A frightful story of cruelty to a nun, which has
greatly ex- cited the people and produced serious disturbances, comes from Cracow. It was discovered that a nun, Barbara Ubryk, had been confined for twenty-one years under circumstances of atrocious cruelty. The Bishop of the diocese appears to have acted in a very fine spirit. He received notice of the case —of which he knew nothing—through an anonymous letter. A judge was sent to visit the convent, and found in a cell seven paces long by six wide an entirely naked, half-insane woman, who folded her hinds and said, "I am hungry, have pity on me ; give me meat, and I will be obedient ! " There was no chair, no bed, no stove, no table in the cell, which was full of filth, and contained, besides, only a dish with rotten potatoes. The judge immedi- ately sent for Bishop Galecki, who was greatly moved, and vehemently denounced the nuns in the severest language, and on their excusing themselves, said, "Away out of my sight, you who disgrace religion! " He suspended the father confessor and the superior of the convent—a lady of noble Polish birth. The nun, when asked why she had been imprisoned, replied, gesti- culating wildly, "I have broken the vow of chastity ; but," she added, pointing, in great excitement to the other sisters, " they are not angels ! " The physician of the convent had never heard of this poor wretch, though he had been seven years the medical adviser. It is said that the Bishop means to dissolve the convent. We have no doubt that the history of corporate religious life does produce more sins of cruelty than the history of any other kind of corporate life at all,—and all vivid corporate life, that of our own Trades' Unions, for instance, is apt to be very cruel in punishing any offence against the order ; and not the less, but the more, if those who punish are conscious of any similar guilt themselves.
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