CONVENTS IN FRANCE.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3705, 9 November 1880, Page 3

CONVENTS IN FRANCE.

Before the Great Revolution (says the writer of ". Continental Gossip " in S.M". Herald), ihere were about 38,000 people of both sexes living in convents and apart from the duties and interests of common life. , The Revolution, regarding these centres as dangerous, abolished the religious order, sold off their convents, and dispersed their members. It seems incredible, but it is none the less true, that there are in France at the present day no fewer than 160,000 monks and nuns, including the Jesuits. In Paris, and in most of the French towns, there is a quarter almost exclusively composed of religious nouses; mostly vast edifices, shut in' by high walls.and entered by strong massive doors; enclosures jealously separated from the eyes and the knowledge of the outside world. The streets of these quarters abound in people wearing the costumes of such of the orders as permit their votaries to leave the walls of their convents; half the shops are devoted to the sale of the various things known as objects of piety, crucifixes, religious pictures and books, rosaries, medals, votive offerings, holy water recipients, figures of saints, angels, the Madonna, Jesus, the evangelists, martyrs, &c, pots, garlands, and bouquets of artificial flowers, candles, candelabra, &c, for decking altars; priests', garments rich in gold, silk, velvet, lace, and embroidery; and the thousand other glittering objects employed in the Roman ritual. In certain towns the best sites are covered with convents, and the riches possessed by the wealthier orders are very considerable. As all these frocked and cloistered bodies are anti-republican to a man, to a woman, and as they exercise a very powerful influence on the minds of a considerable portion of the nation—an influence all the more potent that they have the greater portion of the French youth of both sexes in their schools—the present Government naturally regarded these establishments as inimical to its stability, and has determined to execute the old laws in defiance of which the religious orders, banished in 1793, had not only contrived to re-eatablish themselves in France, but to increase and multiply to vastly greater proportions than they had reached a hundred years ago.