HENRIETTA KERR.* THE heroisms of the spiritual life have singular

attraction, even for those who hardly understand the source of strength which in various manifestations and at all times has amazed those who have little capacity for enthusiasm. The book we are reviewing is the unaffected story of the life of a Catholic Englishwoman who worked, and died not two years ago, in her convent at Roehampton. The book appeals to the better instincts of our modern world at almost every point. There is nothing mysterious or sensational in it. Mother Kerr's cloister is shown to us in the ordinary daylight of the dusty high-road ; but she lived with rare constancy according to what Roman Catholics term the counsels of perfection. At a time when the Ten Commandments are but tolerated provisionally, we feel a certain shock of surprise and vivid interest when a life on these higher lines is frankly set before us.

Elaborated in the centuries of Christian influence, these counsels of the Master transcend law, and have been by many held to be unnatural, and overstrained towards dangerous re- action; but in all great religions there is some scheme by which " yog " is sought for soaring souls, and this sincere record of one phase of the "religious life" will go far to justify the Christian ideal as at once practical, expansive, and in the highest degree sane, or in harmony with human nature enlightened by revela- tion. The book has been eagerly read ; the first edition, though only printed for friends, is exhausted, and another is ready to meet public demand. Many among us feel the spiritual reaction of the last few years, and grope among alien faiths and modern mysticisms for a method of life by which the travail of the soul can be satisfied. This is the frankest record of convent life we know ; and whether convent life be convenient to society as we have framed it, or not, it is at least interesting to learn some- thing of convent methods and of the many hundred thousand picked women who are banded together to evangelise the world. Nearly five thousand of the most gifted among them, selected

after careful probation, serve in the Order of the Sacred Heart, which was founded in the very jaws of the great French Revolu- tion, chiefly for the improvement of the higher class (so called) of ladies, whose training is certainly no less important than that of the poor, though a far more ungrateful task. To readers who ate not familiar with convent life, some of the phrases in this book will be a patois de Canaan, some of its matter-of- fact assumptions will offend. The limitations of our civilised experience, and its crippling incapacities for life that is spiritually heroic, incline us to discredit religions action and ideas that now we assume to be puerile, now exaggerated. Criticising this particular memoir, we should say that it inclines to the common fault of superabundant details of Henrietta Kerr's youth and relationships ; but they are given with tact and good taste, and there is artistic reason for a fall present- ment of her character before she entered convent life. We could not so thoroughly trust the record of the cloister if it were

• The Life of HenTietta Kerr, Religious of the Sacred Heart. Edited by John

Morrie, al, goehampton. 1886.

not evidently continued from that which describes the child's development. The writer of it does not disturb us by irrelevant dissertations ; she has the merit of such simple directness, that we only see the figure she sets before us. We forget the literary or gossiping side of the book, though Mother Kerr's family and their ways, and her shrewd, humorous mention of passing events, have considerable social interest. It is the inner history of the woman herself we care for ; but to justify her, of course we must understand her environment. We read between the lines of her own letters, and they but deepen our respect for her, while they throw light on much which, seen in the light of sixteenth-century legend, has prejudiced Englishmen against the system of the veil. We get a glimpse of the social developments of the Roman Church. We cannot but be struck by the foresight which prepared machinery as suitable now to the sick world's needs as at any time in the past. In the din of Socialist agitation and of clamouring women, suffering as we do from the pressure of inelastic custom, we find in the communities of which Augustine and Benedict were the earliest fathers, valuable machinery for human co- operation, and for duly broadening where expedient the limita- tions and egotisms of family life.

Henrietta Kerr, one of six children, was born in 1842 at her father Lord Henry Kerr's rectory in Devonshire. She was a sturdy, honest little girl, though about an apple—a common source of childish trouble—she did once tell a lie, and was whipped. A favourite with her father and brothers, she was their comrade in work and play. "Certainly," writes a brother, recently appointed by the Pope to the Archbishopric of Bombay, "ahead of her years in strength and sense, her strong face prevented exclusion from the youthful councils ; and her strong hands and fingers were always equal to their work, for these were moved by a mind and will stronger still. Common- sense ruled her strength ; whatever she did, she did sensibly ; she would not do a foolish thing, nor act or talk in an idle way." When she was ten years old, her father thought it his duty, at considerable sacrifice of income, to leave the English for the Roman Catholic Church. His little girl was indignant ; and hearing the nurses deploring the fate of the children, she pro- tested "it was all nonsense ; my father would never be an apostate; even if he were, nothing would induce me to follow his example." Probably the thought of giving up her pony, her boat, the village, and her garden, roused her opposition. It lasted a good fortnight, and then, with some remaining per- plexities, she set sail on the unknown sea.

If a little prolonged, these reminiscences prepare the ear for the stronger harmonies of her later life. The child, sometimes "wilful and disobedient," had evident outlook beyond the world,

in which, however, she had the brightest prospects. She was the niece, on her mother's side, of Mr. Hope Scott, and under her aunt Lady Lothian's care, she tasted London society. Her health early showed signs of weakness, and she enjoyed a good share of foreign travel in search of good climates. Her letters relating her impressions are bright, and have a ring of humour, though we suspect that she had not seldom "to give

her head some good knocks to swell the bump of veneration." Certainly she did not venerate herself. She disliked self-

scrutiny as "baneful." We have not here space to analyse her perfected humility ; but it was the foundation of her strength and spiritual freedom. However, she thoroughly en- joyed "a bit of London," and the steadfast individuality of the girl is shown in her remark that life at Lady Lothian's was "delightfully quiet, though it seems odd to say so, as I have been out every night this week." By general consent she was beautiful. "She had," writes a comrade in her London gaiety, "the clean-cut, fresh appearance of a dew-washed rose. I remember that it was this rose-like look of hers that made me beg that at her first ball she should wear a wreath made only of roses." She enjoyed concerts and lessons from Halle even more than balls ; yet all the time she was preening her wings for flight to that mystic city of Sarras, the goal of Sir Galahad and souls like his. First she made a riding tour with her father in the Lake District. "Papa and I were quite larky," she writes, "being by our- selves." He felt parting from her with bitter, if generous regret. One day as they rode," he was grieving so that he pulled out his little Imitation and tried to read a verse to help himself, and I heard he wasn't reading very well, and then I saw he was crying so that he couldn't."

When the convent-door closed on her, after the wrench of separation, her life might have seemed to lookers-on practically over. It was but continued on a higher plane, and we are allowed to see in her own letters, which reveal much of her inner life, that there was "no break, but a gradual unfolding. As the bud contains the hidden flower, so does holiness in the world contain in germ the beauties of the counsels of perfection."

While rapidly learning both the routine of her duties and acquiring daily larger knowledge of the fuller life as she climbed towards its source, her letters never flag in their quaint humour.

"When I have a spare five minutes," she says, "it seems a positive fortune." It was soon discovered that she had special gifts for teaching, though when first set over a class she says, "I felt like a fish sent to take care of dogs." Some attacks of "dumps, the devil's aides-de-camp," beset her ; but her sweet serenity grew with every year, even when failing strength tried her, mentally active as she was to the last. The impression of absolute frankness grows with every letter and memorandum in which there are treasures of practical and noblest wisdom.

"What a sense of freedom the vows give!" she exclaims, after finally taking them at Rome two years later. The strictness of conventaal rule strengthened and steadied her flight, ever "true to heaven and home," for she never ceased to interest herself in all that touched her family. Many a visitor to Rome from 1865 to 1872 may have heard her perfect management of the powerful organ in the chapel of the Trinita de Monti, to which the Pope and Cardinals were often pleased listeners. They were memor- able years, and though slightly Romanisecl by her environment, her letters are freshly English as ever in their straightforward- ness. Nor when to Anglican eyes there may seem some puerility or superstition in the anecdotes she repeats, should we forget how limited are our means of judging from so different a standpoint. Her chief work was done at Roeharnpton Convent during the twelve last years of her life, in fitting well- born English girls for English life at its purest and best. "To the last," writes her cousin, "A. G.," who supplies charming pages to the appendix, "her bright, eager face was sunshine personified—never could she resist a joke. This was partly from a real bubbling-over of fun, but very often also because, having a true British horror of displays of feeling, she would try, by funny speeches and ways, to cover over anything of sentiment or emotion." Doubly impressive, then, are the con- cluding words of "A. G.,"—" Beyond any one I have ever known she had the capacity for ardent love, and she gave it without stint to those dear to her. I think it was this wondrous gift of love which made her the alchemist she was, turning everything that came to her into gold in one shape or another."

In 1884, after the protracted suffering of a long decline, she "underwent the ceremony of death." Her last words express the burning secret of her life. "Is this the agony ?" she asked ; "agony for God ! What joy ! Isn't it joy ?" With the Holy Name on her lips, her sonl took its passionate flight to him whom she best loved. She knew how, as St. Augustine says, to "take souls by storm, and say to them, 'Let us love God,'" as many a pupil of hers can testify. In this simple record of her is some like power of persuasion. We lay it down with a wish that we had known this new Beatrice bella e ridente in whom we, though not yet in Dante's Paradise, see at least reflections of the vero sfavillar del santo spiro, that pure white light which in her was so little mixed with physical sensibility, or tinged by those mystic ardours which sometimes drug the soul.

M. C. B.