207 wound has healed a fresh incision is made in the tree, above the old scar, and so on. The result is that the pines do not grow to be really stately trees like our Scotch pines. There are human beings in character much like the cork trees, who can endure any amount of disbarking with impunity, insensible to " snubbing," to having their hide of self-satisfaction peeled off. But there are others like the pine who, when wounded in their feelings, their self-esteem, bleed their very life-blood away, and are incurable. About five miles from Bayonne, and three from Biarritz, on a plateau upon which were the head-quarters of the Duke of Wellington and the allied army in 1814, is the refuge of the Servantes de Marie, founded in 1839 as a penitentiary, by the Abbe Cestac. The settlement consists of about four hundred nuns, on an average sixty orphans, and a hundred and fifty penitents. In proximity to the refuge is a settlement of the Bernardines. A sandy path leads into the gloomy depths of a pine wood, where a timber palisade encloses two lines of cells, terminated by a chapel and a graveyard. Within this narrow space reside the nuns. Complete isolation, absolute silence, total abstinence from flesh-meat, manual labour in the garden and cemetery, constant prayer in the chapel, constitute their rule of life. Like the Trappists, their bed is a hard board, to which they retire at 8 p.m. and rise at 4 a.m. On Friday they make their meal on unseasoned vegetables, kneeling. They occupy narrow cells, with space merely for their bed and a small deal table and a chair. They wear no stockings, and are covered by a cowl, attached to a long robe of coarse wool, and their faces are completely concealed. On their backs is a black cross. They are not suffered to read any book, save one of devotions, and no news from the outer world ever reaches them. They are shut out from all view of the external world ; neither the distant snowy range of the Pyrenees nor the deep blue ocean is discernible from their abode. Unbroken silence prevails. At first the Abbe required them to be suffered to speak on Sundays ; but that privilege was withdrawn, and they employ their voices only in Confession. Now, is this Christianity ? Did not God give to men and women speech to be used ?
