ing. I shall leave Donegal, more than ever impressed with the conviction that on the heads of bygone generations of British Protestants must rest a heavy share of responsibility, as regards the present state of Ireland. By British Protestants I mean those of both countries. England is fearfully guilty, in that, while holding the patronage of the Irish Church, she has sent into this country a succession of men to bear the high office of spiritual pastors, who, with a few bright exceptions, thought of the fleece and the fat, and of nothing more. Ireland, on the part of her Protestants, is guilty, in that they have actually looked upon the miseries of her priestridden race, without anything that could be called a real effort to break the yoke of bondage from off their necks. The time for making this effort was after the establishment of William on the throne; but perhaps it was too much to expect that, while yet smarting from the wounds of their bigoted persecutors, the rescued party should at once become their voluntary teachers. The following age presented no such barrier: Popery was strictly curbed by severe penal laws in its external manifestation, but the poison was allowed to work within. Bedell, Boyle, and Usher had no successors in the spiritual, neither had that disinterested patriot, James Duke of Ormonde, in the political, world of poor Ireland.

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

matter.

another, and it would seem a wholly irrelevant 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 says, 'Christianize them.' And to this it must 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