discovered that he had never been present during the season of making
the Pilgrimages, and was consequently ignorant of the religious
ceremonies which take place in it. In consequence, I gave him a pretty
full and accurate account I of them, and of the Station which I myself
had made there. After I had concluded, he requested me to put what I had
told him upon paper, adding, "I will dress it up and have it inserted in
the next edition."

I accordingly went home, and on the fourth evening afterwards brought
him the Sketch of the Lough Derg Pilgrim as it now appears, with the
exception of some offensive passages which are expunged in this edition.
Such was my first introduction to literary life.

And here I cannot omit paying my sincere tribute of grateful
recollection to a man from whom I have received so many acts of the
warmest kindness. To me he was a true friend in every sense of the word.
In my early trials his purse and his advice often supported, soothed,
and improved me. In a literary point of view I am under the deepest
obligations to his excellent judgment and good taste. Indeed were it
not for him, I never could have struggled my way through the severe
difficulties with which in my early career I was beset.

"Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my early days;
None knew thee but to love thee,
Or named thee but to praise."

But to my theme, which will be better understood, as will my description
of the wild rites performed on the shores of its most celebrated island,
by the following extracts, taken from this able and most vivid describer
of Irish scenery:

"The road from the village of Petigo leading towards Lough Derg, runs
along a river tumbling over rocks; and then after proceeding for a time
over a boggy valley, you ascend into a dreary and mountainous tract,
extremely ugly in itself, but from which you have a fine view indeed
of the greatest part of the lower lake of Lough Erne, with its
many elevated islands, and all its hilly shores, green, wooded,
and cultivated, with the interspersed houses of its gentry, and
the comfortable cottages of its yeomanry--the finest yeomanry in
Ireland--men living in comparative comfort, and having in their figures
and bearing that elevation of character which a sense of loyalty and
independence confers. I had at length, after traveling about three
miles, arrived where the road was discontinued, and by the direction of
my guide, ascended a m