11 SEPTEMBER 1886, Page 3

One of the most impressive ceremonies of the Roman Catholic

'Church, the " enclosure " of a community of Poor Glares, was performed on last Tuesday by the Bishop of Southwark, under circumstances which lent it a romantic aspect. The scene was a quiet woodland nook on the Duke of Norfolk's estate at Arundel, on which the Duchess has " founded " a convent for the reception of a community of that austere medimval order whose patrons are St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, and whose rule is that of St. Colette. The house, of domestic Gothic architecture, severely simple, but airy and commodious, with its outer chapel for the use of the public, and its inner chapel—which none but the cloistered " religious " will ever see again, but in which a large company was assembled on the previous day, for a first and last view of it—was formally placed in the possession of the Poor Clares by the Duchess of Norfolk. After a sermon by Prior Vaughan, came the solemn chanting of the psalm, " In exits Israel," and a long procession of priests and guests, and then the Bishop gave the Poor Clares a final ex- hortation and his blessing; and " closed the door." A large square tent had been erected adjoining the external cloister, for the accommodation of a great number of visitors, and the preacher stood on a raised platform covered with crimson cloth, wearing his Benedictine habit, and surrounded by a crowd of eccle- siastics, two being Cistercian friars, in their brown habits and girdles of rope. The nuns, so soon to be shut in from the sight of the outer world for ever, occupied one side of the cloister, groups of people in bright attire filled the wide space, and over- head was a sky so blue and cloudless that it completed the illusion of the spectacle, which suggested to all the beholders a scene in Italy in mediaeval days. On the outer wall of the convent there is the following inscription :—"This convent is built to the glory of God, and to ensure perpetual prayer for those who, whether known or unknown, have by their charitable prayers, helped the foundress in times of trial and sorrow.—

September 7th, 1886."