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boiling-point of fervour you give neither. Besides, you were (a most irregular thing indeed!) looking out of the window a few days ago; hankering, perhaps, after the world you have left. You will remain in the Society just as long as the Frère Séraphique—and what will become of you afterwards, I cannot tell.

Mass is said in the little private chapel, carefully waxed, ornamented with red hangings, white window-curtains, and plentifully gilded all round. It smells a little too much of paint. A statue of the Immaculate Virgin and another of St Stanislaus stand to right and left before the sanctuary; but the paint makes them too lifelike, and their immobility too death-like, not to offend æsthetic taste. Another figure produces a widely different impression. In, or rather below the altar is a deep recess, with a large sheet of glass before it. By the dim light that shines through the glass, we can perceive a pale, a deadly pale wax figure, reclining on a couch, clad in the toga prætexta, and with a palm in his hand. By his side stands an earthenware phial, and the inscription: ADON · PUER · IN · PACE. Enclosed in the waxen mould is the skeleton of some unknown child-martyr, thus exposed to veneration in a manner sufficiently realistic to strike, yet not crude enough to repel. Before this shrine the novices kneel nearly the whole time of the service. The attitude generally considered the most, correct is as follows: Head slightly bent forwards, neither to right nor left; eyes cast down; body straight as an arrow; face serene; hands folded or clasped. This attitnde is recomnnended at all times, mutatis mutandis, according to the dictates of commonsense An assistant in a college could hardly be required to see “with downcast eyes” what his hundred boys are about.

These details may be looked upon as minutiæ unworthy of the genius of Loyola, and reducing every Jesuit to the station of a mere actor. Waiving that question (as also the other one which it includes, viz., whether “all the world” is not “a stage,” as a contemporary of Ignatius seems to think), I can only state that he considered his ‘Rules of Modesty’ to be of supreme importance. His idea was—Jesuita, alter Jesus: and he wished his disciples to initiate the exterior of Jesus, And, instead of leaving this imitation to the judgment of his followers themselves, each man copying his own ideal, Ignatius thought it best to lay down directions for them according to the model he had in his own mind. His soldier-like love of order and uniformity amply accounts for this; but there are other reasons. Our Master, in a lecture on the subject, once used words to the following effect: ‘“There are two converse methods. One is, Sanctify the exterior by first rendering the interior man holy; the other, Render the interior holy by previously sanctifying what is exterior. Be a saint, and you will by degrees come to look outwardly like one. Take care to act outwardly like a saint, and you will gradually becomne one. Which plan is the best? All depends on circumstances; both may be used with great profit; but, given our position of men that have to appear much in public, the latter system is preferable for us.” All this, of course, does not come naturally to a novice, and this straining after “modesty” is frequently one of the most disagreeable spectacles one can see when