Queen by Right Divine. By Kathleen O'Meara. (Burns and Oates.)
—This volume contains three narratives. The first is the story of Jeanne Roan, afterwards known as Sceur Rosalie of the Sceurs Grises, of the Rue Francs Bourgeois, an admirable woman, in whom charity and wisdom and all the gifts of the finest feminine nature were singularly combined. One of her many wise thoughts was her objection to internals, i.e., schools where the ohildren of the poor are boarded and lodged. Children, she thought, were unfitted by them for the life which they would have to lead. The other two biographical sketches, both of them of great interest, are of Madame Swetchine and Pere Lacordaire. What a curious picture in this last is that of the dis- cipline to which the father submitted, or rather on which he insisted ! "Sometimes he would insist on the brethren striking him on the face and spitting on him, speaking to him as a vile slave. 'Be off, and clean my shoes ; fetch me so and so, you miserable wretch.'" Possibly, not probably, good for him, but how for them ?
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