First in importance and influence are the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, founded at Paris in the beginning of the third decade of the present century. In the metropolis alone are eighty odd conferences, one for each parish, besides some national and special ones connected with various other religious institutions and associations. Among the national conferences may be instanced a Polish, a Flemish, an Italian, an English, and two German. The most prominent of the special conferences are the Cercle du Luxembourg, formed by the Catholic students, and the Cercle de la Jeunesse, formed by the youth of the higher schools. The total number of members is probably over 4000. In addition to this, many other religious associations have been directly and indirectly promoted by the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul: for instance, the patronages for promoting the physical and spiritual welfare of apprentices; the work-shops for young girls belonging to the working classes, who are not only furnished with employment, but instructed in their religious duties; the society for the relief of the Faubourgs, managed by women whose object is the education of the children of laboring people who reside in the wretched hovels of the remoter suburbs. The Société Maternelle, established in 1788, which has in every quarter of the city its female agent to relieve working-women who cannot afford to remain at home to nurse their infants. This society expends over 60,000 francs a year, and relieves nearly a thousand mothers. A similar society is that of the Crèches, where infants under three years of age are taken care of while their mothers earn their daily bread. One of the greatest evils of our modern system of economy is the compulsory labor of females. There are in Paris 106,300 working-women who earn on an average only 1 franc and 10 centimes per day, (twenty-two cents in gold,) and have to support a family on this pittance. Very excellent institutions are the Salles d'Asiles, play-schools for children aged from two to six years, which already number over 4000 in France, and are attended by hundreds and thousands of children. The Child's Friend Society is designed to save those children who are in danger of being demoralized by the evil example of their parents. The Société de St. François Regis aims to counteract the illicit relations but too frequently entered into between the opposite sexes. It labors to supply the poor who flock to the capital from every part of the provinces with the documents which the law requires for the solemnization of a legal marriage. The advocates of the civil marriage contract may learn from this the beauties of the system which they praise so highly. Nothing can be more expensive, troublesome, or attended with greater loss of time, than the legalization of the different papers required to be produced before a marriage can be ratified by the civil authorities. On the other hand, the church exacts only a few and simple formalities to unite a pair in the bonds of holy wedlock. This society was founded in 1826, and in 1866 it brought about the marriages of no less than 43,256 couples, who had previously lived together without being married.