nd if the way be dusty or the hills difficult to
climb, each can say to the other, 'I love you, dear; lean on me and walk
in confidence. I can always be counted on, whatever happens.'

Chapter XIX. 'In ould Donegal.'

'Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn!
Slainte, and slainte, and slainte agin;
Pow'rfulest preacher and tenderest teacher,
And kindliest creature in ould Donegal.'
Alfred Perceval Graves.

Coomnageeha Hotel,
In Ould Donegal.

It is a far cry from the kingdom of Kerry to 'ould Donegal,' where we
have been travelling for a week, chiefly in the hope of meeting Father
O'Flynn. We miss our careless, genial, ragged, southern Paddy just a
bit; for he was a picturesque, likable figure, on the whole, and easier
to know than this Ulster Irishman, the product of a mixed descent.

We did not stop long in Belfast; for if there is anything we detest,
when on our journeys, it is to mix too much with people of industry,
thrift, and business sagacity. Sturdy, prosperous, calculating,
well-to-do Protestants are well enough in their way, and undoubtedly
they make a very good backbone for Ireland; but we crave something more
romantic than the citizen virtues, or we should have remained in our own
country, where they are tolerably common, although we have not as yet
anything approaching over-production.

Belfast, it seems, is, and has always been, a centre of Presbyterianism.
The members of the Presbytery protested against the execution of Charles
I., and received an irate reply from Milton, who said that 'the blockish
presbyters of Clandeboy' were 'egregious liars and impostors,' who meant
to stir up rebellion 'from their unchristian synagogue at Belfast in a
barbarous nook of Ireland.'

Dr. La Touche writes to Salemina that we need not try to understand all
the religious and political complications which surround us. They are
by no means as violent or as many as in Thackeray's day, when the great
English author found nine shades of politico-religious differences in
the Irish Liverpool. As the impartial observer must, in such a case,
necessarily displease eight parties, and probably the whole nine,
Thackeray advised a rigid abstinence from all intellectual curiosity.
Dr. La Touche says, if we wish to know the north better, it will do us
no harm to study the Plantation of Ulster, the