Ye reverend Fathers, why make such objection,

Why raise such a cry against Convents' Inspection?

Is it not just the thing to confound the deceivers,

And confute all the slanders of vile unbelievers?

It strikes me that people in your situation

Should welcome, invite, and court investigation,

As much as to say, "Come and see if you doubt us;

We defy you to find any evil about us."

For my part I think, if I held your persuasion,

That I should desire to improve the occasion,

And should catch at the chance, opportunely afforded,

Of showing how well Nuns are lodged, used, and boarded.

That as to the notion of cruel inflictions

Of penance, such tales are a bundle of fictions,

And that all that we hear of constraint and coercion

Is, to speak in mild language, mere groundless assertion.

That an Abbess would not—any more than a Mayoress—

Ever dream of inveigling an opulent heiress,

That each convent's the home of devotion and purity,

And that nothing is thought about, there, but futurity.

That no Nuns exist their profession regretting,

Who kept in confinement are pining and fretting;

And to fancy there might be one such, though a rarity,

Implies a most sad destitution of charity.

That all sisters are doves—without mates—of one feather,

In holy tranquillity living together,

Whose dovecote the bigots have found a mare's nest in,

Because its arrangements are rather clandestine.

Nay, I should have gone, out of hand, to Sir Paxton,

As a Frenchman would probably call him, and "axed 'un,"

As countrymen say—his ingenious noddle

Of a New Crystal Convent to scratch for a model.

Transparent and open, inquiry not shirking,

Like bees you might watch the good Nuns in it, working;

And study their habits, observe all their motions,

And see them performing their various devotions.

This is what I should do, on a sound cause relying,

Not run about bellowing, raving, and crying;

I shouldn't exhibit all that discomposure,

Unless in the dread of some startling disclosure.

What makes you betray such tremendous anxiety

To prevent the least peep into those haunts of piety?

People say there's a bag in your Convents—no doubt of it,

And you are afraid you'll have Pussy let out of it.