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TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY

tions embodying their idea. Most of them are too hard pressed in the mere struggle for existence to pay much attention to the particular features and objects of their respective congregations. The Servites, it is said amongst the clergy, nearly perished by spontaneous combustion, something similar to the reported fracas of the Capuchins; the Passionists were nearly starved out by the indiscretion of an ignorant foreign administration which insisted on full ascetical rigour; the Fathers of Charity have become very modest and retiring since their founder, the celebrated Rosmini, had forty propositions selected from his works and condemned by the Holy Office. The latest is a new order for the conversion of England—of respectable Anglican England, not of its increasing pagan element: it was founded by F. Jerome Vaughan, who seceded from the Benedictines after the interesting fracas which was described by a Catholic pen in the 'Pall Mall Magazine' a few years ago.

Besides the great number of regular clergy—who would be more aptly styled the 'Irregulars,' both for a disciplinary reason, and in view of their canonical relation to the rest of the clerical army—there are the ordinary secular or non-monastic clergy. The seculars are those who live in the world (sæculum) and the regulars those who live in convents, by rule (regula). The seculars have a similar life to the ordinary non-Catholic clergyman; it has been fully