Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/123

Rh anecdotes, which she related to me from her life—so rich in adventure; they are of the most romantic kind in the history of real life.

I shall now tell you a little about Baltimore. Baltimore is the capital of the State of Maryland. Maryland is the earliest residence of Catholicism in the United States. Lord Calvert Baltimore, who went over from the Protestant to the Catholic faith, and who resigned his post in the English Government in consequence, was the founder of the colony in Maryland, which was intended, in the first place, to afford an asylum for persecuted and suffering Catholics; and not alone for them, but for people of every sect, who merely acknowledged themselves as Christians—and there are mentioned as among the earliest planters here, also Swedes and Finns. The noble and large-minded Lord Baltimore wished to erect the Catholic Church on the soil of the New World upon a broader basis than it occupied in the Old World.

The city of Baltimore became the seat of the archbishop, and the Convent of the Visitation was established there, as the mother institution of any of a similar kind which might extend themselves on the soil of the New World. Maryland had tobacco-plantations and slaves, and lived, it is said, in a patriarchal manner. It lives yet by tobacco and slaves;—less patriarchally, however, as various transactions and narratives from the chronicles of the Slave-State prove; and Baltimore is still the home of Catholicism, the seat of the Catholic Archbishop, and the Convent of the order of the Visitation. Some of Lord Baltimore's liberal spirit seems also to continue here. I visited the Convent during my stay in Washington, and liked very much what I saw, in particular the appearance and manners of the Abbess, and the young Sisters. They take the vows for their whole life, but have laid aside much of the old Catholic ceremonial, and have no peculiar habit. They principally occupy themselves in