"The priests, meanwhile, are by no means idle. They are instructing their people in the dogmas of their Church; and for this they have classes in the evening,--the zealous at least, among them have. Apart from their petty persecution in preventing us getting a place of worship (the affair of the 'Madre di Dio' you know all about, as also their general story of every convert being paid), they send missionaries to England once or twice a-year, (there is a priest whom I know just now returned), who bring, generally prostitutes, but women of a better order if they can find them, put them into a convent, to train, and, when trained, send them out to strengthen the Catholics here in their faith, and, if possible, bring back to the fold those who have gone to Geymonat; and highly accomplished trustworthy dames they send home to England to bring out others, or remain there and proselytise; or they send them here and there among the English on the Continent, sometimes to profess one thing and sometimes another. A few weeks ago one tried her skill upon us residing in Genoa, and partially succeeded. Her tale was, that she was the daughter of an English clergyman, who came abroad with her aunt, travelling in great style of course, and was put into a convent, and kept there against her will; and now she had contrived to make her escape, and perfectly trembled when she saw a priest, or even heard one named; and, although of high family, was ready to teach or do anything in an English family, to be out of reach of the priests. The things she told were most harrowing, and some of them very true-like. One English gentleman here thought of taking her into his family as governess, until he should get her father to come for her. I was asked to visit her at his house, and hear her woeful history. I went; but the line 'Timeo Danaos,' &c., was ever forcing itself upon me as I walked musingly along to the house, which was a little distance out of town. While hearing her long unconnected string of falsehoods, the thing that astonished me was, why the Roman Catholic priests should have chosen such an ugly woman to do such a piece of work; and not only had she the most forbidding appearance of any woman I ever saw, but she was the most illiterate; not a single sentence came correctly from her lips, and, in pronunciation, the letter 'h' ever was prefixed to the 'aunt' and the 'Oxford,'--the very quintescence of Cockneyism. It was clear to my mind that she had 'done' the priests, and the sequel proves my suspicions to be correct. That day before she left, she discovered that she was suspected, and very prudently threw off her mask very soon after. Her correct history we are only getting bit by bit; but all we have learned convinces us that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very little of English, by persuading him that she is the daughter of an English clergyman, and very highly connected in England. You have enough of the story to see the kind of plot regularly carried on. What they expected to gain by passing her off upon us, we cannot tell, unless that they wished to know earlier and more fully our movements. There is an English pervert here just now,--a weak fool, but an educated one,--on a mission to Geymonat's people, to assure them that they have committed a great sin. Having proved both systems of religion, he can judge, and there is no comfort whatever in the Protestant. He has taken up his abode here, and is prosecuting his mission vigorously.