The Virginian

Get thee to a Nunnery,—Shakspeare.

A convent of the Ursuline Nuns has for many years existed in Georgetown, District of Columbia, and we well remember of having in earlier days, when life was young and hope was new, lingered around its gates and walls in hopes of once more beholding a blue eyed Juliet, who had bade the world a short farewell, to dwell within the gloomy structure, with the daughters of St. Ursuline. But it was in vain that we wishfully gazed upon the mansion dedicated to God and Religion: for she on whom our young eyes would have feasted, fell an untimely victim to secluded life, and when she emerged from the convent, it was to go down to the narrow house of clay—to slumber beneath the cold clod of the valley.

About a year ago, Miss Mary Jones, daughter of Capt. Jacob Jones, of the U. S. Navy, who had been a novice at this institution, became a religious devotee—resolved upon adopting a monastic life, and took the white veil. It is seldom that this ceremony has been performed in this country; it caused some little excitement, and her friends and the public entertained a hope that she would recede from her intentions, and return to the world, to the bosom of her family and the embraces surely.—But hopes have been disappointed: about a fortnight since she went through the terrible mystery of taking the black veil, and has now sworn the world, society, and all the kindred feelings of our nature, to strike within the solitary limits of a monastic cell to devotion and enjoyments which society denies her.

It is said, that though it was her choice to take an everlasting farewell of the world yet she betrayed those feelings—which religion zeal cannot suppress, and which will vent themselves, & relieve a bursting heart. As she gave the holy vow, her bosom was convulsed with ten thousand throbs, for her heart yet lingered up "the world.

"Her hands were clasp'd, her eyes upturn.

Dropping their tears like moonlight dews,

And through her lips, fond nature breathed

With words of passion, words of fame—

Yet was there light around her brow,

A holiness in those dark eyes,

Which show'd, though wandering earthward now,

Her spirit's home was in the skies."

There must be an alienation of mind, a kind of religious madness, pervading the soul, that in the bloom of life—when surrounded by the joys of the world, love of friends, and the idolatry of society—tears itself from the ties of nature and gives up all, to worship the Creator of Mankind. Yet here we find a young girl used to the highest circles of society—the daughter of a man who holds a preeminent rank among the noblest captains of the age—the daughter of a man who had it in his power to secure to his offspring the most desirable situation in life—voluntarily retiring to the cloister, to unceasing orisons to the Lord of Hosts.

What motives, other than those purely devotional, impelled her to this course—have not yet been made known, and the world is left to wonder, that one so young so lovely and so good, should in a moment of enthusiasm desert the world, and blast the hopes of parents and friends, by retiring to the silent cell of an anchorite.