rtainly not
the least pleasant portion of my life in Ireland. Endowed--partly
from his individual gifts, partly from the nature of his sacred
functions--with influence over all the humble ranks in life, the good
priest jogged along with the assurance of a hearty welcome wherever he
pleased to halt--the only look of disappointment being when he declined
some proffered civility, or refused an invitation to delay his journey.
The chariot was well known in every town and village, and scarcely
was the rumble of its wheels heard coming up the 'street' when the
population might be seen assembling in little groups and knots, to have
a word with 'the father,' to get his blessing, to catch his eye, or even
obtain a nod from him. He knew every one and everything, and with a tact
which is believed to be the prerogative of royalty, he never miscalled
a name nor mistook an event. Inquiring after them, for soul and body, he
entered with real interest into all their hopes and plans, their fears
and anticipations, and talked away about pigs, penances, purgatory, and
potatoes in a way that showed his information on any of these matters to
be of no mean or common order.

By degrees our way left the more travelled highroad, and took by a
mountain tract through a wild, romantic line of country beside the
Shannon. No villages now presented themselves, and indeed but little
trace of any habitation whatever; large misshapen mountains, whose
granite sides were scarce concealed by the dark fern, the only
vegetation that clothed them, rose around and about us. In the valleys
some strips of bog might be seen, with little hillocks of newly-cut
turf, the only semblance of man's work the eye could rest on. Tillage
there was none. A dreary silence, too, reigned throughout. I listened in
vain for the bleating of a lamb or the solitary tinkle of a sheep-bell;
but no--save the cawing of the rooks or the mournful cry of the plover,
I could hear nothing. Now and then, it is true, the heavy flapping of a
strong wing would point the course of a heron soaring towards the river;
but his low flight even spoke of solitude, and showed he feared not man
in his wild and dreamy mountains. At intervals we could see the Shannon
winding along, far, far down below us, and I could mark the islands in
the bay of Scariff, with their ruined churches and one solitary tower;
but no sail floated on the surface, nor did an oar break the sluggish
current of the stream. It was, i