16 NOVEMBER 1844, Page 12

"GET THEE TO A NUNNERY."

IN the latest French journals we find narrated a revolt of a nun- nery, to which "the revolt of the harem" was a trifle. The in- mates of the harem had never heard of a police ; but the insurgent nuns of the French nunnery had been brought up with the fear of the police before their eyes, and yet dared to "kick up a row," as Bombastes Furioso expresses it. These nuns, eleven hundred in number—a formidable body of young and middle-aged ladies, with their minds "made up to mischief"—had lost their Ab- bess, and were informed that a new one, not quite to their taste, had been appointed to rule over them. Accordingly, in emulation of the Ecole Polytechnique, they resolved that the spirit of Young France should not be understood to in- spire the males only of the rising generation—the nuns got up an etneute ! Suppressed it was • but, to the credit of the fair rioters be it added, that they smashed every pane of glass in the nunnery before they surrendered. We remember a Christmas insurrection of the Gottingen students which passed off with less real damage, and yet a corps of Jiigers were sent from Hanover to keep the Burschen in order. Since STERNE'S parrot of the Visitandines, no event in a nunnery has created such a sensation in France. The late Laureate had a pet project of Protestant nunneries, and the zealous members of the Romish Church in England seem bent at present upon reestablishing their nunneries on as extensive a scale as possible. For a century or two, we have had few nunneries in this country ; but if we are to judge by the exploits of these French nuns, such establishments might be recruited from the refractory young ladies who are occasionally brought before Police Magistrates for laughing at overseers and breaking workhouse-windows. Every- thing in this world has its use, if men could but find it out; and the termagants whom workhouse-matrons and workhouse-overseers, with the whole posse condtatus of their understrappers, cannot tame, might possibly make very good nuns.