It is unavailing as afflicting to trace the progress of fatal mismanagement during prosperous times, issuing as it did in the sanguinary burst of 1798. The Union placed our country in a position of far greater power to confer good, while its accompanying concessions invested the enemy with more abundant opportunities of working evil. Coercion was found to be unavailing; conciliation was then resorted to, and helped forward the mischief; until, instead of bringing our fellow-subjects, by God's appointed means, to a participation in the blessings of Christianity, we have flung our own national faith as a sop to the fierce Cerberus of the triple crown, only to learn how speedily his capacious jaws could ingulph the gift, and then renew his stunning yell for more. It ill becomes us to recriminate, where all parties are so deeply guilty concerning our brethren: one path is yet open to us, and that is one which has never been totally closed. Prejudices that stood not in the way of learning to cluck with the Hottentot, though they could not abide the barbarous sound of one of the finest languages in the world, daily spoken in our London streets, and prevalent among three millions of our nearest neighbours,-these prejudices have now been put out of countenance; so that Christian men are at last content to yield the point of obliging a native Irishman to study our

grammar before they inform him that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Yet the obligation is not fully recognized: the ministers of this Church do not generally look upon the Romish peasantry as the lost sheep whom it is their duty to seek and to bring back; and too: many of the Protestant laity allow themselves to be hindered in the exercise of an imperative duty, that of rendering their influential position, as to the temporal circumstances of the natives, available for their spiritual advantage. We wonder and complain that the Ethiopian does not change his skin: some talk of boring a hole through the island, and keeping it under water for a day or two; others of exporting the whole native race, and re-peopling the land with a different breed ; others, again, are disposed only to confine them to Connaught, with a menace of driving them into the sea on the first provocation: but, alas, how few apply themselves to preparing the bonds of love wherewith to draw this forlorn, this perverted people back to God!

In fact, the Creator of the world is entirely left out of the various schemes for bettering a country that he has made so rich and so lovely: how to render it a tractable appendage to our own imperial isle, is the grand question: how to make it the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, is

another, and it would seem a wholly irrelevant matter. Establish Popery as the state religion,' says one; Give them useful knowledge, without any religion at all,' quoth another; Administer the tee-total pledge,' suggests a third; while a small section, amid the smiles of pity and jeers of scorn that such a proposal must elicit, soberly 'Christianize them.' And to this it must says, come, or a besom of destruction will sweep the land, directed by Him who will not always be insultingly overlooked by his rebellious creatures. The servant who, through blameable ignorance, knew not his Lord's will, shall then be beaten with stripes; but what a scourge of briars will be prepared for the back of those who, unavoidably knowing their Lord's will, which they cannot help hearing in their houses of worship, through pride, through prejudice, through indolence, or unbelief, refused to do it!

LETTER XIV.

CONCLUSION.

At Sea, August.

LIKE a pleasant dream, my summer tour is ended, and dear Ireland, with all her touching associations, lies many a long mile to the west. I could not write before starting, and now the resource is welcome. We were brought to Derry by our considerate friends, in the family travelling carriage, after bidding a reluctant farewell to their sweet retreat, and its magnificent neighbourhood. I preferred the coach-box, not only for the parting view of Swilly and his glorious mountain hosts, but for the first and best sight of Derry and the Foyle. Both were afforded me, under a splendid sky; and with a bounding heart I found myself once more within the walls; and almost immediately afterwards perched on the top of the steeple.

In my former letter I neglected to mention Walker's testimonial; it is a noble column, and

the statue is very fine; but not being part and parcel of the bona-fide antiquities, it attracted less of my notice than was justly due. The Chapel of Ease I ought likewise to have mentioned; and to have rescued Derry from an unjust stigma which Inglis, through some misconception, left to rest on her population. He says there is no reading-room, or public library; there are three ; and one of them is of great extent, arranged in a handsome building very near Brown's hotel. Corporation Hall, which occupies the site of the old Guard-house, in the centre of the Diamond, is a noble room, commanding a full view of Lough Foyle, and containing a painting of the town just as it was in 1688-an article that I found it difficult not to covet.

The evening was lovely; and so late as between ten and eleven o'clock we all indulged ourselves with a stroll round the ramparts, which we twice encircled without meeting a human being, save two lads who appeared to belong to the shipping. I have already described the relative position of the cathedral, where an iron railing alone separates the grave-yard from the south-eastern corner of the ramparts; against this railing I stood for a long while, until the scene was so impressed on my mind that it cannot be obliterated' while memory holds her seat.' There, in the pure light