t twelve hours. In fact, allowing for
the difference of situation, it nearly resembled John's Well, or James's
Fair, when beheld at a distance, turning the slated houses into inns,
and the hovels into tents. A certain idea, slight, untraceable, and
involuntary, went over my brain on that occasion, which, though it did
not then cost me a single effort of reflection, I think was revived
and developed at a future period of my life, and became, perhaps to a
certain extent, the means of opening a wider range of thought to my
mind, and of giving a new tone to my existence. Still, however,
nothing except my idea of its external appearance disappointed, me; I
accordingly ascended with the rest, and in a short time found myself
among the living mass upon the island.

The first thing I did was to hand over my three cakes of oaten bread
which I had got made in Petigo, tied up in a handkerchief, as well as
my hat and second shirt, to the care of the owner of one of the, huts:
having first, by the way, undergone a second prostration on touching the
island, and greeted it with fifteen holy kisses, and another string
of prayers. I then, according to the regulations, should commence the
stations, lacerated as my feet were after so long a journey; so that I
had not a moment to rest. Think, therefore, what I must have suffered,
on surrounding a large chapel, in the direction of from east to west,
over a pavement of stone spikes, every one of them making its way along
my nerves and muscles to my unfortunate brain. I was absolutely stupid
and dizzy with the pain, the praying, the jostling, the elbowing, the
scrambling and the uncomfortable penitential murmurs of the whole crowd.
I knew not what I was about, but went through the forms in the same
mechanical spirit which pervaded all present. As for that solemn,
humble, and heartfelt sense of God's presence, which Christian prayer
demands, its existence in the mind would not only be a moral but
a physical impossibility in Lough Derg. I verily think that if
mortification of the body, without conversion of the life or heart--if
penance and not repentance could save the soul, no wretch who performed
a pilgrimage here could with a good grace be damned. Out of hell the
place is matchless, and if there be a purgatory in the other world, it
may very well be said there is a fair rehearsal of it in the county of
Donegal in Ireland.

When I commenced my station, I started from what is called the "Bed