting to see what good things He

had in store for her, she rushed away to find a "living grave on earth," and she has had too late to cry

And yet they told me that all rest is here;

Within these convent walls the medicine and the cheer

For broken hearts; that all without

Was trembling, weariness, and doubt;

This the sure ark which floats above the wave,

Strong in life's flood to shelter and to save.
Ah, me, it is not so;

This is not rest, I know.

"This is not love!

And yet they told me that all love was here,
Sweetening the silent atmosphere;

All green, without a faded leaf;

All smooth, without a fret, or cross, or grief:
No balm like convent air,

No hues of Paradise so fair!

A jealous, peevish, hating world beyond;
Within, love's loveliest bond;

Envy and discord in the haunts of men,
Here-Eden's harmony again.

Ah, me, it is not so;

Here is no love, I know!"

I have written so much more than I intended that I cannot say now what I wished about the healthful work which you may do in your own homes, where God has placed you; how you may find the work He would have you do in His vineyard; how you may lay aside frivolous pleasures, yet keep those which are innocent and ennobling. Believe me there are many such, for our Heavenly Father has given us all things richly to enjoy. He wills our happiness, and it is ourselves who will and make all our worst and truest unhappiness.

Another time I may talk about the useful and happy and wellesteemed women who neither provoke public criticism nor madly conclude that self-respect and piety are to be found only within the cloister's shade-women who are the ornaments of their sex, the pride of their country, and blessed of God in all their work and labour of love, whether it be in their own beloved home circle or abroad among the sick, the ignorant, the fallen, and the miserable. Why should not such women be the type of the "Girl of the Period" for the eighth and next decade of our century?

THE LAST OF THE DANISH CHURCH.

TOWARDS the close of the seventeenth century Christiern V., King of Denmark, having learned that there existed no religious provision of any description whatever for the Danish and Norwegian mariners visiting the port of London, with characteristic energyhe had been a warrior-determined upon erecting, at his own

expense, a suitable place of worship close to that part of the river Thames where it was customary to moor the Danish vessels, and where the hardy descendants of the fierce Norsemen might have an opportunity of hearing Divine service performed in their own language. At first there was considerable difficulty in finding an available site, for even at that early period land by the river side was rapidly increasing in value, the increasing development of our trade with other nations leading to a great influx of shipping, and consequent enhanced demand for wharfage and dock purposes. Moreover Ratcliff Highway enjoyed pretty much the same kind of reputation as that possessed by it at the present day, and the Danish monarch was naturally averse to furnishing his sailors with excuses for venturing within reach of the merciless landsharks and female harpies who lay in wait at every street corner. But there was no help for it. Mahomet was obliged to go to the mountain, for the mountain would not come to Mahomet, and so the purlieus of Ratcliff Highway, where Moll Flanders and her dissolute companions held sway supreme, was decided upon as the locality in which the intended place of worship should be erected.

Yet although the great river-side thoroughfare was constantly a scene of noise, riot, and drunkenness, there were places in the immediate vicinity where respectability, peace, and order constantly prevailed; where the lamp and rattle of the night-watchman afforded no tempting bait for mischievous pranks on the part of frolicsome, pig-tailed tars just returned from sea, and where the very houses wore a staid and solemn aspect which effectually rebuked any approach to unbecoming levity amongst the thoughtless way. farers who had blundered their way out of the busier streets. Such a neighbourhood was Marine Square, but its name is no longer known to the metropolitan topographer, for it is only as Wellclose Square that people are now acquainted with it. At one time the square possessed a sad and melancholy reputation. This was some thirty and odd years ago, when the newly erected Brunswick Theatre suddenly fell, just previous to the opening, killing or crushing all who happened to be in the place. The site of the illfated structure is now marked by the Sailors' Home. Two centuries ago Marine Square formed a kind of East End Belgravia. The houses were tall and large, with great iron railings in front, every gateway having its own lamp. They were inhabited principally by wealthy shipowners, merchants, and tradesmen who had waxed rich in their dealings with seafaring folk. The inner portion of the square consisted of a grass plot, studded with a few trees, and surrounded by old-fashioned iron railings.

Here the Danish King resolved to build his church. In May, 1693, letters patent were procured from the English Monarch, and

given to Martin Lioufeld and Theora Wegerstoffe, two Danish merchants residing in England, whereby they were permitted to erect in Marine Square a suitable place of worship for Danish and Norwegian seamen of the Augustine faith, and to appoint a minister, deacons, &c. A lease for 999 years for a portion of the inner part of the square was also obtained, at the nominal annual rental of £5, from Sir Michael Hastings and others, to whom the ground belonged; and on April 19, 1694, the first stone of the new church was laid with great pomp and ceremony by the Danish Ambassador.

The architect was Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the famous Colley Cibber. He was born at Flensburg, in Denmark, and was the son of the King's cabinet-maker. He executed the sculptures which decorate the base of the London Monument. The progress of the edifice occasioned much interest in Denmark, and on its consecration in November, 1696, King Christiern obtained for it an annual grant of £2,000 out of the Danish treasury. In 1766, when King Christiern VII. came to this country on a visit, he attended Divine service in the building erected by his predecessor. The early registers of the church contained many curious and interesting details, but unfortunately they were destroyed by a certain elder, who had become involved in difficulties, and found himself unable to refund the moneys which appeared from these books to have been held in trust by him. The only register now in existence is in the possession of Mr. Alsive, son of the last churchwarden. It extends from June 13, 1802, to October 20, 1816, when the annual grant from the Danish Government ceased, and the prosperity of the place began to decay. The burial register, however, extends to 1833. Among the persons interred in the vaults belonging to the church was the architect himself, also his second wife, for whom a monument, since disappeared, was erected.

After the church had ceased being a Danish place of worship it passed on lease into the hands of the trustees of the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, by whom it was converted into a seaman's church. On the erection of the new church of St. Paul in Dock Street it was no longer required for this purpose. Originally it was intended to have erected the Dock Street church on the site of the Danish structure, but legal impediments intervened, and the project had to be abandoned. These have since been removed, and it has been arranged that, with the assistance of the Bishop of London's Fund, the present building shall be replaced by large and wellappointed parochial schools.

Accordingly the order went forth that the church should be at once demolished, and on Wednesday, March 3, 1869, the sale of the various portions of the edifice commenced, the circumstance