who having read its pages,
will shake his head sadly when he hears of Liars, and remembering its
Parliamentary notes will say--

"There were Giants in those days."

Armagh, July 6th.

No. 45.--A PICTURE OF ROMISH "TOLERATION."

The country from Armagh to Monaghan is a very garden of Eden,
undulating, well wooded, well watered, and in a high state of
cultivation. The intervening towns and villages are neat and sweet,
and the people seem to be hard workers. Monaghan itself, during the
last generation, has wonderfully improved. It suffers by reason of its
position on an almost inaccessible branch line, and the complete
absence of manufactories, but it has no appearance of poverty. The
Diamond is a well-built square, and the whole town, mostly built of
stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted
with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. The gaol, an enormous
building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress,
and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood,
for it has long been disused. The district did not furnish malefactors
enough to make the establishment pay. The gaol officials stood about
with folded hands wishing for something to do, and probably locked up
each other in turn by way of keeping up a pretence of work. The
governor had nothing to govern, and the turnkeys sighed as they
thought of old times. The thing was growing scandalous, and the
ever-diminishing output of convicts marked the decadence of the
country. Day by day the officials climbed to the topmost battlement in
the hope that rural crime-hunters might be descried bringing in some
turnip-stealer, some poacher, some blacker of his neighbour's eye, and
day by day these faithful prison-keepers sadly descended to renew the
weary round of mutual incarceration, so necessary if they wished to
keep their hands in, and to apply somebody's patent rust-preventer to
the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped
with honest pride. At last the authorities intervened, discharged the
turnkeys, and locked up the place. It was a case of _Ichabod_. The
fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. The
officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to
the Divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never
come to pass under Home Rule. All became earnest Nationalists in the
sure and certain hope that under an Irish Parliament