[wood] an URSULINE EPIC 45 



even in the remoter country places the slightest approach to boorishness 

 is quite unknown." In 1757, Montcalm found the ladies " spirituelles, 

 galantes, dévotes," and notes in his joairnal that " Quebec is a town of 

 distinctly good society. ... at two splendid balls I saw more than eighty 

 charming ladies, all beautifully dressed.'' So, perhaps, the " good old 

 times," which foim the theme of a lament written from the convent in 

 1785 were not so very different from the new as the writer would have, 

 her Parisian Sisters believe. " There is liberty to profess our holy 

 religion; but there is little care for living piously, young girls are not 

 brought up so well as they used to be. Some of our pupils are taken 

 from us and allowed to go to the tlieatre before the age of fourteen. 

 We hear many complaints of the vanity and luxury which are becoming 

 prevalent in society; yet there are many good people who persevere 

 faithfully in the path of duty." Society was probably getting more 

 complex in Quebec, and throwing off its froth and depositing its dregs 

 as it always has since social complexities began. But the fair field and 

 much favour were there, for all that. Yer}^ few convent schools have 

 ever enjoyed such opportunities, and none have used them better. 



Yet in one miportanjt respect the Ursulines were at a very serious 

 disadvantage. All communication wif;h France was cut off by the British 

 conquest in 1759, by the War of the Amerijoan Revolution in 1778, and 

 again by the long wars of the First Eepublic and Empire; wliile no 

 French book was printed in Canada till 1765, and very few of any gen- 

 eral educational value appeared there during the next fifty years. The 

 only source of supply was from a French bookseller in Paris whose 

 London correspondent managed to forward a few text-books, from time 

 to time, as occasion served. 



This separation from many forms of French life in those troublous 

 times of un.iversal questionings, and the difficulty of getting secular 

 text-books, combined to throw the whole soul of the teaching more than 

 ever into the religious sphere. But tliis overwhelming preponderance of 

 one aspect of insti'uction did not crush out all other aptitudes, as some 

 jnight think. Literature was certainly not taught on modern compara- 

 tive liaes; but there are many books in use ^o-day which are of an 

 altogether lower world of literature than the Roman liturgj^, with its 

 profoundly intimate adaptability to so much human yearning, and its 

 [perennial grandeur of expression. How those Ursulines would have 

 rejoiced exceedingly to see the fulness of knowledge uniting with the 

 charm of the best French prose in praise of the aesthetics of the liturgy, 

 in Dom CabroFs Conférences at the Institut Catholique de Paris on Les 

 Origines Liturgiques ! " Ainsi l'Eglise s'est servie des sens, des céré- 

 monies extérieures, pour vous élever vers Dieu; c'est le premier degré 



