gium on your merits, and your labour, that we shall overturn all the reserves, with which I see our friend is armed, to discompose our satisfaction, and effectually to prevent our self-esteem.'

'O fie!' she eagerly exclaimed, then we will let it all alone. But I am quite satisfied so far, and am so exhilarated by active employment, that I only lament I have lived so many years without tasting the pleasure of a life given to good works.'

It was not a moment in which a formal argument on the subject could be admitted; I therefore turned the conversation to the one on which they specifically come, saying, 'I will share in the subscription with great pleasure: and may the good work be prospered.'

'I thought you would approve it,' Mr. Sandford said, for I really think there is a great error in not equipping and fitting out our Missionaries in a sufficiently independent way. This, you know, is exclusively for the female schools, and we intend it shall be put in the sole power of the Missionaries' wives; so that when they have established them, they may have a certain fund on which to draw. I shall not rest satisfied with less than one thousand pounds for the first beginning.'

Maria, laughing, said, 'I have a great mind to marry a Missionary, for the very purpose of going to lay out this said thousand pounds in the way which it ought to be.'

Think well, though, Maria, before you make up your mind. Are you willing to devote yourself to the incessant labour of such a duty?'

' O, if I undertook it, I should perform it: I would never give it up.'

'If you had to go to the torrid zone, it would be

something like what our chapter names,-Giving your body to be burned, would it not?'

'Why, yes: but I am not going; only if I did, I should encounter all things, and take whatever lot might befall me. I have no notion of shrinking from such engagements, and leaving them just when they want you most. No: we must even die, if it must be so,'

6

You know it is possible to do all this without being a profit to you, do you not?'

There, you come back to the chapter! which however, I have no reason to dislike: but though I know it is so written, I confess I do not understand for what a person should give his body, except it were for some extreme good?'

'Will you meet the grave party here this evening, if I can engage them, and we will endeavour to discuss the subject, it may be useful to us all, and we will prepare some needle work, for a good object, to employ the ladies meanwhile. Will you come?'

'I suspect you want to make me uncomfortable and spin out such a number of cases of which I have never thought, as to try to overturn my happiness. I cannot deny you any thing, but I am inclined to say I will not come.'

'But as you do not say so, I will say you will come; and if God permit me, I will try to make you more happy than you are even now.'

'That is a bribe, and I shall take it.'

'Mr. Sandford, will you make one of the party?' He bowed, and they both soon withdrew.

ELIZA.

RECOLLECTIONS OF IRELAND.

No. IV.

THE FATAL FUNERAL.

[Continued from page 214.]

How much time the priest spent in this situation, I know not; but the heavy and scattered clouds had been for some time condensing over the lake, and rather suddenly poured down a thick and heavy rain. Young William L. who, like myself, had been calling at some of the houses of mourning in the neighbourhood, was running rapidly across the field which was the nearest way to his house, as well as to that of the priest, holding down his hat in front to screen off a little of the rain. He almost fell over a person sitting on the side of the hill, apparently unconscious of the state of the weather; it was not too dark to distinguish his person. 'Mr. M'Mahon,' said the young man, laying his hand on his shoulder; how very incautious!' The priest looked up, rose, and went on without replying.

'You must be quite wet,' William continued, moving on with him.

'It is a bad business,' replied the priest, conveying to his companion, in his abrupt rejoinder, the

intimation that his thought were otherwise employed than in the state of the weather.

'It is indeed,' William replied with a deep sigh; so many immortal souls, and they, perhaps, unprepared.'

The priest could not well escape from noticing this; he muttered something about the church taking care, but he appeared scarcely sensible of what he said. He was secretly oppressed with a heavy feeling of responsibility, which he would gladly, but could not, shake off. His companion soon perceived this. Priest M'Mahon was one of whom all men spoke well; one of the very few on whom that peculiar' woe' is pronounced; and though young L. ranked among the "righteous overmuch," his open cordial manners, and the priest's easy goodnature, always prevented the slightest approach either to asperity or coldness. The latter could hardly maintain reserve with any one-and of all persons, my friend William was the most difficult to maintain it with-his feelings were soon revealed, at least in a partial and unconscious sort of manner, but sufficient to shew the deplorable state of a mind in which natural feeling struggled under the height of Popish superstition, and combatted the force of acquired opinion, in which light gleamed sufficiently to make error manifest, and wherein the simple knowledge of error woke up a long train of thought and feelings, which plunged it more and more into doubt, disorder, and unhappiness.

Presuming on a power, the very existence of which he had recently begun to doubt, Priest M‘Mahon had been led into an act, the results of which had caused him shame, regret, and remorse; it had

opened one loop-hole, through which the foundation of error which his church rested on had become indistinctly visible; and his own comfortless sensations of personal responsibility, and deep sorrow for the sorrows he had caused, were increased by the miseries of religious doubt and perplexity; he was truly unhappy beneath his oppressive load: and herein he was pre-eminently miserable, that his situation deprived him of the sweet relief of pouring out his heart in the ear of a fellow-sinner, and he did not bear the blessed privilege of pouring it out before his God.

Young William L. was a sincere and kind-hearted Christian; he no sooner discovered the mental uneasiness of his companion, than, as the sweet balm of mortal woe, he preached unto him Jesus. The gospel sweetly falls upon a humbled and a contrite heart; and such was poor Priest M'Mahon's. In the common acceptation of the word, he was what is called a good sort of man, feeling in disposition, and mild in manner; very affectionate, and full of that sort of charity which is the growth of nature only. He had been brought up to the priesthood; but until this fatal event had never considered the truth or falsity of the tenets he held. Like too many other ministers of religion, he was ignorant of the gospel; he listened to it now-strange as such an assertion in a Christian land may seem-for the first time: and there was something within his breast which silently assented to the truth and the sweetnesss of what he heard. He reached his solitary home, where there was none to soothe or sympathise with him. He would willingly have detained his young companion, but dared not to manifest a disinclination to be left