n I have read somewhere that the Hebrew characters, with their
minute vowel-points, have driven blind many an enthusiastic scholar, and
I fear these black Greek letters are becoming too much for my old sight.
There now, dear reader, don't rush to the conclusion that this is just
what you anticipated; you knew, of course, how it would be. You never
had much faith in these transcendental enterprises of reviving Greek at
the age of seventy-five, and you shook your incredulous head at the
thought of an Academia of two honorary members at Kilronan. Now we
_have_ done a little. If you could only see the "Dream of Atossa" done
into English pentameters by my curate, and my own "Prometheus"--well,
there, this won't do--_Vanity of vanities_, said the Preacher.

But this much I shall be pardoned. I cannot help feeling very solemn and
almost sad at the approach of Christmas time. Whether it is the long,
gloomy tunnel that runs through the year from November to April,--these
dark, sad days are ever weeping,--or whether it is the tender
associations that are linked with the hallowed time and the remembrance
of the departed I know not; but some indescribable melancholy seems to
hover around and hang down on my spirits at this holy season; and it is
emphasized by a foreboding that somewhere in the future this great
Christian festival will degenerate into a mere bank holiday, and lose
its sacred and tender and thrice-sanctified associations. By the way, is
it not curious that our governments are steadily increasing the number
of secular holidays, whilst the hands of Pharisees are still uplifted in
horror at the idleness and demoralization produced amongst Catholics by
the eight or ten days that are given in the year to the honor of God's
elect?

Well, we shall stand by the old traditions to the end. And one of my
oldest habits has been to read up at Christmas time every scrap of
literature that had any bearing whatever on the most touching and the
most important event in all human history. And so, on the Sunday evening
preceding the celebration of Father Letheby's first Christmas in
Kilronan, I spoke to him at length on my ideas and principles in
connection with this great day; and we went back, in that rambling,
desultory way that conversation drifts into,--back to ancient prophecies
and forecastings, down to modern times,--tales of travellers about
Bethlehem, the sacrilegious possession of holy places by Moslems, etc.,
etc., until th