ensuing Sunday; upon which day, as time ran short, it was absolutely necessary that the recantation should be publicly made. Myers and the rector had a jovial booze-six bottles each at the least; and their jollification was repeated every day until Sunday; when the archbishop, on receiving an assurance from the jovial rector, that Myers was au fait at the theology of the case, permitted him to make his solemn, public abjuration of the errors of Popery, and to receive the Protestant sacrament. In order to celebrate the happy event, the prelate invited Myers, and several zealous Protestant friends, to dinner. When the cloth was removed, his Grace thus addressed the convert- Mr. Myers, you have this day been received into the true Protestant Church, and renounced the corruptions of Popery. For thiş you should thank God with all your heart! I learn, with great pleasure, from our worthy friend, the Rector of Castlerea, that you have acquired an excellent knowledge, in a very short time, of the basis of the Protestant religion. Will you be so kind as to state, for the edification of the company, the grounds upon which you have cast aside Popery, and embraced the Church of England?'-Faith, my lord,' replied Myers, ‘I can asily do that! The grounds of my conversion to the Protestant religion, are two thousand five

hundred acres of the best grounds in the county of Roscommon!"

The literary organ of the Dublin University, boasted some time since, of the number of the Irish gentry who had embraced the Reformation. The triumphs in question were achieved by the instrumentality of the penal code; but surely it is strange to hear such spiritual influences vaunted in a modern publication!

"Under these iniquitous laws," said O'Connell, "it was not sufficient that a man born of Catholic parents should merely profess Protestantism; it was also necessary that the convert should go through the legal forms of abjuring Popery, and receiving the sacrament during service in some Protestant church. I heard of a very curious case, in which the son of Catholic parents, early in the last century, entered Dublin College, professing to be a Protestant. His talents in due time procured for him a fellowship, from which he retired upon a rich College living. He amassed great wealth, bought an estate, and left it at his death to his son; when, behold! a bill of discovery was filed against the son, as inheriting from a man who in the eye of the law had been a Papist; inasmuch, as he never had made a formal, public, legal abjuration of Popery. So that the Anglican Parson-the F. T.

C. D.-the rector of a college living, who had been in Anglican orders for thirty or forty years of his life-this man, notwithstanding all his Protestantism, was legally a Papist; because he had omitted the performance of some legal formula!

"It often happened, too, that points of objection to the legal Protestantism of apostates, were raised by reason of inaccuracy in the certificate of the apostate's abjuration. These certificates often bore that the conforming party had received the sacrament DURING divine service;' whereas the sacrament in the Anglican church, is administered, not during service, but after it. There were frequently needy or dishonest persons to watch for, and pounce upon, flaws of this sort."

"It is wonderful," observed a priest, "that there were any Catholic estates left in possession of their rightful owners."

"There would not have been any," said O'Connell, "only that individual Protestants were found, a great deal honester than the laws. The Freeman family, of Castlecor, were trustees for a large number of Catholic gentlemen in the county of Cork. In Kerry there was a Protestant, named Hugh Falvey, who acted as trustee for many Catholic proprietors there. In Dublin, there was a poor Protestant, in very humble circumstances, who was trustee for

several Catholic gentlemen, and discharged his trust with perfect integrity."

O'Connell had an estate called Glancara, situated near the Lake of Cahara, which had been in his family from a period prior to the penal laws. I expressed some surprise that Glancara had escaped

confiscation.

"Oh!" said he; "they did not find it out; it is hidden among wild mountains in a very remote situation, which was wholly inaccessible in those days from the want of roads—and thus it escaped their clutches."

O'Connell once said to me,

"If ever I took a title, it would be Earl of Glancara."

CHAPTER XIX.

Hunting Staigue Fort-Character of the Emperor NicholasRemarks on the Exemption by Law from a Second Trial on the same Capital Charge-The Ruined Church of KilkeeTradition of the M'Carthy Mhor-Interest taken by O'Connell in English Politics.

THE 12th of November was devoted to hunting. O'Connell rose an hour before the sun, and set off to the mountains near Staigue Fort, where two hares were killed before breakfast.

Staigue Fort is a very curious relic of antiquity. It consists of a circular area, of about fifty feet in diameter, enclosed with a wall of rude masonry, which is four yards thick at bottom, diminishing to about two at the top; and in tolerably good repair throughout the entire circuit. The external height of this wall varies in different places, owing to the inequalities of the surrounding ground; within, it rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet from the