stumble on-not a golden relic, but one of those botanical prizes from time to time cast up there, called by the people sea-nuts, wafted on the Gulf stream from the tropical shores of the New World.

With the present accurate knowledge of the botany of the Old World, had there not been a Columbus, such an incident would not merely, as in his day, have supplied a hint to the scientific, it would have done the work, furnishing, as it does, unmistak

leaves the Gulf in summer at 86°. Near Cape Hatteras the thermometer shows 81°, or from 10° to 12° above the water of the ocean under the same parallel; hence, to 43° degrees of longitude, the thermometer falls to 7540, and at the Azores to 721°, still preserving a temperature from 8° to 10° above that of the ocean. The Gulf stream and its widely extended overflowing form a body of warm water of great extent in the middle of the Atlantic. Its length, from west to east, exceeds 2000 miles; this gives an area equal to four times the extent of France, and larger than the Mediterranean Sea. The prevailing south-west wind has its origin in this part of the Atlantic, its peculiar mildness and humidity being derived. from the warm current over which it sweeps. It is, therefore, no flight of fancy to assert, that we are indebted to the continuous mountain chain of the Andes for our agricultural position and prosperity."

able evidence of the existence of regions then undiscovered.*

Turning from the picturesque to the practical, after "looking through Nature up to Nature's God," I would visit the homesteads of the English settlers, and the field of the late Waste Land Company's efforts.

I would allow time for taking an interest

* "Letters from the Irish Highlands," 1825, p. 318."Our sea-nuts are another marine curiosity, having very much the appearance of horse-chestnuts, but of various shapes and sizes; they contain a kernel, white and bitter to the taste, and some are small and round, like marble; others, oval, with a handsome black or yellow band round the middle; others, again, with an impress like a stamp on one side. On showing some of them to a nurseryman near London, he pronounced them to be South American, all diadelphous and siliquosus. The largest, a hymenea, a forest tree, with the fruit enclosed in pods above two feet long, and six or eight inches broad. These pods discharge their fruit every two years with a report like a pistol. The quantity of essential oil they contain causes them to float so long in the water that the seeds would no doubt germinate as hardy store plants. Some of the smaller species were indeed cultivated in England, but have been neglected on account of their rambling unornamental appear

ance.

The unlearned natives of Connemara have, however, found a fanciful use for these nuts, by laying them under the pillows of their straw beds, as a charm against the nocturnal visits of the fairies."

D 2

in the workhouse, in the constabulary arrangements, the schools, and the missions, four powerful and philanthropic, aye, philanthropic agents, all equally forced upon the population for its regeneration, as pioneers opening up the country, and fitting it for a new and better order of things, lightening the sorrows, preventing the irregularities, and enlightening the darkness of the adult and rising generation.

* Inglis, vol. ii. p. 24.-" I had an opportunity of conversing with many landowners here and in the neighbourhood, and I regretted to find among them so little sympathy with the condition of the poor; I also found among them the greatest terror of any provision for the poor."

+ When I say with reference to the constabulary that it was forced upon them, I allude to its original institution under the peace preservation act (54 Geo. III. c. 131), of the force called the Peelers. Mrs. Hall describes the present constabulary as created by themselves, and having their confidence, p. 417. In most of the counties the magistrates were themselves among the first to desire a change, and surrendered up their rights to appoint constables to the inspector-general.

CHAPTER V.

ENDOWMENT OF IRISH CATHOLIC CLERGY.-CONDUCT OF THE IRISH PRIESTS.THE IRISH

EPISCOPACY.-SOUTHERN AND

NORTHERN STUDENTS.- BURNING THE BIBLE.-ST. PATRICK

AND HIS

SAINTS.-CHANGE IN EPISCOPAL MANAGEMENT.

CHURCH EDUCATION SOCIETY.-PROTESTANT MISSIONS.

I BELIEVE time was when state-payment to the Irish Roman Catholic Church would not have been repudiated. Had Mr. Pitt begun this century by crowning the Union (that excellent work, or that coup-d'état, call it which you will), with an apportionment of a fixed income to the priesthood, I hardly suppose the boon would have remained long unappropriated. What a half century of mean and grinding ways the poor priests would have then been spared, to whom it is indeed hard to stand upright, placed as they

are, like empty sacks, among their needy flocks; what misery might have been spared the last two generations had but the shepherds seen their interest in the advancement of their charge, and not in that dependence which ignorance and want engender and perpetuate.

It would seem a dereliction on the part of rulers, on whom the protection of the helpless more especially devolves, that, in dealings with the ignorant, exactions, indefinite in time as well as in amount, should be allowed to obtain the force of the most stringent laws, without any of the checks imposed by law in ordinary transactions between man and man. But then, how can the law keep a Goody selling sweets from cheating the innocent and greedy little customer? The priest takes his ignorant flock at equal, nay, at far greater advantage, when what he traffics in, and the circumstances under which it is offered for sale,