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When a writer acknowledges, in advance, that he cannot relate the whole truth, his position is far from being enviable. It augurs badly for what he writes, and so far plages him in a disadvantageous light before the public. This is, however, precisely the condition in which I now find myself. Such is the nature of the subject on which I feel it my duty to write, that I shrink with native abhorrence from relating, at least, the whole truth. It is repugnant to my feelings, to my taste, and at variance with the general tone of my conversation, ever since the God of purity enabled me to disentangle myself from the society of Romish priests and bishops—men whose private lives and conversation with each other and with their penitents in the confessional, breathe nothing but the grossest licentiousness and foetid impurities.

I do not wantonly and without provocation make any expose of the iniquities of Popery. My entire life, since I left them, is evidence of this; but they have pursued me with such persevering malignity and demoniac malice, that further silence would be criminal and disrespectful to my Protestant fellow-citizens, from whom, notwithstanding the malice of papists towards me, I have always experienced kind attentions and hospitality. Nor should I, even now, allow the subject of Popery to occupy my mind, or taint the current of my thoughts, if I did not see it striding with fearful rapidity over the fair face of this my adopted country, infusing itself into every political nerve and artery of our government, while its members are asleep and dreaming of its future glories.

It is not pleasant to me to contend with papists, who look upon it as a matter of duty, and as a fundamental article of their faith, to persecute myself and all other heretics. That they should dislike me, is not a matter of surprise; that men whose confessions I have heard, and who have heard mine, should even dread me, is not to be wondered at. Many of these men deserve (I speak of bishops and priests exclusively) not only public censure, but the gibbet, the dungeon and the gallows. I cannot blame men, under these circumstances, for detesting my very name. They are in my power—they tremble in my presence—and were I to blame them for some degree of opposition and dislike to me, I should be quarrelling with that instinct which teaches the profligate and debauchee to shun the society of a virtuous and upright man. While I live among papists they are naturally afraid that I should lift the veil, which conceals from the eyes of Americans the deformities of Popery. They are in momentary fear that I shall show to their American converts, which Bishop Fenwick of Boston says he "is daily making from the first families," the Old Lady of Rome in her dishabille. They have long hidden from them her shrivelled, diseased, distorted, and disgusting proportions, and they are unwilling that this painted harlot should be now seen by Americans. This is good policy, and hence much of their opposition to me. A curse seems to have rested upon Rome since its very foundation. Pagan, as well as modern Rome, seemed always to delight in deeds of darkness.

We are told in history of a singular practice illustrative of this in ancient Rome. I mention it merely to show the apparent natural fondness of Romanists, ancient as well as modern, for deeds of darkness. It is trifling in itself, and may be deemed, perhaps, irrelevant; but it may be interesting to the historian, whose curiosity extends further than that of theologians or moralists.

The ancient Romans were epicures. Some say they were greater gluttons than those of the present day. Poultry, of all kinds, was a favorite dish with them, and how to fatten fowl most expeditiously, became a question of vital importance with the philosophers of the Eternal City. After several experiments, it was found that the best plan was to close up the eyes of geese, turkeys, ducks, and all other kinds of poultry, and, in that condition, cram and stuff them with food. This succeeded admirably. The fowls fattened in less than half the time.

It seems that man was always, as well as now, a progressive animal, and accordingly, as soon as Popery fixed its head-quarters at Rome or at Antioch, no matter which for the present, popish bishops commenced a similar experiment upon man. Anxious for his conversion to the infallible church, they determined to close his eyes and compel him to receive from themselves, as so many turkeys and geese would from their feeders, such food as they pleased to give them. They were not to question its quality, but, like so many blinded geese, swallow-all that was given them. The practice continues to the present day in the Romish church; even American converts to Romanism are not to question the quality of the food, or spiritual instructions, which popish priests please to give them. Blind obedience is a necessary article of spiritual diet for a convert to Popery; and whether his priest tells him that he must worship God, the Virgin Mary, St. Peter and St. Paul, or the wafer which he carries in his pocket and calls the body and blood of Christ, he must obey without murmur or inquiry.

This unreasonable, unscriptural, and impious doctrine, is inculcated especially in the confessional. No man, not even a papist, dare preach in public such a dogma as blind obedience in anything, or to any man. I have always been instructed, while a Catholic priest, never to intimate in public that the Romish church ever required unconditional submission to her will, unless I was morally certain that all my hearers were by birth and education Roman Catholics; but my orders were positive, and under pain of losing my sacerdotal faculties, never to lose an opportunity of inculcating this in the confessional. There and there alone do Romish priests teach and fasten upon the minds of their penitents all the iniquities which the church of Rome sanctions.

If I can satisfy Americans that Auricular Confession is dangerous to their liberties; if I can show them that it is the source and fountain of many, if not all, those treasons, debaucheries, and other evils, which are now flooding this country, I shall feel that I have done an acceptable work, and some service to the State. I fear, however, that I shall fail in this; not because what I state is not true, and even admitted to be so, but because Americans seem determined—I would almost say fated—to political and moral destruction.

For twenty years I have warned them of approaching danger, but their politicians were deaf, and their Protestant theologians remained religiously coiled up in fancied security, overrating their own powers and undervaluing that of Papists. Even though they see and feel, and often blush at the logical triumph, which popish controversialists have gained, and are gaining over them in every intellectual combat in which they engage; yet such is their love of ease or love of money, or something else, that they cannot be roused until the enemy falls upon them with an annihilating force. It is painful to me to see this indifference upon their part. They are better able than I am to contend with Papists. They possess more talents, and have more friends than I have to sustain them. This is the land of their birth. It is not mine, but not the less dear to me. The religion of this country is the religion of their forefathers, and of the Bible; it is peculiarly their duty to defend both.

Nothing could induce me to undertake the present work but the universal approbation which my recent book on Popery has received from the journals of the country. I should leave it to be done by Protestant theologians. The notices which my book on Popery received were flattering. They gave me credit for talents, candor, and frankness. But I am in reality entitled to no credit for that book. The utterance of the truths contained in it was a spontaneous emotion. It was, if I may use such language, but the breaking up of some moral iceberg, which for years lay heavily on my soul. It was a sort of inspiration fanned into a blaze by an irresistible consciousness that I had too long neglected a duty which I owed to my adopted country. But I now feel relieved and willing to enlist in the cause of moral and civil rights.

The following pages, I apprehend, will appear to some of a rather random and fugitive character. It will be said that much of the matter is irrelevant—that I fly too rapidly from one subject to another. To such men I will say, that they know very little of Romish intellectual tactics. A well trained reverend Romish soldier cares little about the polish of his armor, or whether he aims his blows according to the system of this or that commander. He steps into the battle arena in his lightest armor, and with his sharpest weapon. A Protestant theologian meets him, with a face as solemn as if he was accompanying to the grave all that was dear to him, wearing his heaviest coat of mail, and armed with claymores and battle-axes. While the latter is wasting his strength upon "the desert air," and aiming his harmless blows at every spot but the right one, the Papist goads him to death, and seldom fails to obtain the crown of victory from the spectators. Many Protestants who are in the habit of contending with Papists in this manner will disapprove of this book; but I trust that in differing from them in my mode of warfare with Papists, they will on reflection see that, although they may be right, I am not wrong. I shall, therefore, beg leave to pursue my own course. I will give my ideas to the public just as they strike me, fresh from my own mind, with no regard whatever to style, ornament, or criticism; and I am vain enough to wish that all controversialists, and even all Protestant and Popish writers should pursue a similar course. We should then have more truth in controversy; more soul and more sterling morality in religion. All that is pedantic would be exploded, and truth, fresh and warm from the heart, would be substituted in their place.

As I have stated, every crime which the Romish church sanctions, and almost all the immoralities of its members, either originate in Auricular Confession, or have some connection with it In order to explain this to my readers, it will be necessary for me to go back and state the causes which first induced me to doubt the infallibility of the Romish Church.

I have been often asked the following questions: Why did you leave the Roman Catholic Church? Before I answer this question, I may well exclaim, in the language of the ancient poet, omitting only one word, "Oh! nefandum, jubes, renovare dolorem" But however painful the relation may be—however offensive to the ears of the virtuous and chaste—however disgusting to the pious and moral portion of our community—however at variance with the elegancies and formalities of private life—however heavily such a narrative may fall upon Romish priests and bishops, and however disreputable it may be to Nuns and Nunneries, I will answer the above question so often made.

Several causes have contributed to induce me to doubt the infallibility of the Popish church, and to renounce its ministry altogether. Among the first was the following:

When quite young and but just emerging from childhood, I became acquainted with a Protestant family living in the neighborhood of my birthplace. It consisted of a mother (a widow lady) and three interesting children, two sons and one daughter. The mother was a widow, a lady of great beauty and rare accomplishments. The husband, who had but recently died, one of the many victims of what is falsely called honor, left her, as he found her, in the possession of a large fortune, and, as far as worldly goods could make her so, in the enjoyment of perfect happiness. But his premature death threw a gloom over her future life, which neither riches nor wealth, nor all worldly comforts combined together, could effectually dissipate. Her only pleasure seemed to be placed in that of her children. They appeared—and I believe they really were—the centre and circumference of her earthly happiness.

In the course of time the sons grew up, and their guardian purchased for both, in compliance with their wishes, and to gratify their youthful ambition, commissions in the army. The parting of these children, the breaking up of this fond trio of brothers and sister, was to the widowed mother another source of grief, and tended to concentrate, if possible, more closely all the fond affections of the mother upon her daughter. She became the joy of her heart. Her education while a child was an object of great solicitude, and having a fortune at her command, no expense was spared to render it suitable for that station in life, in which her high connections entitled her to move when she should become of age. The whole family were members of the Protestant church, as the Episcopal church is called in that country. As soon as the sons left home to join their respective regiments, which were then on the continent, the mother and daughter were much alone, so much so, that the fond mother soon discovered that her too great affection for her child and the indulgence given to her were rather impeding than otherwise her education. She accordingly determined to remove her governess, who up to this period was her sole instructress, under the watchful eye of the fond and accomplished mother herself, and send her to a fashionable school for young ladies. There was then in the neighborhood, only about twenty miles from this family, a Nunnery of the order of Jesuits. To this nunnery was attached a school superintended by nuns of that order. The school was one of the most fashionable in the country. The nuns who presided over it, were said to be the most accomplished teachers in Europe. The expenses of an education in it were extravagantly high, but not beyond the reach of wealth and fashion. The mother, though a Protestant, and strict and conscientious in the discharge of all the duties of her church, and not without a struggle in parting with her child and consigning her to the charge of Jesuits, yielded in this case to the malign influence of fashion, as many a fond mother does even in this our own land of equal rights and far-famed, though mock equality—sent her beautiful daughter, her earthly idol, to the school of these nuns. Let the result speak for itself.

Up to the departure of the sons for the army, and this daughter for the nunnery, I had been ever from my infancy acquainted with this family, and had for them the highest respect and warmest attachment. The elder brother was about my own age, and only a few years between the eldest and the youngest child.

Soon after the daughter was sent to school, I entered the College of Maynooth as a theological student, and in due time was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by particular dispensation, being two years under the canonical age. An interval of some years passed before I had an opportunity of meeting my young friend again; our interview was under peculiar circumstances. I was ordained a Romish priest, and located where she happened to be on a visit. There was a large party given, at which, among many others, I happened to be present; and there meeting with my friend and interchanging the usual courtesies upon such occasions, she—sportively, as I then imagined—asked me whether I would preach her reception sermon, as she intended becoming a nun and taking the white veil. Not even dreaming of such an event, I replied in the affirmative. I heard no more of the affair for about two months, when I received a note from her designating the chapel, the day and the hour she expected me to preach. I was then but a short time in the ministry, but sufficiently long to know that up to the hour of my commencing to read Popish theology, especially that of Dens and Antoine de Peccatis, I knew nothing of the iniquities taught and practised by Romish priests and bishops.

On the receipt of my friend's note, a cold chill crept over me; I anticipated, I feared, I trembled, I felt there must be foul play somewhere. However, I went according to promise, preached her reception sermon at the request of the young lady, and with the special approbation of the Bishop, whom I had to consult on such occasions.

The concourse of people that assembled on this occasion was very great. The interest created by the apparent voluntary retirement from the world of one so young, so wealthy and so beautiful, was intense, and accordingly the chapel in which 1 preached was filled to overflowing with the nobility and fashionables of that section of the country. Many and large were the tears which were shed, when this beautiful young lady cut off her rich and flowing tresses of hair. Reader, have you ever seen the description which Eugene Sue, in his Wandering Jew, gives of the lustrous, luxurious and rich head of hair worn by Charlotte De Cardoville, and shorn from her head by Jesuits, under the pretence that she was insane? If you have not, take the Wandering Jew, turn over its pages till you find it, and you will see a more accurate description of that shorn from the head of the young lady to whom I allude, than I can possibly give.

Turn back to the picture given by this same Eugene Sue, of the personal beauty, piety, charity, and many virtues of Mademoiselle De Cardoville, and you will have a correct portrait of this young lady of whom I speak. You may therefore easily judge, from her immolation upon the altar of fanaticism, or, more properly speaking, her personal sacrifice to the idol of Popish and Jesuit lust, the nature of that feeling which such an event must have produced in the mind of every Christian believer.

Having no clerical connection with the convent in which she was immured, I had not seen her for three months following. At the expiration of that time, one of the lay sisters of the convent delivered to me a note. I knew it contained something startling.

These lay sisters among Jesuits, are spies belonging to that order, but are sometimes bribed by the nuns for certain purposes. As soon as I reached my apartments, I found that my young friend expressed a wish to see me on something important. I, of course, lost no time in calling on her, and being a priest, I was immediately admitted; but never have I forgot, nor can I forget, the melancholy picture of lost beauty and fallen humanity, which met my astonished gaze in the person of my once beautiful and virtuous friend. I had been then about eighteen months a Romish priest, and was not without some knowledge of their profligate lives; and therefore I was the better prepared for and could more easily anticipate what was to come. After such preliminary conversation as may be expected upon occasions of this kind, the young lady spoke to me to the following effect, if not literally so. I say literally, because so deep, and strong, and lasting was the impression made upon my mind, that I believe I have not forgotten one letter of her words.

"I sent for you, my friend, to see you once more before my death. I have insulted my God, and disgraced my family; I am in the family way, and I must die." After a good deal of conversation, which it is needless to repeat, I discovered from her confession the parent of this pregnancy, and that the mother abbess of the convent advised her to take medicine which would effect abortion; but that she knew from the lay sister who delivered me the note, and who was a confidential servant in the convent, that the medicine which the mother abbess would give her should contain poison, and that the procuring abortion was a mere pretext. I gave her such advice as I could in the capacity of a Romish priest. I advised her to send for the bishop and consult him. "I cannot do it," said she. "My destroyer is my confessor." I was silent I had no more to say. I was bound by oath to be true to him. In vain did the noble sentiment even of the Pagan occur to me; a sentiment sanctioned almost by inspiration itself. It fled from my mind as smoke before the wind. I was one of the priests of the infallible church, and what was honor, what was honesty to me, where the honor of that infallible church was concerned? They were of no account; not worthy the consideration of a Romish priest for a second. The almost heavenly sentiment of the noble Pagan, "Fiat justitia, mat coelum," let justice be done even if the heavens were to fall, fled from my mind. I retired, leaving my friend to her fate, but promising, at her request, to return in a fortnight.

According to promise, I did return in a fortnight, but the foul deed was done. She was no more. The cold clay contained in its dread embrace all that now remained of that being, which, but a few months before, lived, and moved in all the beauty and symmetry of proportion; and that soul, once pure and spotless as the dew-drop of heaven, ere its contact with the impurities of earth, which a fond mother confided to the care of Jesuit nims, had been driven in its guilt and pollution into the presence of a just but merciful God. All, all, the work of Jesuits and Nuns!

This was the first check my Popish enthusiasm met with; and now for the first time did a doubt of the infallibility of the church of Rome enter my mind. After witnessing these events I could not help asking myself, can a church which sanctions and countenances such flagitious iniquities as I have just witnessed, be a Christian church? Can a body of men, who individually practise such deeds of blood, treachery and crime as those which I have seen, be, collectively, infallible? Are these the men whom the Saviour commissioned, in a particular manner, to preach the gospel to every creature? Are these the men, as a body, with whom he promised to be always, even to the consummation of the world? Are these the men who collectively constitute an infallible church? If so, unprofitable indeed has been my life. It is high time to come out from among them; and if I cannot live the life of luxury and ease, of sin and crime which a Romish priest can live, let me, at least, live that of an honorable man, and a useful member of society.

These were some of my reflections; and accordingly, that evening, I called on the Right Reverend Protestant bishop of————, with a view of making a public recantation of my belief in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. But as chance would have it, he was out of town that week, and when next I made an effort to see him I found that effort in vain. I had not properly weighed the chains that bound me to Popery. I knew not their length, nor their strength. They were stronger than adamant, than steel. They were chains woven for me, in some measure, by beings that I loved. They were thrown around me and fastened to me by hands that I reverenced. They were the chains of early education. I could not break them; they were too strong for me. The force which alone could do this was the grace of God. This I had not. Until then I went about without faith in the world. I soon fell back, in a measure, into my former belief, but not without a resolution to examine more fully the nature of Popery itself, and the practices of its priests. It is well said, a drowning man will catch at straws. It occurred to me that, perhaps, all the crimes and iniquities committed by popes, priests and bishops, and sanctioned by the church of Rome, might be confined only to the old countries, where "use makes law," and that by leaving the old and coming to the new world, where the people made their own laws, and the human mind had its full swing, and thought is only bounded by its own interminable extent, I might find a different state of things. I fancied, at any rate, that man might worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without the interference, let or hindrance, save the inherent power and sovereignty of the people. I little supposed that a pure and enlightened people, such as Americans boast themselves, would sanction such institutions as those in which the young friend of whom I have spoken, lost her virtue, her honor and her life. But alas! how sadly have I been disappointed.

Europe is not the only portion of the world that contains legalized Sodoms. Its people are not the only people that support them. Its lawgivers are not the only men, nor its lawmakers the only ones, that make laws for them and give them charters. Its people are not the only people who contribute their time, their lands, their moneys, and who take almost from the necessaries of life, to support monk houses and nunneries, Jesuits and Dominicans. No, no. The new world, the new people, if I may say so, who boast of being the most enlightened people on the face of the earth—these are the people who, in proportion to their number, contribute most to the support of Popish brothels, modestly called nunneries.

But it will be said that the young lady to whom 1 have alluded, has given no evidence of her being virtuous. As far as you tell us, she has made no resistance, and it is scarcely possible that one whom you have placed upon so high a prominence of virtue, could have so suddenly fallen into the depths of vice. This is all very plausible, and naturally to be expected from those who know nothing of auricular confession—a Popish institution, one of the most ingenious devices ever invented by the great enemy of man, for the destruction of the human soul.

I am personally acquainted with several respectable Protestant Americans, both male and female, whose ideas of confession in the Romish church have often amused me, though not unaccompanied with feelings of grief and sorrow, at their unacquaintance with this, what may be called mantrap, or rather woman-trap in the Romish church.

American Protestants suppose that Popish confession means little more than that public confession of sin, which is made in all Protestant churches, or that which we individually make to Almighty God in our private chambers. Such may well inquire how this apparent sudden fall could have taken place. These inquiries will cease when I state that the young lady became a convert to Popery, and give my readers some idea of what auricular confession is, and how it is made. Every Roman Catholic believes that priests have power to forgive sins, by virtue of which power any crime, however heinous, may be remitted. But in order to effect this, the sinner must confess to a priest each and every sin, whether of thought, word or deed, with all the circumstances leading to it, or following from it; and every priest who hears confessions, is allowed to put such questions as he pleases to his penitent, whether male or female, and he or she is bound to answer under pain of eternal damnation.

It is very difficult, I admit, to suppose that the daughter of a virtuous mother, and that mother a protestant too, brought up in the elegances of life, from her birth, breathing in no other atmosphere than that of the purest domestic morality, should be precipitated, in the short space of a year or two, from a state of unsullied virtue and innocence, to the veriest depth of crime; and it is a melancholy reflection to suppose a state of society, in which, by any combination of human events, the fond mother of a virtuous child could be made the instrument of that child's ruin. Such an event is scarcely possible in the eyes of Protestant Americans, and I feel a pride in believing, from my acquaintance with many of them, that if American mothers were aware of the existence of a society among them, whose object was to demoralize their children, shut out from them the noonday light of the gospel, and ultimately decoy them into the lecherous embraces of Romish priests and Jesuits; they would, to a woman, rise in their appropriate strength, and deliver our land from those legalized Sodoms called nunneries.

I will here take the liberty of showing them how the young friend to whom I have alluded, was debauched. The nunnery to which she was sent, as I have heretofore stated, had attached to it a fashionable school; all nunneries have such. The nuns who instruct in those schools in Europe, are generally advanced in years, descendants from the first families, and highly accomplished. Most, if not all of them, at an early period of life met with some disappointment or other. One perhaps was the daughter of some decayed noble family, reduced by political revolutions to comparative poverty, and now having nothing but the pride of birth, retired to a convent. She could not work, and she would not beg. Another, perhaps, was disappointed in love; the companion of her own choice was refused to her by some unfeeling, aristocratic parent. No alternative was left but to unite her young person with the remains of some broken-down debauchee of the nobility. She prefers going into a convent with such means as she had in her own right. Another, perhaps, like my young friend—and this is the case with most of them—was seduced, by some profligate priest while at school, degraded in her own eyes, unfitted even in her own mind to become the companion of an honorable man; seeing no alternative but death or dishonor, she goes into a convent. These ladies, when properly disciplined by Jesuits and priests, become the best teachers. But before they are allowed to teach, there is no art, no craft, no species of cunning, no refinement in private personal indulgences, or no modes or means of seduction, in which they are not thoroughly initiated; and I may say with safety, and from my own personal knowledge through the confessional, that there is scarcely one of them who has not been herself debauched by her confessor. The reader will understand that every nun has a confessor; and here I may as well add, for the truth must be told at once, that every confessor has a concubine, and there are very few of them who have not several. Let any American mother imagine her young daughter among these semi-reverend crones, called nuns, and she will have no difficulty in seeing the possibility of her immediate ruin. When your daughter comes among those women, they pretend to be the happiest set of beings upon earth. They would not exchange their situation for any other this side of heaven. They will pray. So do the devils. They will sing. So will the devils, for aught I know. Their language, their acts, their gestures, their whole conduct while in presence of thee scholars, or their visitors, is irreproachable.

The mother abbess, or superior of the convent, who invariably is the deepest in sin of the whole, and who, from her age and long practice, is almost constitutionally a hypocrite, appears in public the most meek, the most bland, the most courteous, and the most humble Christian.

She is peculiarly attentive to those who have any money in their own right: she tells them they are beautiful, fascinating, that they look like angels, that this world is not a fit residence for them, that they are too good for it, that they ought to become nuns, in order to fit them for a higher and better station in heaven. Nothing more is necessary than to become a Roman Catholic and go to confession. Such is the apparent happiness, cheerfulness, and unalloyed beatitudes of the nuns, that strangers are pleased with them. They invariably make a favorable impression on the minds of their visitors. The inference is that they must be truly pious and really virtuous.

I had recently the honor of a conversation with a lady, who is herself one of the most accomplished and elegant women in the country, and who a few weeks previously had paid a visit to the Roman Catholic nunnery at————, D. C. She spoke of the institution in the highest terms of commendation and was struck with the seeming content and cheerfulness of the lady managers, and could scarcely see why it was not a good place for the education of young ladies; but I will venture the assertion, that had this interesting lady known, as I do, the heartlessness with which crime was committed within its walls, she would fly from it, as from a den of thieves, or a city of plague. A peculiar coldness, a heartlessness not to be found elsewhere, nor under other circumstances, exists in Jesuit convents, to which order that of————belongs. Nothing like it can be traced out in the records of the world's doings. And had I the talent to point it out—could I fix it in a position, so as to stand out solitary and alone in its naked deformity, before heaven and before men—instead of meriting the commendation of the accomplished mothers and daughters of our land, they would soon be left without support, and crumble to dust amid the brutalities which their silent walls alone have witnessed, and would proclaim to the world, had not the inanimate materials of which they are composed forbidden it.

When crimes are committed in open day, there is some palliation for them; but when committed in the dark, and in recesses ostensibly dedicated to virtue, they are marked with an atrocity, which God, or man, or woman cannot witness without shudders of horror. Such are those committed in Jesuit nunneries, and by those very Jesuit nuns who appear so happy, and so chaste, not only in the nunnery in————, but in every nunnery throughout the world.

This it will be said, and has often been said, even by Christian mothers and Christian daughters, cannot be. They suppose that a sinner can never be happy, or even appear so. How little these people know of human nature! How perfectly unacquainted they are with the power of discipline, or force of education! Yet it would seem as if they should know better than to conclude hastily, that because nuns are cheerful and happy in appearance, they must be also chaste and virtuous. Many ol our American ladies have been in the East; some of them have been in Constantinople. I believe that one or two have visited the harem of the Emperor of Constantinople, and might have seen there numbers of ladies, accomplished in their own way, covered with crime and sin, yet cheerful and apparently happy. But show me the Christian lady, who ever witnessed this, that will not weep at the bare mention of the fact, that will not sigh for the conversion of the Turk and Mahomedan, who will not mourn the fate of her sisters—for sisters they are of the same family—thus degraded and still content:—all the result of circumstances, education and want of pure religion.

But these sympathizers with Turks, Mahomedans and Pagans have not a tear to spare for their sisters of the United States. Not a sigh escapes them for their relief. Not a dollar can they give to remove from our land that accursed thing, Popery—the primary and sole cause of all those evils. On the contrary, if Jesuits want to build a nunnery, the husband has no peace from his wife, the father from the daughter, the brother from the sister, the lover from his betrothed, until they make up money to build a nunnery for the poor nuns. Well, indeed, may I apply to such individuals the language of the Jesuit Rodin, in the Wandering Jew:—"Fools, dolts, double dolts." But Rodin was wrong. He was entirely premature in the use of these expressions; and I am not at all pleased with his depriving me of the opportunity of being first to apply those sweet-sounding terms to American Protestants—a people who have done, and are still doing, more to merit them, than any other of the past or present age.

I find, though I have not the merit of intending it, that I am strictly performing my promise to my readers, viz., that I will go entirely upon my own hook, pay no attention to order, style, or to what critics may say, but give them my ideas at random of things and facts, just as I saw them, and precisely as they struck me at the time. This, I must confess, is rather a Tristramshandish mode of writing, particularly to Americans, who are a most precise, systematic and business people; but it is a free country, and, as the poet said, "Cur ego invidior si pauca querere possim" &c.

But to return to the causes which induced me to leave the Romish church.

The young lady of whom I have spoken in a previous page, was sent to school, as I have stated, to a Popish nunnery. She was a Protestant when she entered; so are many young ladies in this country when they enter similar schools. The nuns immediately set about her conversion. The process by which such things are done is sometimes slow, but always sure. It is often tedious, but never fails; though the knowledge European Protestants have of such institutions, renders the process of conversion more tedious than in this land of freedom and Popish humbuggery. The work of her conversion proceeded with the usual success, until she finally joined the Romish church. The next step, in such cases, is to choose a confessor. This is done for the young convert by the mother abbess of the nuns; and now commences the ruin of the soul and the body of the hitherto guileless, guiltless scholar, and convert from Protestant heresy. She goes to confession; and recollect, American reader, that what I here state is "Mutata fabula de te ipso narratur." Every word of what I am about to state is applicable to you. This confession is, literally speaking, nothing but a systematic preparation for her ruin. It is said that there is, among the creeping things of this earth, a certain noxious and destructive animal, called Anaconda. It is recorded of this animal, foul, filthy and ugly as he is, that when he is hungry, and seizes upon an object which he desires to destroy and subsequently devour, he takes it with him carefully to his den, or place of retreat. There, at his ease, unseen and alone with his prey, he is said to cover it over with slime, and then and there swallow it. I now declare, most solemnly and sincerely, that after living twenty-five years in full communion with the Roman Catholic church, and officiating as a Romish priest, hearing confessions, and confessing myself, I know not another reptile in all animal nature so filthy, so much to be shunned, and loathed, and dreaded by females, both married and single, as a Roman Catholic priest, or bishop, who practises the degrading and demoralizing office of auricular confession.

Let me give American Protestant mothers just a twilight glance at the questions which a Romish priest puts to those females, who go to confession to him, and they will bear in mind that there is no poetry in what I say. It contains no undulations of a roving fancy; there is nothing dreaming, nothing imaginative about it; it is only a part of a drama in which I have acted myself. I may truly say of all that occurs in Popish confession, "Quorum magna pars fui."