Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 1).djvu/215

 the soul had been conjured by Romish wizardcraft!

A few English pupils there were in this school, and these might be divided into two classes. 1st, The continental English—the daughters chiefly of broken adventurers whom debt or dishonour had driven from their own country. These poor girls had never known the advantages of settled homes, decorous example, or honest Protestant education; resident a few months now in one Catholic school, now in another, as their parents wandered from land to land—from France to Germany, from Germany to Belgium—they had picked up some scanty instruction, many bad habits, losing every notion even of the first elements of religion and morals, and acquiring an imbecile indifference to every sentiment that can elevate humanity; they were distinguishable by an habitual look of sullen dejection, the result of crushed self-respect and constant browbeating from their Popish fellow-pupils, who