miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. The spire is two hundred
and fifty feet high. I mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons
in weight. I also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and
penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear,
with their scarlet robes, remindful of Egyptian flamens and African
flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed
candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison
on his sin-struck soul. All this expense in poor Ireland, all these
advantages for poor Ireland. And still the Irish are not happy. With
Roman Catholic cathedrals on every hand, with monasteries, nunneries,
seminaries, confraternities, colleges, convents, Carmelites, Christian
brothers, and collections whichever way they turn, the Irish people
should be content. What could they wish for more?

The principal shopkeepers of Monaghan have unpatriotic names.
Crawford, Jenkins, Henry, Campbell, Kerr, McEntee, Macdonald, and
their like must in some way be accountable for the smartness of the
town and for the emptiness of the prison on the hill. And you soon see
that the Cathedral was needed, for besides the Protestant church, the
town is polluted by two Presbyterian churches, to say nothing of a
schism-shop used by the Wesleyan Methodists. A Monaghan man said:--

"The respectable people are nearly all Protestants, and all the
Protestants, and most of the respectable Catholics, if not all, are
Unionists. In point of numbers the Catholics have the pull, and in the
event of a Home Rule Parliament, which, God forbid, our position as
Protestants would be no longer tenable. We should have to knock under,
and to become persons of no consideration. The small farmers among the
Protestant population would have an especially hard time of it. They
mostly held aloof from the Land League and such-like associations; and
when the other party get the upper hand they will have to smart for
it. What Mr. Dillon said about remembering in the day of their power
who had been their enemies, is always present to the minds of the
lower classes of the Irish people. It is that they may have the power
of punishing all sympathisers with England that some of them say they
want Home Rule. No doubt they have other temptations, but certainly
that is one great incentive. So keenly are they bent on getting power
that they in some cases quite disregard any possible disadvantages
accruing fro